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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
