A psychic archetype represents a core energy expression that we believe defines our psychological and spiritual journey, in this, past and future lives. Although we may engage in different forms of life, such as soldier or doctor, we are one enduring archetype, which could be the Warrior or the Healer.
This article explores the psychic archetype of the Teacher.
One archetype, many guises
History is full of warrior priests and soldier healers (medics). Teachers can be athletes and athletes can be teachers. We can wear many guises over the course of our lives, but we usually operate from a single psychic archetype.
Sometimes necessity and circumstances can force us into a guise that is far removed from our spiritual purpose, it will seem. If we look closely enough at our actions under any circumstance, we will be able to see the consistent psychic imprint of our representation.
I have a varied work history including construction, website design/management, teaching (college English), and now spiritual consulting. With each iteration of my work opportunities, I repeatedly found myself in the same role… as a spiritual and emotional advisor to those around me.
The teacher
I once thought my archetype was the Teacher. I started teaching while working on my master’s degree in English in 1991. From 1992 to 2010, I was a lecturer at a university for more than a decade and a half. I loved teaching. However, when I look at the interactions I had with students, my most common and repetitive role was as an advisor.
A teacher archetype person truly and deeply loves to spread knowledge, show how to develop skills, and impart wisdom. Teaching is an aspect of every archetype. Fathers and mothers teach their children, warriors teach others how to fight, but the teacher is the archetype with the gift of taking people from one state of understanding and skill to another, higher state of understanding and skill. regardless of circumstances or roles.
Each archetype travels through lifetimes gaining experience within and beyond its ideal representation to enjoy and understand the full range of human experience, while learning lessons related to completing his or her work and/or the fact that he or she is prevented from completing his or her work. Lessons cut both ways. Sometimes we learn through support and other times through resistance.
The ideal society (utopian vision)
It is really not difficult to imagine an ideal society in which everyone discovers his or her psychic or spiritual archetype and is given a way to express that archetype through work and interactions with the other archetypes in the world. Creating such a world would require a wholesale and comprehensive acceptance of the balance between science and spirituality, between creativity and necessity, and between compassion and integrity.
Reality is an ebb and flow of balance, imbalance and rebalancing, and that is where all souls learn lessons not found in utopian visions or in the spirit realm. We choose to be here; and psychic or spiritual archetypes indicate that we choose a singular type of role so that we can experience true mastery.
Are you a teacher?
Each archetype has definable and distinguishable properties.
Drawn to the transformative moment
Teaching is about transformation, about being able to recognize, create and seize the transformative moment for others and guide them through it. The true gift of the teacher is his or her ability to guide others successfully through the teaching moment. A student comes into an English class and doesn’t know how to schematize a sentence. By the time they leave the classroom, they can diagram a sentence.
Many different archetypes can learn this skill in their role as a teacher, but the teacher will help them understand WHY it is important to know how to diagram a sentence and why this is important as a thinking skill. Transformative moments, when fully realized, include not only the functional ability to do something, but also the clear understanding of why something needs to be done.
A desire to serve others and the community
The Teacher plays a vital role in the survival and improvement of communities, society and humanity. They love it and need to move people from states of ignorance to states of understanding. They want to see the joy you feel when a student gains understanding and awareness about a topic, action, or skill. The Teacher is as much a pillar of human society as the Mother and the Father, especially because they work outside the family dynamic.
Teachers are at their most powerful when the student wants to learn, although they can be surprisingly effective with those who resist learning or choose willful ignorance. Many a classroom may begin with scores of disinterested students who become involved in the learning process because of the teacher’s skill, enthusiasm, and talent.
Tireless interest in self-education
Teachers have their own passion for learning and never stop being students themselves. They simply explore knowledge with the natural intention to share that knowledge, looking for the best techniques and their own style for communicating knowledge. The teacher is experimental by nature and will try numerous techniques to communicate and show students how to learn what they know.
They take their passion for a subject and use it to master the subject on two levels. First, there is mastery of the material or skill. The second level is figuring out how to convey that same mastery or appreciation to others. Their personal enjoyment of learning is part of the foundation that makes them the Teacher archetype.
Its leaders
Results are important to the Teacher archetype; they feel fulfilled when a student ‘gets it’ and can move on without them. They know and feel success when someone can do or understand something after that person has worked with them. In their highest manifestation they can be understood as the transformers of all societies.
Teachers show others what the necessary knowledge is and how to learn to be successful in the world. Teaching is fundamental in helping them understand their place in the scheme of the community of archetypes.
