Weekly Reflection 2025-02-16
I take care of myself to take care of you; I take care of you to take care of myself.
The craziness in the world continues unabated this week. Trump is up to his usual antics with Bannon and crew pulling the strings. Bannon has a plan, then Musk shows up as an interloper with a different plan. How will this play out? Who knows?
Lots of people currently have lots of theories. Our feeds are filled with countless analyses each with their hot take.
Analysis is very left-brained, picking it all apart and then coming up with the single correct explanation for what is happening. The Truth, the Whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. But who but God knows the Whole Truth? I’m not even sure that he/she/it/they know. Do my toes know they’re cold or do I know that for them?
And because all these analysts are convinced they’ve found the Whole Truth, they can also assign blame and innocence. But who would could be so arrogant as to think they are blameless?
We are all imperfect and limited creatures. We get tired and ‘hangry’ and frightened sometimes. Sometimes we are less than our best. Sometimes we make mistakes, have accidents, and cause harm.
That, in and of itself is not a problem. The problem comes when guilt turns into shame. This reminds me of an interview with Carl Jung just at the end of WWII. He was asked if the German soul would find peace and answered that if you can’t admit your guilt, you project your shadow onto the world. What we deny in ourselves gets projected onto the world. We end up battling ourselves to death.
Humanity is currently facing a test that will play out thru every member of humanity: will the humanity in each of us endure or will the self-destructive tendencies of the ego-self (and wetiko cannibalism) wipe us out?
Unless and until enough of us clue into the fact that our salvation lies in the salvation of the whole, things will continue to get worse quickly. And here is where the inner / outer paradox is most profound - I can only save myself by saving you and I can only save you by saving myself. Both / and in a never-ending dance.
I feel like I spend my days straddling the great divide. I spend most of my time with the dispossessed, being dispossessed myself. But I can still pass as one of the "still possessed” and I need them to be able to find the provisions we need to build a sustainable lifeboat.
Among the dispossessed, there is a growing shared understanding. The words vary. Some are coming from a conceptual perspective focused on capitalism or colonialism or white supremacy. Others are coming from a practical perspective, trying in vain to address homelessness, addiction, depression, food insecurity, and inequity. Regardless, it leads to the same conclusion.
If you see the polycrisis and are curious, you will soon understand the metacrisis. If you see the metacrisis, you will soon understand collapse and the kind of transformation necessary to resolve the crisis. The metacrisis lives in each of us and will only be resolved when we resolve our own crisis of meaning and purpose.
The only alternative is to deny the metacrisis. But denial requires delusion, and delusion requires violence. It’s not enough to live in your own denial, you need to silence those around you who see what you refuse to see.
The sane people are being gaslit - being made to question their sanity - by the deluded people running around setting fire to everything.
We think of the "dispossessed" as the "poor people" but what if the opposite is the case? What if our pity should be directed to those poor possessed souls, those who have sold their souls to the devil in a quite literal way?
The problem is everyone can see this clearly when looking up the pyramid. We generally can’t see it in ourselves, but the people below you can see up your skirt.
So, we look on in horror at Trump and his ilk, acting utterly irresponsibly, disregarding the safety of millions - actually billions of people for their own personal gain or petty vengeance.
But how are the top 10% any different than the top 0.1% except in degree and access to the levers of power?
My friends in the top 10% (which includes the vast majority of North Americans) don't think the harm they cause in the world thru their choices is their responsibility. They think it's their "right" to cause harm because they've got the money to let them. And they assume their privilege will cushion them from harm.
So, how do you justify all the harm you cause?
Do you simply deny any evidence of harm?
Do you blame the victims?
Do you hide behind "everyone else is doing it" and "one little bit more won’t matter"?
Do you invent a God that justifies why you should live in excess while 90% of humanity and all of the natural world suffers for you?
And what's your justification for continuing to do harm when you finally understand? Is it just too inconvenient or uncomfortable? Or maybe you don’t have enough time or energy left after all the hard work of defending and maintaining your privilege?
Sadly, possession renders the possessed deaf to all of these words.
Reflection is the antidote to this form of deafness and blindness.
Reflection sees the world as a mirror to the self. Reflection asks “can I see myself in this?” and “Can I see my Self in this?”
The “bus within us” methodology and IFS provide the framework for a practice that allows us to develop our ability to, as IFS would say, come from Self-energy more often. To let the Self be in charge for once.
Of course, that’s a bit of a misstatement. The Self is never solely in charge. I think of the Self as a masterful facilitator who creates the right conditions for all the pieces and parts to show up in a way that weaves together strengths to overcome weaknesses. Coming from Self energy naturally leads to more effective collaboration, both internally and externally. When the Self is in charge, all the parts are working at their best; every perspective matters.
The key is to develop the ability to acknowledge tensions as an opportunity for learning, growth and understanding which then unlocks curiosity and reflection.
So, I take care of myself to take care of you and I take care of you to take care of myself.
We are most effective, most efficient, most productive, and most helpful when we are in flow, which is synonymous with experiencing the Self in charge, when the Master and all his emissaries are working well together.
The practice basically consists of a few steps*:
develop and cultivate a more refined ability to differentiate the “Self in charge” energy from the parts hijacking the bus
Observe the karmic patterns - when are the hijacks likely to take place? What helps to resolve the hijacking?
Use these patterns as tools in ongoing experiments, putting them into practice in the real world - right here, today.
Reflect on how those experiments went to refine the tools and your skills in being able to apply them.
The beauty of experiments is that they are never a failure. Even when they don’t go as hoped, we still learn and grow. In this way, failure to practice is a useful, necessary and helpful form of practice. Even the occasional hijacking helps us discover new tools and refine existing ones - plus they give us a refresher in identifying flow and the lack thereof.
The big innovation is seeing the “world out there” and all the tensions it engenders as a reminder to reflect on your own inner and outer relationships. It’s all projection, so how can we learn from it?
In an odd way, the fact that the possessed are so provoked right now is a good sign. Ghandi said "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." I've lived thru decades of them ignoring us and laughing at us. Now, they want to fight. Soon, we're going to win.
Buckle up and stay safe. Don't let the bastards get you down. Protect your sanity at all costs by staying in contact with others who are working to maintain their sanity. Develop a habit of stopping and reflecting on what the mirror holds up for your attention. Be playful and run experiments.
* Of course, this isn’t a linear series of steps “once and done.” It’s more of a spiral process which, like any skill or art, we can refine over the course of a lifetime.