MLou

YES!! The Magician in us is that part of us that can change the energy so that it doesn’t have to be the same old same old. I knew that you’d get that right away (after all, yoga is in part about being able to observe oneself so that one doesn’t fall into the repeated thinking patterns) and it seems to me it’s such a valuable thing to recognize. That’s what I understand by moments of change - pivotal moments - as you say.

Yours with a very happy smile, Allan

You are so right when you write about the result of producing a first draft, too. When we do that, and when we’ve paid attention to what the writing has required of us in terms of reassessing our lives, we move into a different relationship to our own sense of self. The impulse to write is almost always the positive use of ‘Orphan’ stage, and the actual writing requires us to be Pilgrims, Warrior-Lovers (as we seek to understand and not to condemn) and then we become Monarchs as we see the whole sweep of our lives in relation to other lives. Communicating that to others requires us to venture towards the Magician’s realm.

Now, finishing a first draft, knowing that something has changed for us, is important. If nothing had changed we wouldn’t have discovered anything, and so we’d never have completed pilgrim stage. You see that in the self-serving memoirs of some political hacks. It is in the recognition of that change in ourselves, of knowing we’ve been somewhere important, that we see we too have been in the company of Magicians - those who change the energy of a situation. And the Magician was ourselves.

I hope this makes some sense…

As ever, Allan

That’s exactly right. The recognitions we make as a result of going into memoir can only arise if we go through all the six stages as we write, and the new way we can see ourselves as a result is at least half the reward. If we’ve done a good job we can convey the experience to the reader, and thus become a Magician.

In Orphan stage we discover our wounds, and feel their pain. We then explore these wounds as Pilgrims, and as Warriors we decide to transform the pain into meaning. The pain now becomes the gold. Communicating that the gold exists is the Monarch’s job. And so we take our experience and see it as existing in stages, yet it’s not until we see it that way and live those stages as we write it that we can complete the stages ourselves.

Fun, isn’t it?

Allan

Eakins, is the author of a few books on autobiography.)

In one of them I came across the idea that to do psychoanalysis, one must return to the orphan-stage in order to revise one’s story — so to speak. (Those aren’t quite his words but I think it’s what he means.)

That idea got me to thinking about your book and our own stories in memoir. You provide us variations on a theme.

Might it not be true that the primary value of memoir to the memoirist is not the publishable book but the new persona born of the effort of revising one’s life and - only after that effort - or to reinforce the work - then recreating these steps to a revised self in a sroty–narrative? In other words, it’s the new self that’s the primary gain and the book a secondary gain.

Your archetypes can function in this inside-out-way to provide the memoirist benchmarks.

Thius the autobiographer can review the journey by revisiting your archetypes to see the path traveled and evaluate the story he/she has told.

I think you’ve already told us this and I’m only now catching on, right?
MLou