Escaping the Devouring Mother

that Primal early image of the mother beckons us to become howling infants once again yes we lose Consciousness and then we start behaving in all kinds of devastating ways so what we're really fighting is the desire to fall into the dragon to nurse at the dragon to become a a child once again A Dangerous Child and then we have the hero and Yung says the hero represents the good favorable action of the unconscious while the dragon is its negative and unfavorable action not birth but a devouring not a beneficial and constructive deed but greedy retention

and destruction Our Heroes have to face that challenge of early adulthood by facing those chaotic Primal regressive Tendencies of the unconscious when we think of the mother the mother that's from the perspective of the infant so you know we're born and we're just piles of howling Instinct without any regulation and we have to be helped and raised but that first experience of the newborn infant to the mother is a realm of overwhelming Instinct and because those um preverbal memories are still alive in all of us that there is a beckoning that that Primal early image

of the mother beckons us to become howling infants once again so to defeat the mother is actually to defeat the attraction to wanting to collapse back into that howling State this kind of regression yes we lose Consciousness and then we start behaving in all kinds of illegal and devastating ways so what we're really fighting which is something to think about is the desire to fall into the dragon to nurse at the dragon to become a a child once again A Dangerous Child and that's that is what oong basically says is that when fighting the dragon

we are fighting the temptation to to regress you have some good quotes there don't you yeah the um and so we have the dragon the regression or a symbol of regression and then we have the hero and Yung says the hero represents the good favorable action of the unconscious while the dragon is its negative and unfavorable action not birth but a devouring not a beneficial and constructive deed but G greedy retention and destruction and our heroes and they're always U male Heroes um are uh have to face that challenge of early adulthood um by facing

those chaotic Primal regressive Tendencies of the unconscious and to develop boldness and courage and stand against those forces of of chaos MH yeah so um just to kind of translate that it's such a great great quote but to sort of translate it say you know you have a young person who's uh about to finish college and has no idea what he wants to do he you know he doesn't have any plans he doesn't have a job and so the regressive tendency would maybe be to you know see if he could stay in college longer maybe

he can you know engineer some way to add on an extra semester for example and you know the images of what he's going to do afterwards is like well maybe I'm going to move back home and and it's this it's a a kind of regressive regressing back to a childlike state of dependence or staying in a childlike State instead of overcoming the fear you know Yung talkx and in volume Five he talks about fear a lot because what we have to do to face the Dragon is overcome our fear a and in the battle with

the dragon um this is another short quote from Yung the hero has much in common with the dragon he fights or or rather he takes over some of its qualities invulnerability snake's eyes Etc so if you can fight the regressive tendency um it's empowering and uh there again I think we see the Opposites and um that one is is it looks like it's being defeated but in the defeat the hero absorbs some of those qualities MH becomes more dragon-like exactly um uh now you too can breathe fire so the example that you had given Lisa

is um a collapse into kind of a passive dependency on the mother yes but also depending on how far we regress we also can regress to a more borderline state which is a chaotic state which is even more dangerous and then we're in the world of the self sabator why is it that things are going well and something Wells up in front inside of me and I have an Impulse to say something that's going to create chaos or to be provocative in some way or to make infantile demands and to foster a kind of chaotic

wildness in my relationship at work at school and that's also this unfortunate regression to that very very very early state which isn't as peaceful as wanting to play video games in the basement but is actually much more terrifying mhm mhh yeah now the other side of the Dragon is also as we were saying um the dragons can have a protective aspect that in Hinduism Naga is a central figure in Buddhism that is the protector of those who are in right relationship she is she is a goddess of water and fertility and the Earth and wisdom

and she protects the treasures material and spiritual so I think later in life once we've kind of differentiated from the seduction of the Dragon we can have a relationship with the unconscious and the unconscious is also the source of creativity and treasures and instincts that can save your hide right like if we know it's not going to devour us then we can we can harness ourselves to it in a way that's incredibly powerfully creative which I think is part of the appeal of uh shows like House of the Dragon which was the kind of prequel

to Game of Thrones which I really enjoyed I have to say I started off thinking H you know but then I I really got into it and they do a lot with dragons and there's this wonderful image and of course this is another popular books too but they they do this wonderful uh there's this wonderful thing where if you're uh a Targaryen and you can speak uh what's the language um H Valerian or something you you can um you can sort of tame a you can bind a dragon to you and then you become a

dragon rider and uh it's it's this really uh stupendous thing and there are these aerial fights and all these great uh uh special effects you see these kinds of swooping beasts in the air bellowing loudly uh and it's but it's a wonderful image I think of just what we were saying that that you know with the right relationship you could have access to the vast Life Energy of the unconscious of the creative unconscious that the dragon represents right and the thing that they say when they approach the dragon in that television series is serve me

ah okay the dragon that's great number of the situations the dragon looks up considers then belches flame all over the new ask if you're not the right kind of targarian it's not going to go well right that's right so this calls up for me you know what is um the right relationship uh to to dragons to this aspect of the unconscious and a and just as in fairy tales there are a number of ways to relate to dragons but you have to go in consciously you can't just walk up to a dragon and say hey

uh serve me but uh Joseph you and I were talking about there is a theme of befriending this way where like Horse and Rider the the hero um you know is the one directing the forces of Dragon the unconscious and we were talking about the Sci-Fi series by Ann mcaffrey of uh the dragons of per and uh the whole series that b borrows from Conrad Lawrence uh Laurens l o r n z uh who discovered how uh chicks imprint and that when the chicks hatch the first thing they see is is what they will follow

and consider uh their their guiding more or less maternal force and uh it was such a wonderful scene of people gathering around all the dragon eggs hatching and that when the dragons hat you simply stand there and wait for one of these little baby dragons they're so cute to make eye contact with you and and bond uh such an interesting in image of a kind of Primal bonding with a baby dragon that you can befriend big dangerous [Laughter] Ducks uh another way is you can trick the dragon uh aside from the usual heroic uh sword

piercing um Legends there's a a story um I think in the Bible or one of the Apocrypha of uh Daniel and um this Idol and it's a dragon and uh the way that Daniel kills the dragon is by feeding it cakes made of pitch and hair and fat and our greedy Dragon gulps them all down and um then they explode in the Dragon stomach which is a gloriously um really horrible Gory End To to the dragon so it it calls up various ways of which Dragon what do I do what are my options how do

I relate to this energy