A Deep Dive into the Nature Child Archetype

Returning Humanity Back to Its Rightful Nature

By Beth Martens Archetypes are traditionally said to live in the unconscious, and were discovered by Carl Jung in his epic breakthroughs on human consciousness. I saved my life from cancer working with archetypes, and saw how they can be awakened out of the unconscious and  magically go from feeling like an enemy to being a superpower that exists to help us complete our missions on earth in the human family.

In 2015 when my dad died of cancer, and I was recovering, in the depth of grief and healing I discovered in myself the eight archetypes that map out the journey of those who are on a mission of service to this planet. And this journey begins (and ends) with the Nature Child. Given the growing rise of what we don’t want to see happening to our natural world and the state of humanity, exploring this Nature Child within ourselves is very timely.

And despite while things may look bleak, I have a clear vision of what a world with an awakened Nature Child archetype would be. We can live in harmony with natural forces, within and around us. It makes me resolve to continue helping those who are serving the planet find their way on the journey.

The Nature Child’s Superpowers

The superpowers of the Nature Child include being able to tap into the natural cycles and flow, so we can slipstream on its immense, raw power. This power is what moves the ocean tides, what shines the sun, what burns in the core of our earth, and forever delivers fresh water and air and earth to its surface.

Considered one of the primal archetypes that every human holds near, the Child archetype exists on the precipice between life and death, and is wired for basic survival. The calling of this archetype on the journey is to go from the experience of betrayal that is rooted in the fear of not surviving, to being awake, fully alive and caring deeply for our world and the expression of its innocence.

It is to awaken from the blind bliss we may associate with nature lovers, to a wise, eyes-open place where all is seen, the ignorance ‘dies’ and the pure innocence lives on. Ironically to get there, to embark on the journey of returning humanity back to its natural place in nature, she must experience the unconscious shadow and get betrayed.

The Dark Side

In the shadow of this archetype lies naive innocence, avoidance of disillusionment and fearful protection of the self. The Nature Child will do anything to avoid the experience of betrayal, but as Carl Jung so famously said, “what you resist persists”. For centuries we’ve been working against natural forces both within and around us.

Nature and its human aspect has been royally betrayed. And we see the devastating effects in our health, our relationships and our environment.

We can suffer the shadow of the Nature Child by turning a blind eye to these effects, because it’s too much to take in and challenges our innocent bliss. We unconsciously fear the loss of our innocence and bliss, but it’s really our ignorance that is at stake.

We can find our place in nature again.

To take our right place in nature, and especially protect the fragile inner Child in all of us, but in a wise rather than naive way, we have to see if we’re using this archetype’s powers consciously from love, or unconsciously from or fear. Are we awakened to the reality of where this planet is at, are we stuck in the shadow of denial and betrayal?

To help guide this awakening of the Nature Child for those who wish to be of more service to this planet and its people, I created a map of the journey to help gain back the energy we use staying stuck in the unconscious and use it to truly help create the solutions.

5 Elemental Steps to Transform Denial & Betrayal into a Sustainable Path to a Natural Life For All

If you care deeply about the earth, and make it your responsibility to take care of it - to do your part, to be a good person, to help others and to be a part of the solutions we need on this planet - here is a transformational process that will help readers work with the forces of nature as they are, so you can slipstream more easily on the power of the collective consciousness that archetypes represent.   

One: Have a Big ‘Why’ Behind Your Desire to Serve the Planet

If you have a sincere desire to be a leader on the path of returning humanity back to a natural state, you first need to feel deeply connected with your reasons to awaken yourself and others. In other words you need to connect with your big ‘why’ in order to gain the powers of spirit and purpose on the outset.

If our why is empty, disconnected from deeply rooted, soul-level and very personal purpose then we will be hard pressed to withstand the challenges of the journey.

This empty ‘why’ for the Nature Child, when you boil it all down, is the unconscious fear of not surviving. Whether that’s personally, as a humanity, or as a planet, this fear is a betrayal of the human spirit’s true nature and strength. At 29 I survived a stage 4 lymphoma against the odds, in part, because I discovered a much bigger ‘why’ to heal than merely that I didn’t want to be sick and die.

By resisting sickness and death I was literally pulling it in. But when I stopped betraying myself with fear and got in tune with what I loved about life and the opportunity it created for profound freedom at the soul level, I began to survive against the odds.

My purposeful ‘why’ I do this work now, of empowering people to be valued for their earth missions, is so we can work together to liberate ourselves from a disconnected, superficial and  artificial existence.

I feel it to be true, if we all did our part (what is ours to do from within our own soul’s sacred contract), together we would rise. Doing the work of establishing your big ‘why’ out of love instead of fear fuels the fire of inspiration that is desperately needed to positively drive us to create solutions. And it cures the sense of purposelessness that is a betrayal to ourselves and this planet.

Two: Fuelling the Fire

Where we source our inspiration matters. If we let our fear lead, we won’t find the ignition, drive or ambition to care deeply about the world we live in and are leaving to our children.

There are two kinds of fire.

Hungry fire, which only gets more hungry when you feed it. And soul fire, which makes you feel full when you feed it. We have been so monumentally sold on hungry fire by the mass media that many humans act like hungry ghosts only living to get their next hit of empty, purposeless ‘inspiration’ that’s not inspiration at all.

This empty fire really adds up to nothing more than a stimulant that takes you up and down too. (I’m wrestling with a trip to Starbucks as I write.) It’s a betrayal of ourselves when we trade the experience of true inspiration for stimulation, and other purposeless distractions that we unconsciously use to avoid our inner experience.

And we can measure the effects of this betrayal by our low levels of energy, our lack of care and our lack of ability to get genuinely interested in creating anything, especially badly needed solutions for the problems we face on the whole. Next time you see something that burns you up, pay close attention.

That will point you to your own source of inspiration, show you your unique direction and light a fire under your butt. You maybe don’t know why it’s under your butt, but it is. Now that you’ve let yourself be on fire with what really feeds you, the ideas will come.

Three: Ideas, Beliefs, Dreams

The New Age ‘movement’ has not helped us here. It’s spread as ‘knowledge’ that thoughts and beliefs are somehow not natural, that they are the enemy of a human being’s peace and that they shouldn’t ideally exist. And yet they do. So what if on the journey to take up your mission, and have an impact and help in only the way you can, is about aligning your thoughts beliefs and dreams with nature?

When we spiritualize away our thoughts, beliefs and dreams, we are betraying our nature because this is such an important aspect of creating through our life’s purpose. Literally anything that exists of human creation, can be traced to an originating thought. So to create change, we have to think of it first! We are taught that reading, watching movies, consuming great art and knowledge is stimulating the imagination.

There is a certain stimulation yes, but from an outside source that may or may not have our best interest. When you take the trouble to think for yourself and create your own original thoughts, beliefs and dreams based on what your life has taught you, you are exercising this elemental power.

When I traveled in India I was taught by a guru on a mountain to search for the true nature of everything. They said that if you find a thorn on a bush there is no problem. That thorn is doing its job to protect the plant from being eaten before it can seed and reproduce itself. But if you find that thorn in your foot, you’re going to call that thorn a problem. This is how thoughts are.

If we use thinking to call ourselves and others down, for example, then thinking will seem like it’s not natural, not helpful. Thinking all day long of what we lack and fear is a betrayal of this Nature Child aspect of ourselves. But if we use our thinking mind to come up with the ways to help others, have better lives, be more awake and suffer less, then this is the true nature of thinking that will benefit many and contribute to returning humanity back to nature.

Four: The Path of Water

Water has always been my teacher, both literally and symbolically too (it’s a Mermaid thing). For the Nature Child aspect of ourselves especially, water is symbolic of human emotions, and it’s at this level where the shadow of betrayal is acutely felt. This represents a major obstacle for us, because if we feel something, the tendency is to believe it to be true without investigating its true nature fully.

The betrayal at this leg of the journey is the denial of feelings, the spiritual bypassing of our inner experiences that push us into false self-portrayal, the “comfort” of addictions and the quiet suffering of powerlessness. By awakening the Nature Child and the water element we can look deeply into the true nature of of our emotions and have the power to discriminate what feelings we have that stand in the way of manifesting our thoughts, beliefs and dreams.

Unconscious feelings are where we are trapped, often sunk. We don’t like our feelings, so we habitually stuff them into the unconscious at all cost. Unfortunately, they they rule us from there and create everything we don’t want in our life, making us forget our true soul’s path and mission.

In this watery elemental step towards taking humanity back to a natural place, we need to assume radical responsibility for how we feel, and learn some way (there are many) to release the feelings that don’t serve our big ‘why’, our inspiration and the dreams that want to manifest into something tangible.

Working with this or any archetype is such a tool. When we see the shadow of betrayal - of our own inner human experience we call feelings - it’s half gone. Poof! And if you apply yourself to releasing the remaining emotions that stop you from manifesting through your ideas and dreams, you become an unstoppable force for good. Once the feelings are dealt with, we come to the next step, and create what really matters.

Five: Fruit of the Labour

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.

Carl Jung

To reclaim the lost energy of the Nature Child, and to awaken out of its naive innocence into natural wisdom, we have to get grounded through purposeful action and the exercising of our inherently human capacity to make something out of seemingly nothing. But we see now it’s not nothing, it’s a big ‘why’ it’s the seed fire, thoughts and feelings that lead us to this chance to create something tangible in our own image.

To fail to take action and create what we know to be right and true is a betrayal of the Nature Child. In letting opportunities for helping in our way go by, we are allowing our life force to slip between our fingers, one hardly noticeable drop at a time and short-circuiting our natural journey to manifest.

Where we get stuck in manifesting our solutions for an unnatural world is being entirely ungrounded by the feelings and programs that lay under our inspiration and ideas. This disconnect from the earth and our ability to manifest keeps us from giving the Universe clear messages about what we envision is possible.

So when you go out to make a difference in the world, you will be greatly aided by this aspect of the Nature Child’s superpowers, in actually making that difference whatever it looks like - your movement, your message, your stand, the ground on which you are firmly rooted.

We all have our area to take care of, to care about, to pour our care into. We just have to follow the thread of what we authentically care about, and we will know what is our ground to root in.

Know your superpowers and the shadows that conceal it.

If you really let yourself look at what’s happened to nature, in you and on this planet, it can be a bit of a shock. It can bring up your deepest fears. These 5 elemental steps, if carefully applied will create sustainability along this path of returning humanity back to nature.

With a clear soul-level reason why we are moved to be part of solutions, the fire of inspiration that feeds rather than creates more hunger, opening to the ideas, beliefs and dreams that work with natural forces, swimming like Mermaids through the waters of our emotional worlds and grounding it down with acts of creating something tangible to the benefit of all, we can navigate ourselves back to nature.

If we let ourselves unconsciously run from fear of not surviving and remain in our naive innocence that is really ignorance, simply to protect ourselves from the sting of betrayal that is really just awakening our human care, then we are sunk. But when we resolve to gain our freedom from this endless suffering, and assume the awakened voice of the Nature Child, then we are on a sustainable path to a natural life for all.

Going Deeper

Are you trying to figure out how to make your difference in the world in a way that takes care of you too? If it's your time to take a stand for nature, and how you are naturally called to create solutions, sign up for a free training that reveals how those caring deeply about the planet use the Nature Child archetype to be valued and get paid for their calling.

Sign up for free with your email HERE and I’ll send the training right to your inbox along with 3 questions to journal so you get the most out of it. No one person can return this planet back to its true nature, but together we can do this. ***

 

To Learn more: 

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