This struck me as a profound thought.  Suddenly aware of why I was eating, I am not doing it anymore.  My mind has wandered to other possibilities…

I could play my favourite itunes songs.  I have created playlists for all 12 core archetypes because I love to immerse myself in each world by hearing several songs in a row on the same theme.  Sometimes I love to listen to new music and find the archetypal core in a song.  I bet you can guess the one I play the most.  My top 5 Warrior King songs right now are When I was Your Man – Bruno Mars, I’m Your Man – Leonard Cohen, I’ll Always Come For You – Nickelback, When You’re Gone – Bryan Adams (“even food don’t taste that good” is a brilliant lyric), and Scream – Usher.  Not thinking about food now, are you. 

Movies are another great way to get in touch with what brings you joy.  Most movies take you on a journey that reaches for the light side of life.  I like comedy romances on days when the weather is not co-operating.  My all time favourites are While You Were Sleeping, You’ve Got Mail,  Wedding Crashers, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Legally Blonde and The In-Laws (not strictly a romance but it makes me laugh).  One more for luck – This Means War.

Hey, what do you know.  The sun is shining and the breeze is incredibly fresh and slightly warm.  I am going to put on my favourite mascara, my sunshine yellow dress and go buy some nifty office supplies – just to treat myself.

What about you?  What gifts do you give yourself to connect you to your feeling of joy and remind you of your intrinsic worth?  This connection to your Virgin archetype is the source of your creative power.  Spend some time exploring it.

Even the poster is fantastic.  His face shows so much struggle and inner self loathing despite the prestigious pilot uniform.  He looks like the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.

Flight pilot, Whip Whitaker, rescues hundreds of people because he is a superior pilot.  He is also an alcoholic, and a failure as a husband and father, who now risks being stripped of his pilot licence, social status, freedom and vices.  In short, he reaches a point in his life that he has to define what he stands for.

The Warrior King is challenged to discern his highest value.  Whip could be scot free if he blames the accident on the dead stewardess who was his lover.  He found the moment where he knew what he was capable of.  He stepped up and finished the statement I am the man who…

We all left the theatre inspired by his actions.  I could feel it as I walked away.  I wonder how many people thought of the story afterwards and wondered how they would finish that statement.  We are all asked to stand for something every day.  It is like the song, I would walk ten thousand miles to be the man who wakes up next to you…  There’s a guy who has decided where his priorities lie.

I like movies that keep you thinking after the lights go on.

For example, when a man reunites with his wife after decades of being apart, a woman who he loves so intensely that he can’t forget her despite having his memory wiped out, I’m not not buying it without the sex scene.  It is not gratuitous.  A movie is a felt experience and if the protagonist is having a monumental feeling the audience should be let in on that.  Otherwise, why are we putting in the time to go on this journey with him?  It can be subtle or tasteful but it needs to be more than implied if the theme is driven by love.

So I started thinking, are there Romance movies that don’t have a sex scene?  Of course there are lots when you stop and think about it  like Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, About a Boy, Hitch, many teen romances.  Tons more.  The key is to have a momentous first kiss – which is the first piercing of the intimacy boundary.  You wouldn’t for example, learn about the big kiss by having a friend tell a friend.  The kiss wouldn’t be implied.  Also, the movie has to end when the relationship starts if you are hell-bent on not having a sex scene.

I’m not saying Oblivion is a Romance but it is a story of love.  That’s what makes it an action story with a twist.  Love of Earth; love as a real connection.  Oblivion is first and foremost an action movie and there are fantastic visual images and some interesting new fight scenes.  The best part is all the twists and turns in the plot.  But the reason I would say it was not a great movie is because it has a theme of the importance of  real love, the felt experience.  This is supposed to be shown to be more important that the logical or evidentiary experience, yet it didn’t give us enough evidence of an understanding of love, in my view.

“No matter how far you are down the wrong path – turn back!!”  

This is what Gives Up WHat Kept Her Stuck is all about.  It is becoming conscious of your limiting belief.  Notice that this is story beat number 8.  The reason your protagonist can become conscious of her limiting belief is because she has been in her secret world and grown in her connection to her authentic self.  This connection gives her the solid grounding to be able to see things from a perspective of independent thought.

My favorite classic example of this moment is in Ever After when Danielle directly asks her step mother if she has any feelings of love for her.  She has been working like a slave in the hopes that she could please her step mother and earn love for she has never known the love of a mother.  Her step mother smirks and questions why she would feel love for a pebble in her shoe.  With great sadness, Danielle gives a firm nod and accepts the truth that has been before her all the time – this woman will never love her unconditionally.  From her face and her actions from that moment forward you know she is no longer limited by her belief that her step mother might love her, and her step mother has lost power over her.

Finding this moment in your story is a key factor in the transformation of the Virgin.  You can often find what the limiting belief was by looking back at beat number 2 – Price of Conformity.  Ask yourself why your protagonist felt she had to conform to her dependent world and then give her a reason, based on love, that she understands that is not her best option.

In About A Boy this moment happens when he hits rock bottom and it occurs to him that island living is not the answer.  To be happy he has to care about someone besides himself.  Similarly, in Wedding Crashers John is at a funeral and realizes it is better to have loved and grieve than to never have loved at all.  These moments clear the way for the Virgin to grow into her authentic self.

What is the light bulb moment for your protagonist where she realizes that she has a belief about what she deserve in life and it is not working for her?  Once she is conscious of the falseness of the belief she can just let it go.

Environment is so important in the virgin world.  When we surround ourselves with things that feel beautiful, colors that move us, scents that uplift us like citrus in the winter, or freshly baked vanilla cookies, we have found a tangible connection to our inner voice and our source of joy.  This simple act has profound impact.  The virgin archetype lives in a world driven by love.  Love is not like fear which finds you and pushes you around if you don’t push back.  Love is something you have to make space in your life for by being present and gazing inward.  You have to awaken to love and welcome it in.  You have to make a wish, or appeal to the gods, or believe in your dreams.  When we notice the sensual delights that appeal to us and put them in our environment we have found the door to enter the love based world.  

Stories that are driven by love need to take some time to experience the environment of your protagonist and how s/he responds to it.  The reader needs to be taken to this world where the rules are different and experience the joy of it.  At its best, this environment reflects the worthiness of the virgin to be seen for who she knows herself to be.   

On the shadow side, the Victim archetype exists in an environment that sends her the message she is irrelevant.  Things are run down, drab, and broken.  Sometimes even her body is not respected.  It is an environment where she must struggle to gain a connection to her intrinsic worth as nothing in her surroundings or her relationships gives her evidence that she is seen or appreciated for being her beautiful self.

So what is the environment like in your story?  How can you use the sensual aspects of it to take a person on the Virgin journey?

I am just finishing up marking essays and about to have christmas exams in a few days, so things are very busy. However something funny happened today in our last Intro level class, where we were reviewing the terms and definitions for the exam. You will be honoured I am sure, to know that some of your concepts are now on the Women’s Studies Exam!

So anyway, there I was going over the idea of the fear based world and hero quest vs the love based world and the virgin’s journey. We were trying to come up with a few issues in women’s studies that fall in to the virgin category (ie the book that the class wrote their essays on, Obasan, about the Japanese Canadian experience in WW2, has many virgin story elements). And then, one student who by his own admission is half crazed from lack of sleep and too much coffee (he is finishing up a paper for another class), said “Well, isn’t Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer a virgin story?” This got a big laugh from the class, and I just wanted to let you know it has become the tag for “Virgin’s Journey” in our class.

And yes, I would say Rudolf was on his Virgin’s journey.

Here’s how I see the story from an archetypal level.  The villain is a coward with serious mother issues.  He is also a tyrant who knows his masculine power and uses it to inflict pain which he feels justified in doing because he has not dealt with his wounded child issues.  Orphans make great agents, but at a cost.

James is also an orphan but he has dealt with his child issues and developed a healthy mother relationship where he recognizes being a man is upholding your chosen values and not being controlled by your wounds.

The flaw in the storyline for me occurs when the woman the two “brothers” have slept with is tied up for target practice and James plays the game knowing he is a lousy shot.  He doesn’t even negotiate her safe release if he is successful.  He seems to be only thinking about proving himself in some kind of sibling rivalry.  I would have loved it if he took his shot to do the unexpected, ie. kill the guards and aim his gun at his brother, a close range shot he couldn’t miss.

If I get to be the writer, the brother would have anticipated James going in this direction, foreshadowing his skill at predicting and manipulating situations, and with a gun in each hand, killed the girl right away (because he has complete disregard for women as lovers, he is so obsessed with his mother complex) and held a gun on James looking for praise for his cleverness.

James would have gone to Severene, to hell with the risk, hoping beyond hope he had not failed her and she is still alive.  She uses her last breath to tell him this is better (implying that the life of living with a man who is working out his mother issues on you is a living hell) and she is glad to have known at least one good man.  He stays to be of some comfort before she dies while the brother goads him to come play or die.

The flaw in Skyfall is that James wasn’t affected by the death of Severene, who he just slept with.  I thought the point of this Bond is that he values women, would die for them, because it is the highest calling of a man.  This is why women fall into bed with him.  Not because they are cheap and easy, but because intuitively they know this about him and honor and celebrate it.

The question now is Moneypenny.  Is James going to show a casual disregard for her and completely destroy the archetypal power he held as a warrior king?

This would have been a much more powerful movie for me if it was about more than overcoming a mother complex.  I wanted to it be about being a grown man and valuing the feminine on your own terms.

First I liked it.  I loved that it makes moments of my childhood come back to me, like the yellow ribbons and those fabulous clothes and hairstyles, and that it fills in the details.  This untold story is more fascinating than fiction.

It is also a story well told.  I couldn’t believe how tense I felt given I know how it ends.  Great writing and directing.

What makes it a really great movie for me is that it includes a personalization of the ordeal as Joe Stafford regrets that he didn’t listen to his wife when she wanted to go home.  He stayed because he wanted to prove he was a man, impress his boss.  He thought sticking it out would be a great career move.  His self reflection is really powerful because he gave so little consideration to his wife’s fear and his role to protect her and he suffers in regret.

I was so pissed off with him when he kept playing the skeptic, working aginst Tony, as if this was a good role for him.  Had he learned nothing?!

And then it happened.  At the airport when they were stopped, it was as if something clicked in Joe’s head and he decided to step up to the plate and do whatever it took to bring his wife to safety.  And he did it with a passion that made me tingle to watch.  He sold that crappy screenplay as if he wrote that baby himself.  They were not going to fail because he didn’t show up and do all that he could do.  This was the Warrior King in action and I loved seeing it.  Great character transformation.

I also have to say Ben Affleck was great.  Hopefully it’s not because he reminds me of an ex-boyfriend, but I think he is very charismatic on screen.  He echoed the same message.  When the warrior king in you is called to a challenge you use your discernment and you follow through.  Despite having a lot to lose, and an easy out, Tony Mendez acted out of integrity.  It is a beautiful thing to witness and I am grateful for the inspiring movie and the insight into the real life warrior kings that were involved in that moment in history.

The action scenes were interesting.  Great camera work, obligatory market scene, chasing, speed.  Nice touch when Aaron Cross leaps onto the handrail rather than mow down a bunch of people.  It was a great symbolic representation of his humanity. They even gave Marta some action.  But let’s face it, without the archetypal message of the Warrior King, this would have been a pretty run of the mill action film.

What I really liked in this movie were the moments where Aaron’s primary concern is Marta.  I’ll be a bit cryptic for those who haven’t seen it – he takes care of her emotionally when her actions may kill him.  That speaks volumes.  He holds her hands against him to keep her safe in a chase scene, and he comes for her when he could have gotten away.

Even the driving force of his actions (he needs the meds to make him a better man, because that’s what she needs to stay alive) emphasizes the value Aaron places on Marta.   This is what makes him an interesting character.

Other main characters have capitalized on this emotional pull such as in Cowboys and Aliens, where Jake carries the woman out of the dessert and apologizes for falling down.  It is in Monster Ball when Hank puts his father in a home because the father is detrimental to Leticia.  Hank doesn’t ask Leticia to understand that the father is old, he just makes the problem go away, for her.  It is what he judges to be the right thing to do. 

They could have been playing Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man, or had the Proclaimers walking 500 Miles. There are many movies and songs with this message.  I personally never get tired of it.  That’s a hallmark of an archetypal character.  You know generally how they will/should rise to the challenge and you look forward to seeing it, every time.

Is there a veiled message here for men?  In the final scene Aaron allows Marta’s instinct to be the leading force.  Otherwise, if he wasn’t going to give her power a place why did he bother risking his life for her?  A real man allows his woman to be a central value in his life and trusts her sense of meaning.  It doesn’t make him less of a man, it elevates him from Hero to Warrior King.

Here are the rules of operation in the love based world:

1. The people around the protagonist, her community, don’t see her true potential.  They see her as a pawn in their desire to further the fear driven world, if they see you at all.  Even if their intention is to be benevolent they are not allowing her to be herself.  Love is conditional which isn’t really love at all.  SOmetimes everything is all very comfortable and safe as long as you fit in.  The motivation to go on this journey has to come from inside you and it is a Virgin’s journey – the road to recognizing that you are of value for being yourself.

2. Some belief you hold in yourself is holding you back such as “I should be helping others”, “who am I to be beautiful, talented, spectacular?”, or “other people’s happiness is more important than mine.”  Notice again this is coming from inside the protagonist and we can see it on the screen.

3. Virgins do not flourish through mounting fear.  In a state of fear their focus becomes very narrow and uncreative.  The Virgin needs a Secret World where she is safe and appreciated.  For a while she must believe her secret is safe.  This gives her the freedom to grow into her potential.  She can follow what brings her joy in this world.  Put lots of joyful moments in the middle of your movie, not setbacks!  Let the audience watch her grow the way we marvel at flowers or butterflies emerging.  She must also go back and forth between her two worlds because she is not ready to exist on her own.  In the moment of moving back and forth there can be fear (or comedy) just not in the Secret World.

4. The Virgins world is full of relationships.  People are connected to each other and the growth of one will inspire the growth of another.  The antagonist in this story can grow out of love for the Virgin.  Fathers come to understand that their role is not to control their child but to love them and build a place of safety when they are being authentic.  Bosses see the error of their ways.  You don’t have to kill off or exile your antagonist in a story of following your passion.  It is better if you see them grow to become a better person for having known the Virgin.

5. Unexpected outcomes happen in a Virgin story.  Billy does not set out to become the first male lead in Swan Lake.  But he was and it was magnificent.  The key is for the Virgin to stay connected to what s/he loves and follow it wherever it takes her.  S/he opens herself to the play of the universe.  When the Virgin is being true to herself, shining her light, the world becomes brighter.  Art, connection, growth and change are all possible, in ways beyond what you initially imagined.  If your character dreams of being a dancer she may not get into the school she applied to but she danced in the streets igniting a new dance craze and dancing becomes part of our everyday lives.  The goal was not as important as finding a connection to what she loves.  The rest is luck, synchronicity, or dare I say, destiny.