Human Shadow Talk

Technology and Soul, The Shadow of Technology

2011-04-10T13:20:00.000-07:00

I went to a workshop given by Glen Slater, PhD, last weekend on "Technology and Soul, Living at the Turning Point," and was just getting on here to talk about it, when up popped a whole slew of new options I could add to my blog site -- Do I want my readers to be able to flip through my old blogs, or scroll through my old blogs, or eat my old blogs, or what? -- that I had to think about before I could even get onto my blog site.

And of course, by the time I suffered through that initial interruption, which was full of seemingly pressing questions that apparently needed to be answered immediately before I could even get onto my blog site, I was in great danger of forgetting what I had gotten onto the blog site to say in the first place.

Perfect. And exactly what the workshop was all about.

We are absolutely inundated with choices. Most of them technological. Most promising to make our lives easier or to make our work go faster or to make us cooler or smarter or more attractive. Most sounding downright irresistible, now that we know so much about how to market things to one another. So we scurry from choice to choice, trying to make the "right" one, trying to keep up, trying to do what everyone else is doing, leaking little bits of our own unique creative individuality all the time.

Soul making takes some peace and quiet. Some continuity. I had an entire chain of thought going about that workshop which will never quite exist again. Because it was booted out, rooted out -- almost entirely expunged -- by another set of ideas that popped up in front of it. Did you ever read Watership Down? (Great book.) At one point the rabbits are trying to get a big old dog to go in a certain direction, so one rabbit pops up in front of the dog, which it chases, and then another rabbit pops up in front of the dog, which it chases, and then another rabbit pops up in front of the dog, which it chases...

...that is our minds, folks. In the USA, circa 2000s. We run hard, but we are easily distracted as to direction.

50 years ago children read Treasure Island or Tom Sawyer or Huckeberry Finn. Today, many children have to struggle to read Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. There are so many forms of communication and entertainment available to us we can't bear to limit ourselves or our children to only doing one thing at a time. But we know from brain scan studies that multi-tasking prevents deep understanding in any of the tasks involved. (Or, there seem to be a lot more channels available today than we actually have the bandwidth to handle. See What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr.)

We can't keep technology from effecting our souls. That's where we are. That's what's happening today. But we can, as Slater suggests, try and make its impact on our souls more conscious. We can make more of an effort to choose what will serve us and to reject what will not. We can start to realize that the "hive mind" produced by cyberspace is not unbiased after all, it's actually extremely biased, and not towards wisdom, either -- it's biased towards selling products.

We can start to realize we don't have to chase every new rabbit that pops up.

Also recommended by Slater:
You Are Not A Gadget, Jaron Lanier
Enough, Bill McKibben
Alone Together, Sherry Turkle

Shadow in "The Black Swan"

2011-03-08T11:05:00.000-08:00

Half Jester, Half King mask.

Every few years we're blessed with another great artistic example of what happens to those who deny or bury their shadow. This year, it was The Black Swan.

Nina was a good girl. A good girl in a grindingly difficult profession where harsh judgment was the norm. A good girl trying to placate a fragile, frustrated, controlling mother. A good girl trained since early childhood to ignore the complaints and demands of her own body, the needs of her own soul.

Perhaps not since Robert Louis Stevenson woke up from a dream and began writing down The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have we been presented with such a splendid and graphic vision of what happens next -- internally -- to such good girls or boys.

They die.

Maybe not right away, in fine dramatic fashion, like Jekyll or Nina. In fact, maybe you won't even notice their deaths, since most people you know will be doing the same thing: that slow, mute, miserable shrinkage that occurs every day while we dutifully trim our dynamic, multi-faceted pegs to fit into the small round holes of Corporate America. But it will still be death.

Like Dylan said, He who is not busy being born is busy dying.

There's a lot of juice in the shadow. A great deal of creativity.

But ignored, split off, or denied access to consciousness, the shadow turns deadly to its own ego.

As Marie-Louise von Franz (friend and student of Carl Jung's, acclaimed analyst and author in her own right) once put it,

The shadow is not necessarily always an opponent. In fact, it is exactly like any human being with whom one has to get along. Sometimes by giving in, sometimes by resisting, sometimes by giving love -- whatever the situation requires.

The shadow becomes hostile only when it is ignored or misunderstood.

The Shadow In Health Care

2011-01-06T11:11:00.000-08:00

This is my grandson Mitchell, with his friend Groucho. Yesterday we spent all day with Mitchell and him family at a local hospital's pediatric oncology unit, learning that this beautiful little guy probably has lymphoma. There is a large unexplained mass of tissue present in his abdomen, as well as smaller masses in his groin and his armpit. So tomorrow we will all go back to the pediatric oncology unit with him, where Mitchell will be biopsied and bone marrow scraped and tested and treated lovingly and professionally again by the excellent staff that work there.

We also learned yesterday that the health insurance which both of his working parents pay into out of every paycheck may not cover oncology treatment. Bumps and scrapes? You got it! Cancer? No way! It's sham insurance. Looks and sounds like health insurance, comes out of your paycheck in the same way, just doesn't cover you when it counts.

Where has this country come to? When two hard working young people have to worry about whether or not they're going to be able to afford the medical treatment which will be necessary to save their son's life? We're not talking tummy tucks or Viagra prescriptions, here. We're talking cancer care: the Big C. For one of the sweetest little boys in the world.

And where is this country going? When those in power would rather keep the "the other party" from moving forward on comprehensive health care than come up with a simple system that would work for all?

We could afford to wage an unfunded war in Iraq for trumped up reasons, killing, bereaving and maiming hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Americans, but we cannot afford for Mitchell to have a bone marrow scrape and chemotherapy?

We can afford tax cuts for the rich and the powerful, but if Mitchell does get well enough to go back to school, we cannot afford for that school to have art, PE or music teachers?

If you're "Proud to be an American" right now, perhaps you're just not paying attention.

The 12 Carts of Costco

2010-12-21T13:36:00.000-08:00

We all know all of the following, but life can get a little hectic this time of year, things can start to fall through the cracks in Santa's sleigh, so to speak. So let's have a quick review:

1) No one else can give you exactly what you want without you having to say a thing. Other people are not mind readers.

2) You cannot give anyone else exactly what they want without them saying a thing. You are not a mind reader either.

3) If there's something you really want, and if you can afford it, then get it for yourself at some time other than Christmas. Take some of the performance pressure off your loved ones.

4) Surprises suck more often than they provide true delight.

5) What you really need will not be given to you by someone else. It will not come in a gift wrapped box.

6) What you really need will not come from another person, or from outside your being, at all. It's simply not possible.

7) Because what you really need is the experience of being alive, a deepening appreciation for the complexity and the mystery of life.

8) It's easier to experience being alive while playing dominoes than while opening presents.

9) Just because "everyone else" does something this time of year does not mean that you have to do it. Not all families are harmonious. Not all families are actually good for their family members.

10) So choose what works for you. You are not obligated to spend precious time off from work with people who treat you disrespectfully, whether they call themselves family or not.

11) We all get a little "dark" in this darkest time of the year. That's one of the reasons there's been a holiday at the end of what we now call December since before you could call us human beings: to lighten things up, to remind ourselves that warmth will return, that spring will come again. So it's perfectly OK if you don't feel as cheerful as all those singers on the radio sound. They were paid to sound that way, you know.

12) Cook. Eat. Walk. Repeat every few hours.

What Story Are You Telling?

2010-12-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

I was lucky enough to attend a lecture (on Friday) and then a workshop (on Saturday) given by James Hollis. And if you've never heard of James Hollis, then get on powells.com or amazon.com after you read this, look up his books (he's written 13) and buy at least 2 of them. Hollis is one of the great hearts and great minds of our time.

His topic this weekend was the stories we live and tell in life. That, unbeknownst to us, we're born into our parents' story, our culture's story, a particular time in his-tory, a particular location on the planet. And that, also usually unbeknownst to us, our own story develops out of these stories as we move through life.

As children, we had to fit into our parents' stories. We were totally dependent on them. As young adults, we had to fit into our culture's story. We had to make a living, support an emerging family, function in the society into which we were born.

But at mid-life, our task begins to change. It then becomes our job to examine these stories. To see where they limit us, where they keep us from becoming who we alone were meant to be. Or, to quote Hollis, at mid-life it becomes our job to find out "What are the invisible agencies keeping me from doing what I need to do?" "What assignments were you given at birth? Which ones do you want to stop carrying out now? What secrets were you supposed to keep for your family?"

One of the problems with family dynamics is that the most damaged member typically sets the pathology everyone else in the family has to adjust to. Without knowing it, we let our parents' stories and our culture's stories become the stories of our own life. Another problem with family dynamics is that family members typically expect other family members do things for them that they ought to be doing for themselves.

What psychologists call a "complex" is simply a stimulus activating your own personal history. When this sort of thing happened to you as a child, you acted in this way. The complex was an emotional adaptation that served you as a child, but when carried over into adulthood unexamined, will keep you from fully growing up. "Children are necessarily disempowered. Therefore childhood adaptations tend to disempower us as adults."

We can't keep complexes from occurring. They're autonomous emotional systems which develop in every human being as defenses against the 2 primal human fears: being abandoned and being overwhelmed. But here's some pithy advice from Hollis on dealing with complexes as we examine our life stories:

"Try and build a lull between stimulus and response."

"Don't trust your first responses. They are often in service to old complexes."

"Don't judge the feelings that come up in you. They're not 'wrong,' and they no doubt worked at one point in your life. They were logical reactions to the stories you lived in as a child. But become aware of what you're feeling, now that you're mature enough to change your responses."

Ask yourself: "What am I doing? And what is it in service to?"

As he says, our task in the second half of life is "to find out what is truly worth serving; to find out what we are called to do."

--notes on lecture by James Hollis on "The Stories We Tell," given in Portland, OR, 12-4-10.

How I Recognize My Own Shadow

2010-11-24T17:07:00.000-08:00

Icarus falling

Got this from my friend Robert Tompkins today:

How I Recognize My Own Shadow

I see Senator X on TV,
blocking the Start treaty on nuclear control with Russia.
And I loathe him.
I feel disgust, contempt.
The man is just venal. Stupid. Evil.
(All of which he may be.)

Then I ask myself:
But aren't I block-headed, overly stern and self-punishing, too?
Wouldn't I rather destroy something than appear vulnerable?
Do I tend to cling to the same tired old defenses, in spite of all logic?
(Uh, yeah. 'Fraid I do.)

Goddam it, Senator X is a part of me.
And I am a part of him.
We are actually connected by our hatred for one another's opinions.

Can I let this into my heart?
Can I feel the truth of this without applying guilt or shame?

Then can I go further?
Can I realize that this is not truly who I am?
That this is not truly who Senator X is, either?

Can I experience my Self, here and now, without denying the figures in my shadow?

Can I listen to Senator X, without denying the figures in his shadow?

--Robert Tompkins

Check out kochindustriesfacts.com

2010-11-23T11:01:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons it's so hard for us to make good decisions about climate protection: there are mountains of sheer propaganda and false 'information' being funded and spread by the firms and families who make their billions selling oil and coal.

In particular, I'm talking about the Koch brothers. Much of the mis-information about climate change and climate protection circulating through our culture emanates from these guys, who are not thinking about your health or mine. They're thinking about their bottom line.

Check out the new website that's being built to start bringing what the Koch brothers are up to out into the light: kochindustriesfacts.com.

The Government R Us

2010-11-04T15:37:00.000-07:00

There's no better indicator of just how lost in the shadows we are than the fact that vast numbers of us describe the government as "them."

But unfortunately, this is a democracy. One of those things where people govern themselves. If our government is not working, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

What good is it doing for Republicans to be so upset at Obama that they can think of nothing more important than getting him out of office in 2 more years? (Mitch McConnell: defeating Obama in 2012 is our top priority) That is not even trying to govern, folks. That is flat-out obstructionism; a sore loser scheming to get back on top again.

And then what? Back to the policies that got us into this mess in the first place?

Bush was in the White House for 8 years. And the country was in terrible shape when he left office. In fact, the first bailouts occurred during the Bush administration. Obama has been in office for 2 years.

Now, which is the bigger number, 8 (Bush) or 2 (Obama)?

And let's be clear about the 2 year part: the bailouts were a necessary evil which kept us out of a full scale depression. The health care bill was a good start in a direction a majority of Americans want and need. Government spending is completely out of control, but not because of anything Obama's done. Government spending is completely out of control because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are completely unfunded, and because as a people we are too childish to tax ourselves in proportion to the number of goodies we like to receive.

When people wearing funny hats start gathering together and yelling, "We want our country back!" just who do they think has it?

Look in the mirror, folks. The government R us.

Scarier than Halloween

2010-10-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but it wouldn't have to be Halloween for the political climate in this country to be terrifying me.

Are we de-volving?

Have we gotten to the place where human beings only use their intelligence to project whatever they don't like about themselves onto other people, rather than using their intelligence to correct whatever it is about themselves they don't like?

High Stakes in Extraordinary Times

2010-10-07T16:07:00.000-07:00

This is from the preface to Cosmos and Psyche, by Richard Tarnas:

"We find ourselves at an extraordinary threshold. One need not be graced with prophetic insight to recognize that we are living in one of those rare ages, like the end of classical antiquity or the beginning of the modern era, that bring forth, through great stress and struggle, a genuinely fundamental transformation in the underlying assumptions and principles of the cultural world view. Amidst the multitude of debates and controversies that fill the intellectual arena, our basic understanding of reality is in contention: the role of the human being in nature and the cosmos, the status of human knowledge, the basis of moral values, the dilemmas of pluralism, relativism, objectivity, the spiritual dimension of life, the direction and meaning -- if any -- of history and evolution. The outcome of this tremendous moment in our civilization's history is deeply uncertain. Something is dying, and something is being born. The stakes are high, for the future of humanity and the future of the Earth."

Things Could Definitely Get Worse

2010-09-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

This excerpt from Paul Krugman's article in the paper today is worth repeating. And worth understanding.

"...It's hard to overstate how destructive the economic ideas offered earlier this week by John Boehner, the House minority leader, would be if put into practice. Basically, he proposes two things: large tax cuts for the wealthy that would increase the budget deficit while doing little to support the economy, and sharp spending cuts that would depress the economy while doing little to improve budget prospects. Fewer jobs and bigger deficits--the perfect combination.
More broadly, if Republicans regain power, they will surely do what they did during the Bush years: they won't seriously try to address the economy's troubles; they'll just use those troubles as an excuse to push their usual agenda, including Social Security privatization. They'll also surely try to repeal health reform, which would be another twofer, reducing economic security even as it increases long-term deficits..."

--Paul Krugman, New York Times News Service, 9-11-10

2010 Silver Medalist, Young Voices Foundation

2010-09-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

This is very merry!

Using Beauty just won a Silver Medal for 2010 from the Young Voices Foundation in the Inspirational/Spiritual category.

The goal of the Young Voices Foundation is to identify and honor books that inspire, mentor and educate youth.

I don't have the artwork for the medal yet. I'll put it up on the blog and the website as soon as I do.

Two medals.

Not bad, little book.

Psychopaths in Power

2010-08-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a girlfriend mentioned the possibility of Mitch McConnell gaining control of Congress after the mid-term elections. Made me think of this essay by Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig:

"We can consider aggression as a quantum, something which some individuals possess more of from the time of earliest childhood. And we all know aggressive persons who compensate with a highly differentiated moral code. Put somewhat simplistically, aggression serves these individuals to move from desiring good to living and asserting what is good.

"Psychopaths or compensated psychopaths employ aggression to achieve their own, egoistic goals. A compensated psychopath with a great deal of aggression dominates his classmates, family, or business associates with his harsh and unyielding morality.

"There are certain advantages to being a psychopath or compensated psychopath. Many of them have a relatively easy time adapting to society, unencumbered as they are by moral or neurotic scruples. They replace the lack of love or of true relationship with a love of power, something they can achieve without too much difficulty owing to the absence of moral or Eros-related restraints. Even an compensated psychopath can find room for a justification of unrestrained power-seeking within his rigid morality.

"It is little wonder that psychopaths occupy so many of the top positions in society and rather astonishing that there are not more in such positions.

"Let me put it somewhat differently. One of the major problems of any society, or of any political or large organization in general, is that of preventing unscrupulous, socially adapted psychopaths from gradually taking over the helm."

Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig, Meeting the Shadow. Tarcher, Los Angeles. Page 225.

Amen.

Homo hostilis, the enemy-making animal

2010-08-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

TO CREATE AN ENEMY
by Sam Keen

Start with an empty canvas.
Sketch in broad outline the forms of
men, women and children.

Dip into the unconscious well of your own
disowned darkness
with a wide brush and
stain the strangers with the sinister hue
of the shadow.

Trace onto the face of the enemy the greed,
hatred, carelessness you dare not claim as
your own.

Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.

Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,
fears that play through the kaleidoscope of
every finite heart.

Twist the smile until it forms the downward
arc of cruelty.

Strip flesh from bone until only the
abstract skeleton of death remains.

Exaggerate each feature until man is
metamorphasized into beast, vermin, insect.

Fill in the background with malignant
figures from ancient nightmares--devils,
demons, myrmidons of evil.

When your icon of the enemy is complete
you will be able to kill without guilt,
slaughter without shame.

The thing you destroy will have become
merely an enemy of God, an impediment
to the sacred dialectic of history.

The problem seems not to lie in our reason or our technology, but in the hardness of our hearts. Generation after generation, we find excuses to hate and dehumanize each other, and we always justify ourselves with the most mature-sounding political rhetoric. And we refuse to admit the obvious. We human beings are Homo hostilis, the hostile species, the enemy-making animal. We are driven to fabricate an enemy as a scapegoat to bear the burden of our denied enmity. From the unconscious residue of our hostility, we create a target; from our private demons, we conjure a public enemy. And, perhaps, more than anything else, the wars we engage in are compulsive rituals, shadow dramas in which we continually try to kill those parts of ourselves we deny and despise. --Sam Keen, "The Enemy Maker"

from Meeting the Shadow, Edited by Zweig & Agbrams. Los Angeles, Tarcher. 197-8.

You need to get this book. It's full of great essays by everybody from Sam Keen to Susan Griffin, the historian with heart.

The Shadow in Politics

2010-07-06T12:08:00.001-07:00

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is a conservative politician who staunchly opposes the interference of "big government." You might recall him saying, during the Republican party's response to President Obama's State of the Union speech in 2009 that "The strength of America is to be found in the compassionate hearts and the enterprising spirit of our citizens."

What a difference a disaster makes! Now -- post the BP environmental catastrophe -- Governor Jindal is saying that big government isn't doing enough interfering in his state. "It is clear we don't have the resources we need to protect our coast. The disjointed effort to date has often meant too little, too late."

I guess when the shit hits the fan, compassionate hearts get covered in it, too.

AS E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post said, "'Deregulation' is wonderful until we discover what happens when regulations aren't issued or enforced. Everyone is a capitalist until a private company blunders. Then everyone starts talking like a socialist, presuming that the government can put things right because they see it as being just as big and powerful as its tea party critics claim. But the truth is that we have disempowered government and handed vast responsibilities over to a private sector that will never see protecting the public interest as its primary task. The sludge in the Gulf is, finally, the product of our own contradictions."

Well said.

The Dangers of Innocence

2010-06-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

Here's what Rollo May has to say about the intersection of shadow material and morality in his essay entitled "The Dangers of Innocence":

The ethic of Christianity in our time became allied with the individualism which emerged in the Renaissance. This increasingly became the ethics of the isolated individual, standing bravely in his lonely situation of self-enclosed integrity... Ethics and religion became largely a matter of Sunday, the weekdays being relegated to making money--which one always did in ways that kept one's own character impeccable. We had then the curious situation of the man of impeccable character directing a factory that unconscionably exploited its thousands of employees. It is interesting that fundamentalism, that form of Protestantism which puts most emphasis on the individualistic habits of character, tends to be also the most nationalistic and war-minded of the sects, and the most rabid against any form of international understanding with other countries.

We need not--indeed, we must not--surrender our concern with integrity and our valuing of the individual. I am proposing that our individualistic gains since the Renaissance be set in balance with our new solidarity, our willingly assumed responsibility for our fellow men and women. In these days of mass communication, we can no longer be oblivious to their needs; and to ignore then is to express our hatred. Understanding, in contrast to ideal love, is a human possibility--understanding for our enemies as well as our friends.

...our capacity for evil hinges on breaking through our pseudoinnocence. So long as we preserve our one-dimensional thinking, we can cover up deeds by pleading innocent. This antediluvian escape from conscience is no longer possible. We are responsible for the effect of our actions, and we are also responsible for becoming as aware as we can of these effects.

...Life consists of achieving good not apart from evil but in spite of it.

--Rollo May, "The Dangers of Innocence," in
Meeting the Shadow, Tarcher & St. Martin's Press, pgs.174-5.

The Shadow in Relationships

2010-05-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes I forget completely what companionship is. Unconscious and insane, I spill sad Energy everywhere."
--Rumi

Being troubled by the shadow in my own primary relationship, I thought it was high time I re-read what James Hollis has to say on the subject. The following excerpts are from his book, Why Good People Do Bad Things, Understanding Our Darker Selves:

"Our first relational messages are found in the primal bonding experiences... these parent-child encounters thereby constitute archaic messages that are always humming beneath the surface of our contemporary engagements with others. The more intimate the relationship, the more the archaic drama with its directives is present, whether recognized or not... while we believe ourselves free at any moment, how often are we in service to these archaic, primal messages, or better, are we ever free of them? Their ghostly presence in our social life and in our intimacies constitutes a continuing Shadow dimension whereby we are not who we are in the moment, but who we have been, reflexively, historically defined..."

"...the narcissistic agenda of any individual psyche will have a strong urge to impose itself upon the relationship in service to getting its needs met, even at the cost of the well-being of the other... The more damaged one's history, or the weaker one's sense of self, the greater is this narcissistic tendency and the more rigid and controlling the dynamics of the relationship... Thus, the Shadow of narcissism haunts all relationships, even the most evolved, and constitutes the ethical challenge of relationship, namely, 'to what degree can I truly love the Other by keeping my own needs from dominating them?'...

"...How many relationships are governed by the principle of love, by caring for the otherness of the other? How many are impaired, not through continuing enlargement and mutual support of their separate journeys, but by dint of habit, fear of change, lack of permission to live one's own journey, and refusal to accept the summons to their own responsibility?... love becomes a Shadow task for us all when it 1) asks more of us than that which makes us comfortable, 2) asks us to examine our own complexes and regressive imagoes, and 3) asks a greater generosity of spirit than we consider comfortable...

"...A relationship should serve the growth of each party toward becoming more nearly who he or she is capable of becoming. I do not see that a relationship in which people "take care of each other" is worthy of the name of relationship, at least not a loving, mature relationship. Love is supportive and caring, and therefore we freely offer gifts to each other... gifts that sometimes ask considerable sacrifice or ourselves. Kindness, affection, and empathy are part of any healthy relationship, and doing for the other is a gift to both of us, as long as it is not in service to an old codependency, or a sullen compliance...

"...Love asks independence of both parties, freedom, not control, not guilt, not coercion, not manipulation. Dependency is not love; it is dependency--it is an abrogation of the essential responsibility of each of us to grow up, to assume full responsibility for our lives. Not to take on this challenge is a flight from adulthood, no matter how mature a person may be in other areas of endeavor... We all find it easier to blame our partners than to grow up, or to recognize that we are the only ones present in each scene in that long-running drama we call our life. It stands to reason that we are the ones charged with its outcomes and consequences, not our partners. Acknowledging this responsibility is easy enough in the abstract, but it is fearfully challenging in the context of daily life when our will is fragmented, when we are vulnerable, and when we fall back into our archaic complexes...

"...(A typical marriage) carries and suffers the burden of our chief fantasy, namely, that the magical "other" will fix things for us, render life meaningful, heal our wounds, and help us avoid the task of growing up and facing the huge existential vacuum that all conscious souls must engage. Because life, with all its possibilities, all its decisions, is so huge, we cling to the small, and hope the Other will spare us the task of growing up. But, since they do not, cannot, and should not, we are angry with them. This is Shadow material, for it feeds on that which lies within us, that which makes us uncomfortable with ourselves, that which intimidates us...

"...acknowledging that we are the only constant in every relationship requires taking on the problem of our own Shadow."

--from Why Good People Do Bad Things, Understanding our Darker Selves, by James Hollis, Ph.D., pgs. 86-98.

Neural Nets... or Wagon Ruts?

2010-04-05T16:50:00.000-07:00

At a workshop of Jerry Ruhl's recently, I learned about what brain researchers and scientists call "neural networks." (Since anything worth talking about alludes to the internet, you say "neural nets.")

Basically, neural nets exist because brains are very busy. And since they're so very busy, they take shortcuts to get from one place to another whenever they can.

So if you've done something, or felt something, or thought something, or heard something one time, you're very liable to experience it in exactly the same way the next time it comes up. Because you already have a pattern -- or a neural network -- for it in your brain.

And the more times you go over that thought or feeling, the deeper that neural network will get. There are places in Eastern Oregon where you can still see wagon ruts made by settlers back in the 1800s. That is what happens in the brain when we go over and over something. Think Rush Limbaugh. Think anyone who says the same type of thing over and over, with as much emotion as possible, whether it applies to the situation they're in or not. By that time, is it a neural net, or a wagon rut?

While this phenomenon is not exactly new -- Carl Jung first started talking about it almost 100 years ago, but he called them "complexes": sets of emotions attached to a fragment of your history, which are charged with feeling and energy, and are autonomous, which means they come up on their own -- it is getting more terrifying all the time.

Terrifying because we live in a world with thousands of highly effective ways to communicate, but a world where people do not tend to think about what they're saying. A world where most just say whatever pops into their heads first, or whatever they've heard someone else saying, with no reflection whatsoever. A world where many people actually make their living saying whatever pops into their heads first, to as many people as possible, and as hatefully as they can. (Sorry to pick on you here again, Rush. But you do make a juicy target.)

Folks, this is not good. As we all know, as we've been told repeatedly by every sage who ever walked the earth, minds need calming, not inflaming. Unless we're at the saint or Buddha stage, a good 80% of "whatever pops into our heads first" is going to be feeling-toned, overly emotional bullshit, capable of doing great damage to others. Not wisdom, not information, just complex. Knee-jerk, reactionary, monkey-mind babble.

Which we now pass around to one another faster than the world's worst virus.

Truly terrifying.

from The Red Book, on our current political climate

2010-03-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

"The spirit of this time considers itself extremely clever, like every such spirit of the time...

The clever person mocks wisdom...
he uses the pointed, poisonous weapon...
But the mockery falls on the mocker...
and he suffocates on his own scorn.

We cannot save ourselves from the cleverness of the spirit of this time through increasing our cleverness, but through accepting what our cleverness hates most."

--The Red Book, CG Jung, Edited by Sonu Shamdasani, p. 237

Massive amounts of contempt for others will not get us anywhere.

To progress, we have to accept the Beauty in others as well as the Beast in ourselves.

I'm interested in the human shadow, but this is ridiculous.

2010-03-16T08:18:00.000-07:00

There is SO much shadow, so much blaming, so much accusing others of doing what one is actually doing oneself, so much newspeak, doublethink, and flat out BULLSHIT in politics right now, I don't even know where to start. I don't even want to get into it. How --and when-- did the American flag become a symbol for hatred and bigotry and name-calling, for obstructionism rather than leadership?

Hhhmm... Howard Zinn might have said 'from the very beginning, my dear...'

I can think of a good bumper sticker, though:

Not Self-Destructive Enough To Vote Republican

MUST we have more "The Book of Eli"s ?

2010-01-20T11:12:00.000-08:00

Parts of David Denby's review in the January 18th New Yorker are too good not to repeat.

...I'm beginning to wonder if filmmakers aren't using the world's end as a trope to license a neo-primitivist ethos. When people must scavenge just to survive, any kind of violence is justified. ...

"The Book of Eli"combines the maximum in hollow piety with remorseless vilolence. It's a true American commercial product, overflowing with barbarous acts and improving bromides.

Uh huh.

What do we see when we look within?

2010-01-12T09:10:00.000-08:00

Increasing the Light at the Winter Solstice

2009-12-10T10:12:00.000-08:00

The Winter Solstice.

A time humans have been celebrating for thousands and thousands of years. The time of year when nights get their darkest and their longest. The time when things look and feel their bleakest.

You can call it Christmas, you can call it Hanukkah, you can call it Kwanzaa, you can call it the remnants of a pagan festival if you want to. But whatever you call it, the darkest days of the year bring out the human need to give, share, sing, gather, and generally light up the darkness in any way we can.

And there is a lot of darkness today. No doubt about it. We're in the midst of big changes -- religious, social, political, in consciousness -- and human beings tend to take change pretty hard. We don't tend to "go gentle into that good night," we tend to fear the worst and fall apart. We tend to go kicking and screaming into that good night, fiercely defending turf we don't need, can't use, and could have started sharing ages ago.

The only way to increase the amount of light we've got is to take some responsibility for the amount of darkness we produce.

To try to become aware of when we're merely projecting our own fears and inadequacies onto others. To try to figure out how much of the evil we see out in the world is actually coming from within our own hearts, our own actions, and our own attitudes.

The amount of human darkness increasingly exponentially around the world isn't coming from "them" -- it's coming from "us."

A good thing to ponder during the Winter Solstice.

The Pot Calls the Kettle Black

2009-11-16T08:09:00.000-08:00

Why do we hear so much ranting and raving over the airways? Why is it so easy for us to get all hot and bothered by what someone else is doing? How come we just can't get off of certain subjects?

It's pretty simply, really. We dwell on what others are doing so we don't have time to think about what we're doing ourselves.

It's called projection, in psychological terms, and it happens all the time. It starts with denial, and ends in blame. We take some part of ourselves we don't like--or are ashamed of, or don't want to think about, or can't bring ourselves to deal with--and project it out onto another person, where we can see it. Imagine a movie projector. You would be the projector whirring in that little room up in the back of the theater, and the other person would be the big screen down in front. You're creating the image, the image is actually coming from you, but the other person is the only place where you can see the image. Thus we can develop a rich and satisfying hatred for the other person while remaining steadfastly in love with ourselves and not having to change a thing personally. "I don't have a bad temper. What are you talking about, you asshole? You have a terrible temper!!"

This cycle, denial--projection--blame, is a basic psychological mechanism. It's a description of what went on at your dinner table last night. It's a description of what we each do all day long every day unless we're making a sincere effort not to do so, and probably a good 78.87% of the time even then.

There's no getting around the fact that humans are now using their intelligence to project whatever they don't like about themselves onto other people, rather than using their intelligence to correct whatever it is about themselves they don't like. Shoot--we're taught to project whatever we don't like about ourselves onto others. Children hear their parents and teachers and leaders do it every day. Hang out in any schoolyard, anywhere in the world, for one whole recess period, and count how many times one kid blames another kid for what he or she just did.

Where do they learn that?

Halloween Shadows

2009-10-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

It's fall, isn't it? All about shorter days, longer nights, turning colors, and the stirrings of evil spirits, both within and without.

An excellent time to read an illustrated book on the human shadow...

My "Little" Shadow

2009-09-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow,
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

--Robert Louis Stevenson
(who, of course, also wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)

2009-09-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

A Possible Reason for the Meanness of Conservatives

2009-09-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

A Possible Reason for the Meanness of Conservatives

Talking to Claire yesterday:

about those times when you find yourself
face to face with a wealthy person who starts to foam at the mouth
about the remote possibility that illegal immigrants—who do the dirty work while the rest of us look away or go on vacation—might receive a bit of basic health care while in this country.

And then this morning:

stopping in mid-stride for no logical reason whatsoever,
while actually on my way out the door to do something logical,
dropping down on my hands and knees in front of the art file,
rifling through, pulling out whatever spoke to my heart
and slapping it up all over the refrigerator.
Ah…
Much better.

Could it be a lack of wildness that drives conservatives to meanness?

A fear of being different, of not looking successful enough,
Of not doing the right thing—does my tie look OK?
Is my lawn smooth enough?
The bland sappy art and the elevator music,
the white walls and the beige carpets,
the high ceilings in big chilly houses with faux stone fronts,
the church services where thousands chant the same words in unison,
the same restaurants with the same food
—none of it nourishing—
appearing every few minutes
along otherwise featureless suburban freeways?

Could it be that all this blandness squeezes the wildness and fierceness
out of their poor denied animal natures
in fearsome and menacing ways?

Thank heaven that
young people are getting weirder and weirder looking all the time.
It just might save the human race.

Simply Too Much Shadow to Share

2009-09-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

Not too current on this blog thing, am I? Afraid my last entry was in January...

Ah, well. I assume you've all had plenty to look at on the internet without any input from me.

Sometimes there's simply too much shadow to talk about. Or write about in public, anyway.

A marriage breaks up, the two people live apart for months, then their marriage reforms with new dynamics. Re-marriage, but with the same two principal characters.

And as that goes on relationships with children -- really, I should think of something else to call them besides children, the youngest is 26, for Christ's sake -- also change and evolve.

I don't know about you, but I can't seem to grow without pain. Like that story where the Worm/Dragon has to peel off 7 different layers of skin in order to become human again. Ouch. It hurts to peel off layers of old persona, old masks, old habits, old kneejerk reactions developed in childhood (complexes, a Jungian would call them).

Even when those old skins are so worn out they no longer keep out the elements, it hurts to pull them off and find out what's underneath.

So please excuse my silence. There's simply been too much shadow to share.

A Revolution of the Spirit

2009-01-31T11:09:00.000-08:00

How gratifying to have one's opinion verified by experts first thing in the morning, via the daily paper.

Lately what I've been saying to anyone who'll listen is that the whole premise of our economy is unsound. The GNP is based on all of us selling as many things to one another as we possibly can. Things we usually don't need, that there are already too many of, that the world does not have the resources for us to keep making. How sustainable is that? This system does need a shot in the arm, there's no doubt about it, but beyond that this system needs to fundamentally change its whole underlying idea, its structural vision.

So how pleasant it was to run into Benjamin R. Barber on the editorial page of The Oregonion today (Saturday, January 31. I'll add a link to it as soon as one of my kids tells me how to do so.)

Barber is a senior fellow at Demos, and the author of Jihad vs. Mac World and Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole.

Here's a quote from an essay in today's paper called "A new american revolution?" Rethinking the Soul of Capitalism:

Today we find ourselves in another seminal moment. Will be use it to rethink the meaning of capitalism and the relationship between our material bodies and the spirited psyches they are meant to serve? Between the commodity fetishism and single-minded commercialism that we have allowed to dominate us, and the pluralism, heterogeneity and spiritedness that constitute our professed national character?

I love this question.

What if we didn't spend all our time and money making things we don't need, and started concentrating our resources on making things that benefit us all and enriched our culture?

What if we produced less junk and more soul?

What if we spent our time building and staffing first-rate, engaging schools? What if preschoolers, the elderly, and those too mentally challenged to hold a job, were cared for by well-paid experts in quality facilities?

What is the basis of our society wasn't rampant, unbridled capitalism--the most ruthless economic system ever invented other than outright oppression--but became instead the pursuit of non-material happiness?

The struggle for the soul of capitalism is, then, a struggle between the nation's economic body and its civic soul: a struggle to put capitalism in its proper place, where it serves our nature and needs rather than manipulating and fabricating whims and wants. Saving capitalism means bringing it into harmony with spirit--with prudence, pluralism and those "things of the public" (res publica) that define our civic souls. A revolution of the spirit. Is the new president up to it? Are we?
--Benjamin R. Barber, Rethinking the Soul of Capitalism

What A Difference a Few Months Can Make!

2009-01-08T18:19:00.000-08:00

Having been absent from the blogosphere since October due to family difficulties, what a welcome change to return to it only twelve days from the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

Unbelievable. Unprecedented. Indescribably delicious.

The USA is about to have a President who understands the concept of the human shadow, although he may not call it that. Who understands that name-calling, fact-twisting, blame-mongering or sending-to-hell will not solve any of our problems, and is, in fact, holding us back.

Who shows a graceful awareness of his country's shortcomings as well as his own, and shows the willingness and the ability to confront both.

Hallelujah.

While you wait for inauguration day, read both of his books, available now in paperback: Dreams from My Father, a clear-sighted and thoughtful memoir, and The Audacity of Hope, a succinct history of how the US got where she is today, and what can be done about it.

That creaking sound you hear, right there at the edge of your hearing, is the sound of the wheel finally starting to turn...

Workshop on "Greeting the Shadow in the Body"

2008-10-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

Greeting the Shadow in the Body
A Workshop on Integrating the Human Shadow

A time for noticing, with body and mind,
the parts of our beings we usually forget.
Practical teaching in shadow work,
during a guided yoga session.

With Jay Fields, Certified Yoga Instructor &
Kay Plumb, author of Using Beauty and her Beast to Introduce the Human Shadow

December 6, 2008
12:30pm to 5pm
$50/person
OmBase
6357 SW Capitol Highway, Portland, OR 90239
(in the Hillsdale neighborhood, across from Food Front)

Wear comfortable clothes. Bring a yoga mat if you have one.
No prior experience in yoga or shadow work required.
Call 503.285.9210 to reserve a spot.

Election Murk

2008-10-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

There is no better time than election time to study the human shadow.

When we point our finger at another and accuse them of doing what we ourselves are doing right at that very moment, we are talking straight out of our shadow.

As in, "Barack Obama will say whatever he needs to to get elected." --John McCain

Accusing others of doing what we are actually doing ourselves--the best offense is a good defense--is now so pervasive, elections in this country have gotten so unreal, so much stranger than fiction, that we might as well quote George Orwell:

"...Newspeak words have two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts... it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink...

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party member knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt...

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies--all this is indispensably necessary.

Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. "

--from 1984, by George Orwell

Tolle's Terminology

2008-09-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

Another way to look at ego and shadow is to lump them both together, which is what Eckhart Tolle does in A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. While his approach may be driving some Jungians crazy -- It's not that easy! I can hear them holler -- it does have a certain 'practical shortcut' appeal.

Your ego is your persona, the masks you wear every day when you go outside in public, who you think you are, who you tell people you are.

Your shadow holds the parts of your personality you don't want showing, the parts you would never consciously tell anyone else about.

Since Tolle's aim is to get people to go beyond thinking to Being, he lumps the ego and the shadow together. And it does work for the purposes of his discussion, because neither is your true essence. Neither is "a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human systems of thought," as Jospeh Campbell defined God. (Campbell also defines God as the Ground of Being, which is my personal favorite since I'm a gardener. )

But in Tolle's approach I miss the poetry of "the brighter the light, the darker the shadow." My dualistically-conditioned-mind responds immediately to images of Jekyll and Hyde, light and shadow, what I show vs. what I hide, what I must project onto others vs. what I can face in myself.

Thank goodness we don't have to make a choice. We can learn from Jung, and we can learn from Tolle.

K

Ego and Shadow

2008-08-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Kay,

The "shadow" is how I have always thought of the ego. A subversive element to it, more interested in maintaining itself than anything else. Distorting the reality of situations to suit its purpose and its survival.

Marilyn

Hhmmm... isn't that true for each part, ego and shadow? That unless consciously injected with compassion, each is only out for its own survival?

We're born knowing how to flee. How to fight. How to snatch a worm out of mama bird's beak before our siblings can. How to knock the other hummingbirds off the perch.

But calmness, compassion, contentment, mercy, forgiveness... the only way I know to develop those traits is by conscious practice.

That's where shadow work comes in. If we don't learn how to love ourselves first, with all our flaws, if we don't handle all the selfish little baby birds and menacing beasts that dwell in our own shadows compassionately --humorously, even -- then we can't cut anyone else any slack.

Jeremiah Abrams calls shadow work "the pursuit of an unhypocritical life." That's a hell of a good definition.

Hell of a task, too.

K

Marilyn's Question

2008-08-11T13:03:00.000-07:00

Kay,

I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your book. I know that you have been told this a million times, but here is one more, it was so much in your voice. I could imagine you sitting in front of me with your faint Texas accent, saying those very things in those very words. I have loaned it to a couple of friends and both have liked it. I wanted to ask you how you differentiate between the "shadow" and the "ego."

Marilyn

If only we could! What an excellent question.

Your ego is how you learn to act as you grow up. Your ego is who "Marilyn" is.

Your shadow is everything that doesn't fit into the picture of "Marilyn." It's Marilyn's opposite, everything Marilyn doesn't want to be.

Both grow up together, side by side, hand in hand. Every time your parents said it was bad to get angry, or your peers thought it wasn't cool to be so enthusiastic, et cetera et cetera, something voluble and lively fled the light world of your ego and hid in the darkness of your shadow. As repressive as parents and school systems tend to be, most of the juice goes into our shadows.

Thus your ego learns how to please, how to get around in your culture, and gets all the credit out in the world -- let's say Marilyn is a very hard worker -- while your poor ole shadow has to hide in what Robert Bly calls the "long black bag we drag behind us" thinking I'd really like a day off, sometime, you know? and eventually getting frustrated enough to sneak past your ego and take swipes at other people. That John Doe is so lazy!

"Shadow work" is noticing that you're unreasonably upset at John Doe, and asking yourself why. Hhmmm... why am I being so snarky? If I'm getting angry over someone else looking relaxed, maybe I need to relax myself. Schedule a little more play into my life. Shadow work pulls something out of the dark bag -- the unconscious -- and brings it up into the daylight world where you can see it and decide what to do about it -- makes it conscious. Better for you, better for John Doe.

Here's a good description of ego-shadow formation, from Meeting the Shadow, by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams:

"As ego comes, so goes the shadow: the disowned self is a natural by-product of the ego-building process, which eventually becomes a mirror image of the ego. We disown that which does not fit into our developing picture of who we are, thus creating a shadow. Because of the necessarily one-sided nature of ego development, the neglected, rejected, and unacceptable qualities in us accumulate in the unconscious psyche and take form as an inferior personality--the personal shadow.

However, what is disowned does not go away. It lives on within us--out of sight, out of mind, but nevertheless real--an unconscious alter ego hiding just below the threshold of awareness. It often erupts unexpectedly under extreme emotional circumstances. "The devil made me do it!" is the adult euphemism that explains our alter ego behavior.

Ego and shadow are thus in an age-old antagonism that is a well-known motif in mythology: the relationship of opposing twins or brothers--one good, the other evil--symbolic representations of the ego-alter ego in psychological development. Taken together, these sibling opposites form a whole. In the same way, when the ego assimilates the disowned self, we move toward wholeness."
--Meeting the Shadow, The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature,
--Edited by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams, p. 47

2008-07-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

Summer Shadows

2008-07-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

It's summer.

We wait a long time for summer here in the Pacific Northwest. Especially in this exact spot, near the top of a hill that overlooks the union of two big rivers and catches every passing cloud in its treetops. Rather moist and muted most of the year. Shades of dark green and gray.

But right now? Loud electric light. Air that's been scrubbed clean. Every green in the world. Flowers. Sweet smells. Bird song. A garden unfolding into all the delights I forgot about during winter with its long, cold spring.

It's just not possible to stay indoors, to think about human shadows and write blogs, when the shadows outside underneath the trees, the ones occurring in nature, are so vivid and compelling.

It's not possible to read the paper, to listen to the news. If only Charles Krauthammer went outdoors more! Four sentences into his editorial in The Oregonian this morning I felt like throwing up. So much hatred! So much vitriol for "the other side!" How did human beings get to such levels of rottenness in discourse?

Strength and comfort to you through it all, Barack. Thank you for being brave enough to take it on.

And to you, Mr. Krauthammer, a reminder that "the other" is merely a projection of what lies within your own heart.

National Shadows

2008-06-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

How about the human shadow in elections?

Seen any accusing,
blaming,
finger pointing,
name calling,
or general-attempts-to-discredit-others
going on lately?

Seen anybody trying
to appear perfect?

Seen any cover-ups going on?

The Peaceful Warrior

2008-05-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

How do people write blogs?

This discussion started days ago, at the very bottom of the page. So now it's completely ass-backwards, and getting more so every time I add something to it. Oh, well. Maybe that describes life's proper trajectory. Going forward can appear backward in the eyes of the world.

As I continue to re-read Karen Armstrong's book The Great Transformation, The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, when I get to the section on the Bhagavad-Gita, or Song of the Lord, I'm reminded that Krishna answered the question "How do we defend ourselves from predators without becoming predatory ourselves?" 2300 years ago, as he counseled Arjuna on the eve of a major battle between warring princes:

...How could a warrior do his sacred duty to society without incurring the bad effects of the violent karma that he was forced to commit?

...Krishna proposed that Arjuna practice an alternative kind of yoga: karma-yoga. He made a shocking suggestion: even a warrior who was fighting a deadly battle could achieve moksha (awakening to one's true self). To achieve this, he had to dissociate himself from the effect of his action--in this case the battle, and the death of his kinfolk. Like any yogin, the man of action (karma) must give up desire. He could not permit himself to lust after the fame, wealth, or power that would result from the military campaign. It was not the actions themselves that bound human beings to the endless round of rebirth, but attachment to the fruits of these deeds. The warrior must perform his duty without hope of personal gain, showing the same detachment as a yogin...

...he must take the "me" and "mine" out of his deeds, so that he acted quite impersonally... by practicing karma-yoga he would in fact be detached from the world, even while he was living and active in it...could learn to transcend selfishness in the ordinary duties of daily life...

...the whole material world was a battlefield in which mortal beings struggle for enlightenment with the weapons of detachment, humility, nonviolence, honesty, and self-restraint. (bold added)
--The Great Transformation, The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, pgs. 431-7
--Karen Armstrong

OK. Fight only when necessary, never for glory, and only for defense. Got it. Act like Yoda.

Which is so against human nature, with its psyche simply crammed full of archetypes like the ogre, the tyrant, the selfish stepmother, the cruel Baba Yaga. No wonder it takes some yoga, some sort of spiritual discipline, to access our saint or our wise ruler!

And not only do we have trouble changing masks -- we want to put that warrior mask on and leave it on, stomp around like Achilles, reap the spoils of victory, scare the shit out of lesser mortals -- half the time we don't know if what we're fighting for is worth having. I gave up 35 years of my life and all I got was a heap of possessions and a giant mortgage I'll never be able to pay off.

What if the warrior finds himself engaged in a battle he no longer believes in, or feels to be unjust?

Gnarled and Ancient Roots

2008-05-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

The problem with "being good" is that human beings come from such gnarled and ancient roots. We usually come closer to a hummingbird knocking his fellow hummers off the feeder than we do to Buddha.

I'm old enough to have gone through the little spiritual revolution that took place in Portland in the late 60s and early 70s. Ran a natural food store, owned exactly 1 skirt (made out of a batik Indian bedspread), one pair of Danner boots, one pair of overalls, and lived over the store. 6 of the 8 apartments over that store, in a rickety old 1920s-era wooden building, housed idealistic 20-somethings who worked there.

As Dickens said, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Best because we were committed and dedicated -- save the world with organic agriculture and simple living! -- worst because we knew nothing about our own shadows. So no matter how hard we tried to be good, and we did try really hard, and we did do a lot of good, every once in a while something very bad would happen. Accusations would fly, relationships would explode, gossip would flourish, feelings would be hurt.

That Utopian experiment -- plus growing up in a fundamentalist household -- taught me that "absolute goodness," or "compassion for all beings," is just not a reachable goal for most of us. There are breakthrough personalities, who truly get it and can actually do it -- Confucius, Socrates, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Black Elk, Dalai Lama -- but few of us ever hit that plane. The rest of us would be better off admitting we have some unpleasant characters in our personality, and learning how to deal honestly and openly with them; better off to get to know our inner caveman, than to pretend like he doesn't exist. (first and second blogs)

It's hard to be good. In fact, some of the meanest people I know try the hardest to be good. Go to church every week end, cheat people in business every week day. Know the words to every hymn in the book, say terrible things about others. Are politically active, but have no tolerance at all for other political opinions. "Goodness" involves judgment. One thing better than another. Us and them.

"Goodness" does not occur in nature. It's another man-made construct, like justice or fairness. Beauty occurs in nature, tragedy occurs in nature, violence, love and nurturing all occur in nature. But goodness? Whether budding out or dropping its leaves, a tree is neither bad nor good. It's simply "tree." One whole thing.

Reminds me of a famous Jung quote: "I'd rather be whole than good."

If it were OK for human beings not to be so good all the time, not to always be right, not to have the last word, not to know every answer, would they become easier to live with?

If we could accept that we are merely animals -- or, with such gnarled and ancient instinctual roots, maybe even plants now and then -- could we become better human beings?

Balancing Aggression & Compassion

2008-05-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

In the course of self-publishing Using Beauty, I went through a bruising process with someone who treated me less-than-honorably. I have some righteous indignation, some anger, some bitterness about the whole thing.

But I've been re-reading Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation, The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, and got to the section on Buddha last night. In light of what I've gone through lately, the concept of loving everything, of having compassion for all beings, is mind boggling. I mean... This guy? Dick Cheney? Child molesters?

How DO we balance the parts of ourselves that are aggressive, selfish and violent, with the parts of ourselves that want to be tolerant and compassionate?

How DO we protect ourselves from predators, without becoming predatory ourselves?

Evolution

2008-04-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

Today, with the book out after all these years, an actual copy sitting here on my desk, the caveman slinks back into his lair and I evolve a little bit. Stand up a little bit straighter, look ahead a little bit farther. Plus, the sun has finally come out. It's so hard to be cheerful when your whole month of April feels like a set from Blade Runner.

Fifteen years of thought in such a slim volume. Amazing. I've heard that the shortest books carry the biggest messages, and it's true that I couldn't do without The Left Hand of Darkness or the poetry of Mary Oliver, but I couldn't do without Anna Karenina, either. Hhmmm... does size really matter? An age-old question.

Things change. Archetypes come and go. Shadows form and dissolve within me.

The trick is to develop a little compassion for each one. As soon as I look right at Bob's drawing of the caveman, notice how beautiful he is in his own way, he throws down his club and starts to stand up straighter.

As soon as I admit what I'm doing, I can begin to cut it out.

Ignoring my caveman does not work as well as acknowledging his existence.

K

The Caveman

2008-04-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

A friend who can't believe I'd rather stay home and spread compost or re-read Joseph Campbell than go shopping or out for coffee called yesterday and asked, "Have you exploded into a ball of light yet?"

And I said, "No. Just the opposite. Today I am totally in shadow."

Teetering right on the brink of publishing a book about the human shadow--the web site up, the book at the printer and ready to be shipped out to the distributor, the marketing started--I find myself completely whelmed, over and under, inside and out, by awareness of my own shadow. Absolutely covered in murk.

Friends and neighbors look at me and see a middle-aged Beauty--the kind, pleasant, responsible, pillar of the community--but when I look in the mirror this week I see the caveman. Primitive. Carping, impatient, negative, mean. Swinging a club of words under its breath as it lurches from side to side down a narrow, rocky path. A clear danger to anyone it meets.

Who is this guy? What is all this negativity I carry within me? Where does it come from? What does it want?

One thing's for sure: it belongs to me. It's definitely mine.

If I sit still long enough to let reality enter the picture, it becomes very clear that every negative thing I think or say about others appears in my own conduct, or has at one time or another.

That the caveman swings his club at his own shadow.
K