Happier Life, Happier Ending

If the story of your life were to be told someday many years from now, what would it be and how would it end? Would the ending be that you died peacefully in your sleep, at an advanced age? Would your last years not only be healthy but filled with loving friends and family, excitement, and a sense of purpose? Would you have no regrets?

And as you look at the story of your life right now, are you on the path to the ending you would like to experience? Because if not, working with energies that are hidden from your conscious awareness could help you get on the road you’d like to travel. You can decide today to work toward experiencing a happier ending to your life’s story.

I believe we have more power than we think to write our own stories. I also believe we can learn much from examining stories people share in common to get clues about unseen energies we might want to work with as storytellers in our own lives. We can write more satisfying stories. We can even, perhaps, set ourselves up for far better endings than the ones we’re currently headed toward.

Unseen Energies That Influence Your Roles and Story

Great stories, myths, and fairytales all have characters and themes that psychologist Carl Jung identified as archetypal: they’re templates from which humans create new stories to share with and connect with others, stories that make sense of their experiences. As individuals, we also write stories that explain our life experiences and influence our present and future. However, our stories are often hidden from our conscious awareness and not even written by us. They may be stories written by people long ago who had different ideas about what people’s lives should look like. These stories have archetypal energies that influence us.

We may enjoy movies and myths about tragedies and that feature innocents who are betrayed or heroes who die gloriously in battle, but we want our lives to have happy endings.  By identifying any archetypal energies that are influencing your story, you can start to imagine ways to loosen their grip and free yourself from restrictive narratives and roles, giving you more freedom of choice. Then you can experience your innocence and heroism without having your story’s ending be a disappointing or even tragic one.

Do you feel certain that you’re living your life consciously? Could you be partly or mostly living according to a story you haven’t questioned, one that might have been written by someone else and supported by your unconscious choices? Maybe you’re living out a story of helping others in excess, being a hero at the expense of taking care of yourself and set up to experience an ending marked by health problems and an early demise. Is that what you want for yourself? To be worked to exhaustion?

As you think about your story, do you identify with a particular character in a myth, movie, or novel? This character might have an archetypal quality: It might be a workaholic, a leader, or an innocent. It may have qualities like a father or mother, a king or queen, or a student or teacher. You can gain wisdom and insights from this energy, this character or role, by having an imaginary conversation with it.

A Helpful Conversation with the Unseen

To gain more freedom of choice and get on a path toward a happier ending to your life’s story, I suggest you meditate to open the doorway to your unconscious and ask an archetypal energy or character that’s influencing you to help you gain insights and energy for transformation. You might consciously choose to meet and talk with a particular role you identify with—a servant, a teacher, or court jester, perhaps—or a character from a novel, myth, or film.

When you are in a meditative state, allow this archetypal energy or figure to come forth into your awareness in any form it takes.

 Observe its qualities and appearance.

Ask it, “What can I learn from you?”

Ask it what you can give to it, and then ask what it can give to you.

Take your time. The answers may be slow in coming. You might even have to try again another time to receive insights in the form of images, words, or an internal knowing—insights that answer your questions. Your unconscious has much wisdom to offer you. What’s more, it is connected with the collective unconscious that holds all the archetypes and the wisdom all human beings—past, present, and future—share. Working with it consciously will lessen its power over you and gain you insights and even energy for transformation.

The unseen figures that reside in your unconscious can become your allies as a result of your work with them. They can help you reclaim strengths you might not realize you have and manage any weaknesses that get in the way of you living the way you would like to. They can create a shift within you as you release something that’s been weighing on you and take in a gift the figures offer, whether it’s a strength, a nugget of wisdom, or a type of energy you can use in your everyday life.

A Better Ending

Whatever your story is today, it doesn’t have to end with a dissatisfying situation you have been moving toward for years because of a lack of self-reflection and a lack of conscious interaction with unseen forces influencing you. If you work consciously with archetypal energies, you can get started on the road toward a happier ending to your life and even find more satisfaction and a greater sense of purpose as you live each day.

A version of this article appeared in The Edge magazine.

You can learn more about transformation and how to change your story and your life by reading my books, available at bookstores everywhere.