Heal the Split

If you are in the U.S. (and perhaps if you’re not), and if you are seriously interested in looking at how we might move out of the mess we’re in, I invite you to read what follows. As always, these are my observations and judgments.

Note that I talk about 9/11 at the beginning, but only to bring the attention to the Red Pill metaphor. This is not an article about the facts of 9/11. (Note that any situation where “they did it to us” or “they’re doing it to us” will do.)

Setting the context: Distraction and Refocusing

In the San Francisco Bay area, where I live, there is a small, growing group of progressive activists who are trying to uncover the truth about what happened on 9/11. They want to persuade people that 9/11 was an “inside job”, that the U.S. government, rather than 19 Middle Eastern hijackers, planned and executed the destruction on that day. To me, both the 19-hijacker story and the government-did-it story are extremes. Most of the arguments appear to be about which of these extremes people are leaning towards. I am not interested in proving or swaying anyone one way or the other about what happened or didn’t happen on 9/11 or who did what. That isn’t my focus today…

My intention is to refocus attention on what’s needed to heal the situation in America. My approach combines the head and the heart. To embrace the head is to embrace intelligence and reason, and to embrace the heart is to embrace vulnerability, love, and compassion.

What follows was born out of an online conversation between me and a man I’ll call “Steve”:

Steve: I appreciate that we may never really know who perpetrated 9-11 on us, but the 19-hijacker Story has way too many holes IMJ, and once one discards that government story, what is one left with?

I am left with truly not knowing. Many Eastern spiritual systems teach that the place of not knowing is “where it’s at.” And the place of “not knowing” appears to be a place that Americans are not particularly willing to sit in.

Does it have to be either/or, can there be elements of both?

If you were somehow able to prove that the government did it, what would you then have?

Steve: I totally appreciate your Jungian analysis of 9-11. I agree that the collective unconscious of this country is being dumbed down, and de-volved to be younger. My hallucination is that this is intentional (by the covert Them), and not just a natural process. And yes, implied in my version of 9-11 truth is a split between “us” citizens, us “sheeple”, and “them” bad guys, BushCo and whomever higher and more secret than that.

All that seems plausible to me. And I see victim language there, for example, “is being dumbed down” (rather than “dumbing itself down”). Now it’s simply a matter of going to the next step and looking at how we rigged it to be that way. And once owning that we rigged it to be this way, that leads me to…why did we rig it to be this way?

Let me digress for a moment, since some of the 9/11 truth folks have appropriated the Rabbit Hole metaphor.

Taking only a little of the Red Pill

The great movies are our collective dreams. Dreams are direct messages from the unconscious, told in images, the language of the unconscious. Collective dreams are known as myths. Myths are not fantasy or fiction, but rather are the stories of how the archetypes and natural and elemental forces move, dance, and interact in relationship. They show us how they move, dance, and interact inside us as humans.

I see the movie “The Matrix” as the myth of our time, particularly in the U.S. The Hero’s Journey is one of the myths contained within the film, as are several other myths, metaphors, and themes from various spiritual systems. And like any myth, the “The Matrix” contains some specific things for our particular place and time.

The 9/11 truth folks and government conspiracy theorists may be more or less onto something, but it’s as if they only took a small fraction of the Red Pill…or at least haven’t ventured very far into the Real World. (The same could be said for just about any activist group trying to uncover something sinister about our leaders.) They’ve gotten as far as “nothing is as it seems” but not much into what that’s about, or why this is happening. (Perhaps they’ve only swallowed a few grains, rather than the whole pill.)

After taking the Red Pill, Neo wakes up “unplugged” in the Real World, in a pod in which his body heat/life force (take your pick) is being used as a fuel source in a giant machine. He is disoriented, and I don’t know that the conspiracy-is-truth folks have even gotten to the phase where they are disoriented, or if they have, they haven’t allowed themselves to be in the disorientation. The perspective of “they did it to us victims” strikes me as not being particularly fully unplugged from the Matrix.

When I reference “them” according to a context and rules that “they” defined, I’m still in the Matrix, and haven’t really ever left it…I’ve just done a little prep work. It’s sort of like the membrane between the two worlds has a little rip. Through that opening, I can see that there are these destructive machines out to destroy us, but I have no connection with how the machines came to be there. So if I realize that “nothing is as it seems”, and yet I still continue to see it with my old eyes, it may appear different than it was, but it’s still just another version of “How It Seems” (and not “What Is”). So the government-did-it-to-us version of the story is still within the context of being inside the Matrix. [In terms of shadow, I can see something’s there, but I’m still using the same old projecting and filtering to look at it.]

The metaphor of the Rabbit Hole has only been taken one little step (to the point where Neo wakes up in that pod). The metaphor isn’t being taken to the depth it was intended. Taking the Red Pill begins with waking up (in a rather rude and abrupt disorienting disruption) to the reality that everything we believe about reality is not real. So far, so good. Such waking up happens in stages. In the Real World, we (Neo) are informed by someone who is already there (Morpheus) that we created the machines (the current government) and, at some point down the road after we created them, our machines decided that we were no longer needed as intelligent and spiritual sentient beings of our own significance, and that their best use of us is completely utilitarian (for the raw energy our bodies produce). The machines oppress and destroy those who are waking up to that, and our survival depends on our having a relationship to the thing we created (because we can’t get rid of anything, including that which we don’t like). [In terms of shadow, nothing in our psyches can be destroyed.]

Applying the metaphor, we (the people) created the machines (the current American administration) so that we didn’t have to bother with matters like managing our selves (matters of governance) and relationship with others (foreign policy). And our creation, which became more powerful than us, is doing things in its own interest, without regard to what we want.

How’re we doin’? Uhhh…not too great, because we haven’t completed even the first step – that this is our creation. So rather than being empowered to change it, we reject the truth about us, telling another version of the story still using our old “I’m still trapped in the Matrix” eyes. Here’s where that is in the movie:

When Morpheus says “I can show you just how deep the Rabbit Hole goes,” he was talking about something much deeper than just to realize that the machines were a threat. (That’s those first few grains of the pill.) An integral part of the story is that we created those machines to serve us (so we didn’t have to work). Neo’s ego can’t deal with that and he wants to reject the new reality (the Real Reality) in which humans are reduced to batteries. He stands up and in essence shouts: “No I don’t believe any of this…send me back”. A big part of the ego’s rejection is the horrifying truth that we could (and would) do this to ourselves.

Having a mission of “let’s get to the bottom of what ‘they’ did so we can take ‘them’ out of power” is part of the ego’s resistance to waking up to its/our own creation. Since it doesn’t come from a place of ownership, it doesn’t come from a place of substantial power. Trying to effect change from a disowning and disempowered place is rather difficult, and often not successful. How can we get back the possibility of changing the American landscape?

Taking responsibility

Steve: Are you suggesting that becoming aware of my inner jihadist, my inner conspirator willing to sacrifice 3000 US citizens, my inner deceptive leader…that becoming aware of them leads to an increase my understanding of my shadows, and an ability to take individual responsibility for 9-11?

Yes…you’ve got it.

Steve: But what does taking that responsibility do? How does it change the facts of those elite people in power? Does being aware of their existence make me less susceptible to their manipulation of me?

Yes, it does. The more you, and the person next to you, and the person next to him or her, individually accept and own that we are inextricably tied to the creation of the reality of them doing it to us, then the more we, collectively, can begin to see how to be otherwise. They are doing it to us…and we brought it about. Both are true.

[I was truly grateful to “Steve” for these questions, because they stimulated me to wire up the last missing piece of “how we created this” and articulate it clearly, as well as find a huge piece that was missing about how to make the leap between “I” work and “we” work, which I will cover as part of another article.]

How does this bring about societal transformation?

Find the source (a Jungian approach)

In American society, we have a penchant for treating the symptom, not the source and cause. In the movie “Rising Sun” the Sean Connery character says: “The Japanese have a saying, ‘Fix the problem, not the blame.’”

So first, we find the source of the problem. If I were still inside the Matrix, but I managed to swallow a few grains of the pill, I’d see that the machines are oppressing humanity and the source of the problem would appear to be the machines. That’s because I was unwilling to swallow the entire Red Pill and give up my whole orientation about the nature of things, so that I could live in the Real World. Blaming the machines/government (or terrorists, or mommy or daddy) is simply a way of refusing to swallow more than a few grains of the pill.

What is the source of our situation? Let’s take a look at how the situation we find ourselves in actually came about:

There are forces that exist within me as “parts”…some personal, some archetypal (and I’m talking about many more archetypes than in the men’s work model). Some of them are protectors, doing a thankless job that was set up in my childhood to help me survive through the harshness of those years (when humans and many animals were so much larger than me) and I used these inner protectors in my early adulthood – to help earn a living, keep me safe, hold my boundaries, to the degree that I had boundaries.

Then there’s a different bunch: Some of them I decided weren’t of use to me, some were incompatible with the image I was choosing for myself, some I didn’t like or find acceptable, and some were hurtful (if mommy and daddy screeched at each other, or one hit the other, or screeched at or hit me). I decided I would have nothing to do with them, so I stuffed them down inside of me, so they wouldn’t hurt me or anybody else. The difficulty with that is: All parts within us – not just our inner children – need to have their needs addressed.

So, down in the darkness, deep in my unconscious, those unwanted parts have continued to live, without love, support, or nourishment from me (as ego), without anyone being in relationship with them (again from me as ego). They operate completely autonomously, accountable to no one. They include jihadist, conspirator, deceptive leader. (They also include our brilliant light and our magnificence, which most of us disown even moreso than these “demons.”)

And here’s the leap from individual work to collective shadow. Imagine that a couple hundred million people walk through their lives imagining they are not jihadist, conspirator, deceptive leader. What happens to that cumulative energy?

That cumulative disowned energy operating in all those hundreds of millions of shadow places has to express somehow (and somewhere). Like any shadow material, it either meets us from the outside again and again, or operates within us in ways that we can’t see.

How it meets us from the outside:

What I and you and many others reading this see the government doing is, quite simply, an expression of the cumulative lack of love, support, and relationship with those parts/forces within each of us, that can’t get their needs met from us, on the part of a couple hundred million people. So that cumulative energy – not finding that it can express through us (because we don’t find it acceptable or believe we carry it) – created a vehicle for its expression, in the form of this administration. If you can step into that perspective, it’s easy to see how them being there (regardless of whether we voted for them or they stole the election) is a direct result of this gigantic collective disowning.

How it leaks out in ways that we can’t see:

The people themselves collectively express those things that they, in common, disown. Examples of big ones for Americans are: destructors who are uncaring of individual human life; fanaticists on a righteous crusade to eradicate whatever is projected as evil (well, that one might not be so disowned); slippery, slimy, lying, cheating, stealing leaders who set it up so they have to answer to no one. So we leak these out, being those things. (Very few Americans have a value for truth-telling, compared with 30 or 40 or 50 years ago.)

From what I’ve seen, most activists who are on a crusade to “change the world” operate from their childhood wounds. It goes something like this: “I experience pain or discomfort from what I see, so I must change the world so that I don’t experience pain or discomfort.” Layered on top of this are beliefs and values, such as “abortion is wrong” or “war is wrong” or “violence is wrong”. Again, this is simply more disowning and more avoiding of discomfort, only this time, it’s using the weapon of beliefs and values…it’s the disturbance of the difference in beliefs and values that we can’t abide…and that disempowers us.

Note that I’m not saying that we ought never to act to change anything. It’s the place in ourselves we’re coming from that makes all the difference. We’re just really far from being in the place where we have the collective wherewithal to climb out of our deepening hole. Those tsunamis were here to tell us something and we don’t really have our eyes open yet. (Remember, a few of us are just beginning to find ourselves in the pod, wired up to a machine that we created.)

- Neo: “Why do my eyes hurt?”

- Morpheus: “You’ve never used them before.”

The work I see ahead of us – to discover, embrace, and develop a relationship to those forces within us – is the first step of transforming our situation. Rather than trying to eradicate the disowned forces (unacceptable, painful, immoral, evil) that I buried deep within myself (either “in here” or “out there”), I “repurpose” them, giving them a different job to do.

Repurposing the demons

How do I choose a job for them? First, I commit to, learn, and practice allowing my personal pain in relation to what is to move through me. Second, I recognize and acknowledge that my idealized notion of how the world “should be” (for example, all peace and love, with no pain) emanates from my inner wounded child, and I own that those notions are based on my own hurt from my own wound. I recognize and acknowledge that those wounds and that pain were necessary for me to become who I am, to develop within what would be needed to manifest my purpose, and they existed for my own development. I choose not to impose that on the world.

‘To make that possible, I myself provide what my inner wounded child needs, so that avoidance of my wounds or my pain or the recapitulation of my childhood wounds isn’t the basis for designing those job descriptions (or missions, for that matter). These steps are part of what is necessary to clear the way for the possibility that the job descriptions might be in service to something greater than our own young need to have it be different.

Having done all that, I now have the possibility for creating a job (or jobs) for them to do that are (a) from a choice other than avoidance of the forementioned, and (b) that is aligned with (as a buddhist might say) the way the world actually is (and not a fantasy of how the world might or should be. I have created the space for (c) being a vehicle for true service, love, and boundless giving.

Now I have real empowerment, based on owning my creation, embracing it with love and support for getting its needs met, sourced from love and unconditional generosity. If those beasts within enough of us are fed, nourished, loved, and supported, then there will be no need for the existence a controlling, destructive administration.

So unless we can take true ownership of that which is within us, individually and collectively, we will remain in the illusion that we can control this without (a) taking responsibility for being the source and cause of it, (b) finding that which we disdain and eschew within ourselves, and (c) developing a relationship with “that”, then what “that” is will keep coming to us from the outer world in varying forms and we will continue to have some form of what has happened in our recent past repeated again. This is the essence of the principles of shadow that I wrote about in my very first Journal article…particularly principles B and D, which you can find repeated at http://healthesplit.com/?page_id=5 And remember, if you’re reacting to it…(I’m sure you know the rest).

What I have a hard time with, is that we seem to want to punish the very product of our handiwork. I invite you to take a moment to sit with that.

Taking the rest of the Red Pill (beyond what’s in the movie)

This is the beginning of the transformation that our society will need to undergo if a reasonable semblance of what is America today is to exist in 20 to 50 years.

It’s interesting to me is that people outside the U.S. can see this quite clearly. They wonder “What are these people doing?”

The next step – beyond (a) waking up to the truth of what is happening and (b) realizing that we created this and are doing it to ourselves – is (c): Why did we do it, and how does it serve? This is past where the movie ends (and, for me, the sad tragedy is that the movie studio had to be greedy, ripping off the black woman who wrote the story that became the movie, thereby eliminating the possibility of the real sequel, instead of the live-action comic book that is the far inferior second-and-third movie (actually shot as one movie). [Incidentally, the same thing happened with Star Wars. Joseph Campbell came into the save the failing script, gave us three films, then died, leaving with Lucas to stumble through and try to connect the dots to Anakin’s descent into demonic shadow as Darth Vader (see principle B for a definition of “demonic”).]

But all that are simply manifestations of what’s going on the American psyche. As an educated guess, I’d say that, collectively speaking, large numbers of people aren’t ready to grapple with this. (Hell, the American collective mostly didn’t “get” that “The Matrix” was pretty much non-fiction, so we created “V for Vendetta” (sort of a “Matrix Lite” – still a really good movie, but not very multi-layered or multi-faceted like the Matrix movie).

Until I/we know the deeper purpose of us having created it this way, I/we will likely no clear idea of where we are headed and what we go from here.

Steve: I sign off with another man’s response to one of my “down the rabbit hole posts”:

“Let us be aware of what we have created or allowed to control global consciousness.”

I’d say that that’s pretty much right on. Find the source and address the cause (from the source).

Steve: I’ll leave it at that, even though there are plenty of scary and fun ideas out there of “what we have created” or “allowed” to control global consciousness…

Awww…you stopped before it began to get really interesting for me.

With respect and love,
Cal

(C) 2007 Cal Simone
[First published in the MKP New Warrior Journal, November 2007.]