Warrior, Magician, Lover, King

by Rod Boothroyd

  I decide how to interact with my children.

  I only maintain friendships which serve me.

  And so on. You can see how this works, I’m sure. Find your first thirty NUTS right now, and write them down. Pin them up somewhere so you can see them every morning. Reflect on your NUTS regularly, so that you know what you stand for and you know where your boundaries lie. This process can show you the core values which lie at the very centre of who you are and how you present yourself in the world.

  The essence of integrity is knowing what you stand for. It’s rare to see such clear sovereignty in young men, because they are at a developmental stage where they are often driven by a need to go out into the world and make their mark. But occasionally I come across young men who are clearly Princes: Kings in waiting. Tom, a young man of 23 who I was counselling recently, came up with some truly profound values when we talked about integrity and what he wanted to stand up for:

  Equality of people.

  Justice for all.

  Freedom of expression

  Supporting the power of the common man.

  Defending the rights of the oppressed.

  Supporting the right to be truly yourself.

  You could spend a few minutes now thinking about your own values, the values that underlie your NUTS. Simply start by jotting down all the ideas which some to mind – you can always refine them later. The important thing here, I believe, is to start thinking about what really matters to you. And reflecting on the qualities you admire in others is often helpful in identifying the qualities you would like to embody yourself.

  10 Act With Intention

  One of the most powerful aspects of sovereignty is forming an intention and acting upon it. For example, in the list above you will see this statement: “I do not indulge my addictions.” Addictions serve as a great way to illustrate the power of intention.

  Over the years I have heard many, many men declare that they will give up porn, drugs, drink, gossip, sweet food and all the other addictions which seem to soothe some deeply wounded part of us all, only to find that after a week or a month or a year they drift back into the same old pattern. Why is this?

  There seem to be two main reasons.

  First, they have not set a clear intention for change. They have not thought about what it would really mean for this change to be a part of who they are, nor whether it fits with what they truly want at this time in their lives.

  To consciously set an intention for yourself requires a clear choice about what you want, born of a clear decision about what is best for you at this time in your life – for example, giving up alcohol or drugs. Setting a clear intention about what you want means you stand much less chance of being swayed or distracted by the prevailing opinions of the people around you (who may wish to maintain the status quo).

  Also, setting an intention means you have great clarity about what you’re trying to achieve, and that clarity allows you to hold yourself accountable if you fail to move in the right direction. If you have an accountability buddy, so much the better. That’s a buddy who can check in with you on a regular basis to see how you’re doing with your intention, and who is willing to really listen as you speak about what’s going on for you.

  The second reason is more challenging. You may not be in a place of sufficient internal strength to give up your addictions. And this brings us to the essential element of how to deal with your emotional wounds so you can become the Sovereign you want to be.

  We all carry a wounded little boy inside of us; he’s a part of who we are. So, for example, if your wounded inner child is demanding to be soothed with alcohol or drugs or food or sex, and his demands are stronger than your conscious intention not to indulge in those things, I’m sure you already know how this will turn out.

  (In case you’re wondering, your inner child will most likely prevail. And you’ll be back to the PC watching porn, getting the whisky bottle out, eating trashy food, smoking dope, or whatever…)

  To beat yourself up about this is pointless. The right course of action is to find a way of working with your inner child to soothe him.

  Most wounded inner children lacked good parenting, and this is what they still need. So you could be a father to him; to put it another way, you could be his Sovereign. You can father your inner child by talking to him, holding him, and indulging him in a good-father kind of way, just as you would for your own son or daughter. You can also set a loving boundary around his actions, just as you would if he was your own physical child. This way he will come to feel more safe and more loved, and the intensity of his pain will diminish.

  Another benefit of attending to the needs of this part of yourself is that his urge to hijack your entire system will become much less compelling, which means your Sovereign can take his rightful place as leader in your kingdom without fighting the powerful demands of an unhappy little boy.

  11 Be Decisive

  Sure, this isn’t always easy. But decisiveness is a clear trait of all powerful Sovereigns. Decisiveness engenders respect from men and women alike. Sometimes making a decision and sticking to it can be more helpful than questioning yourself and changing your mind numerous times. That can be a sign of weakness and may diminish your chance of achieving success in the longer term.

  Developing the quality of decisiveness allows you to be calm and cool under pressure, to be the person who keeps his head when all about are losing theirs (and perhaps blaming it on you).

  Decisiveness also allows you to be self-motivating when times are hard or circumstances challenging. It allows you to stay calm more easily under pressure, perhaps when the children are provoking you beyond reason, your employees are making demands on you that seem unreasonable in the extreme, and you’re battling all kinds of pressures in your relationship too.

  You will stay calm because you know what to do in a crisis, and you are confident about doing it. You are, after all, a Sovereign who can hold the wounds of his kingdom, because you’ve developed the skills and strengths that allow you to do this.

  There are other advantages to being decisive, too.

  Decisiveness of this kind allows you to move swiftly towards your goals and to move towards happiness and fulfilment quickly and easily. You’re in control of yourself and the world around you. You know what you want and you know where you’re going. You are, in fact, the master of your own destiny.

  Making informed and good decisions is easier with the assistance of your Magician. You can ask him to get all the information you need before you make a decision. Let him be creative and imaginative about getting it, and ensure that you assess the information he offers to you carefully. As far as may be possible, imagine the consequences of each choice you could make. Cross-reference all this with your past experience, and then decide what to do. Learn to trust your intuition.

  The more you face up to challenges, the more you’ll be able to cope with any situation that arises, no matter how unexpected. When you do this, your confidence and self-assuredness will grow quickly.

  A few words of practical wisdom: avoid regret about the decisions you’ve already made. The constructive thing here is to learn from your mistakes and move forward knowing how to do things differently in the future. Energy spent on worrying is energy wasted; energy expended on your regrets keeps you trapped in the past, and is not available to propel you towards your future.

  Strengthening your sovereignty in all these ways will allow you to accept the mistakes you’ve made, forgive yourself, and move on – and even if you do have regrets, you will be able to hold them with a sense of self-compassion and love.

  The Boyhood Sovereign Archetype – The Divine Child

  Boys have all the archetypes of the mature masculine within them in an “immature” form – in other words, in a form that prefigures the same archetype in the mature masculine.

  Moore and Gillette called the boyhood form of the Sovereign archetype the Divine Child. If you’ve ever held a newborn baby boy
or girl, you may have felt this energy of the Divine Child in its most pure and innocent form. Working on your shadows and healing your emotional wounds will allow you to recover some of this childhood energy, and as you do so you will move closer to being the man you were always meant to be – before the world got in the way.

  Perhaps the Divine Child is a state of being, an energy that is hardwired into our brains when we are born: an energy that gives us a natural sense of our capacity to do anything we want as well as an awareness of our glorious magnificence and, yes, perhaps even our divinity.

  Sadly, the world may not take very kindly to this sort of energy in the child. Heinz Kohut, a pioneer in the field of self-psychology, referred to it as “grandiose self-organization” which demands of ourselves and others what can never be provided or fulfilled.

  The Jungian perspective, however, shows us how this archetypal energy is the source of our life force. It empowers us, produces an enormous sense of confidence, self-esteem and well-being, and it fosters our enthusiasm for life. This is the energy that keeps us young at heart and propels us happily, with a sense of the rightness of the way things are, all the way through our lives, even into death.

  The Shadows of the Divine Child

  The inflated pole of the Divine Child is the high chair tyrant. This is a truly immature form of sovereign energy, summed up in the image of a little boy having a tantrum because his demands are not being met while simultaneously demanding that the world should immediately respond to his needs and do as he requires.

  The problem is, anything that isn’t quite right is rejected with anger. The high chair tyrant experiences – and expresses – limitless demands, a symptom of his own grandiosity, but regrettably because he believes his needs can never be met, he turns away from what is offered, even the love that he needs to nurture him.

  Arrogance and childishness and irresponsibility are the hallmarks of this shadow. The problem is that the high chair tyrant has somehow come to believe that he is the centre of everyone’s universe, and that everyone and everything has been provided to meet his every need. This tyranny is an infantile state of mind: that of the indulged and pampered infant who grows into a boy who’s equally mollycoddled, a boy who then becomes a man with no sense of responsibility or obligation to the world around him

  For a man who continues to carry the high chair tyrant into adulthood, progress in the world may, for a while at least, be rapid – there have always been plenty of people in the world willing to serve a tyrant. Yet these men are so-called leaders who can’t tolerate an opposing viewpoint or take criticism or challenge, and who throw a tantrum when things don’t go their way. Possessed by the energy of the high chair tyrant, they may get rid of anyone who opposes them; even so they don’t usually survive for very long.

  The unfortunate problem for anyone possessed by this archetype is that the demands of the high chair tyrant can never be met. The grandiose two-year-old inside the man, the grandiose five-year-old inside the man, the grandiose teenager inside the man – these are the energies which drive the apparently adult man to ever more outrageous behaviour.

  As Moore and Gillette put it, unless the high chair tyrant is brought under control, he will finally manifest as a modern version of Stalin, Caligula, or Hitler. There are plenty of modern day examples, too.

  No matter that the grandiosity and sense of entitlement of people like Hitler ends in the destruction of their own country – all that matters to them is their own grandiosity, and getting their own needs met. Which is, of course, impossible.

  The deflated shadow of the divine child is the weakling Prince. This is an energy of passivity, withdrawal, weakness, and helplessness. Yet this is a front for something more malicious: a more manipulative, vicious, almost predatorial energy which is pretending to be a helpless victim.

  Although this is a most unpleasant energy to be around, in its way as unpleasant as the high chair tyrant, it’s still an energy that occupies a throne, for this aura of victimhood tends to draw protective energy from others with a certain complementary need (his parents, first and foremost).

  As with all shadows, a victim child in the deflated form of the archetype can switch into the opposite pole and – in this case – start to display tyrannical outbursts.

  Although these shadows are dysfunctional, the Divine Child in its balanced form is a powerful archetype for a boy to inhabit. And it’s a powerful archetype when it lives on within the grown man, too.

  The skill here is achieving maturity: inhabiting the mature Sovereign archetype while recognizing the value of the immature Divine Child within. It’s important for a mature man not to identify with the Divine Child, but to simply connect with it and its energy: the energy of creativity, vitality, greatness, perhaps even some kind of connection to our innate perfection.

  We need to watch for the Divine Child’s shadows throughout our lives. As Moore and Gillette put it, the question is not whether we are manifesting the high chair tyrant or the weakling Prince, but how we are manifesting them. As they said, at the very least we’re all manifesting them when we regress into our inner child when we’re frightened or tired!

  And still, we need to honour this inner child, the Divine Child within, for his positive qualities; they are life-giving. If we’re not feeling his energy, the right response might be to consider how we’re blocking him – and why we’re doing so.

  In Summary

  The Sovereign archetype is what the world needs more than anything right now. It encompasses – in its balanced form – a care for the Earth, the people, the environment and the self. It reflects generosity of spirit, and carries an understanding that we are all derived from the same energy source. This allows the Sovereign to acknowledge that we are more similar than different, an insight which is the foundation of an attitude of respect to all the citizens of the world.

  At the same time, the King will rule without fear or favour, knowing that his responsibility extends to the seventh generation, and that he is only a temporary custodian of what is in his care today.

  As a man who knows he is good enough, he can be generous to others and their failings, and so he responds to their projections gracefully.

  He lives from a place of humility, for he respects the natural order of things, and he does not take his sovereignty for granted.

  He feels joy because he embodies emotional maturity. He has done much of his personal work and is able to bless others with a generous and open heart, respecting them as the unique manifestation of the divine that they are.

  He knows with visceral certainty the inevitability of his own death. He grasps this as a physical reality, not just as a theoretical idea, and this knowledge softens his drive and ambition. “This too shall pass” means rather more to him that the average person.

  He may embody the qualities of an Elder, recognizing the need to support younger men on their Hero’s journey. He will look back on his life from his death bed with a sense of satisfaction, knowing that he has done what he can, and that he was indeed good enough.

  Chapter 6

  Your Shadow Uncovered:

  Exploring Your Unknown Inner World

  Shadow: the parts of yourself which you hide, repress and deny. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But is it? For one thing, how would you know which parts of yourself you’ve put into shadow? And what does this really mean, anyway?

  Robert Bly summarized the concept of shadow very simply. He wrote about young children having a “360 degree personality”. They are complete, whole. The energy of life energy radiates out from young children, from both body and psyche.

  A child running, says Bly, is “a rounded, living globe of energy”. And it’s certainly true: when you look at children you can see their energy so clearly. Sadly, you can also see how parents quickly convey to a child that certain parts of his or her rounded globe of energy are less welcome than others.

  They ask a child, “Can’t you just be quiet?” “Can’t you sit still fo
r a minute?” “Why can’t you be more like your big brother?” “Why can’t you just be a good boy for a change?” Such comments convey a message infused with disapproval, rejection or disappointment, and each message changes how the child behaves, thinks or feels about himself. Sometimes the messages are very direct; they may take the form of physical, emotional or sexual abuse which really conveys the message to a child that he is bad, worthless, has no power, is unloved, or something else hugely damaging.

  Parents also send messages about what is expected of a child when they say things like, “Big boys don’t cry.” (Which really means, don’t be vulnerable or show your sadness.) “You should stand up for yourself more.” (You’re weak, and we’re not going to help you.) “You want to be good at sports, don’t you?” (Your talents, wishes and choices are not valid in our minds.) “Boys should be strong and brave.” (Your fear is not welcome here.) Some messages are cleaner, healthier and more useful than others: “It isn’t nice to hit your brother.” “Don’t tease the cat.” “Be polite and share with the other boys and girls.”

  While children fare better in life if they are socialized, for example by being taught not to hurt their most unwelcome new baby brother or sister, parents may go well beyond this. For reasons of their own, they may try to suppress certain natural energies in their child’s personality – his tears, maybe, or his anger, fear, self-confidence, joy, creativity, wildness, exuberance, spontaneity, curiosity and sexuality.

  Each of these is an energy which a child can put away, out of sight, if his parents don’t want it, don’t like it, or won’t tolerate it. And where does it all go? Into the shadow bag, a highly expandable imaginary bag conveniently slung over our shoulder and into which we can put everything our parents, friends, siblings, teachers, and society don’t like or want in us.