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My definitions and usage of various terms in the following essay (e.g. “waking up,” “leap-frogging,” “The Force”) are found in the initial essays in this blog collection. See the entries posted as Front Matter and Introduction, Waking Up and Leap-Frogging.


“Resist Not Evil”

The title of this essay is a quote from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” Mahatma Gandhi meant the same thing when he said, “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.” Both Jesus and Gandhi were drawing upon a very important principle of which leap froggers, and any people interested in working for change, should be aware. The purpose of this essay is to examine this principle and relate it to the leap frog option. But before doing so, we must be clear about what is meant by “evil.”
Definitions of “Evil”

Readers who have been through college courses in Western civ or humanities might be bracing themselves for a long philosophical disquisition, since the question of evil has occupied many philosophers over the ages. But have no fear! This will not be philosophical, although I will give a passing nod to Plato, whose definition of evil (as the absence of good) is one of the most succinct. Rather than getting into philosophy, I want to review some of the practical (hands-on, useful, applicable) definitions.

Standard dictionaries tell us that “evil” is that which is “morally bad, wrong, sinful or wicked,” that which “causes harm or injury,” that which is unfortunate. This is OK, as far as it goes, but it misses the richer meanings offered by comparative linguistics and etymology.

The ancients understood that “evil” has three aspects: mental (what we think of as “wrong” or “bad”), physical (what we experience in our bodies as causing pain, harm or suffering), and affective or emotional (what causes negative feelings or responses, in us or in others). In this multi-level definition, “evil” is not only wickedness but also ugliness: that which is disordered or chaotic. To the ancient Greek mind there was a close link between the beautiful and the good. The Greek term for “universe” was kosmos, i.e. “that which is ordered.” The heavens and earth were orderly, and this order was regarded as beautiful and good. The Greeks regarded anything that destroyed this orderliness and beauty as “evil.”

A few centuries after Plato and the heyday of classical Greece, when the authors of the New Testament were creating their Gospel accounts and epistles, they used three terms for “evil” that illustrate the richness of the Greeks’ thinking. The first, kakos, carries the meaning noted above: that which is bad is also that which is evil or wicked. The second, poneros, carries the affective meaning of “evil” as that which causes pain or suffering. The third word, used especially in the gospel of John and the epistles of John, James and Titus, is phaulos. This Greek word carries the mental connotation: “evil” as that which is stupid, foolish, unwise, or thoughtless. To the Greeks, always mindful of the intellect, the fool was more likely to commit evil than the wise man.

This is close to the modern psychological definition of evil, as developed by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. Jung felt the most intractable root of evil was unconsciousness, being unaware of one’s lack of self-awareness. Jung was familiar with St. Paul’s dictum that the root of all evil was the love of money, but Jung realized that loving money was itself more a symptom of a psychological disorder (lack of self-esteem or a basic lack of a sense of security or trust) than an originating cause. The lack of consciousness or insight into one’s personal “stuff” and how it affected daily living was what the Greek meant by phaulos. Ignorance, indifference, unconsciousness will cause suffering, harm, disorder—all forms of evil.

Beyond classical and New Testament sources, we can consider our own English language roots for further insights. What is the opposite of “evil?” Holy. The etymological root of “holy” is the Old English hal. This is also the root of our words “hale,” “health,” and “whole.” Speakers of Anglo-Saxon (the language that became the basis for modern English) felt that if you are whole (undivided, possessed of integrity) you are holy. Conversely, what is not whole, or not well is “dis-eased,” or evil. As causes of suffering, sickness could be regarded as a form of evil.

So, let’s recap. Evil is:
• what is morally bad or wrong (the refusal to be responsible for one’s shadow side)
• what causes harm, injury or suffering, that “which ought not to be,” the evil which is inflicted
• what is disordered, or destructive of natural orderliness
• what is foolish, ignorant or unknowing
• what is unconscious or perpetuates unconsciousness (e.g. insensitivity or lack of awareness)
• what destroys integrity, ruptures wholeness, or causes disease or pain, the evil which is undergone
These definitions give us a set of useful criteria for evaluating what is evil and what is good, without resorting to philosophical hair-splitting. We can now consider Jesus’ and Gandhi’s statements. We will do so on two levels.

Level I: The Level of Universal Law

The Greek writer who translated Jesus’ Aramaic into the phrase “resist not evil” used a Greek verb (antistanai) that means “to set oneself against.” Jesus urged his listeners not to set themselves against what causes suffering. In other words, what we find distressful we should not resist or oppose. Gandhi similarly spoke of our duty not to cooperate with evil. What were these two wisdom figures trying to tell us? Surely not to cave in to evil, or let it run over us.

Not at all. Both Jesus and Gandhi understood the wisdom in the universal law that says “what you resist, persists.” Another wording for this law is “Reality grows where attention goes.” That is, what you focus on, you get more of. If you focus on opposing something, you wind up actually getting more of it! Why? because your opposition sends energy to what you don’t want. The resistance you exert is a form of energy, and by focusing on the evil, you actually energize it.

Jesus was not calling on us to succumb passively or weakly to whatever comes along, but rather to focus on the good. Your ideals and values are important. You want to stand up for them. But don’t try to do so by setting yourself against what seems to violate or challenge what you want. Rather, put your focus on, and send your energy to the good, to what you want to see more of. Don’t waste time and energy being against things, but “turn the other cheek,” i.e. turn your attention in another direction, and reframe your thinking and actions so that you support and focus on the positive.

The key principle is this: Being against something will only bring you more of it. So change your thinking. Give up resisting or opposing the evil you don’t want. Focus on the reverse of the evil, i.e. on the positive you do want.

This is the first level interpretation. The second level draws upon psychological truth.
Level II: The Level of Psychological Truth

At this level, Jesus’ words call on us not to resist evil, in the form of repressing what causes suffering, lest we develop neuroses. Carl Jung recognized that neurosis is the result of our attempts (quite unconscious, of course) to avoid suffering. In the phenomenon known as “repression,” we grow up “stuffing” deep inside all the things that cause us pain. The more we do this, the more festering “stuff” we accumulate inside, and the more energy we have to expend in keeping it down in there. The more we resist/repress, the more we suffer. And suffering, as we noted above, is a form of evil.

What to do? Take Jesus’ words to heart: do not resist. Do not repress, but own up to the reality of your life. The Buddha recognized that suffering is endemic to life, because we all tend to repress “stuff” as we go through life. We can’t escape suffering, but repression only makes it worse. Everyone suffers. The only sane thing for us to do is to admit it to ourselves and deal consciously with our “stuff,” however it shows up in our personal history.

“Resist not evil” urges us not to repress our pain. But it does not encourage us to express it (which might, and very well may, cause pain for others). If we are not to repress, or express, what to do? Confess. Not necessarily in the formal sense of the Roman Catholic confessional: there are many forms that “confession” can take, e.g. working with a therapist or analyst; meeting with a member of the clergy; sharing with someone who is trustworthy, able to listen well and keep his/her own counsel. The key is to get the “stuff” out, to let go of the repressive effort.

And this means all of us, for none of us is free on this score. We all tend to repress our pain, to live with the misery that goes back to the experiences of our youth. We all succumb to the temptation to resist that which would cause us pain.

How This Relates to Waking Up and Leap Frogging

Perhaps the connection to waking up is obvious: A big part of the process of coming to consciousness is getting wise to the habit of “stuffing.” Waking up means coming face to face with our “stuff,” which means giving up the tendency to resist/repress what causes pain.

In the same way, when we wake up, our attitude toward disease and illness changes. In the Second Wave world, disease is regarded as “the enemy,” something to be fought with the full armamentarium of allopathic medicine marshaled to battle the invader (be it a bacterium, virus, cancer cell, etc.). People who are awake know better. They realize that any form of pain (transient or terminal, simple or complex) is a valuable message from the body for the benefit of the entire being. Any form of dis-ease is trying to tell us something, and the graver the illness, the more powerful and potentially life-transforming the message is likely to be.

And so our charge is not to do battle, but to listen, to go within, to harken to the “wisdom of the body,” and to open ourselves to the deep levels of transformation that we are being called to undertake. Rather than “resist” the “evil” of sickness, we must respond to the challenges and opportunities it is offering us to reorder our lives to be more in tune with our higher wisdom.

There is another way in which the principle “resist not evil” relates to waking up. A key element of waking up is becoming conscious of what we are manifesting in life. When we wake up, we start to recognize just what we are choosing to energize. For most of us, it comes as something of a surprise to realize that we are actually choosing to energize what comes to us. We tend to go through life on “automatic pilot,” and the realization that everything that appears in our reality we have chosen to bring to ourselves—this usually gives us pause. As we “wake up,” we begin to recognize the various ways we sabotage ourselves, draw to us things/persons/experiences that cause pain or dis-integration, of one form or another. For most of us, we find that it requires conscious effort to watch our thoughts, to change our beliefs and attitudes, and to reframe our actions so as to focus on the positive that we want to enjoy. (And for some of us, particularly those with low self-esteem, conscious effort must go into re-visioning our basic self-image, so that we feel worthy of having good things in our lives).

“Resist not evil” also relates to leap frogging, for leap-frogging seeks to change the world by trying the untried. Leap froggers are change agents. They have to understand change, know how to change and be able to work with the Universal Laws that relate to change, a key one of which is this: “Reality grows where attention goes.”

No effort in life really works well that tries to defy the Universal Laws. So leap froggers have to be “for” things rather than “against” things. All leap-frog activities have to focus on the good we want to see, rather than striving to fight what we don’t want to see. We must energize a positive reality and be driven by positive visions, not negatives. It is, therefore, not enough to know what you don’t want, or what you want to change. You must also know and hold in mind what you do want, the desirable, positive, beneficial reality that frees, releases and empowers you and others.

Here are some concrete examples:

 Fred was a prosperous businessman who was astonished to discover a depth of poverty in his community that he never realized had existed. Hundreds of people each year experienced hunger to the point of severe malnutrition and physical debility, in one of the world’s richest countries. Appalled at this state of affairs, Fred was determined to do everything he could to fight this poverty. He contacted a national organization called “End Poverty Now!” and rallied his business colleagues to form a branch of the organization in their region. They poured money into it, set up food banks and expended tremendous time, energy and personal resources into doing everything they could to fight poverty. Poverty became Fred’s obsession for several years. But, for all their efforts, the group never succeeded in eliminating poverty. Why? The Universal Law suggests that these well-intentioned folks were actually energizing the poverty they wanted to eliminate. Far better would it be to form a group focused on abundance and providing food for all. Putting the conscious focus on the positive—food, nutrition, nourishment, abundance—would energize what they wanted to bring about.

 Roxanne was a victim of domestic violence who managed to get out of a very bad marriage with the determination to help other women in similar circumstances. She heard about a group called SAFE (Stop Abuse and Female Exploitation) and for a while she worked with them. But nothing ever seemed to change. Over time, as Roxanne worked on herself and got wise to her “stuff,” she came to realize that there really are no “victims” in the world. She had drawn to herself just the right man to help her deal with her own issues, and her personal experiences of suffering, while not pleasant, could be viewed as a “gift” that helped her be more empathic and understanding of women in abusive relationships. But SAFE was not the way to go about dealing with this issue. Roxane got out of that organization and set up a very different group, focused on building strong families, providing loving homes for children, and empowering women to develop their full potential. Roxane came to realize the need to energize the positive: domestic harmony, families that work, and caring environments for children.

 Sally sought to end racism and sexism in her culture. She knew this was a huge challenge, given the many centuries of tradition that lay behind the way blacks and women were treated. Sally intuitively knew that the “same old, same old” ways would not work. She needed to try something new. A reperception was a basic necessity. Being against racism and sexism really meant that Sally wanted to foster an environment in which all people are valued and respected as precious and unique human beings. Therefore, the focus of Sally’s organization became equality, respect, diversity, and complementarity—all positives that are the flip side of the negatives associated with racism and sexism.

Conclusion

In Jesus’ sermon, the sentence immediately following “resist not evil” urges “turn the other cheek.” That is, Jesus suggests that we ignore what is not desirable, i.e. turn away. Don’t even look at it, for Jesus knew that the simple act of looking at evil sends it energy. So, when you come upon something that is morally wrong, causing suffering, creating disorder, or fostering disease, leave it be and set about the work of realizing a positive replacement. Energize what you want to manifest in its place. And, if all this seems inconsequential—that the simple act of re-perceiving is somehow too trivial—remember that “Mind is the builder,” so how you think about reality is the very important first step in changing it.

Some Questions for Reflection

As you read this essay, what was your reaction to the idea that we all have “stuff” that we have resisted/repressed? Can you identify some of the contents of your unconscious that have been repressed for years?

Have you ever participated in groups that were actively working against something? If so, can you reframe their goals to focus on the positive?

What values and ideals do you hold dear that might inform your leap-frogging activities? How might these manifest in concrete actions?

For Further Reading
Cousins, Norman (1979), Anatomy of an Illness. New York: W.W. Norton.
Jung, Carl (1954), “The Development of Personality,” Collected Works, 17. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1969), “Psychology and Religion: West and East,” Collected Works, 11, 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lammers, Ann Conrad (1994), In God’s Shadow: The Collaboration of Victor White and C.G. Jung. New York: Paulist Press.
Pelletier, Kenneth (1979), Holistic Medicine: From Stress to Optimum Health. New York: Delta/Seymour Lawrence.
Ponder, Catherine (1962), The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity. Marina del Rey CA: DeVorss & Co.
Ponder, Catherine (1966), The Dynamic Laws of Healing. Marina del Rey CA: DeVorss & Co.
Thurston, Mark (1996), The Great Teachings of Edgar Cayce. Virginia Beach: A.R.E. Press.

My definitions and usage of various terms in the following essay (e.g. “waking up,” “leap-frogging,” “The Force”) are found in the initial essays in this blog collection. See the entries posted as Front Matter and Introduction, Waking Up and Leap-Frogging.


Relinquishing the “Addiction to Perfection”

Western civilization is “addicted to perfection.” We are taught from childhood to drive ourselves, to “make our best better,” to compete in ever-more-competitive arenas, never to be satisfied, but to keep raising the bar or level of standard that we set for ourselves. We operate in the belief that perfection is desirable, if not actually possible.

Question this belief in the value of perfection as an ideal, and many Western (or Westernized) people will defend it as part of orthodox Christian dogma, citing the more than two dozen references to perfection in the New Testament. But what most people don’t realize is that Christian orthodoxy, and all the subsequent cultural developments related to it, are built on a fundamental mistranslation of the five Greek words used in the New Testament for “perfection.”

The Roots of Our Addiction to Perfection

The five Greek words are teleio, holokleros, katartizo, epiteleo, and pleroo. Teleio means “to complete, fulfill, finish, or bring an end to.” Holokleros is an adjective meaning “entire, complete, in all its parts,” compounded of two words meaning “whole” (holos) and “allotment” (kleris). Katartizo means “to furnish completely, to readjust, or put in order again.” Epiteleo is a compound verb based on teleo, meaning “to complete, finish or accomplish.” And pleroo means “to make complete or full; to fulfill.” These words occur repeatedly in statements made by Jesus, Paul, John, James, and Peter that urge us (in the orthodox version) to “be perfect,” “be made perfect,” “aim for perfection,” “attain perfection,” “present everyone perfect,” “make perfect those who draw near to worship,” “be righteous men made perfect,” and “be a perfect man.” The original Greek, however, had something quite different in mind.

The authors of the New Testament drew upon sources that were written by men thoroughly steeped in the Hebraic concepts of ancient Judaism. Jesus was familiar with these concepts, including that of shalom. Shalom is rich in meanings and impossible to render in a single English word. It is usually translated as “peace,” but “peace” in the sense of the peace of mind and spirit that comes from being in harmony with Creation, being in a state of wholeness or fulfillment. When Jesus urged people to be “perfect” (Greek teleioi), very likely he had the concept of shalom in mind. That is, he was really urging them to live, work and strive toward the peace that comes from completeness or wholeness—not a private or shallow wholeness, but a wholeness that “ensouls the world.” Jesus was calling people to fulfillment in the fullness of their humanity, to focus on achieving the glorious end appointed to all persons by virtue of their humanity. Jesus recognized what a wonderful blessing it is to be incarnated in a human body, to enjoy life in materiality, to absorb the lessons that are possible for a soul to learn only while on the physical plane. He also knew each of us has a unique set of talents and a particular destiny—that special purpose, work or service that we are meant to fulfill.

This is the true meaning of teleios. If we want to reach our goal, to complete our life’s mission, to know the peace of shalom, the satisfaction of fulfillment, we must give up money-grubbing, let go of grasping and selfishness, and follow Jesus’s example. This has nothing to do with perfection, and everything to do with realizing our divinely-appointed destiny.

When Paul urged the people of Corinth to “aim for perfection,” the verb he used (katartizo) meant “to work to become complete, healed, mended or restored.” Likewise, with James, John and the author of Hebrews. They exhort us to become whole, integrated, healed, fully accomplished in the development of our divine gifts. The goal of life, in other words, is to reach our appointed end, much as an acorn realizes its destiny in growing into a glorious oak tree.

So what happened? How did the original meaning get lost? Students of this issue target the patriarchal bias of “spirit-based” religion, which focuses on the disembodied spirit, and plays down the soul and the physical plane. The spirit world is ungrounded, out of touch with physical life. As the product of mentation, the spirit lives in abstractions, focused on ideals. In the rarefied world of spirit, perfection is one attribute of the Divine, one of the Platonic ideals.

In the several centuries after Jesus’s death, as the New Testament canon was developed, neo-Platonic influences crept into Christianity, showing up most clearly in the interpretation of the five terms noted above. Rather than the original focus on shalom, wholeness or completion, realizing one’s innate human powers, the focus shifted to the unrealizable ideal of perfectability.

By this point, you might find yourself saying, “OK. That’s all very interesting, but why does it matter to me? What does it have to do with waking up and the leap frog option?” Here’s the connection.

Why This Matters to Those Waking Up and Leap Frogging

The whole issue of perfectionism is crucial to the leap frog and wake up processes for many reasons. First is the fact that the quest for perfection is a hopeless endeavor, which is why it becomes an addiction. Trying to be perfect is a foolproof strategy to foster guilt, shame, self-hatred and a sense of personal inadequacy. In our patriarchal culture, the notion of perfection as the goal or standard served church leaders well, in terms of keeping control over people, because it encourages feelings of powerlessness and despair. It also breeds fear and anxiety, because of the evaluation and judgment that perfectionism implies.

Another reason why leap froggers and people waking up need to avoid perfectionism is that it blocks play. Although the puritanical elements in the Christian hierarchy will never admit it, we human beings are meant to be playful. This is what Jesus meant when he spoke of the need to become like children. When we have a child-like (not childish!) engagement with the world, we can relax, play, and respond to reality with awe and wonder. We become creative. Perfectionism kills creativity. Those who wish to support the leap frog option must play with The Force as much as, or more than, they pray to The Force. In our playful activities our true prayer emerges.

A third reason why perfectionism is antithetical to leap frogging and waking up is that perfectionism warps our imagination. One of our most important human abilities is imagination. Western culture, of course, denigrates this gift (think how many times you have heard, or been told, “Oh, that’s only your imagination!”). But our ability to make images, to identify with others, to see ourselves in situations different from the physical reality immediately before us, to cast ourselves into the future and create powerful, attractive visions of what might be—this human power is central to our creativity and to making a better world. And this is what leap frogging is all about.

A fourth reason to avoid perfectionism is that it blunts compassion. It does this indirectly, by first inducing sadomasochism, a self-hatred that then turns outward to become callousness toward others. “Compassion” literally means “a suffering with.” Perfectionism fosters the tendency to avoid all forms of suffering, making it impossible for us to engage with or get into our own suffering. Perfectionism likes to live in the spirit world, the world of the head, the realm of cold logic and neat theory. There is nothing theoretical about compassion and suffering (as the Greek word for compassion--splagchnizomai--lit. “to turn one’s bowels over”—attests). In its very nature compassion is not about perfection. It pulls us into our physicality, to be aware of our own imperfection. When we focus on being perfect, we cannot be compassionate.

As part of our human “shadow,” perfectionism also leads to all sorts of ego issues, because it splits off the shadow. Either it fosters egotism (thinking we are better than others) or it turns into the flip side of egotism, i.e. feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. But the reality is that we all are in the cosmic soup together, all of us struggling with our shadow side, all of us basically equal as we try to play the game of life as best we can. Perfectionism hinders our recognizing our basic equality.

Leap frogging and waking up are all about becoming aware of the beliefs, assumptions, and societal systems that have kept us down, encouraged negative self-images, and fostered feelings of powerlessness. As we wake up, we adopt new ways of thinking, with new standards and new understandings. Prime among these is the understanding of who we are and where we are bound, as human beings on the journey we call “life.”

As human beings, each of us is blessed with many gifts. We are also:
• unique in our set of gifts and talents (no one else has the exact combination we have)
• unique in our purpose and mission in life
• precious in the special role and function we are here to perform
• guided in the lessons we are here to learn
• equipped with the full range of abilities and resources to achieve the goals we took upon ourselves before we incarnated
• and meant to realize our being in all its fullness
“There is a part of every living thing that wants to become itself.” This is what teleios means: not that we should seek to be perfect, but that we should strive to attain shalom, or fulfillment, to reach the goal or completion of the unique life journey we chose to undertake. We consciously allow ourselves “to be less in order to be more—less nearly perfect, but more nearly whole.”

Perfectionism also blocks change. As paradoxical as it may seem, we transform our weaknesses only when we fully and joyfully accept them in ourselves. The more we live in denial or try to escape from imperfection, the more we stay stuck with it.

Waking up has many components. Some of these are part of the process of fulfilling our being. For example, when we wake up, we discover our gifts. This includes coming to understand and appreciate how what may seem like liabilities or handicaps may actually be of great benefit. When we wake up, we come to recognize our uniqueness—how we are different from anyone else on earth, and that this is not only OK, but wonderful (and this recognition frees us from any tendency to envy or copy others, or to look to others to validate our actions or identity). When we wake up, we identify our mission in life, why we were born in the time, place and circumstance we chose, what this life is about for us, and how we are meant to serve others. When we wake up, we appreciate how precious each person is in the microcosm (daily life) and macrocosm (the wider scheme of global reality). When we wake up, we start getting wise to what the lessons are that we are meant to learn, and then we set to work with conscious intention on learning them. When we wake up, we develop our abilities and become aware of the many forms that our “resources” can take (which are much more varied than just “money”). As we widen our sense of “resources,” we come to appreciate just how loving and supportive The Force is.

The addiction to perfection sidetracks these activities. It works to keep us asleep. And therefore it is something we must consciously recognize and work to avoid.

Some Questions for Reflection

Am I addicted to perfection? In my work, do I find myself constantly “raising the bar” or standard I demand of myself or others?

Am I able to be easy on myself, to relax and play, to let go and allow the world to be, just as it is, without feelings of discontent, or attitudes of judgment?

Have I gotten down into my own “stuff” sufficiently to know the meaning of suffering? Am I able to identify with others who suffer?

Do I find that I play “one-up-manship” in my interactions with others, comparing myself to other people, or am I able to relate to others as peers?

Do I envy others or have feelings of jealousy for what others have or are?

Did my childhood encourage me to perfectionism: Did I grow up with criticism and evaluation? Was there strong sibling rivalry that left me feeling compared to others? What is my sense of self-image?

As I allow myself space, time and patience to hear my intuitive voice of wisdom, how am I guided to respond to the ideas of this essay?

For Further Reading

Anderson, Sherry & Patricia Hopkins (1991), The Feminine Face of God: The Unfolding of the Sacred in Women. New York: Bantam.

Edinger, Edward (1985), Anatomy of the Psyche. Chicago & LaSalle IL: Open Court Press.

Fox, Matthew (1983), Original Blessing. Santa Fe: Bear & Co.
Hammer, Paul (1976), The Gift of Shalom. Philadelphia: United Church Press.

Jung, C.G. (1959), “Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self,” Collected Works, 9ii. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Lammers, Ann Conrad (1994), In God’s Shadow: The Collaboration of Victor White and C.G. Jung. New York: Paulist Press.

Moore, Thomas (1992), Care of the Soul. New York: HarperCollins.

Woodman, Marion (1982), The Addiction to Perfection. Toronto: Inner City Books.

My definitions and usage of various terms in the following essay (e.g. “waking up,” “leap-frogging,” “The Force”) are found in the initial essays in this blog collection. See the entries posted as Front Matter and Introduction, Waking Up and Leap-Frogging.


“In the Grip of the Daimon”

The title of this essay is a direct quote from Carl Jung, as he described his own life in Memories, Dreams and Reflections. He used the phrase as partial explanation of his life’s work: He lived, wrote and developed analytical psychology as a consequence of being “in the grip of the daimon” that lived within him. What did he mean? To understand this, we need to define the term “daimon.” Then I will relate the concept to the themes of waking up and leap frogging.
Definitions of “Daimon”
The word “daimon” is Greek, deriving from , “to divide or distribute destinies.” The “daimon” is the energy or being in the Universe that gives us our fate or allots human destiny, i.e. a god/goddess. The Romans took up the term, which became the source of our English derivative, “demon.” But note that, in the original meaning, and the sense in which Jung used it, “daimon” is not the negative thing we associate with “demons.”
Being well versed in the classics, Jung brought many ancient concepts into modern usage in psychology, to foster our understanding of the workings of the unconscious. The “daimon” became a central part of his thinking about vocation, motivation, creativity and the individual’s potential for achieving fulfillment in life.
As Jung used the term, “daimon” referred to something alien from the unconscious, an “archetype” or “numinous imperative which from ancient times has been accorded a far higher authority than the human intellect.” As an archetype, the “daimon” is universal, something experienced in all peoples and cultures. Among indigenous tribes, it shows up as a “primitive power concept.” As “an autonomous psychic content,” the daimon is a “force as real as hunger and the fear of death.” Because it is autonomous, it behaves within us like a god, making demands of us and acting with authority. The poet and potter M.C. Richards describes the experience of the daimon well when she says, “There lives a creative being inside all of us and we must get out of its way for it will give us no peace unless we do." Beside Jung, multiple figures in history have acknowledged being in the grip of a daimon, e.g. the Greek philosopher Socrates, the German poet Goethe, and the French ruler Napoleon.
When we say the daimon is “autonomous,” we mean that it is not under the control of the ego consciousness. It is superior to our ordinary consciousness, and can possess us without our conscious awareness. Its expression cannot be consciously willed, and the more our unconscious is split off from consciousness, the larger and more powerful the daimon is.
The daimon shows up in life as certain feeling states, with a “release of affect.” That is, we feel something, usually something powerful, something with numinosity—an energy that cannot be gainsaid. It can seem like we are being taken over, because the level of intensity and energy exceeds normal human limits. When we are in its “grip,” the daimon will make us feel like we are caught up in a force or process that is carrying us along. And so, it requires courage to deal with, because we don’t fully understand this force, or know where we are being carried, or what we are being led to undertake. Nor do we often recognize this force as something that is our own.
In its workings, the daimon tends to be compensatory, i.e. it functions as a countervailing force relative to our conscious mood of the moment. If we are “up,” the daimon will be “down.” If we are in the doldrums, the daimon will be energetic and upbeat. The daimon, in other words, holds the “tension of opposites,” with its good and bad aspects.
Let’s consider the bad aspects first. The negative side of the daimon explains the English derivation “demon:” that within us that forces us to impose suffering on ourselves. “The Devil made me do it!,” we say. “Devil,” “seducer,” “tempter,” “evil spirit”—all are terms for the negative side of the daimon, which will drive us into untrodden regions and create conflicts between our outer life and inner demands. When the daimon shows up, it often seems unwelcome and intrusive, a source of discomfort, something to be endured. If we could, we would ignore it, but it is ineluctable, i.e., it is that which must be obeyed.
In its benign aspect, the daimon is our “guardian angel” or “genius,” our better self or inner voice, our heart or “higher man”—the part of us that helps build our strength by leading us into challenging situations and giving us the guidance to get through them. The daimon fosters a dialogue between ego and unconsciousness which can heal us and make us whole. By challenging the whole of our being, the daimon forces us to enter the fray of life with every function or ability we have, and this fosters our wholeness. It is the contact with our daimon that gives us a clear sense of our vocation. Jung also noted the close connection between the daimon and creativity: “The fight against the paralyzing grip of the unconscious calls forth man’s creative powers.” Finally, and most relevant to the leap frog option, the daimon pulls us out of conventions and social norms, because it operates in the archetypal (universal, timeless) realm. Which brings us to the question: how does all this relate to the themes of waking up and leap frogging?
The Daimon and Waking Up
One of the activities that is central to “waking up” is the process of transforming the daimon from an “uncontrolled force of nature into a power that is yours to command,” as Jung put it. Part of becoming “awake” is getting wise to what is going on inside. When we start to look within, we discover our “inner city,” that host of energies that lives within us. Some of them, like the daimon, are autonomous, possessed of an energy that transcends our conscious drives, needs and desires, beyond what our ego can control or direct. With time, conscious effort and attention, we can get to know the daimon, come to feel more kindly disposed towards it, and thus draw upon its benefits.
The daimon will provoke inner conflicts. These foster a dialogue between the ego (who would like to think that it is running our show) and the unconscious. This ongoing inner conversation (assuming it goes on long enough) will help us become more self-aware and conscious of our unconscious “stuff.”
Part of “waking up” is becoming more whole. The daimon plays a central role in fostering wholeness, because it carries the compensatory function noted above. In challenging the totality of our being, the daimon requires a response from all the parts of ourselves, and this helps us discover what these parts are. The compensatory nature of the daimon also introduces us to the principle of the “enantiodromia,” which Jung took over from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. “Enantiodromia” means a “running to the opposites.” It is the psychological equivalent of Newton’s law of motion: For every orientation in consciousness, there is an equal, but opposite orientation in unconsciousness. As we become more familiar with this principle, we come to appreciate the wide diversity in the human race (because we are aware of just how many competing, vastly different energies we have within us). This helps to enlarge both our sense of ourselves and of reality. We come to appreciate that nothing in life is purely good or purely bad, but reality (and people) contain both.
One of the most important roles the daimon plays in “waking up” lies in its function as a goad to the work of taking back projections. As long as we are asleep, we tend to project the daimon out on to others. The negative form we hang on our enemies or people (and groups) we don’t like. The positive form we stick on authority figures, like parents, priests, teachers, etc. As long as we do this, we demonize others, fail to see our own inner demons, and live like children, giving away our power to others. Becoming psychologically mature, autonomous adults requires taking back these projections, internalizing the daimon, and coming to live in conscious relation to it.
A sixth way the daimon is central to “waking up” is in its gift of forcing us to impose suffering on ourselves. “Some gift!,” you say. Yes. It is a gift, because the process of conscious suffering helps us to build our capacity for compassion. The Buddhists call this the bodhichitta, the “enlightened mind” or “compassionate heart.” Wrestling with the daimon is an ego-crucifying experience, but one that builds our compassionate heart. We suffer, and in this process, we are gifted with the capacity to relate to others with caring and a level of love that is born only out of personal experience of loss and grief. As our inner wisdom or voice of guidance, the daimon will be a valuable guide as we stay on the journey that is the “wake up” process. Eventually, we all come to live more willingly or intentionally in its “grip,” appreciating the truth that we are not in control here. There is a higher, wiser force in charge, directing our lives.
A final way in which the daimon relates to the “wake up” process is in its ineluctability. The daimon cannot be denied. Thus it forces us to become more self-confident (because we can’t turn to others for approval or sanction: we have to obey our inner voice). Over time, as we get to know the daimon’s beneficence and reliability, we come to “authorize our own lives.” This self-authorization is crucial to choosing the leap frog option, as we shall see next.
The Daimon and Leap Frogging
There are four ways the daimon encourages the leap frog option. The first was noted earlier: It pulls us out of conventions and social norms. Because it is archetypal, the daimon exists outside of time and cultural contexts. It doesn’t follow fads or fashions, or feel any need to measure up to social niceties and expectations. When we heed the daimonic voice, we “do our own thing,” and over time this builds an independence of mind and spirit that is essential for anyone who would choose the leap frog option.
Leap froggers refuse to accept “conventional” wisdom, the traditional ways, the argument that says, “But, we’ve always done it this way!” Leap froggers come at reality with vision, a belief or intuitive sense that things could be better, that there must be a better way. These visions, beliefs and intuitions come from the daimon.
Leap froggers also have courage. They have the gumption to stand against the crowd, to march to their own drummers. This courage can develop from long-term wrestling with the daimon.
Another way the daimon fosters leap frogging is via its role as creative spark or goad. When a person is “in the grip of the daimon,” he or she is in close touch with the source of creativity. While the experience cannot be described as completely pleasant, it is exciting, illuminating, full of surprises and very gratifying, if one is open to the novel, the different, the unusual. The daimon will not bring us the “same old, same old.” Be prepared for surprises! Artists, the creative folks in advertising agencies, inventors, and others whose work depends on inspiration all rely on the daimon for their success. Leap froggers, too, need the daimon, because the essence of leap frogging is trying what has been untried.
A third way that leap frogging relies on the daimon is for its guidance about vocation. Those who undertake the leap frog option do so not just to fill some perceived need, or to make an improvement in society. They do it to fulfill their calling. Second Wave society doesn’t do much to support the notion of personal calling or destiny, that each of us has a special, unique role to play on this earth. All of us come into the physical plane with a responsibility to be “God’s love with arms on it,” manifesting in a form or way that will be different for every individual. Genuine happiness lies in discovering and then living out this destiny. How do we discover what our destiny is? By working with our daimon, submitting to it and obeying its guidance. As we do so, many of us are led into leap frog activities—ways of thinking, living and working that challenge the old ways and break new ground.
And newness is the final way the daimon relates to leap frogging. The wisdom literature is full of references to the process of divine renovation:
“… new things I declare;
before they spring into being
I announce them to you.”
“See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”
“From now on I will tell you of new things,
of hidden things unknown to you.”
“The Lord will create a new thing on earth--…”
“Behold, I am making everything new!”
How does The Force declare new things, do new things, tell of new things, create new things? Through the daimon active in each of us.
The Divine lives and loves through us. As we become aware of the daimon, develop a conscious relation to it, and are willing to live in its “grip,” we become more effective and powerful agents of the divine intention on earth. The leap frog option is part of the process of divine novelty. As we are willing to live and work “in the grip of the daimon,” we foster the leap frog option.
Some Questions for Reflection
Do I recognize, value and give support to my creative impulses?
How do I define “creativity”? Do I recognize the myriad ways in which I am creative, or do I succumb to the Second Wave tendency to define creativity too narrowly (e.g. as the “high” or “fine” arts)?
Do I have a conscious relationship with my daimon? If not, is this something that I would like to develop, or does it all seem a bit scary? a lot scary??
How do I feel about what I have read in this essay? Does the idea of an inner voice that would guide my life seem bizarre, or a confirmation of what I have already experienced?

For Further Reading
Fox, Matthew (1988), The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Fischer-Schreiber, Ingrid et al. (1991), The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen., trans. Michael Kohn. Boston: Shambhala.
Carl Jung has written extensively on the concept of the daimon. Among his Collected Works (CW), see the following:
Jung (1970), “Civilization in Transition,” CW 10
Jung (1954), “The Development of Personality,” CW 17
Jung (1953), “Psychology and Alchemy,” CW 12
Jung (1969), “Psychology and Religion: West and East,” CW 11
Jung (1956), “Symbols of Transformation,” CW 5
Jung (1966), “Two Essays on the Psychology of the Unconscious,” CW 7.
The English translation of Jung has been published by Princeton University Press.
Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, is also a good source for insights into how Jung himself lived out what he wrote about the daimon. See especially pages 336-356, in the Viking (1965) paperback edition.

My definitions and usage of various terms in the following essay (e.g. “waking up,” “leap-frogging,” “The Force”) are found in the initial essays in this blog collection. See the entries posted as Front Matter and Introduction, Waking Up and Leap-Frogging.


Time, Space and Patience

The process of waking up involves many things, but none so centrally as the three essentials of time, space and patience. The great American prophet and healer, Edgar Cayce, regarded these three as “fundamental measurements of a soul’s experience in the physical world,” absolutely central in the life of any person who is in the process of waking up. Why is this so? To understand the emphasis Cayce put on these three features of life, we need to clarify the meaning of each, and then examine their role in the process of waking up.
Time
The English language is very rich in its meanings for the word “time:” There are at least 20 different dictionary definitions or usages for this simple word, from “a defined interval” to “a unit of meter in prosody.” This suggests just how much English is focused on temporal concerns, unlike, say, the Hopi, who have no tenses in their languages, and little concern for measuring, dividing, allotting, buying, or killing time.
How very different the Second Wave world is from that of the Hopi! Not only do we reify time, i.e. turn it into something quantifiable, dividable, and concrete, we equate it with money, and set it as the gold standard for business performance in the new idiom “24/7 365,” meaning operations that never close or take holidays. To the Western mind, and especially the New York mind, time is life’s tyrant, forcing us to go faster, faster in the mindless rush born of “hurry sickness,” in pursuit of deadlines that get shorter and more and more unrealistic. If we want something, we don’t want it now: We want it yesterday! And whole industries have arisen to satisfy that lust for speed, e.g. FedEx, DHL, the Internet and scanners, e-signatures, etc.. In this mind-set, time is something to be conquered, as the omnipresent enemy.
Ironically, all this is occurring just as modern science--both physics and medical science--is discovering what ancient peoples like the Hopi and the perennial wisdom have always known: Time is a mental construct, a “root assumption” of our Western culture, without a reality outside of our experience. Einstein showed that time is relative, something we experience in contexts that can make it seem longer (sitting on the hot stove) or shorter (relaxing in the easy chair on the beach in summer). Time is a construct of our own making. At the same time, it is something precious, as our word for the immediate moment—“present”—indicates.
The Indo-European languages all share a mental schema that tenses reality into past, present and future. Few speakers of English ever really think about the labels we put on these divisions of time: “past” comes from the Latin word for step or pace, suggesting the duration or interval it has taken to move across some terrain. “Future” also has Roman roots, from a participle meaning that which is about to be. And “present,” in its Latin origins meant that which is beside us.
People who are awake appreciate the dual meaning of “present.” It is not only the NOW moment—our point of power—but also a true “present,” or gift from the Universe. In the Second Wave world, very few people live out the truth of this fact. Rather, we live out in the future, making all sorts of plans for how things should be, or worrying about what might happen. Or we live in the past, with recriminations, guilt, shame, remorse and mental anguish full of “if onlys…”. In neither place, past or future, do we have any of the power that is innately ours as human beings. To claim that power, we need to come back into the body—that is, get out of the mental realm where we go when we flee into the future or past--and be here now.
When we return to embodiment, to experience the flow of life in our physical being through our senses, we are in a inner place where we can appreciate time as the cyclical flow it is. The ancient Chinese appreciated time: The Chinese word for “busy” is composed of two ideograms for “heart” and “killing.” When we rush around in our busy-ness, we are literally killing our hearts!
To wake up we must be in the NOW, consciously cherishing time by slowing down, taking ourselves out of the rat race, and giving ourselves free moments of time. Time to relax, to reflect, to be with ourselves inwardly. Time to be fully present to family and friends. Time to “sit in one another’s stillness” and wait together on each other’s growth. Time to play. Time to live in balance, resisting the pressures toward workaholism that are so pervasive in the Second Wave world. Time to live at the soul’s pace. Time to spot all the moments of grace that fill our lives and to savor the epiphanies that The Force offers daily. Time to “waste” time, since “wasted” time is “usually good soul time”. Time to walk, rather than drive. Walking takes on the motion of the soul, according to Plotinus. By walking, we give ourselves more time to commune with our soul. By slowing down, we allow ourselves to enjoy all the good stuff in life.
We are living through the process of a “timeshift” now, when time as we know it is being bent, folded, spindled, mutilated, compressed, condensed, and subject to all manner of deformation as the mad pressures of Second Wave reality try to obliterate it. The only sane response, in such a situation, is to return to the wisdom of our bodies and souls, by consciously choosing to cherish time as one of the key essentials we have to support our inner work.
Space
The second essential that Edgar Cayce regarded as a requirement for coming to consciousness is space. Like time, space has many dictionary meanings: area, expanse, distance between points. These meanings tend to come with qualifiers, e.g. unlimited, as in outer space, limited, as in a parking space, or reserved, as on a train or plane, but what they all have in common is the basic sense of extension, which goes back to the root of the Latin word, spatium, that is the basis of the concept. The Indo-European root spa- denotes a stretching or drawing. So space represents something drawn out or extended.
With its tendency toward concreteness, English usually treats space as a thing—something that can be measured, divided, touched, etc. But remember the basic root, and the figurative sense it implies. Edgar Cayce, when he thought of space as an essential for the process of waking up, used it more in its psychological sense, similar to the Tibetan concept of space as “that which makes movement possible.”
In this sense, space is what we need to feel comfortable. It is more than just the “elbow room” that has been studied by psychologists and cultural anthropologists in different societies, which reveal that Americans, for example, feel the need for a lot more space around them than do the Japanese. Below these various cultural differences, there is a basic sense of space that we all need as human beings.
We can see this in the very oldest roots of our language. The Indo-European angh means “to constrict,” and it is the basis for German’s angst and English’s “anxiety,” “anger” and “angina.” When we lack adequate room in our heads, it shows up in psychological ways, in anxiety, tension, psychic distress, and a host of physiological reactions, e.g. rise in blood pressure, heightened levels of cortisols etc.
When Cayce urged people to give themselves space, he was aware of our need for more inward spaciousness. We need to live with a self-concept and philosophy of life that allows us room to grow, to change, to develop, expand and be well grounded. For most people, providing inward spaciousness will require conscious effort: We have grown up in families and environments that forced us to give up parts of ourselves, to live up to societal expectations that betrayed our true being, e.g. the artist forced to become an engineer because doing art was not “manly;” the woman forced to give up a love of athletics, because football was not what a woman “should” try to do. In extreme cases, people are forced to live in their heads, losing their groundedness in their bodies and physical space. More and more, people around the world are now questioning the strictures that box us into narrow roles and activities. As we take this questioning deeper, to begin to change our behaviors and lifestyles, we are opening up our lives and giving ourselves the space we need to be grounded and become more fully who we really are.
This is not an instantaneous process although some of the insights it involves happen in a flash. It will require time, and thus is closely related to the other two of Cayce’s key essentials. Only as we slow down, relax, and consciously commit time to inner work and reflection will we be able to expand the space in our lives.
This process can be fostered by the arts—by the creative endeavors that open us to laughter, tears, fun and wonderment at who and how and why we are. These “arts” are not the “high arts” of the Western canon, for which people have to train for years and years--although high art can perform this function too--but any creative activity that so absorbs our being that we get into “the flow,” that amazing realm that exists outside of time. Any good art creates space in our lives.
The issue of space seems particularly relevant to the wake up process these days, because increasing numbers of people now choose to live behind high walls, razor wire, locked gates and other forms of security designed to keep people out. This prompts the question what impact all the walls might have on our sense of space, and our ability to provide more spaciousness in our lives, both physically and mentally. With so much of the physical terrain highly defended, would our psyches then also be highly defended against external energies?
Patience
Inner work requires more than time and space. We also need patience, the willingness to put up with waiting. And more than just waiting: waiting with effort and suffering, without loss of self-control. Patience was stressed over and over in the thousands of Edgar Cayce readings, which make clear that, for most of us, the learning of patience is one of the major themes or purposes for our being on the physical plane.
Cayce put a premium on patience, because, of the three essentials, patience is the most difficult, and the least enjoyable. In its eytmology, “patience” reveals the suffering that is inextricably a part of the process: the Latin patior means “to suffer.” We are “patient” only in the context of some discomfort or unpleasantness. It’s something we’d like to avoid.
Yet only the endurance and consistency that are part of patience make possible the growth in consciousness that is the essence of waking up. Only when we are patient can we come to understand the meaning of the events in our lives. Patience will bring us back to the NOW moment, allowing us to act out of our power rather than our weakness. Patience fosters our paying attention to what is really going on around us. Patience supports hope, giving us a sense that the future is open and potentials can be realized. Patience supports our self-awareness, because it is only insofar as we can endure suffering that we can come to know ourselves as we really are, rather than the ego delusions that lead us to think we know ourselves. Patience is also the virtue that brings our higher guidance (i.e. our intuitions) to fruition. Joined with time, patience fosters the development of trust, and trust is a core component of waking up.
When we are patient we are willing to live and wait with some measure of discomfort, holding the tension between our desire to grow and our desire for comfort. This is not easy, and our modern Second Wave world gives very little support for such work. It lives at a breakneck pace that does violence to both body and soul. Our world misuses and misconceives time, fails to recognize the nature and value of space, and dismisses or denigrates patience. Living under tight deadlines, in lives full of anxiety and narrowed horizons, driven by the “hurry sickness,” Western people have great difficulty in waking up. Edgar Cayce offered the image of a three-legged stool for getting out of the sickness that is contemporary Western life: time, space and patience.
Waking Up in the Context of Time, Space and Patience
If you are interested in using Cayce’s insights to foster waking up, reflect on questions like these in your meditations:
What are my priorities in life? Do I live these out in the work I do, in my interactions with my friends and family, in my personal devotions?
How do I use time? On what things am I spending my time each day? How do these things reflect my values or do these things reflect my values? Am I living out what I believe in?
Are the things I am living out daily serving my spirit? my growth?
Do I give myself sufficient space, or is my life filled with stressors or unquestioned assumptions I inherited from my past (family, teachers, etc.)?
Do I live behind high walls or other forms of exclusionary devices? If so, is it because I’m afraid of what’s out there? How might this fear be impacting my inner life, perhaps closing me off from valuable energies that might enrich my life?
How might I create more spaciousness in my life?
Do I find it hard to wait, to be patient, in daily life, e.g. on lines, in traffic, in dealings with other people?
Am I willing to change, to alter my responses to life events, so as to give myself more time, space and patience?
After you have reflected on these issues, if you come to any insights, take them to the next step: Integrate them within you, and then pay attention to what happens. As they manifest in outer reality, your life will begin to change.
You might also want to try creating and living by a “time budget.” This is set up like a financial budget, with categories like the following: time to work, time to play (mental and physical recreation), time to grow (doing activities that foster your mental and physical abilities), time to eat, time to rest (e.g. sleep—most adults in the Western world are chronically sleep-deprived), time for social activities, and time for spirit-nurturing activities (e.g. meditation, prayer, devotional practice etc.). Such a budget is especially helpful for those who find it hard to live in a balanced way, because it assures that no aspect of life is overlooked or ignored (that is, if you commit to living within the budget you set up). If this is something you want to try, discuss it with family and friends, for their support will be crucial as you live within the budget.

For Further Reading
Brussat, Frederic & Mary Ann (1996), Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life. New York: Scribner.
Dossey, Larry (1982), Space, Time and Medicine. Boston: Shambhala.
Friedman, Norman (1994), Bridging Science and Spirit: Common Elements in David Bohm’s Physics, The Perennial Philosophy and Seth. St. Louis: Living Lake Books.
Gunn, Robert Jingen (2000), Journeys into Emptiness: Dogen, Merton, Jung and the Quest for Transformation. New York: Paulist Press.
Hollis, James (1994), Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men. Toronto: Inner City Books.
Katz, Nathan (1991), “Dakini and Anima—On Tantric Deities and Jungian Archetypes,” Self and Liberation: The Jung-Buddhism Dialogue, eds, Meckel and Moore. New York: Paulist Press.
Roberts, Jane (1974), The Nature of Personal Reality. New York: Bantam Books.
Streng, Frederick (1992), “Mechanisms of Self-Deception and True Awareness,” Self and Liberation: The Jung-Buddhism Dialogue, eds. Meckel and Moore. New York: Paulist Press.
Thurston, Mark (1996), The Great Teachings of Edgar Cayce. Virginia Beach: A.R.E. Press.

My definitions and usage of various terms in the following essay (e.g. “waking up,” “leap-frogging,” “The Force”) are found in the initial essays in this blog collection. See the entries posted as Front Matter and Introduction, Waking Up and Leap-Frogging.


The Faces of Denial

A woman is involved with a man her friends don’t like. When they notice bruises and welts on her arms and face, they ask her what is going on. She replies, “Nothing. Everything’s fine.” Denial.
A child makes it clear she does not want to go away to summer camp. Her mother replies, “It’s for your own good, dear.” Denial.
A teenage boy recounts the circumstances of the motorcycle accident that left him a paraplegic in a monotone voice, as if he were talking about the weather. Denial.
A devout churchgoer speaks up frequently criticizing the immorality and sinfulness of the “heathen” in our society, smugly confident of her moral superiority. Denial.
Five highly educated New Yorkers were riding in a car at night on Long Island in 1998. Four of them saw a huge spaceship or UFO above the car, lingering for 15 to 20 minutes. The fifth man (an M.D.) reported seeing nothing at all. Denial.
The organizer of an international conference worked long and hard to get a famous speaker to give the keynote address. When the celebrity faxed a refusal, the fax somehow mysteriously disappeared, and the conference organizer forgot completely about the disappoint it contained, so all the PR materials later had to be corrected and reprinted. Denial.
The pajamas were blood-stained, and the little girl’s sheets were semen-stained, but she always insisted on holding Daddy’s hand when the family went out for a walk. Denial.
A woman takes up with one man after another, all of whom turn out, over time, to be “losers.” She finally concludes “There are no good men out there.” Denial.
Harriet is a “pillar” of the local church, always active, always to be counted on when anything needs to be done, never idle for a moment, the first to volunteer for any chore or help someone in need. No one can remember a time when Harriet had a need, when someone helped her. When asked about this, Harriet assured her questioner that she was happily self-sufficient. Denial.
A marriage counselor was consulted by a couple having marital difficulties. The counselor interviewed each member of the family individually. He had the 8-year-old daughter draw pictures of her favorite dessert, a scene, things that meant a lot to her. She drew a banana split, a tree trunk being cut in half, and a road coming to a Y-shaped intersection. When he asked the little girl whether her family was happy, she replied, “Oh, yes, very.” Denial.
In the days before chemical anesthesia, the British physician James Esdaile, while stationed in India, discovered that hypnosis could be used to anesthetize patients for surgery. At the time in Europe 95% of surgery patients died from the pain of the operation. Esdaile’s hypnotized patients reported feeling no pain, and 95% of them survived their operations. When Esdaile returned to London, he put on a demonstration of surgery under hypnosis for his colleagues at the British College of Physicians and Surgeons, amputating a gangrenous leg while the patient lay smiling. The doctors watched and then declared that Esdaile was fooling them, having hired a rogue to lie there and pretend to feel no pain. Denial.
Dean Ornish (the developer of a non-fat diet system for reversing heart disease) and Robert Atkins (the developer of a widely-used non-carbohydrate diet) had a discussion recently, sponsored by Natural Health magazine. Atkins said that he has gotten reports from 60,000 patients reporting success with his diet. Ornish replied that these results were merely “anecdotal” and meant nothing, because no controlled studies were done to back them up. Denial.
Denial, thy face is everywhere! The above are just a dozen examples illustrating the truth of the many faces of denial. Denial is much more than a river in Egypt. It is a core element of our lives, but, because it is generally an unconscious process, this may not be obvious. In this essay, I’m going to examine why we use denial, the various forms it takes, the effects it has, and how to get wise to it. Then I will consider the positive version of denial, which is a key component of true happiness and spiritual fulfillment. But first, let’s look at the meaning and derivation of the word.
Meanings and Etymology of “Denial”
Our English word came to us from Latin, through the Old French denier. The Latin root is denegare, “to negate.” The prefix “de-“ intensifies the negation. So denial is “the act of saying something is not true; or declaring that one does not hold or accept something.” It also means a disowning or refusal to acknowledge something, a refusal to accept things as they are. In the form of self-denial, it means a “doing without things that one wants.”
“Denial” also has a technical meaning, used in psychology, and this specialized meaning will be our focus. To therapists, analysts and others in the helping professions, “denial” is used to describe an extreme form of self-protection, or a refusal to acknowledge the existence of an external source of anxiety. Students of learning theory recognize denial as a central element of the “closed belief system,” with serious implications for perception and learning. Denial is also one form of defense mechanism, and a core component of most others, like projection, rationalization, reaction formation, displacement, etc.
Why Denial?
Speaking of “defense mechanisms” provokes the question why use denial? What purpose does it serve? “Defense” suggests its purpose: protection. Defense mechanisms are cognitive devices for tampering with reality to avoid pain. They are “self-deceits” ways we keep secrets from ourselves, part of what Freud called the “ostrich policy” found in all people.
We use denial and the other defense mechanisms to avoid psychic pain or anxiety. These mechanisms are the psychic version of an endorphin: an analgesic that helps us tune out reality and lessen the awareness of pain. Thanks to denial and its related devices, we protect our self-image, avoid humiliation, and, most of all, avoid change, with the sacrifices, threats and challenges change implies.
Most people associate things like denial and the other defense mechanisms with neurotics and “sick” people, but they are used all the time, by all of us. Consider the vignettes above: Scientists’ respond to psi phenomena, or to anything that they cannot explain within the limited paradigm of scientism with denial. Rationalists will respond with denial when presented with the data from astrology (which they dismiss as “bogus,” having made no attempt at all to understand this valuable symbol system found in every culture and used for thousands of years). Alcoholics and their circle of friends and family usually live in denial for years, and a major part of the 12-step programs is designed to get people out of denial. And there is R.D. Laing’s “Game of the Happy Family,” which illustrates how rich in denial are the lives of those in dysfunctional families. Lest you congratulate yourself that you are not a scientist, a rationalist, an alcoholic, a friend of one, or a member of a dysfunctional family, consider this: Jung believed that all Westerners use denial, because of the fear of the unconscious that is pervasive in Western culture. So, unless you are from some remote backwater part of the planet, cut off from the influence of modern science, you probably share the mind-set that fosters denial in some form.
Forms of Denial
Which brings us to the next topic: how denial shows up in life. The examples at the beginning of this essay illustrate how it can look. The abused woman who denies anything is wrong shows the face of denial called “disavowal,” often found in recurring interpersonal problems, or “stormy” relationships, where the denier experiences frustration in dealings with others, or the inability to form stable, satisfying unions. Co-dependency is another element here: getting into relationships that are abusive, and staying, despite the maltreatment that is obvious to others.
The second example, of the child being told that going to camp is for his own good, illustrates the denial at the core of the defense mechanism of “rationalization.” Here the mother is denying her own true motives by covering them with a cloak of reasonableness. This is a “slick” form of denial, especially common with intellectuals who are quick-witted and skillful with words. Certain phrases are characteristic in this version of denial, e.g. “It’s for your own good.” “This hurts me more than it hurts you.” Occasionally, the denial at the root of rationalization is glaringly obvious, e.g. the military’s claim “We had to destroy the village to save it.” Hello??
The teenage boy recalling his accident with no visible emotion reflects the flattening of affect, or emotional numbness that often signals denial. Sometimes feelings are there, but at a reduced level of intensity, and sometimes the emotions appropriate to a situation are completely absent. The person has closed down emotionally.
The pious churchgoer with the smug attitude, seeing sin everywhere outside, is projecting her own problems out, denying her own parlous spiritual condition in such a way that she will never be able to deal with it (because she can’t recognize it for what it is). Warping of accurate perception, like this, is a common form of denial.
The fifth example also illustrates how denial can hamper perception. The M.D., who prided himself on his scientific rigor and cool rationalism, was completely unable to take in any experience that did not fit into his limited belief system. Result: he missed something spectacular.
The conference organizer illustrates how synchronicity works to support our unconscious intentions. It meant a lot to the organizer to have the celebrity speaker. When the news came that the person would not be there, the fax sheet “just happened” to get lost. Then the organizer “just happened” to forget the message the fax conveyed. Memory failure, or selective amnesia—the inability to recall events or details of unpleasant things--is a very common element of denial.
The sexually-abused child manifests denial in the defense mechanism known as “reaction formation.” In this version of denial, information enters the unconscious without passing into conscious awareness; then it undergoes reversal and comes out into awareness as the opposite. The child, who was being hurt and violated by her father, had legitimate grounds to say she hated him, but the hatred got repressed and came out as the longing to be loved and protected by Daddy. Others in the family circle (especially the adult who did the laundry) also were in denial, refusing to take in the messages in the weekly wash. Their attention was dimmed. This poor ability to pay attention or to see what is really going on is a classic sign of denial.
The woman who repeatedly took up with losers illustrates the compulsive quality denial can have, as well as denial in the form of rationalization. Of course there are good men out there. She is trying to avoid facing the fact that the problems are not with the men, but within her. She is using denial to evade facing the reality that she needs to do lots of work on herself.
Harriet, into the “Martha syndrome,” illustrates the self-abuse and poor self-image that is often found with denial. Workaholism, substance abuse, co-dependent relationships, an inability to have one’s needs met, compulsions that drive people to busy-ness, to perform and achieve, as if they felt they had to “earn the right to be”—all these are ways denial can appear.
The child’s drawings for the marriage counselor are versions of the “Freudian slip” that so often will reveal denial if we are prepared to spot it. The girl was denying anything was wrong, but the counselor got at the truth through her unconscious.
The story of James Esdaile illustrates how denial can intensify when shared in a group, leading to what social psychologists call “group think.” Dean Ornish’s dismissal of the experiences of 60,000 people also illustrates how denial operates to keep otherwise intelligent people from seeing reality, because of a limited range of mental flexibility. Most of the controversy today around psi, parapsychology, and “frontier science” are forms of denial, deriving from the errors of our current paradigm of science, with its materialism, positivism, reductionism, and a protocol for research that is far too rigid.
There are other ways that denial can appear, not illustrated in the examples. These include:
• avoiding associations that relate to a painful event or memory. Obvious connections get short-circuited or shut down, so as to block the pain that would come.
• daze: the loss of alertness, or defocused attention
• blocking through fantasy: reality or its implications are avoided by fanciful thoughts of what could be or might have been; when this goes on long enough, the denier can come to live in a dream world.
• isolation: the feelings around an unpleasant event are repressed and attention is fixed on just the facts, producing a bland version of experience.
• strong reactions of rejection about something. The Russian spiritual teacher and mystic G.I. Gurdjieff felt that this was one of the most reliable ways to catch oneself in denial.
• psychosomatic disorders: These can include hypertension, stress, muscle and joint pains, headaches, low energy (because so much psychic energy is being expended to maintain the lies).
• arrested development, especially with defensive independence and detachment from others
• coldness: emotional constipation, leaving others with the feeling that the “real” person is not “there,” or not reachable in some way.
• disturbing dreams or nightmares, and sleep disturbances (insomnia, broken sleep)
• low-level chronic depression
• control problems: lust for control, insistence on personal autonomy, difficulty with bosses and authority figures
• repeated avoidance of a simple thing/task/act without any obvious reason (because the task or thing calls up unconscious associations that are disturbing, and so are avoided).
As I noted earlier, denial’s face is indeed found everywhere. None of us is free of it.
Why Getting Wise to Denial Matters
OK, you say. So I’m into denial, like everybody else. So what if I think it’s a river in Egypt. What’s the big deal? The deal is that denial has consequences—mental, emotional, behavioral, interpersonal and other effects. Let’s examine some of these.
Mentally, when we are in denial, we don’t process information very well. We fail to notice important things. Our range of thinking becomes truncated. Our perceptions get restricted. We operate with blind spots, not seeing stuff that is obvious to others, or we see only on the surface, missing valuable data present at a deeper level. We can miss the context of information that gives it meaning. Denial filters the flow of what we take in mentally, so that we can’t process material quickly, or fully. Our memory is hampered, and we are not able to play the game of life, mentally, with a “full deck.” The group think that was at the root of the Bay of Pigs fiasco illustrates how otherwise intelligent people, putting their heads together over a serious issue, can get way off track because of denial.
In the realm of feelings, denial can be as hampering as it is in the realm of the mind. We might be unable to get in touch with our feelings. I know this one well: When I first began my analysis, my analyst would ask me what I was feeling at times, and the question would seem so strange, for I had no sense that I was feeling anything at all! I was truly numb, completely closed down to the realm of affect! I had spent over 30 years denying my emotional life, which had a major impact on my relationships with others, as you might imagine (more on the interpersonal implications of denial below).
In the realm of behavior, denial shows up most obviously in disavowal, statements that challenge the truth of what is clear to everyone else. Denial can also lead to a lack of spontaneity in life, as well as to behaviors that are generally ineffective responses to life events, because the fear driving the denial casts a pallor of calculation and caution over every aspect of life.
So dealing with other people becomes fraught with problems. This can show up in a general lack of empathy with others, due to the inability to get in touch with our own feelings. The related defense mechanisms that build on denial, like projection, isolation, rationalization and reaction formation, push people away, or give them the vague sense that “something’s going on there but I can’t quite figure it out.” So they mistrust, and in this way, serve to feed even more the vicious circle that is the life in denial. When we live in denial we have trouble trusting others, and so mistrust is exactly what we bring into our lives. Replaying the old tapes from childhood unconsciously, we expect hostility or disappointment or trouble from other people, and so we erect the defense mechanisms like unconscious shields, which lead other people to get uncomfortable, to mistrust, and so then to withdraw, or back off, and thus we see just what we expected to see. We feel just the rejection we expected to feel—without any sense that we brought all this on, by our unconscious denial. Scapegoating of others (i.e. using others to contain a denied aspect of oneself) is another way denial can appear in interpersonal relationships. Defensive independence, detachment from others, and projection were mentioned above, as other interpersonal relational forms that denial can take. A final problem associated with denial in dealings with people is the inability to sustain situations of vulnerability or tenderness, because of the assumed dangers associated with such emotional states.
Denial has implications for the development of character and personality. Wilhelm Reich, while he was still a follower of Freud, felt that denial was a prime force leading to the development of “character armor,” i.e. how we block off and shield ourselves from others (while also locking ourselves into rigidities). When habits of denial linger from early childhood, we are likely to grow up with a poor self-image, a deep sense of worthlessness, a tentative and transient sense of self-affirmation. In cases of harsh childhood experience, normal development gets arrested, in the phenomenon of neurosis.
What’s all this mean, in simple terms? Denial does not give us happiness. It is self-defeating, leading to frustration, partial living, a closing down of whole aspects of reality, poor physical health, and a rigidly circumscribed spiritual life. Denial, in short, is not something we want to encourage, and indeed, part of the task of humanity now, as we prepare for the coming shift of consciousness, is to get wise to this most insidious of unconscious devices.
Wising Up to Denial
How to do this? Some signs were mentioned above: strong, almost impulsive or automatic reactions to something can be a sign (but it will require quite a bit of self-discipline and attention to recognize these when they appear, because they are so habitual).
Any intense aversion or rejection of a thought or experience can be another clue, as are those Freudian slips of the tongue. But, as with strong impulsive reactions, we must be prepared to see these for what they are, rather than laugh them off, or block them from awareness.
Physical condition can offer clues: lack of energy, little interest in life, a life that is just going through the motions can signal the need to begin to examine unconscious “stuff.” Or, the opposite may be the case: a personal history of constant busy-ness, workaholism, never stopping, “Type A” behavior and the hypertension that goes along with it. Such compulsive driving can be a sign that denial is lurking in the depths.
Life itself can hold up signs, in the phenomenon of “synchronicity.” Watch for “coincidences,” like losing disturbing messages, forgetting important facts that we really don’t want to handle, or overlooking someone in our work environment that deep down we really don’t want to deal with . Such “trivial” things can be anything but trivial in helping to point out denial.
The best, most effective ways to spot denial and its kin are through long-term, supervised dreamwork and depth psychological analysis. Dreams connect us with the psychic realm, that level of being that is in touch with the unconscious. If we take a positive attitude toward it, the unconscious will respond in kind. Our dreams will show us when we are denying, and why. Likewise, a good analyst will help us be honest too. But both these ways come at a price: pain. Honesty hurts. It is not easy, or pleasant, to wise up to how we live in denial. We have to want to become aware.
This is not something for the weak. It requires conscious intent and a firm setting of the will, as well as lots of moral courage. Because we will be shown all the garbage we have “stuffed” over the years, all the things we don’t like about ourselves, and all the other ways we are fundamentally dishonest and cowardly, it takes guts to do it. Why, you might ask, would anyone want to?
For self-awareness. To live authentically, honestly, without all the lies. As long as we live in denial (in any one of its myriad forms) we are living a lie.
Another reason is to heal, to become whole. This may seem paradoxical, but it is the case that, when we summon the courage to face and deal with the pain that denial and the other defense mechanisms have masked, rather than get more pain, we see the pain in life become manageable. We discover that it’s not as bad as we feared! We come to realize our strength, that we can deal with pain, and grow through it, and come to appreciate it as a valuable part of life (because it is the way life gets our attention, so we can take up the personal work we are meant to do).
A third reason to get wise to denial is to gain true happiness, which is a spiritual condition, not a material situation tied to having toys or wealth or power or reputation. As long as we live lies, we suffer, and there is no happiness in suffering.
And finally, we work on becoming conscious of the unconscious so we can respond to the Divine call that lives within us all the time, appealing to us to “deny ourselves.”
Deny ourselves? This is the positive version of denial I mentioned in the beginning of this essay, the form of denial that implies the refusal to gratify the ego. In this type of denial, the ego consciousness is disavowed. Jesus called this “taking up one’s cross.” It is a crucifixion, in that it is very painful, humiliating for the ego, and entails sacrifice.
Such a denial is not possible unless and until the unconscious, defensive, cowardly forms of denial are recognized, confronted and worked on. This work can be done in a number of ways—Buddhist meditation practice, Jungian analysis, some forms of yoga, artistic work, if done reflectively—but all of them require a journey into the inner depths, a confrontation with denial in all its forms, and a sacrifice of the old self-image and beliefs that we used denial to protect. In the taking, this journey opens life to the “possibility of developing a wisdom beyond tragedy,” and of enjoying “a peace and poise beyond conflict.”
Denial is not a river in Egypt. And getting wise to it is an important part of “waking up” and leap-frogging.

For Further Reading
Coco, Donna (1999), “A Woman on the Edge,” Natural Health (July/August 1999), 86-89, 142.
Colman, Arthur (1995), Up from Scapegoating: Awakening Consciousness in Groups. Wilmette IL: Chiron Publications.
Comer, Ronald (1995), Abnormal Psychology. New York: W.H. Freeman.
Cousins, Norman (1979), Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. New York: W.W. Norton.
Friedman, M. & R.H. Rosenman (1974), Type A Behavior and Your Heart. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Goleman, Daniel (1985),Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Johnson, Stephen (1985), Characterological Transformation: The Hard Work Miracle. New York: W.W. Norton.
Jung, Carl (1954), “The Practice of Psychotherapy,” Collected Works, 16. New York: Pantheon Books.
_______ (1966), “The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious,” Collected Works, 7, 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1969), “Psychology and Religion: West and East,” Collected Works, 11, 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Krippner, Stanley (1996), “Parapsychological Research in Retrospect,” Revisioning Science: Essays Toward a New Knowledge Base for Our Culture, ed. S. Mehrtens. Waterbury VT: The Potlatch Press.
May, Gerald (1982), Will & Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Rokeach, Milton (1960), The Open and Closed Mind: Investigations into the Nature of Belief Systems and Personality Systems. New York: Basic Books.
Rudhyar, Dane (1973), An Astrological Mandala: The Cycle of Transformation and Its 360 Symbols. New York: Vintage Books.
Tart, Charles (1987), Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential. Boston: Shambhala.

----- My definitions and usage of various terms in the following essay (e.g. “waking up,” “leap-frogging,” “The Force”) are found in the initial essays in this blog collection. See the entries posted as Front Matter and Introduction, Waking Up and Leap-Frogging. -----




There’s an old adage that expresses succinctly the content of this essay: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." The first act—giving a fish—is what I mean by “helping.” The second is quite different. It will require more time and effort in the short run, but it will be more beneficial in the long run. Rather than “helping” it might be termed “supporting” or equipping. People who are at the point of choosing the leap-frog option need our support, not our help. To understand this, we need to be quite clear on the difference between “help” and “support.”
The Definition of Help
Helping is an act that does it for the person we are helping. It takes over and fills the need the person has, without thinking of the wider implications. It has been called “playing God,” because it operates from the conviction that we know what the person needs, or ought to do or be. In certain emergency situations—in the aftermath of earthquakes, fires, floods and other natural or personal disasters—this form of aid is necessary, for those needing aid are so traumatized or overwhelmed that they are in no position to do it for themselves. In other, non-emergency situations, helping should be avoided. Why?
Because “helping” operates with a whole set of assumptions (most of which are quite unconscious). These include:
• the belief that the persons we seek to help can’t do it
• the belief that they aren’t qualified
• the belief that they can’t learn or that it would take too long and involve too much trouble to teach them
• the belief that they don’t have what it takes, in terms of resources (like money) or that they can’t afford (in financial or temporal terms) what will be required
• the belief that they don’t understand
• the belief that they aren’t reliable, trustworthy, a good “credit risk” etc.
This list is not exhaustive: there are a lot more such assumptions floating around in the thinking of “helpers,” but this list will give you a feel for the mind-set. This mind-set is closely linked to the historical relationship between the colonial Western powers and non-Western native peoples. In this schema, the “helpers” hold Western values, operate with a Western sense of time, work with Western technologies (many of which are not appropriate to non-Western venues), and lack an appreciation for the essentials of life (like time, space and patience) and for non-Western values.
“Helpers,” in other words, often mean well and are sincere in their desire to improve the lives of those that seem less fortunate, but they intervene with an unconscious sense of superiority, from a viewpoint that is chauvinistic, imperialistic, racist and sexist (i.e. Western). This stance and its beliefs and assumptions are disempowering. The people to be helped are regarded essentially as powerless. This is not an approach, or a set of beliefs, that we want to support.
There is another interpretation that can be made about people who are eager to help others. It is well known among the psychologically savvy that those who are compulsively focused on helping others are most of the time projecting their own “stuff,” and are using their supposed charitable impulses as a clever (and totally unconscious) way to avoid doing their inner work, while getting other people to think well of them (for all their philanthropic gestures). A true story will illustrate this form of “do-good ego trip.” A few years ago, in my practice, a complete stranger called and asked to meet with me to get some advice. Apparently he had heard of me from one of my clients, since I never advertise. A few minutes into our meeting, it was clear that the man was not interested in working with me, but rather wanted a set of rules or guidelines that would make him more effective in his work with other people. I was mystified: It was clear that this fellow fancied himself something of a counselor, but he had no training, no personal experience of analysis, and no history of working with his own dreams. He assured me, in fact, that he never remembered his dreams. But he made it clear that he was very much into helping others (i.e. he had quite a lot of ego investment in his role of “helper”), and he described at length all the people in his circle of contacts that he was helping through their marital problems, illnesses, family troubles, etc. As I listened to all this, I grew more and more aware of acute discomfort in my body—a feeling reaction that I had come to recognize, through years of practice, as a sign of something amiss. It was only in the very last minutes of our meeting that it became clear what was going on. As the man put on his coat, he mentioned in passing, in a very casual way, that his son was in jail for drug use, his wife had left him, and he had a brain tumor. Recognizing that this man would probably never hear the truth from any other source, I asked him if it had occurred to him that, rather than focusing his attention out, to “helping” others, it might be more useful to look within, and get his own house in order before tending to other people. I suggested the possibility that he was using others’ problems as a diversion to keep him from facing his own. That is, I was holding up his projections so he could see them. He assured me that everything was fine in his life (at which point I reminded myself inwardly of the old saw that “denial is not a river in Egypt”). Then he quickly left. I knew I would never see him again. He was one example of what I mean by a “helper”—a person who has to do for others out of some unconscious impulse that serves his own need more than being “clean” assistance for another person.
The Key Difference between “Help” and “Support”
The single most important distinction between “helpers” and “supporters” is the attitude they have about people. “Supporters” believe in the equality of all people, regardless of where they live, what they have, what they know, or who they are. “Helpers” operate from an unconscious impulse or from the sense that they are superior because of their background (Western, “civilized”), their wealth, their education, their “connections” with those in power, etc. “Supporters” recognize that we are all equal, regardless of the outer-life circumstances that might seem to make people different from each other.
Because of the global dominance Western civilization has had for centuries, there is a deeply ingrained tendency that white, Westernized people have to think of their ways, their systems, their ideals etc. as superior. So, for nearly all white, Westernized people who aspire to assist or aid non-Western peoples, a basic metanoia, or transformation of mind, is necessary, in order to believe sincerely in the fundamental equality of all people. For most of us, this metanoia is not something that comes easily: It entails suffering. It is usually a part of the process of “waking up” and becoming conscious of our “stuff.” The more “awake” we are, the more readily do we recognize the equality of all human beings.
Thanks to this belief in basic equality, “supporters” are able to be compassionate. That is, they are able to identify with the person in need, and to share his/her suffering, because they have taken up the task of facing and working through their own suffering, and they recognize that “the suffering of injustice unites us all.” With this empathic compassion, they can recognize that what is needed is not a hand out, but a hand up—not “help” but “support.”
The Definition of Support
When we “support” another, we consciously refrain from doing it for them, because we see them as equal to whatever challenge they face. We respect persons in need as individuals with:
• innate resourcefulness
• a unique cluster of talents and interests
• personal motivations and aspirations
• a set of opportunities (which mask as “problems”) they have chosen to take on so as to foster their growth and learning
• an inner timetable that must be respected, as part of respecting their individuality
• the same amount of power as any other human being.
Those we hope to aid, in other words, have just as much need for independence, control and a sense of their personal power as we have.
“Supporters” also understand the close tie between empowerment and challenge. Most of us need to be challenged before we move into our power. This is the psychological equivalent of the “strength training” of the athlete on the physical level. We get strong in will and mind and faith only by working our mental, emotional and spiritual “muscles” via the challenges we choose to take up. We grow and develop our courage, daring, gumption, stamina, tenacity and commitment by facing and dealing with the opportunities (especially the difficult ones we see as “problems”) that come our way in life.
For all of us, there are times when we need encouragement, and this encouragement is what I mean by “support.” It may take the form of words, as in the role of cheerleaders on the sidelines of a big game, or as advice or guidance from one more experienced or knowledgeable. It can also be emotional (i.e. empathy), material (e.g. seed money), mental (an idea, suggestion or insight), a combination of all of these (e.g. as in a training course or some social service program), or something more intangible (e.g. serving as a role model or mentor for another). Whatever the form, this encouragement is rooted in the belief that we’re all together in this endeavor we call “life,” and we all have what it takes to make a go of it.
“Support” empowers others. It operates from an attitude of equality, unity and love. Because of this attitude, it respects those to whom it offers support. And its net effect is to realize personal potential and to foster the fulfillment of individual promise.
Distinguishing Supporting from Helping
There are several questions you can pose to yourself to get clear within about whether your intentions and actions are “helping” or “supporting.” These questions center around honoring the divinity of the other person, and honoring your own divinity. For the former, ask yourself if your actions will serve to give the other person more independence. Will what you do assist the other person to recognize his/her own talents, capabilities and power? Would your action provide only temporary improvement, put you in a position of authority over the other person, or promote dependency in any way? If you can answer the first two questions with a “yes” and the last with a “no,” your intended action is supportive rather than “helpful” (as I am defining “helping”).
With regard to the latter concern—honoring your own divinity—ask yourself if your actions will serve to benefit all concerned, for the highest good of all. Will your activity support your own life mission and serve your own divine purpose? If not--if what you propose will in some way sacrifice your own welfare, or pose blocks to your own growth and development—it is not “support,” but another form of ego trip designed to keep you in your own “stuff” (as the earlier example of the man who came to me illustrates).
Notice, in this dual concern for honoring the divinity of self and other, the distinction between selflessness and selfishness. Selfishness comes out of ego, and can show up as either neglect of others, or neglect of one’s own true purpose. It is not only just thinking about oneself. Western culture is very confused about this. True selflessness operates from your divine core (what the Jungians call the “Self”) and manifests as spirit-based motives, thoughts and actions. Giving to others without regard for your own needs and individuality is a form of abuse and selfishness. Selflessness will not betray the divinity in either you or another person.
Waking Up in the Context of Supporting
If you are interested in fostering your “wake up” process in the context of supporting, reflect on questions like the following in your meditations:
Can I recall times or instances when I sought to help others? Did I try to give them a hand up, or a hand out?
Do I often try to help others? Is it a prominent feature of my life? Is there something about it that has a driven quality, like it’s something I have to do?
What is my own life like: does it work? Do I have lots of areas of life that are full of problems (e.g. marriage, connections to family and friends, trouble with children, difficulties with my job)? Are these problems trying to tell me something about myself?
Is there any pattern to my interactions with others? Do I feel (unconsciously) that I have to earn the right to exist, by constantly helping others in one way or another? Am I equally comfortable receiving support from others as I am in giving it?
Do I attract to me people that have lots of problems in their lives? Do I have people in my life that I trust enough to share problems and needs with them?
Do I equate being supported by others with weakness? When I give assistance to others, do I feel superior in some way?
How might I take the insights from these questions to a deeper level?

For Further Reading
Fox, Matthew (1988), The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. New York: Harper & Row.
Gaskin, Stephen (1987), “International Aid,” People and Planet, ed. Tom Woodhouse. Bideford UK: Green Books.
Harman, Willis & Maya Porter eds. (1997), The New Business of Business: Sharing Responsibility for a Positive Global Future. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Kohr, Leopold (1987), “Over Development,” People and Planet, ed. Tom Woodhouse. Bideford UK: Green Books.
Kothari, Rajni (1987), “Grassroots Development,” People and Planet, ed. Tom Woodhouse. Bideford UK: Green Books.
Max-Neef, Manfred (1987), “Barefoot Economics,” People and Planet, ed. Tom Woodhouse. Bideford UK: Green Books.
McArthur, Bruce (1993), Your Life: Why It Is the Way It Is and What You Can Do About It. Virginia Beach: A.R.E. Press.
McLaughlin, Corinne & Gordon Davidson (1994), Spiritual Politics: Changing the World From the Inside Out. New York: Ballantine Books.
Sandholt, Leif (1987), “Western Affluence and Third World Poverty,” People and Planet, ed. Tom Woodhouse. Bideford UK: Green Books.
Schumacher, E.F. (1973), Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row.
Sunray, Paula (1999), Life Skills for the New Millennium. Jackson TN: Petals of Life.
Welter, Paul (1978), How to Help a Friend. Wheaton IL: Tyndale House Publishers.

ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY, Jan 19,26, Feb 2,9, 9AM to Noon, at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $60. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Learn the archetypes active in your own and others¹ lives in this workshop while you deepen your understanding of astrology; pre-requisite: Astrology II or prior training in astrology.
Pioneered by the Jungian analyst and astrologer Liz Greene and her Centre for Psychological Astrology, archetypal astrology uses the powerful symbolism of astrology to identify and explicate the archetypes active in individual lives. This course trains advanced students of astrology to think archetypally by exposing them to the myths, legends and basic principles of the archetypal world. Pre-requisite: Astrology II, or its equivalent.

INTRODUCTION TO DREAMWORK, Jan 20,27, Feb 3,10; 2-4 PM at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $60. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Get a basic orientation to an essential practice of the spiritual journey; learn over a dozen techniques in this workshop that is more experiential than intellectual. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author.
This four-week workshop explores the methods, experiences, and applications of dream work, drawing upon our historical and cultural heritage. A wide array of psychological theories underpinning the study of dreams is also included. Students are required to maintain a dream journal, and to attempt analysis of their own dreams and those of their classmates. Hands-on experience in dream interpretation is stressed.

DEVELOPING YOUR INTUITION. Mar 8,15,22,29, 2-4PM, at 55 Clover Lane, Waterbury VT; $60. Info, call Sue, 802-244-7909. Learn six proven ways to access your inner wisdom and discover your personal intuitive style. Led by Dr. Sue Mehrtens, teacher and author, with over 30 years of experience in Jungian analysis, dreamwork and leading adult programs. Limited to 8 students.
The tumultuous times we live in are making it obvious that many of our old ways of thinking, living and working don¹t function very well any more, and change is happening faster than ever before. How might we cope? By using the whole of our brains‹right as well as left sides, the intuitive as well as the rational mind. Because the intuitive mind operates outside linear time, it is particularly powerful in dealing with the future, allowing us to anticipate what is to come, to make realistic plans, and to stay safe from harm. This workshop opens with a bri