Ch 02 ~Holistic Psychology; Balance on All Levels PACMES — 3rd Ed. (2023)
Goldilocks as archetype of soul in the human experience. Finally, a Comprehensive Holistic Theory and General Holistic Experimental Method
For me the Three Bears fairy tale summarizes how a healthy, childlike awareness navigates thru the human experience. She is challenged to find the “just right” middle balance between two extremes. The tale repeats Goldilocks’ dilemma three times, with chairs, porridge and bed.
Goldilocks symbolizes awareness in the human experience. Over and over again, day after day, we are charged with finding the middle way between all extremes. Goldilocks’ experience, is an archetype for healthy awareness in the human experience.
If our human experience intends no more nor less, than a playful balancing act between all extremes Life offers us, all we need do is choose healthy middle ground again and again, as best we can.
The tale does not judge nor punish Goldilocks for making two “wrong” choices and a final “good” choice. She simply makes a new experiment until the middle solution is uncovered.
Goldilocks conducts her own experiments, as three year olds do, using her senses, in real time. No inner critic here; no penalty, no “failures.” The Bears do not eat her; they simply watch; possibly jealous, as animals cannot do as Goldilocks does.
This is why The Three Bears tale comforts young children. It tells them, “Even tho you are too young to know how to make good choices as adults do, slow down, take your time, use your senses, experiment, trust your senses, do one experiment at a time. If you do, you will be as safe, happy and contented as Goldilocks.
Goldilocks represents our immortal-eternal awareness converged with a childlike purity. As awareness we are constantly invited to find our way between the extremes life presents to us:
- Between endless hyper-vigilance and sloth-sleep, the “sleep of reason,”
- Between anger and apathy,
- Between over- and under-participation at the heart level (Babinetics).
- Between over- and under-identification, over- and under-responsibility, etc.
Q: What do the Bears signify?
A: If you look up the “meaning of Bears in fairy tales,” some scholars believe bears represent instinctual behavior, the capacity to behave only instinctually. More broadly animals connote playing back in their behavior only a limited number of pre-programmed, conditioned behaviors: instincts.
Choice is 98% absent in animals. Without conscious choice, a single animal cannot evolve. Goldilocks can evolve. Her behavior embodies healthy “choice.”
Animals in tales represent replaying only learned, conditioned behaviors. They rarely make conscious choices or decisions. Choice is weak or absent. Unlike Goldilocks, without choice, an animal cant evolve.
Why care about “balance”?
What is in the middle away from all extremes at each end? Health, balance, peace, healthy function, things like these.
Why care about “healthy function”? Because the more we can expand healthy function, on more levels, PACMES; and, the longer we can hold in it, the more contentment-wellness automatically wells up inside us from our unconscious.
Why does this happen? Because contentment, wellness, things like this, in the Feeling level of our psyche, tell us our needs are met in our UNconscious.
Contentment and physical wellness are side-effects when many needs met on multiple levels are met. Balance can also be conceived of in relationship terms. Contentment and physical wellness are side-effects when needs met in your relationship with your self (physical body, inner child), with other people, with the world, and with your own divinity (however individually conceived).
Goldilocks is the archetype of balance in the human experience, reducing choices and behaviors which lead us to extremes, taking us OUT of balance.
Drama is the enemy of peace
The less stress, drama and disturbance interfering with our cell-level intelligence, the more our cells are able to produce physical health. They know how to do this. Why? Healthy function is their programming form Mother Nature.
Except for deliberate entertainment, drama in life is the enemy of peace. More on this later when we discuss whole-brainedness.
Goldilocks as Buddha
Goldilocks’ choices echo the Buddha’s “way of moderation” translated into imagery a three-year old can enjoy and take to heart.
We might say all parents have a “Buddhist” wish for their children to grow up and walk a middle path of wellness and prevention, not too materialistic nor too dissociated-abstracted from the 3D sense world.
What nourishes us most as souls cannot be too hot, cannot be too cold, it must be just right, in a human-friendly middle zone between extremes. In our anatomy, we have a natural middle-ground, at the heart center, the middle frequency of our etheric body, located over our breastbone, similar in frequency to our thymus gland.
The healthy frequency of heartfelt feeling here is a healthy middle zone many people respond to. Guess who else? Each of our internal glands and organs know about this middle-heartfelt frequency. This is a safe place for all internal cells, glands and organs. Feel free to define it differently as workable for you. We are all playing the Goldilocks game.
Middle ground as more colorful
One of my clairvoyant mentors in Health Intuition, Sally Anne Ostler, added a perception about seesaws and polarities.
She reports at each end of a see-saw polarity, images look to her as black and white, more stark. Healthy, colorful images, with a feeling of abundance and life, can be found only in the center between the two stark polarities.
Consider: Poles, each extreme, represented in black and white. Middle ground of greater feeling represented in color images.
This echoes Rudolf Steiner’s 1919 idea of the space between two polarities as the missing middle ground of feeling and life. The middle ground between two dysfunctional polarities will always be a place of more balance and less drama. The middle ground between two stressed poles is less polarized, less fragmented, less disturbed, more peaceful, more whole-brained.
I think I learned the tactic of looking for healthy middle ground between two extreme choices from Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf-methods whole-child education.
A choice is easier to see when the two extremes are colored black and white. All we can do is choose healthy middle ground again and again, as best we can.
Balance as homeostasis
To use a big word, we can say Goldilocks makes choices supporting her own homeostasis. Homeostasis is “the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between inter-dependent elements,” especially in living bodies.
If you have ever cared for a small infant, you know about homeostasis and how much work it can be to maintain equilibrium.
Now imagine each of your six trillion cells as an infant working to establish and maintain equilibrium.
Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”
In the 1950s, Maslow expanded on the the 1940s idea of homeostasis. He suggested a set of psychological needs, self-actualization needs, each of us strives to have homeostasis in.
needs-pyramid-b&w
The present text proposes even more additional needs we are unconsciously trying to establish and maintain balance in. Our cells, our unconscious strive to find a just-right solution for all variables which when disordered, tend to one extreme or the other
Goldilocks as Christ Jesus
Around 1915 Rudolf Steiner personally sculpted a wooden sculpture almost 20 feet tall and ten feet wide. The central figure of three is a standing Christ figure. He is portrayed in equipoise between two polar forces, one above, one below. The upper figure pulls Christ up and away from Earth. The lower figure pulls Christ down further and lower into mere materiality.
The force above represents unbridled, excessive, unhealthy fantasy and illusion. This figure is given the Zoroastrian name, “Lucifer.” This is any impulse taking the human being too high, too fast, upward spirals moving too rapidly upwards. Ungrounded is the word we use most today.
The figure below represents unbridled, excessive, unhealthy materialism and rigidity. This figure is given the Zoroastrian name, “Ahriman.” This is any impulse taking the human being too low, too slow, too much into comfort, sloth and egotism, downward spirals taking the human being down too forcefully into materiality.
Steiner represents Christ as walking between these two figures, these two forces attempting to pull souls out of balance in the human experience.
Pictures of Steiner’s statue here: http://www.rudolfsteinerweb.com/galleries/Steiner_Sculpture/index.html
Buddha’s middle ground is a path of moderation, avoiding the danger of ungrounded and dissociated from earthly experience; on the other hand, the danger of souls chained endlessly to materialism and physical re-embodiment.
Next we will discuss balance in the human experience as the active managing between conscious choice (new responses) and habits (already learned responses).
