Tag: #systemsthinking

I have written much about the Fayu tribe who live in New Guinea and remained mostly unknown to the modern world until the early 70s. What was known about them was they were fierce and did not like intruders. In this series, I explored some of their noble qualities as a people untouched by Western Civilization until recently as well as some of their not so noble ones as remembered by Sabine Kuegler in a memoir about her experience growing up as a child among this tribe. Specifically, I explored the idea of how their warrior spirit became lopsided, overpowering and submerging their kinder, more compassionate spirit. 

As I wrote this series, my friend Jürgen Hornschuh was writing the Yurugu Series. In his series, he explains Yurugu is an African-centered critique of European culture’s thought and behavior. I found his series compelling for just as the Fayu could not see their lopsidedness until the family from Germany came to live with them, so too we who live immersed in Western culture are mostly blind to the thinking, patterns, and cultural narratives that define our cultural realities. Thus, it is helpful to have tools (such as a Yurugu Mirror) to help us see ourselves and our situation more clearly. 

As there is precious little time to prance around whether Climate Change is a thing or not… it is a thing… a big thing happening faster and more devastating than scientists have been predicating for more than 30 years (see Bill McKibben’s book below). It is caused by us—by our burning fossil fuels, engaging in massive agricultural practices, and polluting water systems and the land, not to mention how we claim more and more livable habitat for ourselves, denying other creatures the space they need to live. We have become in a very short period of time an extremely narcissistic lopsided creature.

*Bill McKibben has written 15 books and is founder of the environmental organization 350.org. His new book offers some dark visions of the future and hope for real change: “Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?“

Given the moment we are in now, I’m just diving into what I hope to accomplish in this piece, which is to highlight the struggle we face today (consciousness), how we might get out of it (balance), and the role of Consciousness Warriors (coaches*). Playing off parts in Jürgen’s piece, I have organized this blog into the following sections: What is a Consciousness Warrior, The Weapon, The Vortex, The Struggle, and The End. Jürgen’s article stands on its own and is worth your time and attention for he succinctly and clearly lays out a compelling idea. I am deeply grateful for his work. My thoughts and ideas are simply mine, which Jürgen may or may not agree. Here is Jürgen’s piece in its entirety:  Mach was!? (Do something!?) 

* As I wrote this section and searched for a word to help ground the reader in what I mean by a Consciousness Warrior, the 20^thAnniversary of the Columbine school shooting took place. In remembering the beautiful souls lost and all the survivors who continue to struggle from this terrible moment, I heard the story about coach Dave Sanders. He coached the girls basketball team, was a husband and a father, and beloved by his whole community. By his daughter’s account, he was an ordinary, gentle man, but his heart was extraordinary for when the shots rang out, he raced towards the gun fire telling students to leave. He cleared much of the cafeteria and was racing to the library when he encountered the boys. One of the students he coached said his style was “quiet thunder.” This is what a Consciousness Warrior is…an ordinary person doing ordinary things to help others, but someone who will run into the vortex of a crisis because that’s what they do help others.

What is a Consciousness Warrior?

A Consciousness Warrior can be anybody for all of us hold a tiny patch of consciousness inside our bodies and minds. The trick is taming it and training it. For gardeners, it is like cultivating a beautiful, nourishing garden. So, how do we go about taming or cultivating our patch of consciousness? 

The most important tools that Consciousness Warriors have is time and attention. Where we place our attention, our time flows. Where we spend our time, our reality grows. Time and attention build the landscapes of our inner world. These are the places where our private thoughts, dreams, visions, and nightmares trickle, run, and roar like quite streams or raging rivers. From these place grow our thoughts, which weave the stories we tell about ourselves and the world (e.g., “when I do this, this happens…”). From our stories rise our choices and actions. And this my friend is how our inner worlds are woven into the world we share together—both actions and non-actions that mix, blend, and collide with all the other beings making choices and taking actions to create our Sea of Reality. To change our shared reality, we must begin by transforming our inner landscape and this means working our personal plot of consciousness (i.e., taming or cultivating it). The trouble is, most of us get lost or blown off course by great gusts of wind or tsunamis size waves that come from the unconsciousness, which also resides inside of us.  

Consciousness Warriors pay attention to their inner and outer worlds, and they do the work to tame their minds (or tend them like gardens). They have learned how to navigate and prepare for the storms blowing up from the unconsciousness. And, they know every person is infinitely more powerful than we think we are or have been led to believe we are. This is because all of us has emerged from the Sea of Unconsciousness. There are many routes out of this sea as evidenced by the beautiful diversity of people and cultures on Earth. However, today most of us have been assimilated into the monolithic culture we call Western Civilization. Supposedly this is our shining achievement as human beings—but something has clearly gone wrong. 

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For one thing, Western Civilization places a god-like reverence for what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch (an extrovert’s delight!). Out of this has grown our civilization’s great love for classifying, dividing, and measuring things, especially things that can be turned into money. This is really fun!  However, our intense focus on dividing, measuring, and making money comes at price, and that is our inner worlds. They are drying up, becoming terribly shallow, even turning into vast deserts due to lack of time and attention directed inward. To lead a good life requires a delicate balance between these two realms of reality. But this is where we have taken a wrong turn by directing all of our time and attention to the external world and all the fun things we can do, if only we have enough money. The more time and attention we put into doing things in the world, the more we become attached to these things and our doings. This makes us psychologically dependent on our external reality, leaving our inner reality to wilt away. 

I talk a great deal about this predicament in previous blogs (e.g., The Collective Unconsciousness and the Oversoul), so I will not do so here, except to resurrect an excerpt to provide footing for this strange terrain. It comes from Carl Jung in his book The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Here he describes the collective unconsciousness and how it impacts us. His ideas were considered strange during his life, and mostly remain strange today. This is because we have continued to forget and lose words to describe our inner realities—like a person being overcome with Alzheimer’s Disease. Beginning on page 21, Jung writes:

“The necessary and needful reaction from the collective unconscious expresses itself in archetypally formed ideas. The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.

No, the collective unconscious is anything but an incapsulated personal system; it is sheer objectivity, as wide as the world and open to all the world. There I am the object of every subject, in complete reversal of my ordinary consciousness, where I am always the subject that has an object. There I am utterly one with the world, so much a part of it that I forget all too easily who I really am. ‘Lost in oneself’ is a good way of describing this state. But this self is the world, if only a consciousness could see it. That is why we must know who we are.

The unconscious no sooner touches us than we are it—we become unconscious of ourselves. That is the age-old danger, instinctively known and feared by primitive man, who himself stands so very close to this pleroma. His consciousness is still uncertain, wobbling on its feet. It is still childish, having just emerged from the primal waters. A wave of the unconscious may easily roll over it, and then he forgets who he was and does thing that are strange to him. Hence primitives are afraid of uncontrolled emotions, because consciousness breaks down under them and gives way to possession. All man’s strivings have therefore been directed towards the consolidation of consciousness. This was the purpose of rite and dogma; they were dams and walls to keep back the dangers of the unconscious, the ‘perils of the soul.’ Primitive rites consist accordingly in the exorcizing of spirits, the lifting of spells, the averting of the evil omen, propitiation, purification, and the production by sympathetic magic of helpful occurrences.”

— C.G. Jung

Jung goes on to explain how psychological barriers were erected in primitive times to keep us safe from the unpredictable and sometimes destructive forces rising from the unconsciousness—much like storms that pass over the land or earthquake that strikes out of nowhere. Our ancestors knew about these events. They knew by coming together they could strengthened the barriers they had created. They performed collective rites and rituals using music, dance, and elaborate enactments that harmonized and united them as a people–a tribe. Later, many of these rites and rituals were incorporated into many religions. The one I am following here is the Christian Church and how many ancient, pagan rites and rituals morphed into its religious doctrines and dogma, which were incorporated into basic tenets of Western Civilization. It is my deep feeling during one of these transfers, a separation from our unconsciousness occurred that was too rapid and too violent—leaving us wounded like a Motherless Child. Despite this wound, the barriers held for centuries (though often brutally) keeping Western Civilization mostly safe from incursions from the unconsciousness. However, as Western Civilization has grown, the barriers have weaken considerably and are sinking back into the unconsciousness, crumbling as they succumb to the tremendous weight of our monolith civilization. 

The destruction of the edifices constructed long ago to keep us safe from our unconscious origins is putting us in terrible peril. Just like the Fayu, Western Civilization has become lopsided as it warps under its own weight. When a culture, tribe, or civilization becomes lopsided, dangerous perversions of consciousness can occur that place all individuals living in a lopsided culture at much greater risk for incursions from the unconsciousness—perils of the soul. Our ancestors understood this, but we have forgotten it. Our inability to take collective action on Climate Change is just one symptom of this malady… other symptoms are resurgences of all sorts of crueler ways of thinking and being creeping back into our collective psyche. 

Listen or read the interview with E.B. Berger on Fresh Air who says the New Zealand Massacre Points To A Global Resurgence Of ‘Extremism’. Berger has studied the online activity of extremists, and he notes the New Zealand shooter praised President Trump as “as a symbol of renewed white identity” in his 74-page document published before the massacre. Berger says it aligns with a trend he has found studying the hashtags and language used by alt-right Twitter users.

This is where Consciousness Warriors come in as protectors of the people. Consciousness Warriors are ordinary people who have been driven deeper into themselves as they attempted to avoid the inevitable wounding inflicted by people blinded by our systems and their own unconsciousness.  

My own awareness of Consciousness Warriors rose due to such a situation when I was fired for being with father when he died. Just before this happened, I had a vision of a girl trapped in the jaws of a dragon. It made me laugh, so I drew it and shared it on Facebook. I wrote a simple story to go with it I called Girl With Dragon. It turned into 20 episodes. I didn’t think much of it, neither did most of my friend who joked about it and some scoffed. I took it all in stride for I was amused by it too until my world was turned upside down and inside out. Then, I understood what the image and story was telling me. The girl was caught in the dragon’s jaws. The dragon was the girl’s unconscious choices mixed together with the unconsciousness of those around her, creating the dragon. We create dragons every day. Some are easy to tame, while others turn into desperate problems with no apparent escape. The girl was the first Consciousness Warrior to emerge in my psychology. As I continued the story with The Divine Dodo, more Consciousness Warriors emerged. 

Girl With Dragon 

• Girl With Dragon– Part 1 – They Told Me It Was A Nice Dragon

• Girl With Dragon– Part 2 – The Mother Force

• Girl With Dragon– Part 3 – Hack the Dragon

Follow Sapience YouTube Channel to see new minis as they are made.

I called them this not knowing other people were writing about and talking about them. I thought I was the only one talking about Consciousness Warriors until I watch a video where Margaret Wheatley was speaking to a group about her book and work WARRIORS FOR THE HUMAN SPIRIT: Training to be the Presence of Insight and Compassion. Then, I read Jürgen’s piece where he writes about even more people who are writing and talking about Consciousness Warriors. So, this is how I have come to know and understand Consciousness Warriors. I am still learning, but I am pretty certain Western Civilization is in desperate need of them Now. Using Jürgen’s Yurugu Series as a mirror, I intend to describe a part of our collective predicament for it is multifaceted problem. Perhaps by figuring out how to make one scale on the dragon disappear, we can figure out how to make the whole dragon disappear. As I go, I will blend the thinking of Carl Jung, Dalai Lama, David Bohm, J.M. Berger, Aqua Man, and others to attempt to see this scale clearly and the role of Consciousness Warriors in making it disappear.  

Are you ready? 

Ready, Set, Go

The Weapon: Jürgen writes: The answer could be something like this: look out for the imperialist mindset.

This insight is extremely important for it is mindsets and thinking styles like the Imperialist Mindset that have been used to divide and define our reality into its many parts. I suppose our world is less fearsome when it is neatly divided into categories that can be counted, organized, and neatly stored into many different professions and areas of expertise—essentially turning Earth into a museum. Meanwhile the things we cannot physically see, hear, touch, smell, and taste (such as our inner realities) steadily disappear. In doing this, we literally reduce reality. 

But, why should we be concerned about the invisible world disappearing? Because these places are essential to transform of ourselves. They are needed to grow as individuals, to grow consciously, and to become what we are truly meant to be. Without them, we get stuck in a stage of arrested development. As awareness of our inner spaces slip back over the edge into the unconscious, it becomes invisible and unavailable to us. We lose abilities needed to be fully conscious beings. The bigger Western Civilization grows, the more lopsided its thinking has become and the deeper the blade this type of thinking cuts away at our inner spaces, creating deep wounds that never heal. Slavery, domination of indigenous people worldwide, the Holocaust/ethnic cleansing, racism…and Now the rise of White Supremacy 75 years after it almost tore the world apart are some of the terrible impacts this thinking has inflicted on our shared reality. There are internal wounds as well. Climate Change is like a fever caused by the raging infection that has settled into these wounds. 

To understand the Imperialist Mindset, we must get closer to the unconsciousness for this is where this tool was forged. Let’s start with Aqua Man:

Aqua Man is a modern myth. A myth’s primary function (other than telling a good story) is to convey how archetypal energies affect us. In his origin story, a tool is forged long ago by a ruler of an ancient, advanced civilization. The ruler attempts to use the tool to harness the powers of Earth, but something goes wrong, and the tool unleashes devastation causing the city (Atlantis) to sink.

To begin to grasp the archetypal meaning and energy of this story, replace the sea with the unconsciousness. Thus, the people of this ancient civilization sink back into the primordial Sea of Unconsciousness where the survivors learn how to breath underwater and see in the dark. Some evolve into the advanced beings, of which Aqua Man is one. Others devolved becoming half-fish half-man beings, crustacean beings, and the feared trench beings who live in the deepest trenches of this underworld. It is into the trench Aqua Man’s mother is thrown for breaking the laws of her people by falling in love with a human and giving birth to a half-breed—Aqua Man. Of course, the two worlds become tangled in a deadly conflict that forces Aqua Man to go fetch this lost and mighty tool that destroyed Atlantis. In the wrong hands the trident (the tool) will destroy both worlds (the weapon). In the right hands, it will unite the worlds.

— Bébé’s interpretation of Aqua Man

David Bohm (quantum physicists) expresses a similar idea in a video entitled Wholeness and Fragmentation when he speaks about our dominate way of thinking. He says: 

“All thought is broken up into bits like this nation, this country, this industry, this profession, and so on.” (00:43 of video) “Therefore, people cannot see they are creating a problem, and then apparently trying to solve it. Let’s take a problem like pollution or the ecology—the ecology is not in by itself [the problem], it is due to us, right? It’s a problem because we are thinking in certain way by breaking everything up [and] in each person’s doing his own thing now.” (1:03 of video) “The ecological problem is due to thought [because] thought thinks [there] is a problem out there, and I must solve it. Now that doesn’t make sense because simultaneously thought is doing all the activities [that] make the problem, and then there’s another set of activities trying to overcome [the problem]. You see, it doesn’t stop doing the things [that] are making the ecological problem or the national problem or whatever [problem we have created].” 

— David Bohm — 1:27 in video Wholeness and Fragmentation

To me, the most important part of his comments are when he says:

“I don’t think there is such thing as original sin. I think it developed more and more with the growth of our society [for] there is no evidence people in the hunter-gatherer society were all that competitive. [However,] the more you made society big and had organization, [the more people] had to get to the top [and thus there would be] people on the bottom [who] would suffer. [Because of this] there was a drive to compete, naturally. And, do you think that perhaps the desire to compete is a weakness? [No, it is] not a weakness that was a mistake!” 

—  David Bohm — 2:46 in video Wholeness and Fragmentation  

This idea of a Thought Mistake is critical to understand for as humans immersed in Western Civilization, we do not think our thinking has caused any problems. We think instead it is our savior, but what if it is not? 

Jung thought a great deal about how man has come to reckon with his consciousness. He says:

“…for in certain respects the animal is superior to man. It has not yet blundered into consciousness nor pitted a self-willed ego against the power from which it lives; on the contrary, it fulfils the will that actuates it in a well-nigh perfect manner. Were it conscious, it would be morally better than man. There is deep doctrine in the legend of the fall: it is the expression of a dim presentiment that the emancipation of ego-consciousness was a Luciferian deed. Man’s whole history consists from the very beginning in conflict between his feeling of inferiority and his arrogance. Wisdom seeks the middle path and pays for audacity by a dubious affinity with daemon and beast, and so is open to moral misinterpretation.”

— Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, p. 230

What David Bohm says begs us to consider exactly what is thought. This is another idea Jung explored throughout his career—the acquisition of thought. He says something extraordinary here: 

“Thoughts were objects of inner perception, not thought at all, but sensed as external phenomena—seen or heard, so to speak. Thought was essentially revelation, not invented but forced upon us… bringing conviction through its immediacy and actuality. Thinking of this kind precedes the primitive ego-consciousness, and the latter is more its object than its subject. But, we ourselves have not yet climbed the last peak of consciousness, so we also have a pre-existent thinking, of which we are not aware so long as we are supported by traditional symbols—or, to put it in the language of dreams, so long as the father or the king is not dead.”   

— Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, p. 33

Thus, the timeless phrase—I think therefore I am—may not have been as easy for us to achieve as we think it was. Clearly our ability to think inside our head is a supreme achievement. It is an ability that was hard fought and a struggle to maintain. It was so precious that humans all over the world created elaborate rituals and rites to protect it, this power, this tool that has allowed us to create and do incredible things (e.g., science, technology, art, architecture). But, it is one capable of terrible destruction as well. Every civilization understood this. They knew there is good and bad in everything and everyone. They understood the essential act is balance. Our ancestors understood this, we have forgotten it.

Jung writes: “The unity of our psychic nature lies in the middle, just as the living unity of the waterfall appears in the dynamic connection between above and below. Thus, the living effect of the myth is experienced when a higher consciousness, rejoicing in its freedom and independence, is confronted by the autonomy of a mythological figure and yet cannot flee from its fascination, but must pay tribute to the overwhelming impression. The figure works, because secretly it participates in the observer’s psyche and appears as its reflection, though it is not recognized as such. It is split off from his consciousness and consequently behaves like an autonomous personality (i.e., the trickster).”

— Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, p. 269

The Imperialist Mindset does not care about balance; it thrives on imbalance. It does not care about justice, fairness, or truth for it grows stronger in the midst of chaos and confusion. Over time, this mindset has placed an obsessive focus on dividing things into smaller and smaller pieces, going a bit wild, even rogue. It is this focus that has placed us squarely in the jaws of a dangerous dragon. One created by our thinking, and one that has become so rigid and lopsided for the moment we are in Now, there seems no escape.

For a spectacular description of how the Imperialist Mindset and similar thinking was used to put us squarely in the jaws of the Climate Change dragon, listen to the Fresh Air interview with Nathaniel Rich who talks about his book Losing Earth: A recent interview on FreshAir. In it he documents how thinking like this was used like a weapon by the fossil fuel industry to sow divisions in the Climate Change debate. By doing this, they successfully turned scientific debate and processes into polarizing Thought Wars (i.e., on one side people believe we are causing the 6^th Mass Extinction; on the other side people play upon uncertainty, “We’re not really sure how bad it might be, so we might as well keep the status quo as long as possible… no reason to wreck the economy over something that might or might not happen…”).

No matter what we think using this type of thought and similar mindsets, we will not get out of the dragon’s jaws. We need a different, deeper way of thinking—one that supersedes where we are Now. This is something the Dalia Lama speaks to when he says: “For a long time, science and spirituality were considered to be opposing views, creating this polarization of both subjects. You were either a “Man of God” or a “Man of Science,” with no middle ground. However, we’re now observing a merging of both science and spirituality through quantum physics and the study of consciousness, shattering old thought patterns and putting an end to the previous “tug of war” between the two subjects.”  

– Kalee Brown: Dalai Lama: Spirituality Without Quantum Physics Is An Incomplete Picture Of Reality 

David Bohm echoes this idea saying: 

“I think science has begun to replace religion as the major source of the worldview and therefore if science takes a fragmentary worldview it will have a profound effect on consciousness, but science has always seen as measurement is that no longer true. Science [is] whatever people make of it. You see science has changed over the ages, and it’s different now from a few hundred years ago. It could be different again [in a hundred years]. Now there’s no intrinsic reason why science must necessarily be measurement. This is another historical development, which has come about over the past few centuries.”

— David Bohm — 7:50 in video Wholeness and Fragmentation  

We’ll get back to the Dalia Lama and David Bohm shortly, but now let’s move onto the how the weapon is used to gain power.

The Vortex: Jürgen writes: European rationalistic ideology has “created” a particular kind of person who can be expected to behave in certain characteristic ways.

– The Second Mountain: A Quest for a Moral Life — David Brooks on emerging from loneliness to find ‘moral renewal’

By continuing not to access our deeper nature, we lack the ability to understand the true nature of reality. Since Western Civilization is so good at producing men and women who deny their inner realities, we remain stuck. Jung writes about this modern quandary saying:

“The disastrous idea that everything comes to the human psyche from outside and that it (the human being) is born a tabula rasa is responsible for the erroneous belief that under normal circumstances the individual is in perfect order. He then looks to the State for salvation, and makes society pay for his inefficiency. He thinks the meaning of existence would be discovered if food and clothing were delivered to him gratis on his own doorstep, or if everybody possessed an automobile. Such are the puerilities that rise up in place of an unconscious shadow and keep it unconscious. As a result of these prejudices, the individual feels totally dependent on his environment and loses all capacity for introspection. In this way, his code of ethics is replaced by a knowledge of what is permitted or forbidden or ordered. How, under these circumstances, can one expect a soldier to subject an order received from a superior to ethical scrutiny? He has not yet made the discovery that he might be capable of spontaneous ethical impulses, and of performing them—even when on one is looking.”

— Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, p. 267

Jürgen also speaks to what is keeping us stuck when he says:

“European rationalistic ideology has “created” a particular kind of person who can be expected to behave in certain characteristic ways. If the uniqueness to the culture is not understood, the positive possibilities of other cultures will get lost, and, whether consciously or not, this is a thoroughly Eurocentric objective. For this reason, we assume the particularity of the European form and therefore the need to explain its development, not as the result of some “universal” process, but by understanding its asili [cultural core] – a unique combination of factors that in circular relationship generate the personalities and ideological commitments that form the influencing matrix.

This explanation is all the more compelling since Europeans represent an extreme minority culture. It is the realization that Europe is in fact a culture in which imperial domination of others does indeed become a “comprehensive world-view” that is important. This is unique in the world and the characteristics (themes) of European culture – its “rationalism,” violence, and lack of spirituality – are not merely isolated pathologies; rather these characteristics are linked to each other in a developmental matrix (asili) that is itself “pathological” in the context of human societies. (Marimba Ani: Yurugu. An African-centered critique of European cultural thought and behavior, 1994, p392).”

— Jürgen Hornschuh, Mach was!? (Do something!?) 

This asili is what keeps us trapped in the jaws of the dragon. It is the point we spin around as a civilization. A point created long ago in plain sight, but it has sunk below our conscious awareness, making it invisible and dangerous. Jürgen is right to say the asili is enforced by an extreme minority of people—that being European culture. I propose it is even smaller than European culture today. I believe using European culture with its royalty and dynasties as a template it has shrunk even more to what we call the 1%, which has pulled us into an even smaller orbit. These people are the royal ones of our time and culture. They have amassed much money and power. They are the ones our civilization has been carefully designed to keep in power. They guard it vigilantly—not as highly evolved, benevolent beings, but rather like rabid bull dogs. Most see their job as making sure the rest of us don’t escape the pull of the asili. They worry if enough of us escape, we might raise the orbit of the greater whole, making their world disappear, and it would.

Most modern elites are stricken with a hunger that can never be filled and a thirst that can never be quenched. This makes them capable of doing anything to keep their power such as whipping up chaos to make us feel like drowning fish when in reality we are fish swimming in waters too shallow. This is because they have been busy damning, redirecting, and draining the conscious streams we need to be human. They know united we are powerful. So, they prefer to narratives full of hate, division, and chaos to create confusion and fear. This is how the bull dogs keep us here (I have just used Imperialist thinking to divide rich from poor, thus myself falling back into the asili).

Since we no longer see the asili and do not believe it is there, we go about our days feeling completely in control of our thoughts and lives. Never noticing the pull it exerts constantly on our thoughts, our choices, our reality. It is always there. It is the Thought Trap of a most cunning design operating on quantum levels like a psychological-spiritual black hole that generates a gravity so fierce not even consciousness can escape it. Around its event horizon, chaotic forces polarize the pieces of consciousness so neatly divided by Imperialist thinking, making them slip ever faster into the center of this vortex. 

Quantum physicist suggest vortices create the very structure of our universe literally holding galaxies together with their super massive gravity. The Dalia Lama adds:

“Quantum physicists discovered that physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating, each one radiating its own unique energy signature. Therefore, if we really want to observe ourselves and find out what we are, we must recognize we are really beings of energy and vibration, radiating our own unique energy signature.”

– Kalee Brown: Dalai Lama: Spirituality Without Quantum Physics Is An Incomplete Picture Of Reality 

Thus, vortexes may indeed be the glue holding reality together. The question to ask is the vortex around which Western Civilization spins viable? Or is it fated to destroy us all? It may sound counter intuitive, but to escape this cultural asili, we may need to disappear in inside the vortexes that exist inside us. They might just be worm holes that help us get to our deeper inner spaces faster. We need to get these places so we can rekindle our inner light of consciousness and resurrect the beautiful being waiting there to help us find our wholeness, really to remember it. This is where the energy waits that is needed to transform reality. This is work that must be done one person at a time, but if it starts, it can happen rapidly like fire. It may be the only way out of the dragon’s jaws. 

David Bohm speaks about the importance of wholeness in getting out of the thought trap saying: 

“It’s not a place you can get [to] the wholeness. I say [it] is a kind of attitude or an approach to the whole of life. It’s a way [that] if we can have a coherent approach to reality, then reality will respond [in a] coherent way to us. [N]ature has been tremendously affected by our way of thinking on the earth. (9:33) Nature is now being destroyed. There’s very little left on the earth [that hasn’t been] affected by how we were thinking. If we have coherence, in what way will our behavior seem to be different? [For one thing,] we won’t be produc[ing] the results we intend rather than the results we don’t intend. That’s the first big change, and then we will be more [capable of living in a] orderly harmonious [way]. You know, we will be happier. I think we could put all that in there man but the first.  … (10:03) [Our] major source of unhappiness is we are incoherent and therefore produce results we don’t really want. [And then we try] to overcome them, [but] we keep on producing them. The question is what is the real origin of consciousness exactly in case where did it come from (10:20) was there a time when there was no (10:22) consciousness? Well [if so]. I don’t think it originates in time.” 

— David Bohm — 9:30 in video Wholeness and Fragmentation  

Bohm is asking the same questions Jung asks about human consciousness. Perhaps Bohm is right about coherence. Perhaps our current way of thinking is incoherent, but we are so attached to it we do not see the incoherence. This is why we cannot get underneath the thinking used to create the dragon. This is what keeps us stuck. But, Stephen Hawking may have a way out. He said black holes can evaporate. I think thought traps can too.

The Struggle: Jürgen writes:  Who do we help to make the world a better place?

 – To Beat The Devil — T Bone Burnett · The Invisible Light ·“I’ll tell you what you want to hear… I’ll play upon your darkest fear… then I’ll take what I want from you… to beat the devil you must go deep as he stays shallow…to beat the devil you must not be part of the dissonance…nothing that he does will last…”

Time is a limited resource, especially in our super-fast paced Western culture for to live here is to live always running out of time. This is because in Western culture, it is common practice to exchange time for money. To make it even more interesting, there are different levels of compensation for different kinds of workers. This is a code embedded deeply in the fabric of Western culture that benefits the super-rich for it is basically true to make money, one has to have money to buy the best education, to get pass the gatekeepers, and to land high paying, high power jobs (case in point, the recent college admission scandal). To not follow this well-established pattern (the cultural code), it takes tremendous collective social will and effort. And this takes time for it is a moral struggle and moral struggles require the collaborative effort of many people. 

My friend Cynthia told me about the struggle in the Philippines to extricate themselves from Colonial Spanish rule that reigned in the Philippines for 333 years. During this time, the Spaniards ravaged their land and did terrible things to the indigenousness people. This is the Imperialist Mindset in its purest and cruelest form, and it has done such things all over the world. In the Philippines after so many years of colonial rule, the people felt powerless and at the mercy of the invading force. But, among them rose a soft-spoken man (José Protasio Rizal) who used his words to awaken his people’s heart. He showed them how to reclaim their dreams through love and compassion. The Spanish killed him. Nevertheless, his words and ideas grew and blossomed, helping his people rediscovered their heart power, which helped them reclaim their passion to resist the Imperialist Force. They overcame the Spanish but were invaded again by the Japanese and the United States who also mistreated them. Still the people preserved, maintaining their identity through it all by keeping their hearts nourished and alive.

So, moral struggles are possible. They just take time because many, many people need to come together and unify to create a center of gravity rooted in compassion, love, and courage—perhaps creating a psychological-spiritual counterweight. If this happens, individuals involved in the moral struggle can tap into energy that comes from inside. This energy is most crucial at the beginning of a moral struggle when it is trying to coalesce for this is when every individual is trying to find their internal center of gravity and power. They also need to figure out where they are needed in the emerging effort. To do this, each individual needs to sink deep into themselves, which means confronting their shadow (i.e., the vortex inside themselves) for this might be the only way to find their personal power and understand how their unique gifts and abilities can help hold the sacred space for the emerging moral effort. This is a very fragile phase of development in a moral struggle because everyone’s energy is so easily dispersed, which can cause the entire effort to evaporate. 

People in power know this, and they’ll do anything to stir confusion and create division. Thus, to resist dispersion, it is essential to find ways for individuals to feel empowered and connected. We can do this by seeing, hearing, and understanding each other—think the infinity sign, a never-ending flow of reciprocal relationships, a sharing of energy renewed each time it is passed back and forth between people working for a greater good. 

Sounds simple—right? 

It’s not simple at all because human relationships fall so easily back into old ways, old patterns, old thinking. In short, they return to the Pit of Peril because it is our home. It is what we know. It is how we understand reality. And, it is the Jaws of the Dragon. All human systems are susceptible to this falling into the pit for they rest upon the fragile flow of consciousness passing back and forth between the individual plots of consciousness each of us is attempting to cultivate or tame. In short, the quality of our shared reality rests upon the health of our individual plot of consciousness and our relationships with other–how healthy or unhealthy they are. If we are not watchful, incursions from our unconsciousness and other’s unconsciousness will rise and trip us up in the most dreadful ways. When this happens, it can cause a person to lose their passion and purpose, making them give up. This is devastating not only for the individual, but for the emerging moral struggle because every person is essential in its formation, especially in the beginning when our fragile human relationships tend to self-destruct the most due in large part to the pull of the asili back into the old system, old ways, and familiar patterns of thinking designed to keep us in line, really to prevent people from sinking into their full, authentic selves where their power lies because these types of people are a threat to the system.

Thus, Jürgen nails when he says: With all the many groups of people and their many ideas on what it means to live a good life, it has become increasingly harder to tell who are the ones we would like to identify with, help along, and promote in their efforts to make this world a better place. With so many people lying through closed teeth, so many others pretending to be someone they are not, and with yet so many others not understanding the implications of their own words, how can we tell the real deal from fake and delusion?

Jürgen outlines 3 types of people or personalities to avoid, and I added a fourth. They appear in all cultures, but it is in Western culture where they have truly found a place to thrive because Western systems reward people who exhibit and excel in these traits, behaviors, and qualities. They are: 

1. Lying: Those who are lying through closed teeth (They do so to manipulate and divert the good fortune and luck of others unto themselves — See The Divine Dodo: The Corruption).

“A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And, it all comes from lying—lying to others and to yourself.”  — Fyodor Dostoevsky (Thank you Colin Kilburn for posting)

2. Masquerading: Those who are pretending to be someone or something they are not—the scammer, the conman or woman, the beguiler, cheater, trickster, or slicker. I will get back to this later…it is important. 

Resisting the pull back into unconscious ways of thinking and being takes great inner strength and wisdom. We all have this strength and wisdom, but like Aqua Man, we need to be orientated to our inner realities (e.g., know where our unconscious Pit of Peril is), learn how our abilities work, and train in using our abilities. Consciousness Warriors are deep divers in the Sea of Unconsciousness. They can see in the dark, and they have compassion for those still trapped in old ways, but they don’t take phony, counterfeit, deceptive pretension, or pandering. They draw clear boundaries to protect their inner spaces, guarding their time and attention.  

3. Blind: Those who do not understand the implications of their own words and actions.

Being blind to our inner reality is like a sleeping sickness for we have all emerged from the Sea of Unconsciousness, but our systems and ways of thinking pull most of us back under. A person who has been pulled back into the Unconsciousness or put back to sleep tends to use words carelessly because they do not understand their inner spaces; therefore, they say things that are crueler than they need to be and do things that are meaner than they need to be. Neither do they understand how their words carry gravity that can create a hole inside them that can turn into the Pit of Peril. Some think such a pit is handy because it provides a place to toss all their uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. But, this is a mistake because in the Pit of Peril this submerged content is free to morph and twist into all sorts of cruel and destructive impulses that can easily overpower our best intentions to constrain them. Primitive cultures understood this believing evil spirits could possess people. This makes sense if you understand how suppressed, unconscious content can break through into our lives and cause us to act in ways we might not act if we had better balance inside. 

Jung wrote a lot about this kind of blindness and how it finds ways to re-emerge and steer us wrong. He recounts walking with a native guide on Mount Elgon in East Africa when they come upon a beautifully constructed little hut near a cave where he lived with his family. Jung knew these huts were built as a ghost trap to protect the family from evil forces. When Jung asked the man if he made it, he denied it with signs of extreme agitation, asserting that only children would make such a ju-ju…whereupon he kicked the hut and it all falls down. On page 269, he writes: “This is exactly the reaction we can observe in Europe today. Outwardly people are more or less civilized, but inwardly they are still primitives. Something in man is profoundly disinclined to give up his beginnings, and something else believes it has long since got beyond all that. (…) The conflict between the two dimensions of consciousness is simply an expression of the polaristic structure of the psyche, which like any other energic system is dependent on the tension of opposites. (…)”

Jürgen says: “…there are quite a few signs by which the Imperialist Mindset can be identified in somebody’s speech or behavior, one of which is againstness, which results in kind of a war mentality.” The 1% know this and use this mindset as a weapon to enflame this mind war by turning our thinking and beliefs against us.  Jürgen further describes how the drive for power permeates all of European-based thought, philosophy, and religion, its presence, in most people, goes unnoticed by its carriers. This is our unconsciousness at work, and it is the same forces that make us blind. We are all carriers of it, but it is most virulent in the 1%. This is because of the consolidation of money, resources, influence, and power. 

The 1% speak in a coded language. They don’t use many words (often 3-word simple sentences). And, their words come in short bursts that are repetitive, almost musical, and tinged with strong emotions. They tend to say absolutely nothing, but rather fill the soundscape with their voice so others cannot think or hear their own voice or thoughts. They are like hypnotizers who spin fantastic stories about the land of plenty, but these stories are like mirages for they always fade away the closer we get to them. The 1% are more like magical demagogues. They are Master Manipulators who perpetuate narratives of not enough money, not enough attention, not enough recognition, not enough of everything needed to live a “Good Life” creating fear and confusion because we are easier to herd where they want us in these states. They love it! Like Typhoid Mary, they do not appear to suffer from the disease of unconsciousness, but they readily infect others with their unconsciousness.  

For more on the language of the super-rich, see:

• Inside The Minds Of The Mega-Rich (1A) – Chances are, if you got ten million dollars right now, it would change your life. But would you change for the better? What if it was a hundred million dollars? Or a billion? How would you change, and how would it change you? What impact does wealth have on one’s mind and morals? And what’s the role of the wealthy in easing inequality?

• What’s It Like To Be Rich? Ask The People Who Manage Billionaires’ Money (Hidden Brain) –  What are the lives of the planet’s wealthiest people really like? Several years ago, sociologist Brooke Harrington decided to find out. What she learned talking to the people who managed their money shocked her: “The lives of the richest people in the world are so different from those of the rest of us, it’s almost literally unimaginable. National borders are nothing to them. They might as well not exist. The laws are nothing to them. They might as well not exist.”

Consciousness Warriors understand the dangers of the Pit of Peril and guard against it and the dangers of attachment by practicing awareness and non-attachment (an old Buddhist practice). Consciousness Warriors employ their super powers of intuition, empathy, and love to help others find their inner spring where love, joy, and compassion rise eternal. They seek words that inspire insights to help others transform their inner spaces that are drying up form lack of use. Consciousness Warriors know they cannot do this for another person, just like a personal trainer cannot exercise for someone else. This is work that can only be done by the person seeking wholeness. Consciousness Warriors can walk with, support, and encourage someone who is seeking the power inside themselves that is needed to transform their inner wasted, barren landscapes. Consciousness Warriors are good listeners, but they also understand how a person blinded by their unconsciousness can hurt others, and so guard their inner spaces and time. 

4. Narcissism: Western Civilization is an extrovert’s delight, and people with these abilities are rewarded handsomely, but are we drowning in Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

Narcissistic people have an exaggerated sense of self-importance. They feel entitled to everything and require constant, excessive admiration. They expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it. They exaggerate achievements and talents and are preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate. They believe they are superior and can only associate with equally special people. They monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they perceive as inferior. They expect special favors and unquestioning compliance with their expectations. They take advantage of others to get what they want, and they have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others. They are often envious of others and believe others envy them. They behave in an arrogant or haughty manner, coming across as conceited, boastful and pretentious—and they are! They insist on having the best of everything—the best car, the best vacation, the best education, the best house, the best office. Have you ever encountered one of these people?

– Mayo Clinic: Narcissistic personality disorder

The magic narcissist weld is the ability to split reality. They do this by creating two bubbles of the moment they find themselves in that might be nuanced with good and bad. In one bubble, they put all the negative attributes of that situation, and then project it like vomit on anyone standing too near them. In the other bubble, they imbue all the good and noble things about that situation, and then like Glenda the Good Witch, they step into this bubble and float away, leaving behind a fractured and smaller reality.

In Western European-based systems, narcissists have found a special place where they can flourish because they love to take control. Since most systems in Western society are structured with one person is in control of everyone else, this is a natural habitat for a narcissist. A conscious narcissist might actually do a pretty darn good job at the top, but an unconscious narcissist tends to fall prey to their very worst impulses. 

This is so important to understand because here again we come to the edge of the split between consciousness and unconsciousness. So, let’s try to understand this divide a bit better. To do so, it is helpful to understand how human consciousness falls along several spectrums as charted by C.G. Jung. One of these spectrums is the range between extroversion and introversion. To quickly orientate you to this spectrum—an extreme introvert has a vivid internal world. One so deep and vibrant, the edge between the internal and external can disappear. When this happens, the person is most often diagnosed as having schizophrenia because they lost the line between their inner and outer realities and are no longer able to discern what is rising from within them and what exits outside of them. 

On the other side of the spectrum is extreme extroversion. Extroverts have a keen ability to read a room full of people and instantly grasp the energy of the room. They might even grasp the mood and energy of every individual in the room, understanding in that moment how to make all the energy flow together to create an unforgettable experience for all working it like a conductor of an orchestra. It is electrifying to be in a room with extrovert because they can dazzle, entertain, and mesmerize everyone in it. People are drawn to them, and they are drawn to others because being with other people energies them. It’s simply how their consciousness renews itself. But, if an extreme extrovert lacks awareness of their abilities and how their mind re-energizes, it can become debilitating for when the crowds leave, extroverts can descend into states of exhaustion, emptiness, and depression. Thus, it is not hard to understand an extrovert has an intense desire to be surrounded by people 24/7. 

Now, I am no expert, but I can imagine how it is possible for an extrovert to lose the line between their internal reality and the external world too. If this occurs and a little unconscious narcissism is added to the mix, it wouldn’t be hard for this sort of person to believe the outer world is also their inner world. Lacking the balance that having a more defined inner world provides, such a person could perceive everything outside of them as part of them and thus belonging to them. They could think they can do whatever they want to someone outside of their own bodies and minds because there is no division. When this occurs, we have crossed over into a pretty bad case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 

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So, what does this mean that these four types of people or personalities flourish inside Western Civilization?

It means we are sick… Western Civilization is sick… it is making everyone inside sick. 

The sickness stems from our wildly out of balance inner states that are disappearing ever more rapidly due to the type of thinking and mindsets so prominent in Western Civilization. These imbalances have caused an extreme state of lopsidedness that is hastening the crumbling of the barriers erected long ago to hold back our most destructive impulses rising from the deepest places inside us all—our unconsciousness—something that gets amplified in groups.

It is pointless to beat ourselves up for being unconscious for it is our most natural state of being. We all do our best to navigate our unconsciousness, which is most frequently expressed through human relationships and exacerbated by the cultural asili that keeps us trapped in thinking too small for the moment we are inNow. To escape, we must sink deep into ourselves, and to do this we need the help and support of others.

One antidote is cultivating trust. But to do this, we need to relearn how to truly make contact with each other. Ian MacKenzie talks about this in his blog titled: The Wild Edge of Emergence. I heard him speak recently where he described  4 essential elements for emergence that are:  

1. Contact – What does it mean to truly make contact with another human being…another living creature?
2. Trust – Can the other person receive you (e.g., will I be judged? Can I be myself with you?). To work in a state of trust means letting go of the masks and personas necessary to navigate in our current systems.
3. Transparency – What is actually going on with us? Are there hidden agendas that will make the collaborative effort become stillborn? If the seed of new beginnings is not planted deep, it will not grow.
4. Coherence – Every individual begins to self-assemble knowing that every other individual plays an essential part to the whole (e.g., you got that piece, I don’t have to worry about that). We learn to share our gifts, and probably more importantly, to receive the gifts that others bring. A natural order begins to form like tribal and ancient communities where every individual has essential roles even the elders… they kept the memories and listen deeply.

He spoke about how making contact with another human being takes a long time because there are many levels that must to be navigated to reach deep contact. This is especially true for individual immersed in Western cultural for they have to wear masks and occupy personas to navigate and survive in the systems they depend on to survive—systems filled with the Imperialist Mindset and other sharp styles of thinking and being that are always eager to cut people down who threaten the system and the preferred ways of thinking in it. 

Of these 4 stages, making contact is probably the most difficult. Our ancestors knew the importance of our inner spaces, and they understood how the flow of energy between people affect and impact our inner spaces. If our relationships contribute to us spiraling down as individuals, then our thoughts and actions spiral down and the reality we share descends as well. If we can help each other spiral up, then our thoughts and actions spiral up and our shared reality can spiral up too. Our ancestors knew how to mitigate incursions from the unconsciousness that can cause people and groups to spiral down. All of this knowledge is being lost due to thinking like the Imperialist Mindset and other sharp-edged Western thinking styles. We have almost completely destroyed our inner spaces, and we wonder why our planet is dying Now. 

These are the only spaces from where transformational change can emerge. If we do not heal our current state of lopsided consciousness and reclaim our lost inner spaces—we will go over the Climate Cliff for it is where our Western thinking has lead us. We need to move away from the danger zone. We can only do this together. We must begin by healing the deep wounds inside ourselves and helping others do the same. This can only happen when deep contact is made, and truly reciprocal relationships occur. From here, anything can happen, even making the dragon’s jaws disappear.

The End – Concluding Thoughts

As I struggled to tie the lose strands of the thoughts in this blog together, I watched Notre Dame burned. I thought of the ancient oak turning into smoke and blowing away as I listened to reports about the sacred, precious relics and art inside. Everyone was wondering if all was lost. It sure looked like it from the powerful flames. When the brave, courageous fire fighters could finally be seen spraying tiny streams of water onto the fire beast, it all seemed too little too late, leaving the only thing people could do was watch and witness, unable to look away.

Notre Dame means Our Lady… Our Mother. She was built as a place for people to gathered—for this is what church means—a place to gather and remember there is a touch of the divine inside of us. Chris Cuomo dedicated his hour that night to Notre Dame saying she was a place where people gathered to embraced by her divine beauty and remember this beauty is inside ourselves and in others too. There is tremendous strength in gathering together in community. We may have forgotten how gathering together in places and ways that elevate and celebrate our highest and best potentials that nourishes us and strength us, even at the worst of times. It was Notre Dame where people gathered after the devasting terrorist attacks in France. It has been a place for people to gather and remember we are more than just flesh and blood for centuries. She reminded us we are beings imbued with spirit, light, and beauty.

As I watched, a thought occurred that what if this is a foreshadowing of what is to come? What if we do nothing to mitigate Climate Change and the monster we have created using our thinking grows so big that our tiny streams of consciousness are just too puny and almost useless leaving the only thing we to do is watch and witness horror and terror of knowing we are losing our home, our mother, the place we have gathered for millenniums, a place so precious, so sacred we will only realize what we are losing as we watch is being destroyed.

After the fire was quelled, we learned about the brave fire fighters and the Chaplin at Norte Dame who ran inside the burning church as fire rained down on them from the inferno above them to save the precious relics and paintings. They saved them, and the organ survived the fire, and the cross still hung on front wall. Even the bees living on top of the roof survived. I don’t know if we dare hope that we can somehow do the same for Our Mother—Earth. That the people who show up and run into the center of the coming disaster can save enough of the precious beauty that has evolved on Earth so that Our Mother can survive and recover. I can only foolishly hope that we can like the fire fighters, the Chaplin, and the bees escape the jaws of the dragon at the last possible moment.