Theme: Integrating Shadow

Card #662 – Dead End

text © Jonathan Zap

Some paths are inherently self-defeating. The I Ching very succinctly describes one of the most classic dead-end paths this way:

“He who seeks nourishment that does not nourish reels from desire to gratification and in gratification craves desire. Mad pursuit of pleasure for the satisfaction of the senses never brings one to the goal. One should never follow this path, for nothing good can come of it.”

A dead-end path is one that leads away from the experience of meaning. Typically we are following what we want, not what we need. The path of allowing the ends to justify the means is also a dead-end path, because the journey is the destination. When you seek your ultimate fulfillment by capturing a “precious,” an obsessive object of desire glittering in the outer world, that is a dead-end path. When you seek the inner wholeness you already have by pursuing a beloved, that is a dead-end path. If you want to follow the path with heart, rather than a dead-end path, ask of yourself, “Will I remember this well on my deathbed?” Dead-end paths can’t hold up to such scrutiny.

See Casting Precious into the Cracks of Doom…

Stop the Hottie!

Card #663 – To Slide or Not to Slide

text © Jonathan Zap

To Slide or Not to Slide?

Keep a firm grasp on what keeps you alive and gives your life meaning. Don’t abandon yourself to anything. We’ve all had lapses of discipline, but it is crucial to learn from them so we don’t perpetuate mistakes. Here are some things I’ve learned from my own struggles with discipline.

The problem with letting yourself slide is that the likelihood is that you’ll keep sliding. If you start sliding off a mountain you gather downward momentum. In actual mountain climbing, you might have a window of a couple of seconds to self-arrest with your ice axe before a slide becomes irreversible. When driving a car, a moment of letting go of the wheel due to nodding off or inattention can easily be fatal for you and others. But there are many other areas of life where letting go of the wheel leads to slow-motion crashes or lesser destinies but not necessarily to any dramatic short-term consequence. It is these slow-motion slide zones that tempt us toward downward momentum because there is no crevasse waiting to swallow us up, no tractor trailer waiting to slam into us if our attention lapses for a moment. Fast-motion slide zones — sides of mountains, busy highways, tend to wake up our bodies and survival instincts and innate, animal intelligence will usually keep us vigilant enough to survive.

Slow-motion slide zones, however, often lure us with the sweet, siren call of tragic magic. They give us room to slide, room to get a bit of a rush from downward momentum before any impact. The new credit card I just received in the mail today, for example, wants to give me room to slide. This is not a metaphor, but a carefully engineered, slide-friendly, opportunity to fall into debt. I got it as an emergency back up, but it arrives with a glossy, red coupon with a tempting offer: “$100 in cash back for the first $500 you spend!” The first-year, introductory APR is 0%. That’s a one-year, slide zone that’s been made as comfortable as possible. The cliff, 365 days and nights away, is the 27% APR that kicks in after the cleverly greased slide-into-debt zone. It’s just like that friendly slide zone called a casino that will comp you drinks and a room to make it as comfortable as possible for your life savings to slide away from you.

Even more tempting for many of us, are the slide zones that live in our bodies, those inner metabolic casinos. Any substance that can slide across the blood brain barrier can make itself into a metabolic casino. White powders, including sugar, are metabolic slide zones. Ads for blood-brain-barrier-slider products, such as beer and energy drinks, typically show you buff athletes surfing giant waves, and beach parties abounding with bikini-and-speedo-clad hotties in states of sugar-rush euphoria. “Catch the Wave” as Coke used to say. Go for the rush of that introductory slide zone, obesity and type-2 diabetes come much later.

Consumer culture has brilliantly engineered slide zones available everywhere. We live in a 24/7 food carnival overflowing with ads, storefronts and free samples of the latest fat/sugar/salt combos concocted by industrial food science to give us “mouth feel” and to light up the pleasure centers of our brains. To slide or not to slide? is a question that we have to answer hundreds of times a day — Do I get a salad or a slice of that stuffed pizza oozing with melted cheese? Do I risk an unpredictable, live human interaction or go for some online pornography I can control from my track pad? Do I read an in-depth article or go for a rush of info-distraction and social media voyeurism? To slide or not to slide? moment-by-moment, day-after-day.

We can’t put all the blame on consumer culture, because slide zones are built into human incarnation and are as basic as the first law of thermodynamics. Entropy means that things slide toward disorder unless energy is exerted in another direction. For example, think about where you live — house, apartment, vehicle, or tent. If you’re homeless, then it could be your outfit of clothes and a backpack. (This example won’t work, however, if you have a personal staff. Sorry 1%) Your home base gives you hundreds of to-slide-or-not-to-slide opportunities a day. You’re about to crash — do you throw your clothes on the floor or put them in a laundry bag? If your room is already a mess, you’ll probably throw them on the floor. That’s an example of how downslides gather momentum. The more disordered your living space gets, the more heroic an effort it would take to put it right. The entropy hole just gets deeper and deeper. Downsliding in one area, makes it much more likely that I will downslide in others. If I just had several drinks, I’m not likely to tidy up the house a bit before I go to sleep. If I wake up in a messy house, I feel demoralized and I’m less likely to use my time efficiently.

Relationships are potential slide zones. Do I lash out at my friend who has annoyed me in some little way or hold back, be diplomatic and deal with issues thoughtfully? Do I respond to this email, or let it slide? A tendency toward carelessness in a relationship — not returning messages, not making certain efforts, neglect, leaving a dirty dish in a communal space, can all be instances of relational downsliding that can lead to friends becoming former acquaintances and so fort

While I’m typing this, I have to keep correcting my posture, because if I don’t, I tend to slump a bit. So posture is a slide zone if you don’t stay mindful of it.

Human incarnation is a slide-friendly zone. We don’t always like to confront this because there’s no easy, permanent answer. Many people prefer to hear about easy ways to slide upward — a magic diet pill, five hours of energy for just $1.99, how to get rich quick, three things to do to achieve total success, etc.

The price of freedom from falling into the myriad, daily opportunities to downslide is eternal vigilance. Unfortunately, most of us, including me, are not eternally vigilant. If downsliding weren’t a problem for you, you probably wouldn’t still be reading this. If downsliding isn’t a problem for you, it’s unlikely that you are having a human incarnation.

Some will use the inevitability of downsliding as an excuse to diss the whole possibility of a disciplined life. “Lighten up, live a little, c’mon down and chill out with us in margaritaville http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jimmybuffett/margaritaville.html.” If you make efforts at self-discipline, it makes the citizens of margaritaville a bit nervous and uncomfortable. Unconscious envy may surface as a disparagement of the disciplined person as uptight, repressed and a party-pooper. But to be fair to the margaritaville perspective, discipline can pathologize into workaholism, becoming fitness crazed or turning into some sort of pleasure denier with an anxious, white-knuckled grip on life. Such people have over-corrected for downsliding and become fanatics in certain areas while allowing other areas to slide into neglect. Pathological discipline is essentially a form of over-caffeinated downsliding.

The opposite of downsliding is not hyper-discipline, but living a deeply fulfilling, meaningful and whole life. Hyper-discipline pathologizes when it involves making extreme efforts in some areas — career, productivity, fitness, finance — while neglecting one or more other crucial areas such as soulful relationship and creativity. Some people are both highly disciplined and wise enough not to neglect a major sphere of life, and these people can have active, engaged, adventurous lives that involve wholeness and deep fulfillment.

While I know a very few people who suffer from pathological discipline, I know many more who suffer from downsliding. I’ve watched friends of great promise slide into diminished lives and even suicide. Downsliding is governed by laws of momentum and that means that the more you downslide, the more you are likely to keep downsliding. You’re stressed and you let your diet slide. You put on weight and feel bad about it, and that loss of morale causes you to let other things slide. Downslides in multiple life spheres gather collective momentum until people hit bottom. Sometimes people who hit bottom work their way back up, but other times they flat line, and sometimes that’s all too literal.

Tips for Dealing with a Downslide-Friendly Incarnation

Work with Momentum

Fortunately, the principle of momentum works in other directions than downward. Work with momentum by summoning all your will to get positive momentum going in various life spheres and then maintain or intensify it gradually. For example, for the first few days of returning to exercise, I have to overcome this speed bump of lethargy, but after a while I start enjoying the endorphin high and now I want to do it and it gathers positive momentum. I’m psyched to see my house clean and looking good and that motivates me to keep picking up and finding ways to make it look even better. See: Working with Momentum

Beware the What-the-Hell Effect

You break your diet with one cookie so you might as well eat the whole bag. Sound familiar? Psychologists call it the “Abstinence Violation Effect” (AVE). From the sliding metaphor, we could call it the “I-slipped-so-I-might-as-well-keep-sliding effect.” Slipping is inevitable; the key thing is to catch yourself before a slip becomes a full-on downslide. As the Chinese say, “There is no harm in falling down, only in not picking yourself up again.” Another analogy that’s been suggested is taking a wrong exit off the highway. When would be the best time to turn around? Answer: As soon as possible. Avoid the trap of being either in hyper-discipline mode or downsliding mode. For example, if you are faced with the choice between pizza and a salad, it doesn’t have to be a choice between a salad and eating an entire pizza. You could choose to get pizza and a salad. You could get a large salad and a single slice of pizza which you cut up and put in the salad. Be clever, use positive trickster energy, and avoid the tendency toward all or nothing.

Willpower is a resource, recognize when it’s low.

We used to hear willpower disparaged as illusory. “I don’t believe in willpower!” became a diet book cliché. Actually, a body of research shows that willpower is a measurable resource with many neurological aspects. (Willpower — the Greatest Human Strength is a great synthesis of this research.) Willpower is a resource that tends to diminish during the course of the day as we use it up to hold back from certain things and to get ourselves to do other things. Typically, it is at its lowest ebb in the late evening and that’s when people are most likely to raid the refrigerator, drink too much, send regrettable emails, etc. Understanding how willpower waxes and wanes can help you to recognize and prepare for zones when sliding is most likely. For example, let’s say a couple both have frustrating 9-to-5 jobs. By the time they get home from work and have not yet had dinner, willpower is likely to be very low. They’ve used up lots of willpower to be polite to an irritating boss and in dealing with many other stresses. They haven’t eaten in a while, and low blood sugar has been shown to reduce willpower. This is a time when they could be very likely to get into an argument because the willpower necessary to holdback from expressing irritation is critically low. Insufficient sleep also dramatically lowers willpower.

Slide Mindfulness

Be aware of when you are choosing to slide or not to slide. Instead of just defaulting into downsliding actions, recognize whenever you come to a choice nexus. You go into the bank and find they have put out a plate of free cookies. That’s a choice nexus. If you don’t recognize it as such, then your hand may just reach for the cookie while your mind is preoccupied with something else. Choice awareness expands free will and keeps us from becoming mechanical creatures doing things on autopilot. There is a self-monitoring movement where people attempt to track and quantify various of their behaviors. Some few people may do this obsessively, but often self-tracking is very helpful. Research has shown that dieters who keep detailed, accurate food logs lose more weight.

Life Sphere Momentum Check

It’s a good idea to keep track, on a daily basis, of how we are doing in all major life spheres — social, health, creative, financial — to see which we are giving our time and energy to that day, and which, if any, we are allowing to slide. Try to catch any major life sphere starting to roll downhill and give it some love and attention.

Keystone Disciplines

Look for keystone disciplines, disciplines that help you to be disciplined generally. For many, exercise is a keystone discipline. Exercise raises mood, confidence, energy and creates a feeling of health that may make you less likely to want to indulge poor eating or abuse intoxicants. For some, creatively managing their time is what keeps everything else in balance. Positive momentum in one discipline can work synergistically with others. For example, if your kitchen is clean and refrigerator well stocked, you may be more likely to make yourself a healthy breakfast. If not, you may be more likely to grab a sugary latte and pastry from the nearest coffee shop.

Consider this a propitious time to be aware of the slide status of all major life spheres and take corrective action where needed.

Some relevant short writings on creative discipline: Bechira Line , Perseverance , Tapas , Pathfinding and Day-Mapping, Warriors of the Light, Mindfulness, a collection of Zap Oracle cards on discipline

My major essay/podcast on the Warrior stance: The Way of the Warrior

A collection of my writings on the Warrior Stance

Card #664 – To Slide or Not to Slide

text © Jonathan Zap

To Slide or Not to Slide?

While I’m typing this, I have to keep correcting my posture, because if I don’t, I tend to slump a bit. So posture is a slide zone if you don’t stay mindful of it.

Tips for Dealing with a Downslide-Friendly Incarnation

Work with Momentum

Beware the What-the-Hell Effect

Willpower is a resource, recognize when it’s low.

Slide Mindfulness

Life Sphere Momentum Check

Keystone Disciplines

Consider this a propitious time to be aware of the slide status of all major life spheres and take corrective action where needed.

ome relevant short writings on creative discipline: Bechira Line , Perseverance , Tapas , Pathfinding and Day-Mapping, Warriors of the Light, Mindfulness, a collection of Zap Oracle cards on discipline

My major essay/podcast on the Warrior stance: The Way of the Warrior

A collection of my writings on the Warrior Stance

Card #65 – Persona Melt Down

text and photo © Jonathan Zap

“There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;” — T.S. Eliot

You are not your persona or social self. We all put on social masks and in some circumstances they are quite necessary. But they are not who you are. If some old masks no longer serve, let them melt away.

Sometimes we put on masks to meet the outer world — we act differently at work or school than with intimate friends, adopt specialized demeanors when interacting with police or on a job interview. But some people — some police, for example, or people forever trying to be cool — come to identify with the persona. They believe they are the persona, the uniform or cool clothes wear them, and authenticity and their essence become ever more submerged. I once saw a magazine ad that showed a generic square-jawed male model looking very self-satisfied. The caption of the ad was something like this: “Underneath his Yves St. Laurent shirt, his Pierre Cardin jacket, his Porsche designer sun glasses, John Lance wears Brut.” In other words, under his exoskeleton of brand names is just one more brand name. An ad for Seiko watches still currently in print says (approximately), “It’s not your clothes that say the most about who you are, not your shoes, not the car you drive, not the music you listen to. It’s your watch.” Of course it is your self that says the most about who you are, not the brand name consumer goods, but the Babylon Matrix wants you focused on surfaces, appearances and objects. It wants you to believe that buying stuff is the key to forming an identity. Cars are especially marketed as ways to buy an identity.

I was once walking down the street at lunchtime on a weekday and saw one carefully groomed yuppie after another passing me. There was not a hair out of place, and they seemed dressed up to look just like ads they had seen in glossy magazines. In my mind’s eye I saw that their energy had formed a kind of exoskeleton, their identification with persona, clothing, accessories and bodily appearance had formed them into a kind of full body helmet, polished, blow dried, glazed with subtle cosmetics, while somewhere the self, a shriveled, malnourished, somnambulant embryo lay dormant.

Molt the persona that has become attached to you through identification and feel yourself grow larger. Don’t wait, like Darth Vader, for the exoskeleton to fall away on your deathbed.

It is not your brand names, not your clothes, not your car, not your hair, not your weight; it is you that says the most about who you are.

For those willing to read more, a Jung quote on the persona:

“Every calling or profession has its own characteristic persona. It is easy to study these things nowadays, when the photographs of public personalities so frequently appear in the press. A certain kind of behaviour is forced on them by the world, and professional people endeavour to come up to these expectations. Only, the danger is that they become identical with their personas-the professor with his text-book, the tenor with his voice. Then the damage is done; henceforth he lives exclusively against the background of his own biography. . . . The garment of Deianeira has grown fast to his skin, and a desperate decision like that of Heracles is needed if he is to tear this Nessus shirt from his body and step into the consuming fire of the flame of immortality, in order to transform himself into what he really is. One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.”

“Concerning Rebirth” (1940). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P.221

Card #22 – Savage Potential

text and photo © Jonathan Zap

I Stood Upon a High Place

I stood upon a high place,

And saw, below, many devils

Running, leaping,

and carousing in sin.

One looked up, grinning,

And said, “Comrade! Brother!”

— Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

There is no such thing in nature as an H-Bomb, that is all man’s doing. We are the great danger. The psyche is the great danger.

— C.G. Jung

Never underestimate the savage potential within and in humanity in general. The positive aspect is that this is a propitious time to work on understanding and integrating your savage aspects and those of others. Your savage potential can be an asset when properly integrated. Failure to witness, integrate and compensate for your savage aspects can lead you into a Lord of the Flies world.

That’s the short version, for those willing to read more consider this brief meditation on

“Grappling with the Dark Side of the Force:”

The dark side of the force is implicit in the Babylon Matrix. We must accept it, but not allow ourselves to be ruled by it. Although history is largely about the dark side of the force, we must not fully externalize the dark side, but must first grapple with it from within. If you are not aware of the dark side of the force operating within yourself then you are in a state of dangerous blindness and the dark force is able to act as an autonomous complex within you. Many people are in a state of denial about this because “dark side of the force” sounds dramatic and exotic, something pertaining to serial killers and Nazis. Actually, it is more often mundane and may be ubiquitous in our thinking.

Here’s a very mundane example of the dark side of the force: There is someone I am intensely attracted to but they are unavailable and/or do not return the attraction. I feel a force in me that wants them to want me, wants them not to be who they are, but what I want them to be. I feel a force that doesn’t want them to be free to choose what they want (unless it is also what I want), but that just wants them. There is a rage inside the force because it is not getting everything it wants. The rage is not righteous indignation at some injustice; it is the rage of frustrated infantile omnipotence. The dark force inside of me assumes that the world is there to satisfy my wants and everything I want should be there for my taking. The force wants what it wants when it wants it. How dare anyone else take what is mine, and it is all mine!

The example above is just one of the myriad versions of the dark side of the force I can find within myself. Because I also have a will and a conscience and other forces within me, the dark force does not have to rule me, even though I do have to acknowledge and integrate its presence. If there aren’t strong enough countervailing forces within me, then the dark thought forms in the above example could turn me into a stalker, a predator, or some other sort of malignant narcissist. Indeed, this is exactly what the dark side of the force does to many who are out there on the street and in the corridors of power.

Here is an example of two people grappling with the dark side of the force, one in what seems to be a mature way, the other in a way that is immature and/or insincere:

Pastor Rick Warren asked Obama: “Does evil exist, and if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it, or do we defeat it?”

Obama’s response: “Evil does exist. I mean, we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil in parents have viciously abused their children and I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely and one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world…Now, the one thing that I think is very important for us is to have humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil, but, you know, a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil…And I think one thing that’s very important is having some humility in recognizing that, you know, just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t always mean that we’re going to be doing good…”

One hour later, Warren asked McCain the same question about evil and what we should do about it. McCain’s response began this way:

“Defeat it.”

Grappling with the dark side of the force means grappling with it within as well as without.

See: Incarnating under the Influence in a Polywater World

Card #23 – Small World

text and photo © Jonathan Zap

This is a propitious time to pay great attention to detail. For some, particularly introverts, it easy to lose track of details while cognitive energy is being spent lavishly in inner worlds. Meanwhile, details of the mundane physical world are neglected or missed until they bite us in sensitive areas. At other times the inner world is dominated by what some call psychic entropy, looping negative thought tapes, volatile emotions and obsessions, and this causes dangerous neglect of the details of the outer world. It can be a grounding practice of mindfulness to sometimes give your focus to attention to detail, and often this is a practical necessity. Transitional times — when, for example, you are about to leave your house and an inner dialogue about such and such is in the foreground of your mind — put that inner dialogue on hold for a few moments and check the details — did I turn the stove off? Did I bring my wallet, and everything I need for the next destination? Also, when psychic entropy is attempting to dominate you, the small world can be a way to resist the dark undertow. There is a very useful principle:If in doubt, focus out. Pick a task that is somewhat mechanical, that you have already mastered, but that requires attention to detail — a small home repair for example, and give yourself to doing that task with complete focus and efficiency.

If you got this card in connection to a relationship, opportunity, issue, check the details. Perhaps negotiation of the difficulties requires a moment-to-moment attention to the minutiae of what’s happening. Conversely, there are some people whose natural focus is always on the details and mundane minutiae and not enough on what really matters in life. Those people need to stop, take a deep breath, and ask themselves: Will I remember this well on my deathbed? For that sort of person, focus on urgent but unimportant minutiae (a ringing phone, etc.) needs to give way to spending more time on that which is important but not urgent.

This card relates to Hexagram 62 of the I Ching

For a practical orientation to the day see:

Pathfinding/Day Mapping

See writings on the Warrior Stance

When it seems like the small things are driving you crazy:

Mechanical Resistance Matrix

Card #25 – Toys in the Attic

text and photo © Jonathan Zap

Toys in the attic — what is happening in your personal unconscious?

Few things take as much courage and are capable of producing such valuable results as exploring the unconscious.

Nothing could be more crucial than Socrates’ great commandment: “Know thyself.” Those who don’t know themselves act out their unknown contents in the world, and often with disastrous results.

Explore the unconscious with the courage to see the horror and beauty of the endless diversity of elements. But don’t explore as a tourist, as a psychedelic thrill-seeker or dilettante. If you enter the unconscious without a moral purpose, as Jung pointed out, you are asking to get wrecked. You would not go deep-sea diving without some training, tools, discipline, and a support network. Shamans don’t travel into the unconscious to have fun or hang out, they enter with respect, usually for the moral purpose of healing, and they get in and get out as quickly as possible, well aware of the dangers. Another moral purpose to enter the unconscious is to expand consciousness and to share that expanded consciousness with others.

Sometimes we are in a state where we are consumed or obsessed with some outer controversy, but actually what we are experiencing is much more fundamentally an agitation happening in the unconscious. We live in a mostly extroverted culture where problems and rewards are located in the outer world. But virtually all human problems — war, conflict, environmental destruction, etc. — ultimately derive from a single source, human psychology. Try the following meditation: sit still, focus on your breathing, but instead of trying to still your mind, let it run amuck, going wherever it wants to. Have a pen and notebook (or other recording system) in front of you, and record what comes up. It is also of great value to pay attention to your dreams and record them for further study.

It is crucial to be aware of the forces and subpersonalities in your personal unconscious. To be ignorant of them is to be ruled by them, allowing yourself to be dominated by a network of autonomous complexes.

“I’m not really the type to wander off and sit down and go through deep wrestling with my soul.”

— George W. Bush, as quoted in Vanity Fair, October 2000

“I’m also not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.”

— George W. Bush, aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003

How do you know yourself? One way is continuous, mindful attention to the movies with voiceover narration playing in your head all day and all night. There are waking movies, dreaming movies and daydreaming movies. The Dubyah sort of method of self-inquiry would be to ignore these movies as just bits of nonsense. But notice that every bit of ephemeral whatever — a flickering image, a twisted thought form of words strung together — each of these has an absolutely factual existence. It is a fact that you thought of that particular image, those particular words. The unfolding of the universe is altered because you thought of one thing and not another. And regardless of what a dismissive ego might think, each of these “bits of nonsense” happens for a reason, is a product of inner forces operating within you. Acknowledging this takes courage, because we would rather cling to a neater, tidier version of ourselves, an airbrushed yearbook photo, when actually we look more like labyrinths filled with moving images and words. And these labyrinths have twists and turns and secret corridors we may not know ourselves. If we don’t know them, then this unexplored content — sexuality, emotions, unintegrated desires, etc. — will come spilling out of us as slips of the tongue, and sometimes as horrendous irreversible actions (the stuff that personal and collective histories are made of). For example:

“The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off.”

— George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” — George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

“Who could have possibly envisioned an erection — an election in Iraq at this point in history?”

— George W. Bush, at the White House, Washington, D.C., Jan. 10, 2005

“The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case.”

— George W. Bush, Pella, Iowa, as quoted by the San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000

“I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today. You’re doing a heck of a job. You cut your teeth here, right? That’s where you started practicing? That’s good. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me.”

— George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., May 27, 2004

It is all too easy to point to the unconsciousness of the other, but the only thing standing between you and Dubyah-consciousness is eternal vigilance about your inner content. You must be willing to explore the sometimes dark and twisted contents of yourself. Really listen to the voices speaking in your head all day long. Notice that there are different tones of voice, different agenda, different subpersonalities speaking with those different voices. Witness the voices or else become them as a sequence of acting out personalities. Witness all the images that appear in your mind. It’s said that fear is like a dark room where negatives are developed. Carefully study all those negatives, prints, slides and looping videos. Evaluate each of them on various scales such as negative/neutral/positive, fear/anxiety to calm/spiritual acceptance, power/love.

Besides careful observation of inner content, you must also recognize that you are not merely a passive observer of these inner artifacts. In fact, you are the producer, the director, the special effects team and all the actors in these inner movies. You can decide to start editing out certain repetitious scenes and looping voices. You can consciously choose and create thought forms, images and scenes to add to your inner content. Exploration of inner content is not like a tour of a museum where you mustn’t touch any of the glass cases or their curious contents. Inner exploration is an active, interactive, and sometimes interventionist process. To observe a thing is to change a thing, and the maximal case of this is when the object of your observation is your own inner content. Crowley’s definition of magick is: “The science and art of creating change in conformity to will.” You are at your most magically empowered when you choose to use your will to create change in your inner content. So throw open all those glass cases, probe all the curious inner contents, and, when you are ready, grasp hold of some of these strange artifacts and metamorphose them with your true will.

Exploration of inner content is a pathway of truth that takes great courage, moment by moment. Not everyone who glimpses this pathway to truth has the courage to follow it into the labyrinth of the unconscious. Consider the poem “The Wayfarer” by Stephen Crane (1871-1900):

The Wayfarer,

Perceiving the pathway to truth,

Was struck with astonishment.

It was thickly grown with weeds.

“Ha,” he said,

“I see that no one has passed here in a long time.”

Later he saw that each weed

Was a singular knife.

“Well,” he mumbled at last,

“Doubtless there are other roads.”

For an introduction to learning more about the levels and content of the unconscious see

Thoughts on Jung

Here are a couple of excerpts:

“Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.” — C.G. Jung

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world—all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul had gradually been turned into a Navareth from which nothing good can come. Therefore let us fetch it from the four corners of the earth—the more far-fetched and bizarre it is the better!” — C.G. Jung

See:

Some Things to Consider before Dream Interpretation

If you’re aware of what’s in your personal unconscious and need to wrest control of your mind back from fragmenting forces see the techniques for dealing with afflictive thoughts and feelings in A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler

For an example of what can happen when you enter the unconscious too casually see: Shred to Black — Salvia Blue Moon Apocalypse

For more on Dubyah consciousness and its alternatives see:

Real People Suck — An Imaginary Person’s Manifesto

Card #15 – Faces in the Crowd

text and photo © Jonathan Zap

View the light and dark aspects of humanity with clarity and compassion. Jung once said that when walking down the street of a big city you will encounter every sort of human type, from the caveman to the man of the future. Respect and honor those below you, those at your level and those above. It is so easy (I know from my own experience) to fall into sarcastic disdain for unconscious people, but this is an example of our own unconsciousness.

The individualized mutant will tend to view collective energy and what Jung called “mass man” with disdain and irritation. I have certainly been guilty of this. It is so easy to be annoyed or even horrified by the bustling, buzzing, acting-out energy of mass humanity. Mass man is composed of people who don’t really know themselves, or their moment in history, and yet seem to be completely defined by the present era. They are person-shaped creatures who seem to be living stereotypes. They aggregate together and produce much sound and fury signifying nothing.

And yet they are as much a part of nature as stars, trees or viruses. They are part of the cosmic design and must be accepted as such. Like many natural forces, they can be extremely dangerous. Easily manipulated, mass man has been used to create many of the bloody tsunamis of history. More often mass man is merely mundane and a somewhat appalling spectacle to those of individualized consciousness.

The mutant must, of course, be alert to the many dangers and hazards created by mass man. You don’t want to get trampled by a mob, and so it is best to keep your distance. When traveling amongst mass man, cloaking may allow you to be safer. One of the most common dangers of mass man is allowing them to arrest your attention. Sometimes they can be both appalling and fascinating, like the car accident from which you cannot avert your gaze. One of the great dangers they present is that they tempt the mutant toward a stereotyped stance of sarcastic disdain and lazy feelings of superiority. It is so easy to ridicule and feel superior to mass man and that can be a camouflaged version of laziness and stagnation. Feeling superior to unconscious masses can be a way of diverting our attention from our own shadows, our own mediocre and stagnant aspects. When mutants meet other mutants they can all too easily form a bond of mutual disdain of mass man, and mocking them can be a very lazy and unproductive game of shooting fish in a barrel.

This is a propitious time to make your peace with collective energy. Allow mass man to go its own way, while you go yours.

Card #12 – Light and Dark are Interrelated Elements

text and photo © Jonathan Zap

Your ego may judge the light and dark threads of the tapestry as good or bad, but a non-dualistic view sees them as interrelated. John Toland’s biography of Hitler begins with a quote from a Graham Greene character: “The greatest saints have been men with a more than a normal capacity for evil, and the most vicious men have sometimes narrowly evaded sanctity.”

Here is an example of two people grappling with the dark side of the force, one in what seems to be a mature way, the other in a way that is immature and/or insincere:

Pastor Rick Warren asked Obama: “Does evil exist, and if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it, or do we defeat it?”

One hour later, Warren asked McCain the same question about evil and what we should do about it. McCain’s response began this way:

“Defeat it.”

Grappling with the dark side of the force means grappling with it within as well as without.

I Stood Upon a High Place

I stood upon a high place,

And saw, below, many devils

Running, leaping,

and carousing in sin.

One looked up, grinning,

And said, “Comrade! Brother!”

— Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

There is no such thing in nature as an H-Bomb, that is all man’s doing. We are the great danger. The psyche is the great danger. — C.G. Jung

See: Tolkien and the Developmental Need for Evil

Dynamic Paradoxicalism — a non-dualistic philosophy I am working on

Some observations on how the dark side of the force operates in politics through shadow projection:

Projection — the Enemy of Peace and Justice

Operation Infinite Projection

Left off Balance

Card #13 – Mechanical Self

As we come to believe that we need the baubles of the external world to be whole and submit to social conditioning, we become stereotyped and mechanical. Seeing the mechanical nature of our conditioned personalities can be a dark night of the soul, but is the only way for the Tin Man to find his heart.

Free will needs to be earned and requires the ability to break from our mechanical, habituated subpersonalities. The path of evolution is in returning to our essence after being conditioned into mechanicalness. According to the Taoist I Ching, evolution occurs on the path of “reverse alchemy,” the path of “returning to the Tao.” Evolution does not necessarily occur by perpetual attunement to the Tao. Daisies, spiders and viruses live perfectly attuned to the Tao, never deviate from it, but don’t have the potential for individual evolution that human beings possess. We are born in touch with our essence, but relentless programs of conditioning work to separate us from our original essence. However, if we are able to travel the difficult path of reverse alchemy, undo the many layers of conditioning and restore our original essence, then we will be evolved.

Consider this a propitious time to follow the path of reverse alchemy and help the Tin Man get back his heart.

For more on the mechanical nature of humanity, and how to overcome it, read The Fourth Way and/or In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky.

Card #20 – Mutant Emerging From Eclipse

What is blocking your connection to the light? Usually there is some sort of negative inner script that frames life and/or yourself negatively. Negative frames are often just below the surface of consciousness and act as filters through which perceptions pass and are distorted. For example, “Life sucks and then you die. I never get my fair share. I can’t do anything right.” etc. These negative frames constrict life energy and operate as self-fulfilling prophecies.

We can easily perpetuate the eclipse by regret, and feeling bad about feeling bad. Consider for a moment how many other human beings must be in similar straits right now. Pray for compassion and healing for yourself and others who are similarly afflicted. Remember that real change usually comes out of the dark night of the soul. Alchemically, one needs the descent into chaos to create new forms.

As the Dylan lyric puts it, “He not busy being born is busy dying.” The eclipse comes when your soul feels like it is busy dying. Receiving this card means it is a propitious time to get busy being born.

Resources for dealing with inner eclipse follow, but it is also possible that the eclipse is more outer. This card could indicate a time where you are in an environment that is not receptive to what you have to offer. If so, consider this text related to I Ching Hexagram #36,” Eclipse”.

From Brian Browne Walker’s

The I Ching or Book of Changes: A Guide to Life’s Turning Points

Darkness reigns in the external world now,

Disengage from negative feelings and

maintain your inner light.

This is a time when darkness and inferior energies surround you. ..The only light left is that inside your own heart, and you are counseled to return to it, maintain it, and quietly nourish yourself with it.

It is in dark moments that a correct attitude is most important. If we fight against the darkness, we are swallowed by it and suffer great misfortune. If we react to the lack of visible progress with despair and negativity, we extinguish our own inner light and block the aid of the Creative. If we try to persuade others that they must return to the light, we exhaust ourselves in vain now.

In a time such as this, it is wise to adopt a stance of outer disengagement and inner perseverance. Don not focus on or interact with the negative influences around you; this only strengthens their grip on you. Step aside, yield, let go, allow people and events to pass without attachment. Direct your attention inside, to your inner light, your devotion to what is right, your conversation with the Higher Power.

Progress may be slow, but there will indeed be progress. Remember that much of the work of the Higher Power is hidden from us, and that we enable and assist it by remaining detached, accepting, and reserved in the face of negative influences.

Again, the above was from Brian Brown Walker’s superb, concise I Ching.

Additional Resources

If you are in a situation where your value is not being recognized consider the following:

Keep secret work secret. We live in a cult of confession society where people go on national television to spill out their personal lives. But consciousness work, esoteric work, is depotentiated, loses power, when you share it with those who haven’t earned access. As Aleister Crowley said, “If I tell a man something he isn’t ready to hear, it is the same as if I told him a lie.” Don’t spill your pearls before swine, save them for your spiritual allies, those that share a deep commitment to consciousness.

Often it is safer and in a variety of ways advantageous to be cloaked and to evade unnecessary attention. Deng Ming-Dao, a modern Taoist sage points out,

“Useful trees are cut down. Useless ones survive. The same is true of people. The strong are conscripted. The beautiful are exploited. Those who are too plain to be noticed are the ones who survive. They are left alone and safe.

But what if we ourselves are among such plain persons? Though others may neglect us, we should not think of ourselves as being without value. We must not accept the judgment of others as the measure of our own self-worth… Thus, to be considered useless is not a reason for despair, but an opportunity. It is the chance to live without interference and to express one’s own individuality.”

If your eclipse is inner (in addition to or instead of situational) the following card texts contain a whole toolbox full of field-tested techniques for emerging from inner eclipse. The first tells you how to deal with psychic entropy and the second is on how to awaken from depression.

Dealing with Psychic Entropy

Psychic or psychological entropy is a state of mind first written about by Carl Jung and later developed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in his concept of Flow. A state of psychic entropy is characterized by anxiety, sadness and boredom and typically includes looping negative thought tapes. Psychic entropy is a state that leaves us hampered in our ability to deal with complex external tasks or useful inner contemplation. We all know what this feels like — that all too familiar state of being frazzled, fragmented and unraveled, paralyzed by inertia and self-conflict, worried thoughts gnawing our mind like a chew toy. So what can we do about that?

One answer is to use such times to do easy mechanical tasks like laundry and dishes that can be done even if your attention is a bit fragmented. Entertaining, not too dense audio books and podcasts on headphones can be a way to fill the chaotic inner space with better quality content. Psychic entropy is more likely to occur in solitude so if there is a positive social interaction available you can try that. Focus on external considering — on others’ needs rather than your own — as psychic entropy is based on internal considering. Alternatively, you could go all the way in the other direction and sit down in solitude, perhaps with a journal open, and carefully observe, or even record, all the fragmenting thoughts as they loop through your mind and see what subpersonalities they come from and what their issues are. If the state of psychic entropy comes from a general deficit of meaning in your life then see what you can do to increase meaningfulness.

Consider Csikszentmihalyi’s “5 C’s” of a Complex Personality as summarized by Maryam:

“The Complex Personality knows how to integrate a variety of experiences into its overall experience, making the dullest moments interesting. Being in Flow leads to Complexity for when you experience Flow, you want to experience more of it and construct your world to pull you irresistibly towards experiences within the Flow. Focus on these to craft your world:

1) Clarity – Know what you want to do in your life every day. Have clarity of goals, listen to feedback and adjust yourself to the feedback you receive from the world.

2) Center – You are in Balance. Your goal is to focus, to know how to avoid distractions, to become at one with what you’re doing, with all of your attention under your control.

3) Choice – Knowing there are a variety of possibilities around you, that you’re not determined by outside events but have choice and can move within it. Whatever you do, you do “at Choice”.

4) Commitment- Care for what you’re doing at all times. Remain conscious of what you care about. Commit to it.

5) Challenge – Keep upping your challenges as you master a certain level. Always make life more challenging.”

See the section on “Dealing with Afflictive Thoughts and Feelings” in A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler for a more thorough discussion.

Awakening from Depression

Subclinical depression is almost the norm in our society. Many people go through their days burdened, their gaze lowered, suffering under a generalized feeling of oppression. Although it is easy to attribute much of this to fractured, alienated lives, environmental toxins and poor diet, research indicates that the primary causes are negative thought forms, often occurring just beneath conscious awareness, which frame perception negatively so that one lives in a darkened reality tunnel. For example, “Life sucks, and then you die…I never get my fair share…I can’t do anything right…” etc. The negative thought forms trigger negative emotions which in turn trigger physiological changes, and the process feeds on itself as a vicious circle. This card indicates that this is a propitious time for you or someone close to you to awaken from depression. There are many ways to go about the awakening, but the will has to be there for recovery to occur. Depression is a yin condition, associated with lowered energy and a murky wateriness. Take deep breaths, stand up straight with good posture and get going, get active, raise fire, the yang principle, by doing stuff! Don’t feel like it? Excellent, that is the sure sign of how well getting active will work. Pick tasks that give definite results by putting in the effort — like cleaning up your home. Shift to a high vitality diet with more live and raw food. Do a fearless moral inventory and ask yourself what you will remember well on your deathbed and prioritize doing that.

Depression is often suffering that is neglected and not confronted. For this reason I prefer anguish and the dark night of the soul because these are more dynamic states capable of transformation. Confront what haunts you.

See: Dealing with Zones of Inner Jeopardy

Could you be addicted to pain? See: Rebelling from the Pain Body Matrix

Are you unhappy about being in your body? This is the core of much neurotic torment and takes the form of dissatisfaction with looks/weight/aging/health.

Read: The Glorified Body

Are you unhappy about romantic relationships?

Read: Challenging Thoughts on Love

Stop the Hottie!

Casting Precious…

Having trouble finding a path of meaning and creativity in your life? Much depression is caused by a deficit of meaningfulness. Read:

The Path of the Numinous

For more on discovering the core meaning of your life and facing some of the tough existential realities of human incarnation read:

The Capsule of Intentionality… and read all parts of A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler If your depression is related to a devastating loss or shock, the last part of the guide, “Dealing with Shock,” will address that directly.

Worries have you down? Read: An Antidote to Worry

Feel like there’s something wrong with this entire plane of existence? Read: A Splinter in your Mind

Too much focus on the social matrix compromising everything else? See:

Confessions of a Self Aware Starship

Want an effective life stance that will hold up to the darkest moments? Consider the path of the warrior:

The Way of the Warrior

Warrior Quotes

The Taoist Path

Taoist Quotes

Finally, if you’ve looked into all these other possibilities and feel that an outside force is depressing you, read the documents in the mind parasite category of the writing section or order a copy of the Mind Parasite Matrix.

Card #3 – See the Many Sides of your Selves

Know that there are always the blind spots, the parts of yourself you cannot see. Summon the courage to see them. Most human beings are a host of sub-personalities each of which calls themselves “I” when they take over, though they may have quite different agendas and modus operandi. The process of self-unification usually involves the creation of a central witness self that observes the sub-personalities and is aware of their comings and goings and how they vie for control. The voices that speak in your head are of various kinds — some are nagging, fearful, needy, strident, insistent, arrogant or filled with self-hate and so forth. The voice of the Self, however, is calm, clear and compassionate. But we may have trouble hearing that calm and quiet voice from the depths when our inner space is dominated by the clamor of competing subpersonalities.

That’s the short version; here’s a bit more:

We tend to think of ourselves as a single coherent personality, and expect the other to be a single coherent personality as well. But a single human being can support many personalities. The dramatic example is Multiple Personality Disorder, which is extremely rare. The familiar example, which is anything but rare, is how different we or the other can think, feel or act based on different moods and outer circumstances. A human being is almost always an aggregate of subpersonalities, and each of these personalities calls themselves “I” when they take over. One of the principle goals of individuation is to build up a central witness personality that is aware of the subpersonalities, that communicates and empathizes with all of them but doesn’t allow any of them to rule unnoticed. A powerful way to build up the witness and reduce fragmentation is to listen attentively to the various voices that speak in your head. Silent meditation is one way to sharpen awareness of the inner voices, but even more effective is mindfulness throughout your day on the revolving cast of inner voices/subpersonalities. Throughout the day there is an almost continual soundtrack, a voiceover monologue (to use a movie analogy), and the voiceover is usually in your native language. If you’re honest with yourself you’ll notice that the voiceover monologue is not controlled by a single personality. Listen to both the content of what the inner voices say and also the tone in which they speak. I might, for example, hear a needy, childish voice in my head say, “I want that!” Another voice that sounds like an anxious and irritated parent says,”You know you’re not supposed to have that.” Another voice sounds like a gruff pirate and says, “Aaargh, what the hell, just grab for it!” Still another voice has a wheedling tone and says,”I really shouldn’t, but just this once, and starting tomorrow I won’t ever again,” and so forth.

Different drives within us can personify into inner characters that become the voices of those drives. One of the essential purposes of an oracle is to act as a mirror of the psyche and confront the inquirer with various aspects of themselves. It takes a great deal of moral courage to be willing to face the multiplicity of selves operating within us.

Depending on the position of this card, it could mean that this is a propitious time to strengthen your central witness personality and/or a need to be more aware of the many sides of others. A good rule of thumb with relationships is to realize that if you don’t know someone’s shadow side, then you don’t know the person. Idealization is a state of dangerous blindness that purposefully overlooks various subpersonalities in the other to form a unified but false picture of them. For example, a romantically infatuated person thinks of the beloved as an angel, or a guru-worshiping person thinks of the guru as a god. Such idealizations are likely to turn into equal and opposite states of bitter disillusionment as they inevitably discover that the idol has feet of clay.

Be wary about listening to (or becoming) inner voices that are not calm and compassionate. The same holds true interpersonally. You may have to listen to voices that are carping, anxious, wheedling, self-pitying, angry and so forth, but listen to them with calm, compassionate understanding. This empathy may gain you influence over the subpersonality (or the outer person) and it will certainly limit how much those uncentered voices can influence you.

Thomas Jefferson said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” The real freedom is free will, and free will requires eternal vigilance with our inner process.

See In Search of the Miraculous and The Fourth Way by P.D. Ouspensky

and A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler