In Memories Dreams Reflections, C精品文档.doc

Hiroshima—Creativity’s Dark Side: Owning the Full Face of the Gods Awakening Personal Mythology through Art Accompanied by a Film Production Piece By Catherine Firpo, Ph.D. Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. —Friedrich Nietzsche The numinous occurs the moment we know we are part of something greater than ourselves. Various perspectives of truth proclaim the quality of numinous experience. The one truth I know in my intimate relationship and exploration of both the inherent darkness and light of the creative process is this: everything, everything that is buried resurfaces. Dig just beneath the soma of shattered life to reveal the bones of existence and destiny. Myth, mythology, mythopoesis, and depth psychology flesh out the bones of a departed absent creativity waiting impatiently to be discovered, re-imagined, loved, and regenerated back into existence. This process employs an archetypal lens and language through the perspectives of mythology and depth psychology to view the range of the highest to the most terrifying depth of creativity’s shadow in the individual and collective psyche as it exists in the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. The often ignored shadow aspect of creativity will be explored through the following templates: descent into the creative process; ascent: surviving the underworld of the creative; and regeneration: the return to the world above or current global cultural times bringing patterns of rebirth. This paper confronts the dark aspects in all of us and the necessary journey we all must take to acknowledge our own shadows. Until we do, a thousand September 11ths will occur in a thousand different ways. Hiroshima and September 11th contain aspects of the same dynamic tension found in violent, supposedly redeeming acts. If collectively we do not proceed with consciousness we risk initiating the blindness referred to by Mahatma Gandhi when he said: “An eye for an eye makes the whole