The Shadow of a Figure of Light: The Archetype of the Alcoholic and the Journey to Enlightenment

The Shadow of a Figure of Light: the Archetype of the Alcoholic and the Journey to Enlightenment delves into the nature of modern psychospiritual transformation by examining the human thirst for wholeness through the lens of alcoholism and addiction. Establishing an unknown historical thread that ties renowned psychiatrist C.G. Jung and Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson, Cody Peterson shows how their methodologies each stemmed from an ancient shamanistic source constellated through what he has coined the archetype of the Alcoholic. Painting the Twelve Steps as a modern myth, the author presents the Alcoholic as a paradoxical image leading us towards enlightenment amid a deepening, culture-wide spiritual crisis.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

Personal Roots

Myths of Meaning

Part One: The Mythological Mycelia of the Twelve Steps

Psychological Roots

William James

Harvard, 1875

The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902

Clark University, 1909

The Spiritual Ancestors

Symbols of Transformation, 1912

Mythological Mycelia

Jung and Jaime, 1923

Mother Earth, Father Sun

Jung Goes to Taos, 1925

Jung Goes to Africa, 1925-26

Myths of Expanding Consciousness

Jung and Rowland, May 1926

Rowland and the Oxford Group, 1932

Bill Wilson Gets Sober, 1934

The Twelve Steps, 1939

Part Two: A Psychological Approach to the Twelve Step Myth

Living Myths and Dying Gods

The Anonymous Alcoholic

God Is Dead

The New God-Image

Jung's Psychological Approach

Wilson's (Psychological) Approach

An Immaculate Conception

The Great Reality

The Psychological Function of the God-image

The Real Problem with Western Metaphysics

The Objective Psyche

The Breath of Life

Meister Eckhart

An Inadequate Conception

An Eastern Approach

The Numinosum

Shaped Energy

"The Primitive"

Spiritual Dynamics

The Coniunctio Oppositorum

The Laws of Spiritual Dynamics

Wilson Discovers a Middle Way

Part Three: The Thirst for Wholeness

The Archetype of The Alcoholic

An Archetype Emerges

Alcoholism and the West's Spiritual Crisis

The Alcoholic and the Trickster

Spiritus Contra Spiritum

The Wounded Healer

The Music of Alcoholics

The Devil

The Power of Evil in Twelve Step Mythology

An Insoluble Dilemma

Self-annihilation

The Christ-image

An Incomplete God-image

Enantiodromia

The Boy Whistling in the Dark

Part Four: The Ego and the Self

The Self

The Inflated Ego

Expanding Spiritual Consciousness

The Fall and the At-one-ment

The Fall

The Mythos of the Anonymous Alcoholic

The At-one-ment

The Mystery of Compulsion

The Myth of Compulsion

Vocation, The Creative Influence

Doorways to the Self

A Portal into the Universal Mind

Emulating the Self

Conclusion

The Shadow of a Figure of Light

Projections of the Self

Making the Darkness Conscious

A Play of Light and Dark

Bibliography

Index