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A Letter from Hal & Sidra:
Continuing the Journey, Part II
Monday, March 4th 2002
Dear Friends,
First of all, we would like to thank you for your heartfelt response
to our first mailing. Your e-mails and letters touched us deeply
and we really want you to know this. Many of you requested permission
to send our letters to your own friends and colleagues; this is
perfectly acceptable to us.
The following letter is quite long. We rarely
send out mailings this long, but these are unusual times and unusual
times call for unusual actions. We feel that all the information
is very important. We are offering it to you in a single document
for clarity and comprehensive coverage of our thinking.
After we sent out our first mailing, we flew
to Calgary, rented a car, and drove along the Canadian Rockies
as far as Jasper. The airport at San Francisco was a changed airport.
There were armed National Guardsmen (and Guardswomen) and the
line of passengers waiting for security clearance was about a
quarter of a mile long. Sidra's nail file was taken from her.
Hal had to remove his shoes so that they could be run through
the electronic scanner.
Sidra has always been the more adventurous risk-taker
in our travels and she wanted to drive through the Canadian Rockies
- a trip she remembered vividly from 50 years earlier. Hal was
concerned about getting trapped in a snowstorm and not being able
to get back in time to do our weekend training in Calgary. It
was already Tuesday and the workshop began on Friday night. To
help us make our decision about the advisability of this drive,
we spoke to the rangers near Lake Louise. They assured us that
the highways were open all year and only in January might there
be a problem for a day or two.
We made the decision to go, though with some
concern, and we had a magnificent trip through what is one of
the most beautiful -accessible - mountain ranges on the planet.
The world may have changed in these past 50 years, and current
events were gathering threatening momentum as we drove this magical
highway, but these mountains - blessedly - had remained the same.
They provided us with a deep sense of timelessness, continuity,
sacred beauty, and peace.
When we hit the turnoff for the Columbia ice
fields, it began to rain and there were some light snow flurries.
We both began to feel what could diagnostically be described as
a mild anxiety state but we continued to drive northward to our
destination. As we descended from the summit, the rain and snow
flurries disappeared. We finally reached Jasper. The next morning
we awoke to the first snowfall of the year and it was seriously
snowing. Our self-diagnosis shifted from mild to moderate anxiety
as we pictured a room full of people waiting for us on Friday
night while we were stranded someplace in the Rockies.
We will spare you the details, but our story
had a happy ending. By noon, the sun was out and, when we hit
the pass at the Columbia ice fields, there was considerable snow
on the ground but it was already melting and the maintenance trucks
had already sanded the roads. We arrived at our destination safely
on late Thursday afternoon. We even avoided a negative bonding
pattern when we became vulnerable, though it was admittedly a
pretty close call.
We don't want you to think that we begin all
of our writing with a travelogue of our adventures. We share this
because it was on this ride to Jasper - and feeling our own vulnerability
-that we began to catalogue the various disowned selves that we
felt were being carried by the terrorist groups, the fundamentalists,
and by the Muslim community. We spent hours looking at these,
and then exploring which contrasting selves were traditional US
primary selves.
We found our discussion very valuable to us both.
Sidra brought up the idea of the strong family ties and communal
feeling that are a foundation of many cultures, including the
Muslim and the Latin, noting that both those cultures carry a
number of the US's disowned selves. In these cultures, the individual
is not seen as existing solo; instead, the individual is always
seen in the context of the group. Although we value family ties
and teamwork here in the US, our primary selves are more of the
independent or individualistic types. We value the Rambos, the
Lone Rangers, and the John Waynes. As a culture, our heroes are
people who proudly operate alone rather than in the context of
a family or a larger group. If they do operate within a group,
it is usually as the leader.
Hal's unconscious had an immediate reaction to
this part of the discussion. Hal's primary self has always been
more introverted and individualistic, and the discussion obviously
hit at a rather deep level. That night he had the following dream:
"I go to the southern border of the U.S. - next to Mexico
- and there are small houses where many Mexican-American families
live. I enter one of the houses and there are many people and
families. In the middle of the room is a very large bed. Everyone
is sitting on the bed talking and just being together. It is a
very good feeling. Then the dream shifts and I am in a larger
empty room. With me is a young woman who carries something of
the spirit of this Mexican community. The room is starting to
go down into the earth where we will be exploring the nature of
the communal family spirit."
Sidra's unconscious, too, reacted immediately
to our discussion. Another disowned self we had talked about was
the terrorist as a fighter, as someone who knew how to fight effectively.
In contrast, there has been a protected quality to life in the
US and most of us, including Sidra, have disowned our own terrorists,
our street fighters who know how to fight. Our primary selves
are more naïve and carry strong injunctions about never hurting
others. We have been taught to "use words rather than fists"
and we are accustomed to the protection offered by our most ordinary
economic advantages. The 911 attacks took away our customary protections;
the old primary selves no longer work the same way in the new
world.
That night Sidra had the following dream about
incorporating a new set of selves: "I was driving our Buick
through a crowd of ordinary looking people. I have no way of knowing
who is safe and who is not. I try to roll up the windows of the
car but I can't because there are no longer any window frames.
There is no longer a roof either. We are driving our usual car,
but we are no longer protected by it. (A perfect picture of the
inadequacy of the old primary selves in the new situation.) Suddenly,
a street fighter, a funny, irreverent young black man who knows
how to take care of himself in this kind of setting, jumps on
the front right fender of the car and begins to "ride shotgun".
Another friend of his takes up a position at the back of the car.
They look at me with amusement; they are laughing at my vulnerability
and they want to see what I'll do next. They are not malevolent,
just challenging. They are perfectly comfortable in this situation.
I know in the dream that I need their protection and I must figure
out how to deal with them and maintain control of my car. I know
that they will honor me if I respect them and I retain my own
sense of irreverence and humor when I am with them." Sidra
awoke with a grin, knowing that this irreverent, paradigm-busting,
street-fighter carries an energy that we will all need in the
times to come.
We were both struck by how quickly our unconsciouses
had responded
to our earlier discussion and how quickly these disowned selves
made themselves known to us. Once they were introduced to us through
our dreams, we knew that we were already beginning the process
of working creatively with them. We hope that our discussion of
the primary selves of the groups that seem to be "other"
will work for you in the same way.
The Disowned Selves
At a time like this, it is important to try to
see what it is that
we disown and what we have attracted to ourselves in the outside
world. Just as in our personal relationships, we need this basic
information in order to begin the process of separating from primary
selves, integrating disowned selves, and started to defuse the
bonding patterns.
We were fortunate to have people who were born
in five different countries in our last training group here at
Thera and, together, we all thought about the question of what
selves people from the US tend to disown. Here are some of the
ideas that we came up with: We are strong; we disown our vulnerability.
We preserve life at any cost, and we disown death. We are independent;
we disown our need of others. We are the have's; others are the
have-not's. We have been the "good guys," the cowboys
in the white hats who rescue others; we disown our instinctual
energies, our "bad guys," our terrorists. We are smart,
we know all the answers; we don't need others to help us figure
things out. We are identified with our minds; others are identified
with their souls. We are more likely to be identified with our
materialism; others with their idealism. We believe in our individual
freedom; we disown our fundamentalists who carry the need for
outside regulation of our behavior. We are innocent, eternal optimists;
we disown our sense of futility. We are young and self-impressed
as a nation; we do not value the wisdom and experience of other,
older nations. We know how to give; we do not know how to receive.
We're not going to go into all these selves in
detail in this letter. It's long enough as it is, so we've chosen
to speak at greater length about just a few of the opposites we've
dealt with most frequently during the past years. But we wanted
to mention these here because one of them just might spark your
own process.
What You Disown, You Marry
History repeats itself. Those who do not learn
from it are doomed to repeat it. This is true in interpersonal
relationships and it is true in the relationships among nations.
In our attempts to do what we thought was right
- or was in our best interests which, by definition, was something
we thought was right - the US has chosen partners who carried
our disowned selves. Our nation "married" Pinochet,
Noriega, Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, and, to our most recent
dismay, Osama bin Laden. Let us hope that we exercise a bit more
caution with our next partners. We are not political experts and
we don't know the answers, but we do urge caution in the new alliances.
Let us learn the lessons of history as individuals,
and as a nation. Our basic lesson is that we must learn to move
through life embracing opposites. We must become aware of, and
then embrace, our disowned selves. And, as in interpersonal relationships,
we must remember that just because we disown a self it doesn't
mean that we do not have that self somewhere within us. It just
means that it is operating unconsciously.
And so it is that our disowned terrorists and
fundamentalists operate beyond the boundaries of our awareness
and beyond our conscious control. We do not know them and we have
not accepted responsibility for them. They are projected upon
the "others". And, more often than not, these are the
"others" that we marry either literally or in political
alliances.
We must recognize and embrace our own fundamentalists
and our own terrorists before we can deal effectively with the
fundamentalists and terrorists on the outside. We must clearly
recognize our contribution to the current situation. However,
there is a big difference between guilt and responsibility, and
we must not assume total blame for the situation. Just as in relationships
between two people, it is all a dance. Both sides contribute to
the overall picture. We cannot control what others do, but we
do have the ability to work with - and control - ourselves.
We believe that if enough people think, feel,
and do their own individual work, this need not go on for decades
and that something will shift in a shorter time span. Each of
us can try to do our part to defuse polarization by doing our
own personal work.
How can we best do this?
Projection: What is it
and why is it so important?
At the present time it seems to us of enormous
importance for each of us to discover what we have projected onto
these "others" and to begin the process of taking back
these projections. But, before we go any further, we would like
to give you a picture of what we mean when we say "projection."
Projection is a particular psychological mechanism in which we
literally project our disowned selves out into the world around
us, just like a movie projector projects an image onto a screen.
Only here, instead of a screen, we project our images upon people
or objects in our surroundings. Whatever is unconscious is projected.
This is perfectly natural; we all do it and we all will continue
to do it. But there is much to learn from it.
Imagine that you are a woman walking past a shop
that sells American Indian artifacts. In the window you see a
squash blossom necklace. It is obviously very old; you can see
the old frayed string at the top where the clasp is. You look
at the necklace and you know you must have it. It demands that
you buy it. It may be too expensive for you, but this doesn't
matter. When you look at it your heart hums and you just know
that you would feel wonderful wearing it.
What is it that has happened here? A while earlier
you passed a store and saw a diamond necklace but that did nothing
for you. If they had given it to you it would have meant very
little other than what it would be worth if you sold it. So what
is it that makes the old squash blossom necklace irresistible
and the diamond necklace, which is far more expensive, just another
piece of jewelry?
In such a situation it is always possible that
the necklace has an actual energy connected to it, the energy
of its owners and the rituals they had attended while wearing
it. However, the fact is that the strong response you feel is
the result of some group of feelings, values, energetic systems,
and selves that are being projected onto it. It is these projections
that make that particular necklace irresistible. This is how projection
works; it operates automatically and quite unconsciously.
In a way, projection is like a bridge that gets
built between your unconscious psyche and a person or an object
on the outside. When, instead of a necklace, you project your
unconscious images onto another person, your projection acts like
a bridge that connects you with that other person. This bridge
gives people a way to walk across the space between them, so that
they can meet each other. Sometimes these projections are positive
- as with the necklace - and sometimes they are negative - as
with the people we judge as bad or "other".
Back to the necklace. It may be that you have
a disowned or unconscious spiritual side that is projected onto
the necklace. This disowned self was suddenly activated when you
looked at the necklace. When we project in this way, we are taken
over by the projection and we lose our ability to think objectively
about the object. Our projection literally colors how we view
the object and determines the value we place upon it. We may buy
the necklace even though we cannot afford it, we might pay much
more than it is worth, or even run ourselves into debt, just because
it - or a similar object - is carrying the magical energy of a
disowned self. We do not mean to imply that this projection is
negative. It is a perfectly normal and natural psycho-spiritual
process. But when operating completely unconsciously, it can be
rather expensive in dollars or in psychic pain.
Much of our classic literature and entertainment
is based upon the more tragic aspects of projection. Think of
the classic stories, like the Blue Angel, in which a very proper
man becomes obsessed with a sensual, free spirited woman and is
ruined by his uncontrollable infatuation for her. He has projected
all of his disowned instinctual energies onto her. He cannot resist
her. Then there is the cheerful good girl, like Cathy in Wuthering
Heights, who must have her Heathcliff - the man who carries her
brooding introversion, her unsociable nature, and her instinctual
energies. Think of the story of Lolita, or the more recent movie,
American Beauty, where the young girl carries the projections
of innocence, an uncorrupted, natural, powerful sexuality, and
naïve sentimentality for the older man who cannot accept
these in himself, but instead projects all of these disowned selves
upon her.
The parts of our psyche that are disowned or
unconscious are going to be projected onto some person, some group,
or some object in this way. When we become aware of a disowned
self, make it conscious and honor it, then automatically that
part of our psyche is taken away from the other person or object
and becomes available to us.
Following up on our necklace: If you realize
that you have disowned your spiritual self and you're projecting
it onto the necklace and you do the work of claiming this self,
then you have real choice about whether or not to buy the necklace
-- and how much to pay for it. Looking at the stories of the proper
man: If he integrates his own instinctual energies, not only is
he no longer obsessed with the more instinctual woman on the outside,
but he now has his own instinctual energies available. When we
take back a projection in this way, we get the new energy and
the new insights that are part of the new selves we have just
integrated.
Equally important is the fact that when we project our disowned
selves onto someone, we are literally feeding that person's primary
selves. For example, let us say that you see someone as a very
negative person, almost devilish. Your primary self is very caring
and loving. You project the unloving side of your personality
onto this other person and push him or her more deeply into the
unloving, uncaring side. The more "good" you get, the
more "bad" he or she becomes; and, conversely, the more
"bad" he or she is, the more "good" you become
to offset this "badness". The polarization between you
becomes ever more intense. This is what we mean when we speak
of feeding the primary self of the other person with our projections.
Again, when a polarization exists, the two people
- or two groups of people - involved are carrying each other's
disowned selves. The primary selves of one are the disowned selves
of the other and vice versa. Neither is totally right, and neither
is totally wrong; each has only a half of the picture. Each has
something to teach the other; and each has something to learn
from the other.
These ideas, and our following thoughts, are
based on the Psychology of Selves. If you are not familiar with
our work, what we are saying may not make much sense to you. Rather
than go into detail here, we will assume that you are familiar
with our work. If not, we suggest that you look at some of the
readings on our website or read our basic book, Embracing Our
Selves so that what we say will be more meaningful.
The Primary and Disowned Selves: "Them"
vs. "Us"
Let us begin by saying that we are not political
experts. Neither are e experts on Muslim or Arab culture. The
following ideas come from our own personal experiences and those
of people we know. We would like to stimulate your own thinking
about the contrasting primary selves that are involved in the
current challenging times as they are reflected in your life and
in the lives of those around you.
It is our hope that this article will encourage
a discussion about these disowned selves that can be fruitful
to all of us. This integration of the disowned selves is work
we can all do. We all know from long experience the paradigm shift
that occurs when we separate from a primary self and we honor
and embrace the other side. There is a power in this kind of work
that can move mountains.
We have decided to use the term "them"
rather than anything more specific. When we refer to "them"
we are talking about several differing groups that seem to be
carrying the disowned selves of the US - the terrorist groups,
the fundamentalist groups (not necessarily just Muslim), and the
greater Muslim community. We are, of course, aware that these
are not always separate entities and that there is much overlap
in the current situation. We don't feel that it is appropriate
to treat all these groups as a single entity because someone can
be a Muslim without being a terrorist, or a terrorist without
being a Muslim. Also someone can be a fundamentalist without being
either a terrorist or a Muslim.
Let's look at some of the disowned selves we
have identified and see the lessons we have been challenged to
learn:
Acceptance of Death vs. Rejection of Death
We have heard many people ask the question:
"How could anyone just want to commit suicide and kill thousands
of people in the process?" For the Muslim community there
is an afterlife, a life after death. Our understanding of this
is that in the afterlife of the Muslim there is heaven and there
is hell. By doing good deeds, not only can someone get to Heaven
earlier, but that same person has a better chance of not going
to hell. To kill people who are infidels or evil doers is a passport
to heaven where good things await.
The basic point here is that death is not seen
as a negative. It is seen as a part of life - and, in some circumstances,
as a positive. It is even something to celebrate. Sidra remembers
visiting Morocco many years ago and being surprised at the weekend
family picnics in the cemeteries. Whole families were there eating
and drinking and playing, having a great time and apparently being
together with their departed loved ones.
The primary selves in the West, generally speaking,
have become essentially anti-death. We fight death to the bitter
end. We hide from it, we fear it, we avoid direct contact with
it whenever possible. We rarely celebrate death and it is doubtful
that we would ever picnic in a cemetery. Death is often seen as
a medical failure. People are kept alive at any cost and without
thought of the kind of life they are - or are not -leading. No
wonder death has such power over us.
In addition to this, unless they belong to some
psycho-spiritual community or ideology that believes in the continuity
of the soul, most Westerners have no concept of a life after death.
They do not believe in reincarnation. This very short life is
all there is and you never get another chance. Without the possibility
of a life after death, people are generally much more frightened
about the prospect of dying.
If death, on the other hand, is merely a doorway into another
realm, possibly a better realm, then death begins to lose its
power to create terror in us. If we in the West would expand our
vision of death to include the possibility of an afterlife or
the continuity of the soul through many lifetimes, then we could
separate from the primary self that must face the prospect of
death with fear.
Let us now look at the lesson to be learned:
Most of us are not eager to die unless our lives are too painful
to bear. However, the issue here is not whether or not we want
to die, it is our inability, as a culture, to deal with death.
How can we make death a more natural part of our lives? How can
we make it just another part of the journey?
Fundamentalism vs. Personal Freedom/Free Spirit
Fundamentalism refers to any group or religious
process that operates out of a strict set of rules about what
is right and what is wrong. These rules govern every aspect of
behavior. If you follow them carefully, then you are a good person
and you will be rewarded; if you do not, then you are a bad person
and you will be punished. Your choice is clear; there is only
one way to live. This issue of fundamentalism is one that has
created a great deal of polarization within the United States.
Now it is operating very powerfully on the international scene.
For many years now in our workshops and trainings
we have been talking about this issue. We have described fundamentalism
as one of the major disowned selves of the consciousness movement.
But it is a disowned self of the nation as well. The US - ideologically
- is committed to personal freedom and there is a passionate,
often judgmental, defense of civil liberties. Much personal freedom
has been gained since the 1960's with much effort. This has been
a real advance for civil liberties. But, much to the distress
of fundamentalists everywhere, the outside repressive controls
have not been replaced by any noticeably effective self-regulatory
behavior.
This is not just an issue with Muslim fundamentalism.
It is an issue in the United States as well, where many of us
completely reject fundamentalist thinking. When we disown our
fundamentalists so completely, we can't even begin to imagine
how deeply offended people are by our popular culture. From their
standpoint, their hard-won civil liberties are being abused, and
they are being forced to live in a profligate, undisciplined,
"anything goes" culture.
As for the consciousness movement, the goal of
much psychological work is to achieve personal freedom. Personal
freedom is generally defined as being able to live life on your
own terms, as being able to do what you want and say what you
need to say. Politically, this has played out with particular
intensity in the arena of free speech and freedom of expression.
This has also played out pretty intensely in regard to sexual
freedom. Personal freedom is often associated with sexual freedom,
because many people are still in a push off from a system of controls
that was very sexually repressive and punitive in the past.
People who are identified with a primary self
of personal freedom disown their inner fundamentalists, the part
of them that longs for a particular kind of security, for structure,
predictability, group consensus, and containment. This self would
be only too happy to be told exactly what to do - and how to do
it. It would be delighted to follow a set of clear, well-established
rules that teach the proper way to live. Then it could feel safe.
Our experience in working with consciousness groups of all kinds
all over the world is that, as we have mentioned previously, the
fundamentalist viewpoint is a classic example of a disowned self
in action.
These people who are identified with a primary
self of personal freedom have often done much personal work and
have taken years to separate from a set of internalized rules
that were causing them pain. Their new primary selves of personal
freedom (or free spirit) have come at considerable cost and these
selves think that fundamentalist rules don't belong in the modern
world. The new primary self, the free spirit, sees guilt (particularly
sexual guilt) and the need for rules as a disease entity and dismisses
this with much judgment.
But there is another way of looking at this guilt,
a framework that honors the opposites within each of us. We can
see the age-old conflict between two conflicting ideological systems
- doing what you want on one side and adhering to the values and
rules of the group on the other - playing out within our own psyches.
Instead of seeing this within ourselves, we are currently watching
this conflict being played out bloodily in the world around us.
When you are unable to stand between opposites,
you are unable to feel the feelings of the other person who carries
the opposite point of view. It is only by honoring the reality
of the fundamentalist psychology in yourself that you can feel
the feelings and have compassion for the viewpoint of the fundamentalists
in the world around us. For the fundamentalists, it is only by
standing between their fundamentalist ideology on the one hand
and finding their free spirit or new age ideology on the other
side that they can have compassion for people who are identified
with being a free spirit.
In these matters your judgments can be your teachers.
Judgment generally comes from the primary self. If you find yourself
judging someone's fundamentalist beliefs then that lets you know
immediately that those beliefs are a disowned self for you.
Now we'll ask the question that always gets raised
when we train people in how to work with their judgments. The
question usually goes something like this: "Do you mean that
if I judge the Taliban for their unconscionable patriarchal treatment
of women that they are a disowned self for me? A self that I should
think of integrating? No way! Never! Never! Never!" But we
are not asking you to agree with the Taliban. You may continue
to disagree with them and to mobilize your forces against them.
What we are saying is: When you have this kind of intense and
ongoing judgmental reaction, it means that you are still being
challenged to find your own inner fundamentalist.
There is a difference between this kind of judgment
and making choices with discernment. The ability to discern, to
make choices in line with our own beliefs and values is priceless.
But judgments are different. Judgments are more passionate than
discernments; they carry a visceral and physical component. You
feel righteous and completely justified. The others are totally
wrong and you are totally right. You cannot even begin to imagine
the others' point of view or where it came from and, what's more,
you don't even want to. This is the clear sign of a disowned self.
When, as in the case of the Taliban, there are
behaviors that you find totally unacceptable, then it's particularly
difficult to step back from your judgment and think in terms of
disowned selves. But you may be sure of one thing. For the majority
of people in the US, and especially those involved in the psycho-spiritual
movement, the Taliban and its fundamentalist approach to life
is, in fact, a disowned self.
We have our own particular definition of personal
freedom. For us, personal freedom is not doing what you want because
always doing what you want is just as one-sided as never doing
what you want. For us, personal freedom means having real choice.
It means standing between the multitude of opposites that live
within each of us and having the ability to choose between these
opposites.
This is one of the sets of opposites. On one
side of us is the free spirit that wants to live life on its own
terms, free to do whatever it wants, however and whenever it wants
to. On the other side is the inner fundamentalist that has a clear
set of rules and values that must be followed regardless of our
personal needs and preferences. Without access to both of these
points of view, there is no real choice and there is no real freedom.
We have already made this lesson completely clear.
Our violent judgments about the Taliban are a foolproof way of
discovering that we are identified with the personal freedom or
free spirit self and we are being challenged to integrate our
own inner fundamentalists.
Disowned Instinctual Energies vs. Love, Love,
Love
For those of us who have never experienced pure
hatred and violence firsthand, the World Trade Center bombing
was incomprehensible. How could someone even conceive of such
a thing? How could anyone want to destroy other human beings?
Most of us grow up in family systems and a cultural
nexus that makes it difficult for us to remain connected to our
instinctual energies. We are far away from our indigenous heritage
and most of us have no access to the "street smarts"
that people who are less privileged must develop. So the fact
is, our instinctual energies are one of the major systems of selves
that get disowned.
Disowning our instinctual energies has a number
of consequences. First of all, the natural aggression that ought
properly to be protecting us by moving forcefully outward into
the world is no longer available to us. Instead, what often happens
is that this kind of instinctual energy shifts track, joins with
the inner critic and moves inward. Instead of providing us with
an inner warrior that will defend us, it ends up as an ally of
the inner critic and attacks us. This is one of the reasons that
the inner critic is such a powerful self in our culture.
Even more important, however, is the fact we
develop a primary self that is very positive, very caring, very
loving, and very spiritual. This primary self enters into a push
off on the more aggressive instinctual energies and we become
nicer and nicer. The disowned instinctual energies become increasingly
"bad" and, at some point, we refer to these buried energies
as demonic energies. Demonic energies are simply disowned instinctual
energies that have been held down for so long that they have grown
in intensity and have become quite negative. When this happens,
they can break out and cause us to behave in ways that might be
very dangerous.
In one of our books we gave an example of a minister
in one of our groups who dreamed that "he was trying to wrestle
a drunk penis into a cold shower." The penis was obviously
not drunk to begin with. It got drunk - or increasingly out of
control - in relationship to years of living with a primary self
that negated his sexuality. His sexual impulses, which were natural
to begin with, became unnatural because of their imprisonment.
Now they were strong enough to break through the primary self
and they threatened to impact his life in a way that could be
very dangerous to him.
We believe it is very important to understand
how we who are in the consciousness movement contribute to this
problem. What is it that the spiritual community is identified
with as a set of primary selves that feeds the disowned instinctual
energies and keeps them unconscious? We feel that this is the
need to try to be loving and compassionate at all times. What
exactly do we mean by this? Who can argue with the need for love
and compassion in the world? The problem with these ideas, as
is always the case when one works with the Psychology of Selves,
is which part of you is doing the loving and which part of you
is being compassionate?
The problem develops because if you are taught
as a spiritual truth that you should be loving and compassionate
then that is what you try to do. When you try to be loving or
try to be compassionate something very negative begins to happen.
From your primary selves of spiritual seeker and knower, you begin
to stuff your negativity into a box where - just like the minister's
sexual impulses - it grows and festers and begins to do its mischief
to you and through you.
The spiritual self labels your anger, your aggression,
your judgments, your jealousy, your arrogance, and your selfishness
as something negative, something to be gotten rid of. We do learn
to get rid of them. We gradually learn how to stuff all of this
into the "disowned self box" where gradually the snake
of our instinctual energies grows larger and larger and takes
more and more energy to keep locked up. This takes a huge toll
on our bodies and our lives.
We are definitely in favor of using appropriate
nutrients to support our immune systems. If you want a different
look at immune technology, imagine what happens to each of us
as this snake gets larger and larger and we have to use more and
more of our strength to keep the lid on the box that contains
it.
In addition to that, we project these disowned
instinctual energies - which by now have become demonic - onto
other people, countries, and groups, and so create an increasing
number of enemies outside of ourselves who become locked into
the cement of this system of disowned selves.
Many people in this time of crisis have split
over the issue of whether or not the U.S. should use military
force of any kind. It is easy to jump on one side or the other.
What we would ask you to do is to allow your loving, compassionate,
peace voice to speak and when that side is through speaking to
allow the warrior side to speak and give its viewpoint. What is
necessary in these harrowing times is to find both sides in yourself.
They are both there, we can assure you of that. Then, when you
make a choice, it comes from the Aware Ego and not from one of
the opposites. Choices made in this way do not produce the same
kind of polarization in others. Choice cannot exist without opposites.
It takes courage to stand between opposites because when you do,
the answers just don't come as simply and easily.
For us, there is no such thing as a bad energy. All energies have
a good side and a bad side. If love is channeled through a controlling
mother, then you have a love that controls. If you channel it
through a spiritual father, then you control in a different way.
In both of these examples, the love goes into the service of power.
If you love through an Aware Ego, then you simply love without
attachment. If your impulse to kill channels through a power side,
then you have a dangerous energy waiting to explode. If you channel
your killer energy through the Aware Ego, then you have boundaries,
the ability to say no and yes with authority, and a warrior that
will protect you when you need protection.
Rather than get rid of a judgment in the service
of the spiritual self, why not figure out which primary self is
making the judgment? The disowned self is what you are judging;
there is a lesson to be learned, and a self to integrate. What
happens when you do this? Now you have a chance to stand between
two opposites. And do you know what happens when you learn how
to do this? You no longer judge the "other" because
you have now experienced within yourself that behavior - or thought
or feeling - that you were judging in the first place.
And, lastly, what happens when the judgment dissipates
as a result of this kind of work rather than a result of trying
to do away with the judgment as an unacceptable feeling? We hate
to say the "c" word because you might misuse it, but
the fact is that you become more compassionate in a natural way.
You don't have to force anything and you don't have to get rid
of anything. That is what we are after. A compassionate and loving
primary self that is built upon a garbage dump of our disowned
energies does not do us any good and - in fact - just as any other
disowned and projected self, it merely feeds the demonic energies
outside of ourselves that can terrorize us.
The lesson here has been made clear. Instead
of thinking about spiritual teachings, we suggest that you use
the idea of psycho-spiritual teachings. In this way you learn
to embrace both sides of your nature; you are constantly moving
between the psychological and the spiritual realities in yourself
and in the people with whom you work. Interestingly enough, in
this lesson, as you learn to embrace the disowned selves that
make up your instinctual energies, you will find that you are
actually carrying out the wishes of your primary self - you are
becoming more compassionate and loving.
Idealism or Life and Meaning Based on God vs. Materialism or Life
and Meaning Based on Technology and Matter
We are not well informed on the subject of Islamic
thinking and we expect that many of you bring a far greater knowledge
and a deeper understanding to this area than we do. However, from
our admittedly limited perspective, we would like to continue
our search for disowned selves. It seems that one of the strong
primary selves of the Muslims is an idealistic spiritual self
that is fully committed to God and that God - and the ideals of
living a godly life - plays an important part in their daily lives.
Prayers punctuate the day. Because of the extreme nature of Taliban
thinking and acting, it is easy to forget how idealistic and God-oriented
the Muslim culture is.
For the average Westerner, the connection to
divinity and the attention that we pay to divinity is quite the
opposite. As a culture we are more secular and materialistic.
Our bottom line concern is usually just that - the bottom line.
It's not that we lack ethics, it's just that the business of everyday
life and God's eternal kingdom are somehow viewed separately.
It is unusual to see a Westerner stopping for prayers in the midst
of a workday.
An idealistic and God-based focus in life has
been disowned for the majority of people in the US where the emphasis
is more secular or materialistic. It requires a level of surrender
to God. We strongly suggest that this surrender go hand in hand
with a consciousness process. Otherwise, it is too easy to surrender
in an unconscious way and end up doing some very nasty things
in the name of God - thinking that this is what divinity wants.
Just as in a marriage there must be love and surrender to the
relationship together with a consciousness process to make it
work; so too, with the surrender to God, there must be love and
surrender to God together with a consciousness process to make
it work.
In the US, as we've suggested, our focus in life
is more technological and material. Our focus as a nation is the
spread of a market economy and democracy all over the world, not
an export of spiritual feelings or religious idealism. Although
our ways of going about this have created a fair amount of controversy,
we basically want people to be free from want and to have the
same economic advantages we have; we leave spiritual concerns
to others.
Instead of being linked to God on a daily basis,
one might say that we are linked to our things. This has become
ever more evident with the increasing technology available to
us. Computers and all that goes with them, modern communication
technology and its faxes, cell phones, and e-mails, TV's, electronic
gadgets of all types, digital cameras, computer games, and much
more have increasingly drawn us into their web. Many of us spend
enormous amounts of time worrying about our finances, about how
best to handle them, and whether or not there will be enough money
to take care of us in our old age. We shop; we buy. As a matter
of fact, one of our gravest concerns right now is not with our
souls, but with the worsening of the economy.
It's interesting to think of bin Laden (as an
individual) and his disowned selves in this context. In this area,
he clearly carries our disowned self, and he's actually told us
how we carry his. He was a son of a prosperous Saudi family. He
has disowned his economically privileged background and chosen
to live a life according to his own beliefs in God's will, rejecting
the material goodies for a more ascetic life. We've often joked
about the idea that the best thing you can do to help your primary
self is to kill off your disowned selves; well, it's not so funny
when you see it happening. He's gone ahead and begun to actually
do it. (And we have responded in kind.)
But we must remember that bin Laden - as an individual
and not necessarily as the representative of any particular group
- is our disowned self in terms of religious surrender and the
sacrifice of material comfort. It would be interesting to see
his dreams or hear his daydreams. We suspect that he would have
dreams of his disowned materialist - he'd see himself shopping
at Gucci's or going on all the rides in Disneyland. In contrast,
we in the US are dreaming of being chased by the wild animals
of our disowned instinctual nature.
Making God an everyday part of life and resting
into God is a very powerful idea. Hal does this very well. When
things get particularly hair-raising and vulnerability is high,
he simply says to God: "Look - this is too much for me. You
take over my life and become my administrator right now. You handle
the anxiety and I'll do the work. I'll do whatever is necessary
and I'll get done whatever it is that you want me to get done.
In the meantime, you have to handle what is going on. It's a bit
much for me."
This way of relating to divinity is simply one
among many different ways of relating to the divine authority
and intelligence of the universe. For Hal, this has always worked
and he certainly has had to call on Gods strength during the current
crisis. It is just one example of what a God-based focus in life
would look like - a way of living life that the Muslims and many
fundamentalists have been carrying in their own ways all along.
Certainly the current interest in things spiritual and the spread
of our psycho-spiritual communities in the US are a proper movement
in this direction.
The Taliban and the Patriarchy vs. Democracy
and Equal Rights for Everyone (even Women)
This is a complicated area, and we want to put
it in the most simple terms. We know that we are generalizing
from the individual to the cultural and this is tricky because
even if cultures (when looked at collectively) have characteristic
primary selves, each person within the culture has his or her
own primary selves. Please keep this in mind.
Our primary selves are democratic; we believe
in giving everyone the right to contribute to decision making.
Whether or not this is truly followed may be open to question
- but our basic belief system is that everyone should be able
to vote and should have an equal voice, including women. This
is true not only politically, but in our personal lives as well.
The classic US primary selves, and those of the consciousness
movement, are committed to listening to everyone's input and to
respecting a wide range of opinions before coming up with plans
that will affect others' lives. Ideally, this system works from
the bottom up. The people who are expected to follow the rules,
are the ones who have a say in making them.
The patriarchal system is diametrically opposed
to this. The Taliban is an extreme version of the patriarchy.
It works from the top, down. In this way of thinking, one group
- the patriarchy - knows best what is good for the entire group
and, from above, it makes the decisions that will affect others'
lives. The Taliban has raised patriarchal thinking to new heights.
They know what is best for everyone, they make the rules, and
others must obey. Or else!
The other characteristic of the patriarchy is
the systematic oppression of women and the devaluation of anything
traditionally feminine. The Taliban excels at this. However, it
is interesting to note that at least one part of the original
intent of the Taliban's early control of women was designed to
protect them from the prevailing lawlessness by removing them
from the rape and uncontrolled violence that was rampant at that
time. This is not unlike the beginnings of the patriarchal system
that we inherited. This turned rather quickly into a restrictive
set of laws - perhaps unparalleled in history - that have effectively
enslaved women, deprived them of all rights, and kept them under
complete control with the cruelest of punishments.
In generalizing the possibility of disowned selves
from the individual to the culture, we have to be very careful
and thoughtful. As we said earlier, not everyone in the culture
has the same primary selves. However, we have observed in our
clinical work that many women, and men, too, have become so identified
with the idea of personal freedom and of a cooperative democratic
approach to life, that they have totally disowned their own inner
patriarchs. They have rejected any rules of behavior that could
sound patriarchal and, in doing so, have polarized intensely against
anything even remotely patriarchal.
What we need to look at individually in this
matter is whether this is indeed true. What do our own inner patriarchs
say? What are the rules or suggestions that they carry regarding
our behavior? If we don't feel our own patriarchs inside of us,
then we can never fully appreciate what the Taliban is feeling
and we cannot deal as effectively with them as we might wish.
We each have in us certain patriarchal ideas.
We don't get rid of these ideas by running away from our particular
religious faith or the rules of our fathers (and mothers). All
of this continues to live inside of us and we must discover it
- as we must discover our other disowned selves - so that we can
we can deal with this more consciously. There are many pairs of
opposites here. Some of them that occur to us are: patriarch and
matriarch; conservative and liberal; autocrat and democrat; fundamentalist
and free spirit; and warrior and nurturer.
Your enemies become your brothers or sisters
once you have embraced in yourself the selves that you judge so
intensely in them. This is not learning to love out of a spiritual
identification. This is the organic evolution of love and compassion
that emerges slowly as we do our psycho-spiritual work and learn
to stand between the myriad of opposites that live within this
vast psyche of ours. Hal likes to call this ability to stand between
opposites in this way "the technology of sweat." Sidra,
with her finer sensibilities, prefers the picture of a hummingbird
hovering between opposites.
Honoring Elders vs. Worshipping Youth
We are a young country in an old world. It is
fairly well accepted that we in the US worship youth and have
difficulty with aging. We'll do anything to remain young. We'll
exercise, use plastic surgery, take the right supplements, do
yoga, even become conscious, in order to remain forever young.
There are thriving industries based upon this worship of youth.
As in any primary self, there's a good side to this as well as
a bad side, so don't think we're against remaining youthful. But
there needs to be balance; there are opposites that are calling
out for attention.
As part of this devotion to youth, we have a
tendency to disown aging and to devalue our elders. Our emphasis
is upon technology and newness - whatever is the newest or the
latest is considered the best. People and things get outdated
quickly. There is little respect for the wisdom of age. Again,
as in all selves, there's a good side to this and a bad side to
it. This kind of primary self means that we are not bound by the
pronouncements of the elders and we can be open to growth and
change. It gives us flexibility and permission to innovate.
We had a personal experience with a Muslim man,
a Pakistani investment advisor. It gave us an amazing experience
of this cultural difference in primary selves. Sidra had spoken
to him over the phone several times and, when he discovered how
old we were, he took us on as a personal project. We had never
before experienced this concern for elders. It was such a sweet
feeling to be treated gently and honored for nothing other than
our "advanced" age. He explained to us that in his Muslim
culture, age was revered, that the wisdom of the elders was respected,
and that all elders were the responsibility of the younger people.
And so he was taking care of us.
In contrast to this we've noticed that the responsibility
here is usually of the old towards the young. At our age, we see
a great deal of this in terms of the advertising that we receive.
The emphasis is upon protecting our money for our children. We
are told to protect our legacies; to carefully craft our wills
and think about our estates. We are offered long-term care insurance
so that our children may never have the burden of caring for us.
Our Muslim friend clearly judged what he saw
as the uncaring attitude towards the elders in our society and
the over-valuing of the young. This is another lesson for us to
learn. We are challenged to separate from our primary selves that
worship of youth and to integrate the part of us that values the
gifts that come only with age.
Linkage
There is something new on this planet and it
is "energetic linkage". We are linked personally, and
we are linked technologically, by unseen energies that travel
through the air and across cables. All of us were moved by the
responses of individuals and nations to the tragedy of September
11th and to our nation's sudden vulnerability. It was not our
personal tragedy; it was shared by much of the world.
Indigenous people, mystics and spiritual teachers have always
taught that we are one family. For the first time in history,
the rest of us felt this as a tangible reality. The media and
the internet linked us instantly so that what happened in New
York and Washington was felt all over the world with an immediacy
never before experienced. (Our beloved friend, Lydia, awake at
3 AM in Sydney, knew of the World Trade Center disaster before
we did and e-mailed her love to us immediately.) People were able
to contact their loved ones across continents and seas. And they
did.
The oneness of the planet was an unavoidable
truth. The love and support could be felt all over the world after
September 11th. And so could the hatred and the wish to destroy.
Much as our sense of ourselves shifted the first time we saw a
picture of the Earth taken from space; the sense of our planet
has shifted once more. We are all one. Now the oneness is not
observed from the distance of outer space, but it is felt within
each of our hearts.
Again, however, there are the opposites. People
felt the closeness and oneness both in their love and gratitude
towards some and in their judgments and fears of others. We can
polarize once again into opposing sets of disowned selves - or
we can do our work, take back our projections, and build proper
bridges to one another. This is an unprecedented opportunity for
a paradigm shift.
The Hope
We are not young and we feel deeply - and gratefully
- the richness of our lives and experiences. We remember Pearl
Harbor, World War II and the Marshall Plan. And we remember the
McCarthy hearings and Viet Nam. We remember Cambodia, Cuba, Chile,
Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, and more.
We remember times when we knew we were heroes and that our country
could do no wrong and we remember times - later times - when we
knew we were villains and we feared that our country could do
no right. These memories - these opposites - are held deep within
each of us.
This is a new century and a new millennium. In
these past months, those of us here in the US have joined the
rest of humanity. We, too, now know what it feels like to be attacked
without warning as we go about our daily lives. These are feelings
that are all too familiar elsewhere on this planet. Now we, too,
are vulnerable in our homeland. Now we, too, are neither heroes
nor villains. Instead, we are a very disparate group of vulnerable
human beings. And our nation is no longer special, but an ordinary
member of the family of nations. We are no longer the Super Power;
we no longer have all the answers. Let us hope that we move forward
with the appropriate humility and awe, and that we continue to
look at the current situation from many viewpoints - including
those that differ from our dearly held beliefs - because much
is at stake and what we do now has grave consequences.
We do not have the answers but the beauty of
this time is that no single group can give us all the answers,
just as no primary self can give us all the answers. What we do
know is that - just as in our personal lives - the more disparate
the selves that are included in any decision, the sounder that
decision will be and the less likely we will be to regret it and
the less likely we will be to feel the slap coming from the other
side. Just now, we desperately need our hearts, our minds, and
our spirits united within ourselves, whatever we do. And the more
diversity we, as a nation, can access, the better.
This is no longer a good idea, it is an absolute
necessity. We need our spiritual selves and our pragmatists; our
warriors and our peaceniks; our patriots and those who fear the
evils of rampant nationalism; our humanitarians and our Machiavelli's;
our lovers of civil liberties and those of us who are willing
to sacrifice some portion of these liberties for safety's sake;
our planetary citizens with their world views and our isolationists
who see no further than our borders; our historians who remind
us what has gone before and our visionaries who can give us pictures
of a better future; and more. We need our opposites. What we judge,
we have left out of the system. What we have left out of the system
can come back to haunt us.
We are basically a nation of optimists. Because
we are a young country and have not suffered war with foreigners
invading our homeland, we are like children who never suffered
abuse at home; we still have a certain innocence, an attitude
that we have resources and that we can do it if we can only figure
out what "it" is. Let us keep this optimism and add
to it a humble awareness of the complexity and awesome gravity
of the current situation.
This is a call for each of us to do our own particular
work. We see the impact of this inner work as twofold. First,
as we do our work and take back our projections, we effect on
the world around us. The intensity of the polarization between
conflicting factions is lessened and the general level of consciousness
in the collective is enhanced. Second, as we each do our work,
our effectiveness in the world is increased. The more work that
we do, the more conscious we are of our own vulnerability and
that of others, and the more opposites that we integrate, the
more Aware Ego will be available to us. And, as you know, an Aware
Ego is an amazingly powerful asset. Whatever it is that you do,
you will have more impact if you are standing between opposites.
Polarization only alienates and increases conflict. Aware Egos
can effect paradigm shifts.
As we continue our own journeys of consciousness,
let us trust that the intelligence of the universe will work through
each of us and guide us to make our own particular contributions.
These will be as different as we are different from one another.
Some of our contributions will be more obvious, some will be more
subtle.
For those whose work is more internal and not easily measured,
you may never be directly aware of what it is you've done or whom
you've impacted. You might never know who it was you spoke to
and who they spoke to next. Or who just experienced you and went
away with a new idea or a new feeling.
Perhaps the most widely read book to come out
of World War II was the Diary of Anne Frank. Anne never lived
to see that millions of people all over the world were impacted
by the years she spent hidden away from the world in an attic
in Amsterdam. Yet they were. You may never be aware of the outcome
of your own private evolution and you may never know whose life
you have touched, but we are all connected now more than ever
and whatever you put out in the world has its consequences.
We believe that every bit of consciousness counts.
We believe that the impact of an Aware Ego process is powerful
and that the gifts it brings are priceless. May we all continue
to open to all of our selves, may we savor life each day, and
may we keep our songs and our souls alive.
We hope that we have given you something to think
about and a direction for you to take at this challenging time.
We look forward to hearing from you and seeing many of you in
the weeks, months and years ahead.
Again, we are traveling this path together; may
all go well with you,
Hal and Sidra
November, 2001
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