BEGINNING TO HEAL AS HUMANS FROM THE IMPOSITION OF EVIL
It Isn't Easy - Nothing Worth Doing Ever Is Easy
A NOTE FROM BORDERS CENTRAL
Forward: On this Fourth Of July weekend Sunday in America there is as per usual no rest for the wicked. I really do live in an old house we fashioned into a respectable recording studio near Nashville. Among all evidence around us to the contrary real musicians actually work. Even on holidays.
And as for us writers we never get time off. As musicians fill my house and hang about the kitchen yet another layer of work is added. And whenever I try to write some erstwhile songwriter claims the territory next to me at the piano and drowns out all possibilities of my making sense. I stumble into the kitchen for coffee - more musicians.
Don’t ever assume we as artists are not 100% insane. Trust what we say and not what we do.
Just stop making sense. It is over rated.
This essay fits in closely with another one. Please take a look at the following as a companion piece.
The Ouroboros: repeating the same mistakes and getting the same results
The Ouroboros symbolizes our own human tendencies to repeat the same mistakes and expect different results. This is also often used as a definition of insanity.
Why are we as humans so susceptible to doing something so fundamentally crazy and against our own interests? If I can gather my thoughts this early on a Sunday morning I may have some success in finishing this essay with some measure of common sense.
Taking on all of this in one essay is likely the epitome of self sabotage, lol. This essay continues the theme of a former essay but tries to dive far deeper.
The understanding that will be necessary to healing ourselves. Learning once again to be sanely human will take work. One does not live generation after generation as either a slave or as a master without deep trauma and need for healing.
Living within a society which demands that humans either live as slaves or masters is fundamentally imbalanced and therefore sick. We who have lived this way over all of these thousands of years of collective insanity are not unscathed.
The price for not healing ourselves and our culture will be to endlessly repeat the same mistakes. This means for all practical purposes we will continue like the Ouroboros to spiral to our doom.
But this time our decision to keep repeating these mistakes will mean death. Individual death and extinction of all of us. And truth be told if we make this choice we probably deserve death and extinction. The approach of extinction is all too real.1
In the end it will mean that we cared more for our own egotistical identifications with these things which divide us than we did for the things which unite us.
It will certainly mean we throughly misunderstood God. And for a people who claim to be the chosen ones, a people of God - that may be the final irony.
The fruits of our dishonesty over many years adds up and becomes apparent for our actions even in the landscape. The understanding of this should not be limited to the few remaining native peoples. It is our birthright, has been stolen from us, and we need to take it back.
DID WE MISUNDERSTAND GOD OR MISUNDERSTAND OURSELVES?
This will sound like blasphemy too many whose point of view is filtered through the world view of certain philosophies, political views, or through certain churches and religions.
It is not meant to be a criticism of any of these. Just pointing out that we as humans go back so many thousands or, depending on one’s anthropological POV, millions of years. But regardless of our viewpoints, back through so many generations that some of the world views we hold today may be limiting in terms of our consciousness.
I turn to the master of the unconscious, Carl Jung and his archetypes:
Although I share the graphic of these archetypes as illustration I feel much more comfortable when considering these archetypes along with the Hero’s Journey as described by Joseph Campbell. Understanding the Hero’s Journey along with Jung is one of the most useful structured ways we can learn about our own journey in conjunction with our collective unconscious. My own previous essay on the subject of the Hero’s Journey:
I attach another post from today much more learned than my own which appeared early this morning as I put some finishing touches on my own thoughts on Jung and the unconscious. I share this excellent essay by
here:To Carl Jung - one of the most brilliant thinkers among us - our thinking processes are best viewed through the lens of something he called the collective unconscious. Although Jung has become a favorite of many questionable new age philosophies - philosophies we may rightfully hold in suspicion - many of Jung’s insights are very likely to be helpful too many of us today.
Especially because of where we find ourselves currently as human beings I believe we at least must consider the concept that we all could be mentally healthier. There is tremendous suspicion among many of us - and even outright hostility toward - psychiatry. This is well warranted unfortunately by much of that accepted science.
Jung himself was very leery of and suspicious of it as well. Jung’s own writings show his motivations at least were healthy. He believed in applying real world, workable and sane strategies to real world problems. He was interested in the things which would heal us and allow us to live sane and meaningful lives.
Jung framed the concept of the human unconscious as his overarching concept.
Since I discuss this by considering our successes as a good Christian society I can’t help but include a discussion of Jung from a Christian POV by Christians. Here is one video I found that at least admits to the possible relevance of this discussion among traditional Christians:
As you have likely already guessed I am a spiritual generalist. Although brought up in the Christian faith and a believer in what Jesus actually taught I have always had too many questions to fit into the framework of the Christian churches. I am a firm believer that our claim to be a Christian society is often wishful thinking.
Those of us who claim to understand God and to live by the word of this God had better make certain we do not live lives which mock this God and every word we claim he or she spoke.
It is in this hubristic & divided world - one inhabited by slaves and their masters - where the word of God - any real god or goddess worth their salt - is thoroughly and fatally mocked. The humans who do this make a mockery of their god and of themselves as well.
Even by the standards of the dictionary we all too frequently misunderstand these words - at least in our actions.
Instead we have the corollary - the diametrically opposed opposite:
OUR INNER CIVIL WAR
It is not out of the question to ask why we are so willing to engage in killing our fellow humans. I would pose loosely here that it is because we have a deeply divided inner self and therefore an inner civil war. Healing the world may well be impossible without healing our inner selves.
It seems that people out to blame others for problems - and all too likely to engage in killing fellow humans - don’t want to change. They engage in hubris without understanding that they are doing so. They are the people who serve the dreams of the ruling elite, those who are the primary drivers of perpetual war for perpetual peace.
They prefer to cling to what they know - to the certainty of ego driven insanity. Change threatens their self concept. They are so entrenched in inner civil war that peace threatens them.
Perpetually at war within themselves they project this conflict on the real world.
These people are many. They are all enemies of the future - any future - any human future - any spiritually tenable future.
It is these true believers - these people who refuse to understand simple truths like “there but for the grace of god go I” and “do unto others” who miss the entire point.
They will chose the spiritually corrupt alternatives. They will fight and murder other human beings and miss the entire proverbial point. With these humans running the show this madness we currently experience will continue to be our new normal.
There are many videos, books and other helps with understanding this collective unconscious. None of these work against our spiritual or religious truth - unless we are already so corrupted by some egotistical agenda that we are no longer able to recognize the truth about ourselves, our cultures or our nation states.
Carl Jung helps explains how we might begin to stop the civil war inside ourselves.
I cannot recommend highly enough the work of Alan Watts in this area. The following video can help illustrate the depths of Watt’s wisdom and the applicable nature of it to our daily lives.
Do you go to the Singer/Songwriters Showcase in Nashville in July? Do you know
Lynne Gibson?
“He who cannot obey himself will be commanded.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche