In the Heart of the Sea of Grief and Guilt

Recently, my husband and I watched the movie: In the Heart of the Sea. It is based on a true story about a whaling ship the Essex that was rammed by a sperm whale in 1820. The whale sunk the Essex about 3,000 miles from the shores of South America. Several books have been written about this disaster then and since. The movie is based on a book of the same name written by Nathaniel Philbrick and published on May 8, 2000. It won the National Book Award for Nonfiction that same year. The movie does an admirable job dramatizing events that led up to the sinking of the Essex and the crew’s 90-day struggle to survive storms, hunger, and despair. The movie also depicts how Herman Melville came to write his magnum opus, Moby Dick, though there are some inaccuracies in this part of storyline as well as in the main plot (see the video below). I think it is interesting to note that Melville was born on August 1, 1819 (one year before the Essex sunk). He died September 28, 1891. Moby Dick was published in 1851, essentially the middle span of his life.

The movie begins with Melville tracking down the last living survivor of the Essex, Thomas Nickerson (this is not historically accurate). 

From Wiki: “In 1850, author Herman Melville visits innkeeper Thomas Nickerson, the last survivor of the sinking of the whaleship Essex, offering money in return for his story. Nickerson initially refuses, but then finally agrees when his wife intervenes. The story turns to 1820: A whaling company in Nantucket has refitted the Essex to participate in the lucrative whale oil trade, and 14-year-old Nickerson signs on as a cabin boy.”  Wikipedia: In the Heart of the Sea

According to the movie, the rainy night Melville arrives, Thomas is consumed by his inner demons because he has never spoken about his ordeal. It is eating him up from the inside and causing hardships for himself and his wife. After some back and forth about the money Melville is offering Thomas to tell his tale, Thomas finally relents. Melville is shown listening and taking notes while Thomas sinks into the memories that are haunting him. I will not retell any more of the movie, except to highlight a few scenes that stood out to me as relevant to me personally and to our time, which is presently 2020. This is exactly 200 years after the Essex was sunk by a whale, which is weird… but I’ll get to that later.

The first thing that struck me as pertinent to our time was the importance of whale oil to the life and commerce of the early 1800s. It was whale oil that lit the Western World from Europe to the Americas, and then following the fracture lines of colonization to light the entire world. The movie does an excellent job depicting how the whaling industry operated. It shows how the corporations of this time were eager to mine the fortunes to be had from whale oil. And, it would become painfully clear just how willing these corporations were of doing despicable things in order to safeguard their money, their hierarchical structure, and their systems of commerce focused on profit at all costs.

At the end of the movie, there is a scene that hints at the discovery of oil that comes from out of the ground. It is a nod to the fossil fuel industry that will soon replace the whaling industry in less than 40 years after the sinking of the Essex. It is also a nod to the transfer of blueprints from hard-hearted industry to another. However, before the whaling industry would decline, nearly every species of whale is hunted to the brink of extinction. I could barely watch the scenes in this movie when the men of the Essex successfully hunted and killed a beautiful bull whale, then stripped him of every ounce of fat he had, which they boiled down to make the treasured Nantucket whale oil. By 1820, whales in the Atlantic had grown scarce. Thus, the Essex had to sail around Cape Horn, a dangerous strait between South America and Antarctica, to reach the whales in the Pacific. But, even here the whales were being hunted aggressively, and so they were moving further and further away from the continents to get away from man. But, man followed them.

* * *

The next scene I feel is germane to our time was when the men were boarding the Essex in Nantucket Bay. On the docks, there is a group of pilgrim-like people who are praying for the men as they board the Essex. You can see this scene at 6 minutes and 30 seconds in the video below. The preacher is heard saying: 

“Oh Father (…) ensure they return safely with a full ship, so that the white flames of Nantucket’s whale oil continue to light our homes and fuel the machines of industry that drive our great nation forward as our noble species evolves…”

Clip of the Preacher’s Prayer from In the Heart of the Whale at minute 6:30

This video is from The Cynical Historian who brings up a very important point about framing.

As you read the rest of this blog, consider the different ways humans frame reality. We can’t help it really. It’s the price we pay for consciousness. And, there is a price for being able to make a choice other than what instinct would have otherwise dictated we do. Time is a framing device that our minds use to distinguish between a moment in the past and a moment yet to be. Money is a framing device most people who live in Western Civilization must use to make a living and to acquire a station in life. Western Civilization itself is a framing device (For more on this frame of reality, see How to identify imperialistic thought (Yurugu series #2)).

Frames are helpful because they encode observations about when something like this happens that follows. Frames serve as shortcuts in thinking that can help us make decisions quickly when we encounter similar situations again. But, all frames leave out critical parts of reality. And, it is these parts that get left out that can really mess us up when we encounter a situation that we really don’t understand… like the men on the Essex when they encountered a whale that was not acting like any whale they had ever encountered before. Sometimes our misjudgments and lack of seeing reality as it really is results in terrible consequences. What is being left out of the dominant modern frame imposed by Western Civilization?

This idea of our species being noble and evolving ever forward plays out again after the Essex has been sunk. The men have been adrift for many days and nights and days. They are surviving on a single piece of hard tact per man per day, and a very small one at that. They are also allowed a single swig of water each day. Since the ship did not sink as dramatically as the movie depicts, the men had time to strip the Essex of her sails and supplies, but only what they could fit into the smaller boats they took out to chase whales, now turned into their life rafts. However, these three boats were hardly big enough to hold enough supplies so the men might survive their 3,000-mile journey back to civilization, especially since they were caught in the doldrums of the equatorial region of the sea. Thus, it does not take long before the men are slowly starving to death. Just before anyone dies, they come upon an island. It is a deserted island, but it provides a short respite from their ordeal. Soon; however, they eat up everything edible on the island. So, they have no choice but to shove off in their little boats again to try to reach the mainland if they want to live. 

This is where the next scene occurs that I feel is closely connected to our time. It is the night before they are to set sail to try to make it back to South America. The first mate Chase speaks with the Captain Pollard about their differences. He is making a peace offering because he knows there is no other way to survive but to set aside all differences and work together from a place of unity. Chase comes from a working-class background. He is a man who knows his trade, which is whaling, and he is very good at it. According to the movie, he was supposed to have received commanded of the Essex, but it was taken from him because of his social class. It was given to Pollard instead because he came from a rich family within the whaling industry. But, Pollard did not know his trade, not like Chase did. Needless to say, there were problems. Pollard accepts Chase’s peace offering, but continues to cling to the idea of the supremacy of man saying something like… “God put us here to circumvent navigate the world and rule over all creatures.” Chase replies, “Does it look like we are so supreme given where we are at right now and what has happened to us.” Neither men at this moment has any idea how much worst their situation is going to get, but I think Chase senses things are probably going to get worse before they get better. And, they do get worse–-they get a whole lot worse.

* * *

After the movie, I thought I might dream about a white whale ramming the Essex. But I did not dream about a whale. Instead, I thought about all the signs I missed one month earlier when my beloved dog Cider died in my arms.

ALL ALONG THE ANCESTORS WERE GUIDING ME HOME. Whale, Sea Turtle, and Heron by Donna Alena Hrabcakova
WATER AND BONES. Women with Rib by Donna Alena Hrabcakova
Cider Dog
Cider-Fox by Donna Alena Hrabcakova — Alena drew this picture about 3 weeks after Cider passed. My husband, I, and surviving dog Sasha were on a walk retracing the last run I took with Cider before she died. On that last run, Cider and I saw a fox. Cider was thrilled about seeing it and barked so vigorously. One would hardly guess she would be dead in less than 48 hours. She loved looking for foxes, and we saw them many times in the months before she died. While we were walking, Alena felt this image rising and drew it then sent it to me. We both felt it was Cider’s beautiful spirit saying: “I am still here.”

That terrible night occurred two days before Christmas. Her heart was racing so fast and her breathing labored. Her body was suffocating because it could no longer keep up with the depletion of hemoglobin in her blood. This was because she was bleeding internally, but we did not know this. The signs were subtle, even the doctors to whom we took her dead body in hopes they could revive her said it would have been hard for them to diagnosis her in time to save her. The symptoms she had displayed, I completely misread and misunderstood. I will not recap this super sad story. You can read it in the previous blog post, but her sudden and tragic death set me back adrift upon my inner sea of sadness, grief, despair, and now guilt, growing waves of guilt. It is a sea that has steadily risen inside me after a decade of struggle that got a whole lot worst just after our family vacation in 2015.

This would be the last vacation our family could afford due to mounting unfortunate and deteriorating circumstances. Now with hindsight (and this movie), I can see that this moment was when our family shoved off from our desert island. We had no idea we had already been rammed by the whale, or maybe I should say the buffalo or bull–or perhaps the buffalos were trying to bring our attention to our imminent danger just ahead of us in time. This really happened to us that summer.

After this trip, every fragile idea and frame of reality we had ever harbored about what it takes to create and sustain a home and maintain safety and security would be shattered, one painful one after another for 5 years in ways that were unreturnable to what we had known before. When people find themselves in such circumstances, overwhelming guilt is inevitable for how else can one confront such devastating losses and continue moving forward? The only other feelings I can say that I was aware of underneath the guilt was terrible despair, overwhelming helplessness, and a rumbling anger… a dangerous anger because this type of anger can blow up into hate, especially when a person feels abandoned, forgotten, or even worst, discarded, dispensable, disposable.

So, you see, guilt is a pretty good armor during times like these because it masks these other more threatening and extreme emotions bubbling up from unfathomable depths and threatening to submerge one’s already shattered ego. At least by feeling guilty, a thin veneer gets created, making a papery barrier that insulates the conscious part of one’s self from those other parts where these powerful emotions churn–and where one can feel these emotions could transform into forces that could sink the listing Ship of Self.

When our frames of reality are first shattered, the feeling of being cast adrift on a vast and foreign sea is almost inescapable. And perhaps it is necessary for these old frames pretty much have to be shattered or abandoned, just like the Essex had to be abandoned after it was rammed by the whale. This is so because they have failed us in significant and fatal ways. After one abandons the mother ship that had been carefully constructed by one’s former smaller frames of reality, one is suddenly confronted with a vast and bigger reality–one that is a great deal bigger–like Pacific Ocean bigger. And, this reality can be brutal. When one finds oneself adrift on this great Sea of Misfortune and Sorrow and sailing in a boat that is too small to sustain you for long, or even worse, clinging to a piece of wreckage, pretty much the only thing you can do is hold on for dear life. One also lacks the most basic tools to navigate by, so it can be hard to get one’s orientation. It is a lot like the situation the men who abandoned the Essex found themselves in without their tools of navigation, or at least, very few of them, which they needed to find their way back to civilization.

If you can hold on during such extreme times, and there is no guarantee that you can because I am talking about catastrophic circumstances that happen to perfectly normal and good people. These are events that come out of nowhere, they cannot be predicted, and they occur through no fault or short coming of the individual (well at least not from our current frames of reality, the ones we are taught from birth and punished if we don’t follow the rules our modern systems purport… so there is a bigger thing going on). These are events that just happen, and they happen to everyone like weather. They are crippling events, even lethal, regardless of whether they originate from inside oneself or come from outside like the whale who rammed the Essex. Now, I understand it is hard to spot a person in such a state. After all, they have ventured outside of the normal frames of reality in which we have all been taught to operate and to stay inside. Thus, such a person may be as hard to spot as the men of the Essex who were 3,000 miles from where most of the other humans who could have helped them were congregated. However, if you do happen to spot someone enduring such trauma and crisis, it is essential to believe this person and be kind to them. Pay them extra attention, so they know they are not disposable like a piece of trash to be thrown away because they are broken at the moment. It is important to do this because these individuals have survived a disaster, and they now possess information about reality that those of us who have not endured such a trial of survival still need to know in order to grow.

It is difficult and draining to support a person in crisis. I will not lie about that. And, inevitably survivors begin to grapple with the whys: why me, why now, why my beloved, why is the world like this? This is hard too, and these are not easy questions to answer. In fact, often they cannot be answered, only endured. But, catastrophic situations might be essential for our collective survival because they force us to confront our most cherished ideas, beliefs, and frames of reality. They force us to grapple with the unanswerable and re-examine how we have come to our beloved beliefs and mental frames, but ones that have kept vast parts of ourselves submerged in our unconsciousness–good parts and bad parts. When we begin to see these parts as a whole, we start to understand how they are essential to be integrated into our growing field of consciousness. Both superior and inferior qualities are essential to help us make more balance choices and live more wisely. With parts of ourself still submerged, we tend to move through the world in a lopsided way. We get stuck just like the men from the Essex who got caught in the doldrums. We do not move forward any more. Rather, we go around in smaller and smaller circles. It is only when we confront and integrate these lost parts of ourself that we can begin to move forward again. And, if bad things continue to happen, we have grown a deeper reservoir of fresh water inside ourselves, this is wisdom, and we can draw on it to help survive and recover from our ordeals a little more quickly.

Eventually, as we continue to do inner work, we also confront the knowledge that what we did not know or understand contributed to the situation that caused us so much pain and suffering and to those we love. This can be difficult knowledge to bear. However, it is precisely this sort of knowledge that help us grow and transform ourselves and our situation. It is a choice of course to grow, and if we do choose to grow, then a lot of work is going to be needed to build a bigger boat. In fact, you are probably going to have to grow the wood, to turn into timber, to build your shiny new Ship of Self because now you are working beyond the frames of reality most people still must work within. This not easy. And, it can be very lonely. And, you need to build it yourself because only you have the blueprint for who you are and what you need to do. There will be many setbacks and challenges because no one has tried to be you before, and so you have to figure it out the hard way, which means lots of failures. So, I do not find fault with anyone who chooses to go back to a smaller frame of reality because, heck, it’s really scary out there. And, now the world has shown you just how harsh and dangerous it can be. And, it has also illuminated how utterly helpless you are. The biggest problem doing this is succumbing to a bunker mentality. So, moments like these tend to mold and shape us in the most significant ways…for the rest of our life… and these choices can ripple backwards and forwards along our thin strand of time… the one each of us spins and contributes to our shared reality.

But, if you choose to build this bigger Ship of Self, then just like Captain Pollard had to confront the idea of human beings a noble species put here by God to circumvent navigate the world and rule over all other creatures, you have to confront it too because it is an idea that forms some of the foundational aspects of Western Civilization. But, are we really so noble? Do we really possess the intelligence and wisdom needed to rule? I wonder if our species might have been better named Homo intelligentes rather than Homo sapiens. It seems to me we are still trying to get there…to wisdom.

STANDING ON MY ANESTRAL LANDS: GIGLOVCE, SLOVAKIA by Donna Alena Hrabcakova

I can say with absolutely certainty that I am not noble enough to rule the Earth, nor do I possess the intelligence, or more importantly the wisdom, essential to reign as a supreme being. But now I want to transition from this speculative stream of thought, to say 2015 was also the year this movie In the Heart of the Sea was released. I didn’t see it then. It turns out a lot of people didn’t see it then. 

“In the Heart of the Sea was one of two flops released by Warner Bros in 2015, the other being Pan.[20] It grossed $25 million in North America and $68.9 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $93.9 million, against a production budget of $100 million.[3]”  Wikipedia: In the Heart of the Sea

But, had I seen it in 2015, I would not have the thoughts I have now here in 2020; not that they are anything special, except possibly to me. During, these five years of mounting misfortune, wreckage, and deepening despair, I often saw myself floating on a piece of wreckage on an endless sea that I dubbed the Sea of Sorrow. It was an inner sea; I drew it many times, as the image below shows (see blog The Sea Within Us). It was also during this time that I came to understand how this sea had been created by my own unconscious choices, but I was not alone in these choices. I had been taught to make them by my culture, by the collective systems within which I must abide to survive. These are carefully crafted frames of reality created by mere mortals who were crafting corporations and all sorts of other systems to run our shiny new modern civilization. And, there are many systems that rule our civilized world: systems of commerce, systems of class, systems of favoritism, chauvinism, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and many other isms and frames used to exclude certain people while elevating others.

The Sea Within Us by Bébé

And so, this is why I very much relate to the suffering and hardships of these men of the Essex. Though I must admit I also rooted for the bull whale protecting his pod after the men harpooned one of his females who had a calf. One might say I am divided individual, and Carl Jung would agree with this. Indeed, to be human is to be divided inside. It is another price for being consciousness. How we resolve this divide can determine everything.

After the bull whale successfully saved the mother and her calf, my sympathies returned to the men and their dire situation. Sure, they were surrounded by water, but it was water they could not drink. Sure, the sea was filled with abundant food, but it was food they could not reach. It was rather as if they floated on a vast desert, and actually that is what happens inside of us when we accept frames of reality that are ultimately too small for who we are and what we ultimately need to do in our life. The men of the Essex had most definitely ended up in the middle of the Pacific partly due to their own poor choices, but in a greater part, they ended up their due to the priorities and short-sightedness of the industry for which they worked. A system of commerce hungry for whale oil that made it impossible for the men to turn back home until they had filled their ship with this precious oil. A hunger that would soon be replicated in full within the nascent fossil fuel industry about to burst out of the ground–imagine that.

* * *

The next day after watching this movie and not sleeping very well due to my great guilt over Cider’s death, my husband and I went for a run with our older surviving dog Sasha. I pointed up into the sky and said: “Look — that cloud looks like a White Whale.”  

Cloud Shaped Like Whale — Masterfile

This was not the cloud I saw, but I think we have all seen clouds that look like White Whales at some point in our life. Captivated by the movie, and now by the cloud, a thought popped into my head: “The world has been struck by the White Whale again.”  

It is clouds, is it not, that are being screwed up by climate change? Either they are growing too big and dropping too much water causing torrential floods, which are only supposed to happen every 100 years or so, but now seem to occur every other year around the world. Or, it is clouds that blow up into mega-typhoons and hurricanes that are far more devastating and deadly with terrible winds and tidal surges. Or, it is clouds that just don’t form at all, evaporating before they can release their precious water further inland from the sea, leaving the land dry and parched and extremely susceptible to wildfires and devastating famines due to droughts that never end.

KOALA — I Weep for You Australia by Donna Alena Hrabcakova — This is just one of the precious species we are losing every day…

Today, we live in a modern world that is populated by nearly 8 billion people, most of whom no longer understand the wisdom of our ancestors or the people who still live closely connected to nature and understand the balances necessary to sustain life. We live in a world where we no longer hear the wisdom of animals and life all around us, really enveloping us and sustaining us. We have become a people who are blinded by ideas of success, glory, and riches to be had in our grand new industrialized world. It is a world we created, but one begotten by short-sighted schemes and greed. And, there is a price for this too.

Recent data shows 2019 was the second hottest year on record.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Screen-Shot-2020-01-20-at-12.44.03-PM.png
Popular Science — 2019 was the second warmest year on record—here’s what this means for our future: New government data shows climate change is (still) heating up — Kate Baggaley, 1/17/20

As our man-made world, powered now by fossil fuels rather than whale oil, pushes nature’s delicate balances ever more out of whack, balances that nature worked out over billions of years, our framing of reality is snapping–just like the timbers of the Essex splintered after the whale rammed the ship. It is 200 year since the Essex sunk, and in this incredibly short amount of time, Earth is breaking, all because of our extreme enamoration with oil and coal.

PBS NEWSHOUR: Could bushfires erode Australia’s climate change ‘inertia’?

The price for our collective short-sighted industriousness is going to be paid by all of us. No one will be spared the consequences of the choices made for far too long. We have changed the world to our liking, but it’s not to the liking of life. Despite this, corporate interests guarding their profit margins stay the course, like Captain Pollard going straight into the hurricane. It is a course that supersedes the needs of life on Earth… a dying Earth… an Earth rammed by the white whale. But this time, there is a twist to the story because this time we are the whale. We are the ones ramming our ship that is carrying us through the vast and desolate emptiness of space, and believe me, if we have to abandon this ship, where we end up is going to be a lot harsher than the Pacific Ocean, probably unendurable. This whale that is living inside us feeds on the powerful emotions that are found in great abundance within our inner Seas…of Sorrow, …of Despair, …of Grief and Guilt and …of Helplessness and Hate. Believe me, or don’t believe me, but modern life is full of people who have fallen into such seas.

If we happen to catch a glimpse of how our personal blindness and short-sightedness has contributed to this current moment, it is often overwhelming, and so, it is quickly concealed or we blame someone else for our sad and sorry fate. But soon, there will be no one else to blame. Soon, our individual seas will spill over and merge with every other sea spilling over to create one gigantic wave of despair for this will be the only emotion left to feel, if we survive that long. Much of this will be because of what our small frames of reality have wrought. Most likely, it will be a prolonged and brutal odyssey, just like the men of the Essex endured… unless we wake up, unless we change our frame of reality, unless we put aside our differences, unite, and help each other do the inner work essential to survive what is coming next. 

This is not easy or pretty work, but what lies ahead of us is not easy or pretty either. Even though the situation is dire, each and every one of us can take action this very moment. This action is to heal ourselves and to help others heal. It requires one magical, elusive ingredient, which is love. It begins by self-love and being gentle with yourself. Love is what can stop this wave of destruction. But, love is work. 

This is what I have learned about healing love:

Is quiet, unless it needs to roar.

Is kind, but not stupid.

Puts others needs above ones own needs and desires, but sees through false appeals for assistance and insincerity, then it simply nods and chuckles.

Listens, hears, and understands what others say.

Waits…sometimes a long time…without judgment… if judgement is necessary, love has a good argument with the Self… and pays attention to all the information, good and bad, then weighs it fairly with the intention of discovering truth and implementing justice.

Rearranges time to do the right thing… rescue a stray dog, listen to a lonely person, help someone in need… these are the moments that really matter… when someone else’s needs truly supersede your own.

Is inclusive knowing all beings are utterly dependent on each other to survive and thrive on Earth.
Protects the rights, dignity, and well-being of all living beings.

Penetrates through everything… it is the great mixer of the universe, but even as it passes through every visible thing in the universe, it does not change or destroy a thing or being in any way, not like hate does, which also penetrates everything, but when it does, it rips things to pieces… love unites, bonds, supports, comforts, and sustains.

There are many other qualities to love. I still need to learn more. But, I am ready to keep learning. I am ready to deconstruct and reconstruct my frames of reality daily, if needed. Are you ready to do intense inner work? Are you ready to build a bigger Ship of Self by growing your own inner strength, resilience, wisdom, and capacity to love deeply? All of this is absolutely essential to be ready for the Great Transformation or whatever is supposed to come next because it has begun. There is no time to waste. Earth has already started listing severely to the side from the ramming we have given her.

THE EL CAMINO OF GRIEF. 
A dream of me in my Russian fur hat on ancestral land — by Donna Alena Hrabcakova
WHEN YOU BECAME LOVE AND BLISS. Blair in the afterlife — by Donna Alena Hrabcakova



* * *

One final thought on the importance of doing inner work since I’m all worked up about it. Many people think that we are on the cusp of a Great the Transformation, a Shift, or Metamorphosis, or Great Awakening of Gaia…but if we have not done critical inner work to get ready for it, to grow big enough for it, whatever you think is coming next, will not necessarily be what you think it is supposed to be. Nature does not care one wick for the transformation of consciousness or even if we survive as a species (case in point, note what happened to the dinosaurs). If we leave it up to Her, we might just all be transformed into Banana Slugs (see the 2nd song in the video below: Muy Tranquil — it’s at about 8 minutes… ah Cider is in this video! It is a concept video for one of the characters in the story I am writing).  

We are the ones who stepped across the Matrix of Minds into consciousness (I explain what this is in the story I am writing, which you can read when I finally get the 1st book out; otherwise, just make up your own explanation). Now, we must make a choice. One of the choices is to learn how to love ourselves fiercely. And, I am not talking about narcissistic love. I am talking about the kind of love that leaves us in great grief when our loved ones are taken from us through death. This is how we save Earth. It begins with you. It begins with healing yourself, and then helping others to do the same. It is time-consuming, messy work, and one slides backwards all the time, it’s very frustrating… but one does not give up and one does not wince when another to small frame of reality is shed. Of course, this is painful, but without pain we do not grow.

I have included my friend Alena’s paintings, lots of them, because she is showing us through her art how to get back to inner, deeper spaces inside ourselves through dreams and visions and imagination. It is only here where we can see inner storms rising and circumvent navigate them in order to survive them. It is here where we learn that we can live a lot more simply and happily than we have been told. It is here where we can learn how to see, feel, taste, and hear our way back to what is really important, and that is love. When we love fiercely, we fight for truth and justice. We fight for life and self-determination. We help each other grow our fields of consciousness, so that we can all make better choices. Alena brought my attention to Robert Moss who recently published a blog on soul loss and recovery. Much of what I have written above can also be understood as soul loss. This is a beautiful analogy to what happens to us when we face situations and circumstances that overwhelm and crush us. He says: “Understanding soul loss and how our Active Dreaming approach facilitates soul recovery and helps us become shamans of our own souls.”

So, activate your imagination…make time to dream…find ways to re-engage your inner world, and most of all love deeply. When you find yourself in grief, which is a natural consequence of deep love, do not fear it… embrace it. Let it help you shatter your previous frames of reality because they were probably too small for your soul, which needs a bigger body and mind to do what it came here to do, so grow! All the while, love yourself and help others in whatever way they need. We will not survive any other way unless we put aside our differences and unite as a force of healing love for life.

Drawing by Bébé from video blog: It Came From Inside and Tribute to Cider

WATER AND BONES

Based on a Dream on October 22, 2019

BECOMING THE HORSE by Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Archipelago appeared

Two thin islands stretched on the North tip 

of a sacred remote lake

The land was sky blue upon Prussian blue 

Savory sorrel, nettles and wild sage all grew on this inlet that was once harvested

Now forgotten. 

SHE WAS NOT SURE AT WHAT HOUR OF THE NIGHT SHE BECAME THE BIRD by Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Lady of the Lake 

whom lived in the water said;

“Something far more sacred lived upon these sandbars…”

This lovely one seemed to resemble my mother as I recalled her from many years ago.

She was composed of water, blood and bones. 

I witnessed her in a timeless slumber,  The Sacred Witness.

A pumice gray ribcage 

formed around her, spiraling, like a  wrapped chrysalis.

I was told the Lady sleeps in a dreamlike perpetual state 

like Shiva reviewing all the stories of the past, present and a future so far away it seems

unfathomable. 

She is assisting us to Remember.

Water and Bones by Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Deep in the waterways 

Everywhere we walk 

Forming us

Our Ancestors Bones

Our Ancestors Stories 

wanting us to

Reconnect 

Remember. 

The Lady said;

“Go to the sacred places, walk upon the land. 

Touch the waters. 

See what dreamtime brings you. 

Gather what is rightfully yours.”

Hushed silence reverberated in the air

Water colliding 

Falling into unconsciousness

Melodic waves 

She said no more. 

I was left with the 

Water and the Bones.

WOMAN BY THE FIRE WITH STARS IN HER HAIR by Donna Alena Hrabcakova
WHEN I STOOD BEFORE MY ANCESTORS LAND by Donna Alena Hrabcakova
ENDANGERED SPECIES: NARWHALS by Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Jewels of Indra’s Net

I wrote the following as a reflection from a series of conversations people from around the world had to discuss the climate crisis. As I looked through the wondrous materials considered and assembled by the Conference Weaving Now What? Deep Dives, I was dazzled by the jewels in the Now What?! Consciousness Deep Dive Conversation Harvest. Immediately, I thought of Indra’s Net. Before telling you why, it is important to understand what this net is. And, to find out more about Now What, visit the beautiful new site: Now What?! The art of being fully human in a time of crisis

According to Wikipedia: Indra’s net is a metaphor used to illustrate three essential concepts:

Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • Śūnyatā (emptiness) – This is a Buddhist concept that has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context. It is either an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience. [I believe for something new to emerge there must be space for it, thus this feature of reality both outer and inner is essential to all who seek to bring into the world a kinder, gentler, restorative reality.]
Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • Pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination) – This concept “is commonly translated as dependent origination, or dependent arising, is a key principle in Buddhist teachings,[note 1] which states that all dharmas (“phenomena”) arise in dependence upon other dharmas: “if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist”.  [I cannot think of a more essential concept to consider as we engage together in these sessions and others along with the weaving done afterwards. I always need to be reminded what dharma means. There is no single English translation for this word. Essentially it is the behaviors that make life in the universe possible. I think fits beautifully with us joining together in conversations that seek to understand and uplift behaviors that sustain life on our planet. If we don’t understand each other, we are indeed stuck.]
Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • Interpenetration (coalescence) – This concept developed from the Huayan school. It  holds all phenomena (dharmas) are deeply interconnected, mutually arising, and every phenomenon contains all other phenomena. Various metaphors and images are used to illustrate this idea. The first is known as Indra’s net. The net is set with jewels which have the extraordinary property that they reflect all of the other jewels, while the reflections also contain every other reflection, ad infinitum. The second image is that of the world text. This image portrays the world as consisting of an enormous text which is as large as the universe itself. The words of the text are composed of the phenomena that make up the world. However, every atom of the world contains the whole text within it. It is the work of a Buddha to let out the text so that beings can be liberated from suffering. [So, there you go. Perhaps this is why Indra’s Net popped into my mind as I read through the jewels, which is only a tiny piece of the harvest and this is even a tiny part of what is happening when we connect with each other and seek mutual understanding. We are indeed reflected in each other. We are the jewels in the Indra Net enveloping Earth.]

I imagine two wonderous Indra’s Net. One net holds our universe. It is woven by time and space that create the matrix holding everything we see in our universe. The second Indra’s Net is like the first, but this one wraps around our beautiful Earth. All life on Earth create the threads that are woven together to create this web. Humans have taken on an exaggerated importance in this web because of the level of consciousness we have attained. I am not going to delve into my thinking on this now…perhaps later… but suffice it to say we have changed the matrix from which we were born, and now we have a Herculean Task upon our shoulders to repair what has been damaged by us so life may continue to exist on this precious jewel in the larger Indra Net—Earth.

I think when we come together and listen to each other, we repair Earth’s net. Each of us has a special place and unique abilities that are needed to sustain Earth’s Indra’s Net. Each human being is informed by individual passions, interests, experiences, and failures. Some of us are really good at speaking, others are really good at organizing, still others are healers, and others bring visions. Each human being weaves part of this wondrous web enveloping Earth. To heal and repair our net, Earthneeds all our insights, energies, passions, and gifts.

So, this is the idea that struck me as I read the harvest material from the conferences, deep dives, and other conversations. It seems to me every human being is a jewel in Earth’s Indra’s Net. Through us the energy needed to repair, strengthen, and heal this netis made visible. We are essentially portalsof transformation, and it is going to take as many ofus pulling in the same direction as possible to change our collectivefate.

I have not had much time to read everything, nor did I have participate in the Deep Dives, but what I have seen is beautiful pieces of wisdom being pulled up from depths inside ourselves. Wisdom that has become submerged and lost due to current ways of thinking and living in our world. Let me stress the weaving being done through our collective action is utterly essential for the moment we are in now.  

Given limits on my time at this moment, I am only able highlight a few of the jewels that caught my attention as I looked through the excellent excel chart being created to preserve some of the harvest from this collective work. There are also notes and videos of Deep Dives and from parts of the conferences taking place around the world. My selection of a few of the jewels in no way diminishes any of the other jewels.I am a simple and small portal of consciousness informed by my individual experiences, passions, dreams, and failures. All this naturally limits what I can see and how I see it. But, then thisis the beauty of Indra’s Net. Each jewel is unique and reflects every other jewel in the net. I suspect there are as many jewels in Earth’s Indra’s Net as there human beings alive on the planet, and the energy coursing through the webbing of this net is the wonderous life alive on Earth right now.

Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • The first jewel I want to highlight is one that I saw reflected in several discussions. This is the jewel of sacred ceremony. We need to remember our thoughts are powerful. They are able to collapse the infinite sea of possibilities in which we all swim into a single thread of reality. We do this by thinking, choosing, and acting (or not acting). Moment by moment we contribute our strand of reality to all the other strands being created by every living being on the planet. As the strands interweave, this becomes our shared reality. Humans have become particularly powerful in sculpting our shared reality by using our minds gifted with consciousness (or cursed – as many world myths account this moment as man’s great fall). I write about this in other places, so I will not delve into my meaning here, but only say humans emerged from a more primordial state of consciousness into the state we understand it as today. This singular accomplishment allowed humans to not only perceive the world, but to apperceive it. I will talk more about this ability to apperceive our world later, but for now, I will simply provide you with a definition of it: 

From Wiki: Meaning in psychology – In psychology, apperception is “the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole.”[2] In short, it is to perceive new experience in relation to past experience. The term is found in the early psychologies of Herbert Spencer, Hermann Lotze, and Wilhelm Wundt. It originally means passing the threshold into consciousness, i.e., to perceive. But the percept is changed when reaching consciousness due to the contextual presence of the other stuff already there, thus it is not perceived but apperceived.

Apperception is thus a general term for all mental processes in which a presentation is brought into connection with an already existent and systematized mental conception, and thereby is classified, explained or, in a word, understood; e.g. a new scientific phenomenon is explained in the light of phenomena already analyzedand classified. The whole intelligent life of man is, consciously or unconsciously, a process of apperception, in as much as every act of attention involves the appercipient process.[1]

Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • The next jewel is the significant of language in constructing our realities. Here again our ability of apperception is powerful for we have civilized and cultivated most of the world simply by seeing possibilities different from what nature originally provided for life to exist. And, so here we stand at the edge of every moment with this power to apperceive infinite possibilities, and language is the tool we use to share our visions of what is possible. So, yes, it is a commanding tool in constructing our shared realities because it allows us to cooperate in collective action. 

It also comes with peril, as this group of jewels point out, for we can misunderstand each other if we do not take care in truly understanding how words are being used and what is truly being said. Our ability for language is an ability that we have perhaps grown too accustom to wielding. I really like the idea of reconnecting with other cultures and languages. This is a beautiful way to understand how utterly diverse our ability to communicate with each other is… and through communication, our ability to co-create. Human cultures and civilizations have unfolded in so many incredible and diverse ways across space and through time. So, getting stuck in our head with words that have become too small for our current reality is a trap, and it is good to learn how to get out of our self-created thought traps. Gaining perspective of different languages, different cultures, and even different ways of communication (e.g., dance, visual art, dreamtime, empathy), helps us re-appreciate our ability to communicate with each other in so many different ways. This I believe helps us to perceive nuances better for every word is really a universe. Here is one of my favorite shorts by  Dr. Maya Angelou – Power Of Words

Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • The next jewel is learning to let go of the story. Here the question was asked: What are the actions I might take now that allow me to fully offer my gifts in service to what is needed in response to the possibility that everything is going to work our just fine or it is not going to work out? I think this is wonderful because it helps one to understand they can take an active role in telling the story unfolding right now about Earth and her fate (or a passive role). I think most of us began to believe (for me it was around the 6thgrade) that our voice does not matter, that our thinking will never be good enough, and that our internal knowledge is wrong and has no place in the world of educated men (I do use men here purposively). 

To survive in our modern civilization, we learn how to bend ourselves and squeeze into the tiny boxes of perception and apperception that are allowed by the systems dictated to us by our modern, civilized world. Most of these systems come out of Western Civilization for this civilization has had a huge propensity to colonize the world with its particular brand of thinking and mindset. For humans living in modern Western systems, there are patterns for how to make money, where to live, how much free time to spend with friends, family, or anything else that is important, even how to think and use our minds. Since so many human beings are born into this system, we do not even realize how much control of our shared narrative we have given up by making ourselves fit into this story being told mostly by powerful ones inside of Western Civilization. 

Most of us do not realize how shallow the conscious waters have become inside of this great narrative. But, we have been told we must swim only in these designated waters—conscious waters that are too shallow to sustain us much longer. I think other cultures and civilizations have not taught this out of their people. This is why we need our indigenous brothers and sisters, but we do not need to misuse their precious knowledge (as another Jewel cautions), rather this knowledge is inside every person trapped inside Western thinking, we need to marshal our courage and venture back into the deep end of our conscious capacities. This is where our indigenous brothers and sisters can be guides, but we must do the work.  And, help each other to take a more active role in telling our personal story that becomes part of the collective story…this is so important. Active storytelling is a precious jewel—indeed, it is a super ability.

Another really critical element in this list of jewels is letting go of the ending of the story. When we let go of what we hope or want the ending to be, we put ourselves squarely in the present moment. This is where our power is. It is not in the past (we’ve already been there). It is not in the future (we are not there yetand thusour choicesare only future possibilities). It is NOW—this is where we choose our thread of shared reality. This is where our voice can help guide the flow of the collective story being told about Earth and its inhabitants. By letting go of our attachmentto what the ending needs to be or should be, suddenly all possibilities open up again. 

In this moment of infinite possibilities, we can get about doing what we are so good at doing. In fact, we have evolved as human beings to not only perceive the beautiful world around us, but to appercept it. I am using apperception in the psychological meaning of this word, as defined earlier: “the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole.” With this ability, we become transformers. It is what we do better than any other species on the planet, and that is to take our individualized toolbox (the mind) equipped with individualized knowledge, experience, and hopefully wisdom and create something new. Even when we don’t employ our wisdom, when we choose from the infinite number of possibilities swirling around us every momentof every dayand act on one, we collapse the infinite stream of possibilities into one possibility. This becomes our thread of reality. 

Indra’s Jewels — Art by Bébé

So you see, we are more powerful than we think… and yet, just like the Buddhist concept of Pratītyasamutpāda, we are completely dependent on each other making the best choices possible to survive within our shared reality—the web we weave together. What a dilemma!  

The world cannot be saved by one human being, not even by the most powerful and rich 1 percent of human beings. I don’t know how many it is going to take to save Earthfrom the looming climate crisiswe have woven into the story, but it is probably going to take asmany of us as possible who are awakening to our new role as narrators in this collective story. So, releasing the ending you want is essential because to be a powerful narrator, it is essential to see the present moment for what it is and tell this story as accurately as you can… how you avoided the rocks or boulders in the stream, how you saw and out smarted the poisonous snake laying wait in the rocks, how you navigate the stream of possibilities.  

These are power stories. They have always been power stories from timeimmemorial.  Now we must learn how to tell these powerful stories about ourselves again against the backdrop of our modern age with all its distractions, pain, and fear thatcreates chaos meant to keep us docile and frozen in non-action. Or at least trap us in polarized action. Such action simply gets cancelled out by its equal and opposite action by others trapped on the other side of a false divide. It is a trick of the powerful narrators of our time who currently control most of our collective narrative. Too many of ushave fallenintotheir trap, makingus desperately grasp at things beyond our reach. This especially happens whenwe lose the firm ground of our inner reality; then, we are especially at the mercy of nefarious forces trying to control the collective story through fearmongering  and other dramatic techniques. 

We must grow stronger consciously. This is how we strengthen Indra’s Net because each one of us is a jewel in this beautiful net. We can help each other by giving freely our time and attention to lift each other when we falter or fall.  We don’t have to leave anyone behind. When we stand on the plain of our present moment and really see what is in front of us, we are powerful beings. This is a link to some of my early writing and visual storytelling about these ideas. This began to emerge inside of me more than two years ago: Consciousness Waves.

https://www.sapience2112.com/2019/01/10/consciousness-waves/
Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • Another jewel is pain. Here another critical question is asked: How do we create a space for pain? So much of Western Civilization is focused on avoiding pain at all costs. I don’t know about you, but I grew up feeling it was not OK to admit to feeling pain. Physical pain was fine to admit. Everyone can clearly see if you have a scraped knee or broken arm. But, emotional or spiritual pain…this was scary. Often it is assumed you did not follow the prescribed rules you were taught, and thus you are the cause of your own pain and deserve to suffer. No one deserves to suffer. Hardly any of us has such control over all the things that impact us, it is ridiculous to blame a person in pain for their pain. But, so often this is what we do. I have been going through a year of pretty intense pain, I can tell you one thing: Pain focuses ones attention and time like no other stimuli. Pain tells us something is wrong, and it prods us to seek solutions. When we are in pain, trivial matters, mindless distractions, the things that use to fill our time fade away and the mind focuses on finding solutions. [I captured this idea in a fantastical little story about my trials in The Divine Dodo – Hanga Dyra Mingja.]
The Divine Dodo — Hanga Dýra MingjaArt by Bébé

So, yes, make space for pain. Do not be afraid of the power pain offers. Perhaps this is what victim blamers are really afraid of… the person experiencing pain finding their power making them no longer so easy to control. Finding solutions to things causing pain is absolutely critical. 

In this collection of jewels, there is also discussion about the power of music. I write about the power of music in another story I am writing, so I will not wax on about it here. I will simply say our ancestors understood the power of music and how it can inspire action in the minds of individuals and groups. We have forgotten the power that music and dance give us. We have let them become co-opted into the realm of entertainment and money-making. It is so much more than this. It is part of our internal guidance system. Find your song. Find your dance. This is how the universe moves and expresses itself through us. Our magical powers to transform reality rises from inside of us and through us… and it is through our collective action that what rises from inside our minds is made visible through our collective action in the world—this is our shared reality. 

Indra’s Jewel — Art by Bébé
  • Another jewel closely connected to pain is grief. Indeed, grief as this group discusses, breaks open the heart. The group also shares a beautiful poem expressing grief exquisitely. Grief connects us to our empathy. Our empathic powers are needed now more than any other time in human history. To me empathy is not just understanding that someone else is in pain or is grieving, but it is the capacity to stand beside the person who is suffering, to bear witness to their pain knowing we cannot take their pain from them, but perhaps we can help them hold it for a time… maybe help the person endure it, however long it takes. 

I think really powerful empaths can absorb into their own bodies other people’s pain, anger, grief, and the unbearable emotions. I think our ancestors and indigenous people understand how this works and know how to help transmute these powerful emotional states. But, this takes time and skill to understand and most of us in Western Civilization have lost this ability. However, Medicine men and women around the world still possess it, and known how not helping people navigate these difficult parts of the journey can impact the health not only of the individual suffering but of the entire group. In most modern cultures, we have lost the rituals of transformation that can transmute and balance these negative and destructive energies with their equal and opposite energies. It is here where we have our power as individuals and as groups in helping each other find and maintain balance so that wisdom can rise and shine brightly. 

This is all I have time to reflect on right now. I wish I could do more, and I am sure my thinking and efforts to communicate are inadequate for the rich reservoir of ideas, thinking, collaborative efforts transpiring through this collective work (collective action of transformation) unfolding right here and right now.  I can only encourage each person who has participated in the dialogues or who is just discovering these resources to use your own unique toolbox of thought, perception, experience, ideas to continue strengthening this net we are repairing together. We do this by providing our time and attention in whatever capacity we feel called to do and with whatever time we have available to do so. Time and attention are the most valuable resources in the universe. It really is all we need to be powerful narrators of our personal stories, which of course become a part of the collective story of Earth.

The Thing That Feeds on Fear and Sadness — Art by Bébé

Postscript

After writing this, I came upon readings and conversations about the importance of emptiness. I quite frankly did not understand how absolutely essential emptiness is when I wrote the above. I intend to write more about it when I have time, but for now I must devote most of my attention to finishing editing the story I began 7 years ago (almost to this day for I remember first finding the thread to the story I have been writing ever since late one September afternoon–this story is Sapience). And so I leave you only with a quote from Carl Jung whom I was reading and finally understood the power and importance of emptiness. He said:

“The archetype corresponding to the situation is activated, and as a result this explosive and dangerous forces hidden in the archetype come into action, frequently with unpredictable consequences. There is no lunacy people under the domination of an archetype will not fall a prey too. “

“If 30 years ago anyone had dared to predict that our psychological development was tending towards a revival of the medieval persecutions of the Jews, that Europe would again tremble before the Roman fasces and the tramp of legions, that people would once more give the Roman salute, as two thousand years ago, and that instead of the Christian Cross an archaic swastika would lure onward millions of warriors ready for death–why, that man would have been hooted at as a mystical fool. And today? Surprising as it may seem, all this absurdity is a horrible reality. Private life, private aetiologies, and private neuroses have become almost a fiction in the world of today. The man of the past who lived in a world of archaic ‘representations collectives’ had risen again into very visible and painfully real life, and this not only in a few unbalanced individuals but in many millions of people”

“There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution, not in the form of images filled with content, but at first only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action. When a situation occurs which corresponds to a given archetype, that archetype becomes activated and a compulsiveness appears, which, like an instinctual drive, gains its way against all reason and will, or else produces a conflict of pathological dimensions, that is to say, a neurosis.”

— The Portable Jung, The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, p. 66-67

PAUSING. REMEMBERING.

Painted by Donna Alena Hrabcakova

PAUSING. REMEMBERING

September reminds me of the days where one had the leisure

to jump into a pile of leaves 

carefree no worries about the existential crises of NOW.

Wind brings in the random dance of the falling ones 

turning into a kaleidoscope of magical hues.

My favorite being brilliant red and burnt sienna

Taking my breath away. 

PAUSING. REMEMBERING.

The cycle of Autumn presents herself in Her own timing.

I feel the rhythm within myself changing. 

What I see before me. 

Remembering why I am here. 

What my purpose is.

Are you re-remembering yours?

Painted by Donna Alena Hrabcakova

PAUSING. REMEMBERING.

Those whom passed in the summer and knowing it is a new season without them. 

I like to think an Ancestor will fly into my crabapple trees and visit. 

It happened for awhile this summer a beautiful red tail hawk hovered in my tree,

which seemed like minutes or hours all colliding. 

Our eyes truly connected.

I knew it was someone whom loved me once so much. 

I knew it was true. 

PAUSING. REMEMBERING. 

This Labor Day I reflect on the meaning of why I create. 

What purpose it serves and maybe it doesn’t move but only a few.

I am not needing to be famous.

I only want to be heard.

Connecting to the trees the leaves the intercommunication of the living planet

telling me it is time to release what no longer serves me. 

I feel the quietness moving inside me. 

The need for more psychic silence for the soul.

I don’t question it because it happens with every turn of the seasons. 

I must make the time to create and set boundaries that will not be interrupted.

These are the Sacred Hours of the Day.

PAUSING. REMEMBERING. 

I carry on one foot in front of the other and know each step holds the imprint

of my mother and father 

my grandmothers and grandfathers 

my great grandparents 

the beautiful lands they left in Eastern Slovakia. 

Each step 

Each word 

Each brushstroke is telling 

me this. 

Lest I forget. 

I do not want to forget. 

Autumn embrace me with all your narratives.

Let me be one vessel that carries it all back into the dirt and soil 

full of purpose 

communicating to all whom will listen.

Stories buried and released in the awakening that lies ahead. 

In Lovingkindness, Donna Alena 

THOUGHT FOR YOUR ART: What is your mission statement in your art?

Let’s think about why we create and what are we hoping to communicate in the forms of art we manifest or are given to us from Sources unknown.

What is your part in the collective unconscious of stories, storytelling, novellas, films, music and how you live and express yourself?

I am listening. 
Tell me your statement and I will begin my also. 

PAUSE and REMEMBER. 

These are my words today. 

OUR ART IS THE CEREMONY to heal ourselves and so many.  

ECO GUARDIANS

I love to look at the journey of my paintings for it is an utter surprise, an alchemy of process.  I am in a subconscious state when I paint, I do not sketch out ideas ahead of time I just let the brush be my guide.  I suppose it is being a Visionary or a Soul Artist unsure of what the result will be but trusting in the process.  I see all the symbolism in my art reflecting on the world and what seemed to call out to me most was the word: ECO GUARDIANS.  I was not sure if this word existed but upon my searching I found the words being used in the Maori Tradition: Kaitiakitanga. This means one whom is a guardian, protector or conserver.  This traditional role is important with the Maori Peoples.  They help shelter the lives and species around them.  They help foster and preserve these traditions generation to generation.  This role means speaking to the land, the waters, the air, the sea and all forms of life as a living entity and one that connects us all.  ALL of these entities have their own individual sovereignty. This ideology knows that we are not greater than the animals, planets, trees, we are part of the fabric and web that we share intrinsically together.  We co-exist and must survive together in a language of sacred reciprocity and respectability. 

My house is full of what seems like 200 paintings or more over the last two years.  Images of shamanic birds, horses, Indigenous Peoples, plant life, bears, Ancestors, Spirit figures, fires, water ways, sacred landscapes and so much more come alive in their own narratives.  I feel I just show up but know I am never alone.  I just finished writing about INTERCONNECTEDNESS and have been contemplating on this relationship of being an ECO GUARDIAN for days now.  Can a lake, river, sea life, plant species, a pack of wolves or whales be a part of our subtribe of humanness? We are all connected and one thing I see over and over in my paintings is we are not alone.  When I picture the children being all alone on the Border I wondered whom would comfort them in the night? I dreamt of a large red makwa Ojibwa bear that held the children so they were never alone despite the fact that employees were not allowed to hold the children at the detainment shelters.  This to me was heart breaking. I decided to create a narrative that no one would suffer not even animals if they were alone through my paintings.  Being a guardian means one respects all of life and comforts them to the best of their ability. Even the art we create can have protective boundaries.   I pictured those whom were abused in an exhibition I was in called THE LONG RED LINE: ONE BILLION RISING in Chicago focusing on the voices that had been silent. The atrocities were happening world wide yet I created a narrative where red bears, spirit birds, Zulu Warriors, birch bark trees comforted the night sleeper and held all their truths and sorrows.  I felt if I could change the narrative of such pain maybe it would comfort someone on the planet.  Surely the role of the ECO GUARDIAN cherishes all life and helps to alleviate suffering in even one life. If this is what it meant then surely one persons’ pain abated would not be in vain. 

By Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Spirit Horses went through the fires of California, the Amazon, Siberia, and places all over the planet in my paintings warning of the fires to come.  They brought rain and allowed the water to dissipate the pain of all that was being burned.  ECO GUARDIANS brought the best healing they could in the situation and a source of resurrection.  Water Protectors were brought more springs of water flowing at their feet.  Taos Deer Dancers performed the dances that would help the coldness of winter to bring forth the right ingredients of light and warmth for a new growing season. Meanwhile the New Ancients, the ones originally on the cave wall paintings brought forth hope in the dire of circumstances that in the waning hours of the sun and moon the planet Earth might be able to keep breathing and surviving.  

By Donna Alena Hrabcakova

How can artists be ECO GUARDIANS? First of all you can not be afraid to protect the innocent.  Safety is an illusion in these times but we must step up.  We must validate what is right through our voice, our paintings, our poetry, our songs, our spoken words, our actions.  I am re-writing a new narrative, it is not naïve or sugar coated.  I am well aware of what is happening keeping up with literature, news, writings reflective of the times. I also know we are hungry for solutions, for ways that beauty can dispel the pain and sorrow.  Books, paintings, films and so many forms of art can explore how can we take care of all the planet and ourselves. The time of being guided by the ego is over.  Deceased.  We must care for one another or we will not make it.  Our very breath and lives depend on it.  Extinction of landscapes, plants, animals, water and so much more is real and we know that with acute awareness from the devastation of the burning of the Amazon now. I challenge all of you followers to take a good look at what is happening.  Do not deny it. I want to see what creative solutions you come up with in your processes, dreams, day dreams, and flights of fancy.  Sink your bare feet into the earth if it is warm and feel  the breath of the Mother, in her winds, the trees, the whispers of signs given to your eyes and ears only. She is speaking to us all the time.  Let us write this new narrative. Are you wanting more to this existence? I urge you to join me as an ECO GUARDIAN.  Can I count on you? Let me know what you thinking, writing and creating. 

We are in this together… In Lovingkindness, Donna Alena

INTERCONNECTEDNESS

I laid in bed meditating on the last few paintings I created (with assistance from my subconscious helpers) on the AMAZON and the FIRES.  I asked for guidance what these paintings were about and what they were trying to communicate to myself and all of us.  I heard the word very loudly in my minds eye, INTERCONNECTEDNESS.  I thought of what the ravages of the fires meant in the Amazon with millions of acres burning, Siberia and all over the world currently. I knew since we exist on a living planet this effected us all because it is all energy and ripples to where ever we live on the planet.  I felt so deeply that my heart was hurting, what is this doing to us psychologically? The death of so many species of life discovered and undiscovered, animals, bird life, Indigenous Peoples and the changing of their narratives, stories retold, insects, the dependency of interspecies.  We are connected intrinsically.  Do you feel the burning of the Mother in some way? How? Does it effect you? Do you feel hotter than usual? Is your anger or grief manifested in some level unexpressed? Do you notice the disconnectedness we feel around us to avoid talking about what really matters now, how we continue to live on a planet that is burning, flooding, getting hotter and hotter year after year? Do you feel the avoidance? Do you see it with more acting out and violence? And, meantime shallow discussions continue, and we don’t address the core of what really is happening as denial feels so safe or at least it offers an illusion of safety that these events are not taking place? I cannot and refuse to live in that place of complacency and denial. 

First, I am an artist with every fiber of my being. I know the writers, artists, musicians, creators of gardens, novels, poetry, films, dance, storytelling can be a catalyst of change.  I would like to think as we get our work in the public domains that we can change the narratives.  We can write the truths, is it uncomfortable? Yes. Painful and even traumatic? Yes.  But we no longer have the luxuries of denial.  We depend on one another.

We are INTERCONNECTED.  What happens to humanity through devastating events trickles into our fields of energy.  We needed these plants, animals, people, villages, communities, stories to be a part of the Universal Narrative as they burn what does that mean to you and the place you live on the planet? Do not think the area you live in is not a possibility of future events?  This home is a living organism and it will keep having it’s evolution.  We absolutely cannot escape that.  I think at this time on the planet we are dealing with what is true and what is not. Climate change at the most intense and dire levels are being recorded now.  This is true.  There is a chasm between honoring and offering sacred reciprocity to the planet and honoring ourselves and others in a good way.  Do no harm. You ask how we can do that?

One small ripple of extending kindness is a start. A kind word.  Reaching out to someone in need with no concern of how it will benefit you but how it will help your neighbor.   Recycling, being conscious of your water intake, composting, zero waste, eating no meat, gardening your own organic foods with no pesticides we know of all these possibilities. Living in respect of one another and the planet is a act or prayer of gratitude.  Having deep conversations with others about these issues helps.  Reading literature and books that guide in changing the narrative helps.  Creating a painting of contemplation helps.  I know we are all so busy but what if we chose one thing to volunteer our time to weekly?  One hour or two? Giving back to a cause or agency you strongly believe in? I love teaching art classes to high risk students or working on creating safe environments for others to gather and share conversations with. Painting is always my medicine. Listening to your dreams and intuition, it rarely steers you wrong.  

AIRIA OF THE AMAZON, RAIN MEDICINE, ELLORA OF ECUADOR, and THE CHILDREN ON THE BORDER all came to me without premeditation. So many of my paintings do, I say this humbly as I do not know the magic that will enfold till I start the process.  Our paper, our canvases, music sheets are bursting to translate messages. This will be the new planetary language.  It is a new language we are learning through interconnectedness, one of co-existence.  We have no other choice if we really want to make it.  Our lives count on it.  Our breath and all that lives and breathes on this planet counts on this.  It’s beyond the stage of urgency which leads me to the next topic of being ECO GUARDIANS. I am still in the process of writing this entry.

Thank you for consideration of these words. 

I must write them.  I am asking you to please contribute your storytelling and narrative to this piece.  I want to hear from you.  I am counting on you.  Till we meet again…

In Loving Respect and Kindness, Donna Alena

HOPI WOMAN WITH YELLOW SNAKE PROTECTRESS OF THE EARTH

I have laid in bed thinking of all the paintings I have done since Blair died. My beloved. At first I thought the bulk of my work was about losing him so quickly and unexpectedly. I was devastated beyond all words and the only healing that worked for me was painting.  I have been in my studio painting continuously since his passing 2 years ago.  When I am not working, I paint; it is my healing medicine.  What I realized was this was my ceremony for grief.  Along with the grieving process, I grieved for the United States, the devastation of global climate changes at such a rapid rate and the pain of our leadership and where we were headed.  I realized in the process I was painting about the Mother Earth and all the events that were happening at an exponential rate.  I was grieving at such a deep level and my dreams became more and more prolific and vivid.

This is a painting that came to me in my dreams.  I saw a Hopi woman going through the earth with a large yellow serpent as if she was a Guardian of what was to come.  I asked where she came from and heard “Guatemala.” I had this dream before the insurgence of the refugees from Central America were heading this way at such a devastating rate.  I saw her as a HOPI woman, and she was on a journey to Texas and New Mexico.  This was before the detainment of what was to happen in Texas and on the border.  I was told in the dream she was protecting the pathway of what was to become before us.  Then, the detainment camps happened, and the pain of the suffering and deaths of all those trying to leave Central America escalated.  It is not easy to be a visionary in these times but our roles are so important.  I know the artists are needed with such urgency.  I feel this deep in my art and dreams. 

This Hopi woman speaks of the moment of catharsis.  Please write your stories, poetry, paint and pay attention to your dreams.  We are at the crossroads and the time is now with urgency on every level.

My next post will be on Eco Guardians and being a Warrior in these times.  

Thank you so much for reading this and for your journey with me. 

What will your write, paint, create today?

Love and Undying Hope,  Donna Alena

AIRIA, AMAZONIA WOMAN OF PEACE

Notre Dame Burning — Painted by Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Several months back, I wrote a piece about Consciousness Warriors. As I tried to conclude this piece, Notre Dame burned. What follows is what I wrote then:

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

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

As I watched Norte Dame burn, a thought occurred to me: What if this is a foreshadowing of what is to come? What if we do nothing to mitigate Climate Change and the monster we created using our Westernized, over-civilized, profit-centered thinking continues to grow and consume and become so big our individual streams of consciousness are just too puny and almost useless to put it out? Even banning together in small groups, we are outmatched on every level by this beast that is the collective, which is us as well . This would leave us with only one thing left to do, and that is watch and witness the horror and terror of knowing we are losing our home, we are losing our mother, we are losing the place we have gathered for countless millenniums, a place so precious, so sacred we will only realize what we are losing as we watch it being destroyed.

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

Even in my grandest imaginations, I did not believe Earth would reach a crisis point this year. Yet, here we are, several months since Norte Dame burned, and 2019 is the hottest year yet on record, there have been massive fires in Russia’s arctic, glaciers in Greenland are melting faster than ever (the last time they melted this fast was in 2012), Antarctica’s biggest ice shelf may be more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought, and now the fires in the Amazon rain forest that have turned the skies of São Paulo black at mid-day.

Yes, we know many of the fires in the Amazon have been intentionally set to clear forest for farming. Yes, we know this has been a practice for decades. But, this year there are more fires than ever, and some burn out of control. There are theories that once enough rain forest has been destroyed, it will flip and all of the rain forest will die and become grasslands. While this will be wonderful for farmers who want to grow soy or corn or wheat, the lost of the lungs of Earth, the diversity of life in the rain forest, the lost of the people who have lived in harmony with nature for thousands of years is incalculable–it is a tragedy of mammoth portions that will feed the fire of climate collapse.

Here now is a call to all artists, seers, and people of conscious. What we are seeing here and now in 2019 is urgent. My friend and collaborator, Donna Alena Hrabcakova, shares her vision and message:

AIRIA, AMAZONIA WOMAN OF PEACE — Painted by Donna Alena Hrabcakova

This piece was painted by happenstance, SPIRIT. This beautiful one just jumped through the canvas with a message for all ARTISTS to hear.  I am just a humble channel for my paintings. I have been painting with social consciousness/subconscious for years. Most of my images come through my dreams.  The plight of the INDIGENOUS ONES have always been a deep place in my heart.  I had the lucky privilege to live on a Northern Indian Reservation for years and learn about their culture and language and it was one of the best things I did in my life, learning about the Ojibwa Peoples.  My background is in the arts and art therapy.  I am a woman whom is Slovakian and knows the plight of my family being run off their land due to leaders whom had no conscience and only took and sent many to their deaths. That trauma is in my DNA. I felt the Portuguese name of Airia came through and I looked it up it meant WOMAN OF PEACE. This is what I wrote very quickly this morning on my beloved mother’s birthday Audrey from the Other Side:

The artists, YOU, writers, dancers, play and screenwriters, filmmakers, ceremonialists, dancers, choreographers, musicians, ALL OF YOU, please note we will appear with URGENCY to your pages and canvases.  You will be our lungs and breath for it is so difficult to breath where we are now, full of smog, chemicals and fire.  We are gasping…

This story is about death and resurrection, of corruption at its deepest darkest level.  It is about the dictators that want to live by their rules only and are not concerned about the Mother the Earth for all she gives to us, the lungs she provides, the nutrients, the soil, the water, the food and substance.  This does not concern them for all they want to do is consume like a hungry ghost, nothing will fully satisfy them.  Their beings are run by the ego not the soul axis and nothing will quench their neurotic greed.  It is their own personal cancer.  The time is ending for them to rule in this way, they know it so they have become more and more obsessed with power and their wants and needs.  Yet no desire will satisfy them. They have been raping and pillaging the land for so long now…NO MORE.

They are choking the Mother. The Mother is on life support now.  We used to say she was in the ICU but she is on life support!!!!  Do you hear this, do you know it???  Will she rally and make it? Who will be near her for her vigil? It can go either way and you and I know it could be the last hours or it could be resurrection.  That is why we need the ARTISTS more than ever now to write a new narrative.  Quickly. Your pens, your paper, your acting, dancing, documenting, pictures, paintings, historical recordings, of the narrative you are living now, and what we are experiencing.  HELP US!  It is not too late to rewrite this novel.  Please. The life force plug has not been pulled. Our grief is inconsolable at this stage.  We are wailing at the highest octave, and the whales can hear our cries deep in the oceans and they are carrying the messages from the beautiful birds, our family, that live in the canopy of trees and this Paradise on Earth.  We are the epicenter, the life nucleus and we need you. 

The story needs to be sung, cried, prayed, chanted to the sound waves and energy fields of where you live.  It’s not too late, yet.  We are speaking to you. Do you hear us??? Do you have the patience to translate, those whom will listen we will show up and we thank you for showing up.  WILL YOU BE OUR TRANSLATORS? Carry your journal and notebooks close or memorize the words that come to you.  Pay attention to your dreams even the day visions we send you. We do not know the hour we will visit but like mist and fog we will show up.  Please document the stories, the birds, the vast array of insects, the undiscovered healing plants and the discovered, all the multi-universes of life forces. Please hear us! Do the ceremonies, the dances, rituals, prayers, poetry, performances, paintings, songs, narratives, stories, talking fires, storytelling…do not stop.  You are Her lungs, our lungs, our breath. 

Will you listen?

Will you translate?

The air is so thick it is palpable and I am sure your breathing is effected too.

Please write it down. 

Time is running out. “

Your devoted Amazon Sister, Airia

It Feeds on Fear and Sadness

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”  — Carl Jung, The Philosophical Tree

The starting image of the video came from a dream where I had already fallen through layers of fear and what was left was a place of sadness. This is where I found the thing. It looks like a conglomeration of rocks. But my dream told me this thing is alive and feeds on fear and sadness.

The Thing That Feeds on Fear & Sadness

Carl Jung talks about things that live inside our psyches. You cannot see, touch, or measure them in the ways we are accustomed to seeing, touching, and measuring things in the stream of Western Civilization, but that doesn’t mean these things are not there. Jung and many others defined things within our psyche that affect our thoughts and behavior at the deepest levels of our human beingness. They are not necessarily bad though they can impart nasty effects on us. Nevertheless, we need them to be human. In fact, they provide the energy our minds need to think and feel and dream. They give us motivation, focus, drive, essentially all the things that make us human. During his life, Carl Jung followed his intuition and insights informed by his clinic practice as a psychologist and psychiatrist to define what we know today as analytic psychology. He came to understand human beings are affected by energies that can emerge from the psyche spontaneously and affect us. Working with his patients, he came to understand all humans have access to shared images that encode psychic energies and experiences. He called them archetypes, and they are essential structures of our minds; just as skin and organs are essential structures for our human bodies. These psychic images extend back to primoradial times. They are a sort of short-hand, a memory of humanity’s shared experience of existence since emerging from an unconscious state of being to a conscious state of being; some probably span even further back. Archetypes live inside of us, they are us, and every human mind can access them. Indeed, a human mind cannot function without them. 

There are other things living inside our minds as well. I believe my drawing is one of these other things.

While I worked on the drawing, I was also reading a collection of lectures C.G. Jung gave to his peers at the Institute of Medical Psychology in London between September 30 to October 4, 1935. The audience consisted of about 200 medical profession. A stenographic record was made of the lectures and discussions. Later, it was transcribed and edited by Mary Barker and Margaret Game along with being passed by Professor Jung before being printed and distributed by the Analytical Psychology Club of London in 1936. In Lecture 3, Jung clarifies aspects of a word association test he developed to help him understand what is going on inside the psyches of his patients. He explains that whenever a word in his test hits upon a complex residing in his patient, there is a measurable delay in the person’s response to the word.

Jung says: 

"Complexes are partial or fragmentary personalities. When we speak of the ego-complex, we naturally assume it has a consciousness because the relationship of the various contents to the center in other words to the ego, is called consciousness. But, we also have a grouping of contents about a center, a sort of nucleus, in other complexes. So, we may ask the question: Do complexes have a consciousness of their own?" 

— C.G. Jung, Analytical Psychology — Its Theory & Practice (1968), p. 82

In a previous lecture, he showed a diagram with different spheres of the mind. The center sphere is dark, representing the sphere of the unconsciousness. Jung explains the closer a person gets to the center, the more he or she will experience what Janet calls an abasement du nivea’s mental—or a state where one’s conscious autonomy begins to disappear. The closer to the center a person gets the more under the fascination of unconscious content they become. Jung says:

"Conscious autonomy loses its tension and its energy, and that energy reappears in the increased activity of unconscious contents. You can observe this process in an extreme form when you carefully study a case of insanity. The fascination of unconscious contents gradually grows stronger and conscious control vanishes in proportion until finally the patient sinks into the unconscious altogether and becomes completely victimized by it. He is the victim of a new autonomous activity that does not start from his ego but starts from the dark sphere." 

— C.G. Jung, Analytical Psychology — Its Theory & Practice (1968), p. 82

Jung describes a complex as an agglomeration of associations (very much like the starting image of the thing I drew). A complex often originates from something of traumatic character, it is a thing of a highly toned character, and it can be painful to the person who has it. Jung says:

"Everything that is highly toned [in the psyche] is rather difficult to handle. If for instance, something is very important to me, I begin to hesitate when I attempt to do it, and you have probably observed that when you ask me difficult questions I cannot answer them immediately because the subject is important, and I have a long reaction time. I begin to stammer, and my memory does not supply the necessary material. Such disturbances are complex disturbances--even if what I say does not come from a personal complex of mine. It is simply an important affair, and whatever has an intense feeling-tone is difficult to handle because such contents are somehow associated with physiological reactions with processes of the heart, the tonus of the blood vessels, the condition of the intestines, the breathing, and the innervation of the skin. Whenever there is a high tonus it is just as if that particular complex had a body of its own, as if it were localized in my body to a certain extent, and that makes it unwieldy because something that irritates my body cannot be easily pushed away because it has its roots in my body and begins to pull at my nerves. Something that has little tonus and little emotional value can be easily brushed aside because it has no roots. It is not adherent or adhesive."

— C.G. Jung, Analytical Psychology — Its Theory & Practice (1968), p. 79-80

Jung further states: “A complex with its given tension or energy has the tendency to form a little personality of itself. It has a sort of body, a certain amount of its own physiology. It can upset the stomach. It upsets the breathing, it disturbs the heart—in short, it behaves like a personality. Complexes can interfere in unfortunate ways such as if you want to say or do something, but then you say or do something different from what you intended—that is because your best intentions get interrupted by the complex, exactly as if you had been interfered with by a human being or by circumstances from outside.” (p. 80)

Jung previously said in this lecture that: “Our ego is an agglomeration of highly toned contents too. The ego is supposed to be in full possession of the body; however, there is little difference between the ego-complex and any other complex. One can see this most clearly in a schizophrenic condition where complexes develop a certain will-power of their own [that] emancipate themselves from conscious control to such an extent they can become visible or audible to that person.” (p.80-81)

Jung said that he was not interested in the fact a person has a complex. We all have complexes. What interested him is what the unconsciousness is doing with the complex. Jung was famous for his ability to interpret dreams in ways very different from his contemporaries such as Freud. Indeed, Jung’s method began charting an interior territory of the psyche that revealed it to be much vaster, stranger, and bigger than Western thinking ever allowed it to be known to be. This is not true of Indigenous people or of Eastern thinking, which has maintained a connection to internal spaces and realities. Jung analyzed dreams because they provided a window into the unconscious mind and these internal spaces. He explained he did not like to analyze one dream because a single dream is arbitrary, rather he likes to compare a series of dreams (say 20 to 100) saying, “Then one can see interesting things and the continuity of the unconscious psyche.” (p. 87)  Jung further states the unconscious is continually processing things and content night after night and even throughout the day. Quite extraordinarily he says: 

“Presumably, we are dreaming all the time, although we are not aware of it by day because consciousness is much too clear. But at night, when there is that abasement du niveau mental, the dream can break through and become visible.” 

C.G. Jung, Analytical Psychology — Its Theory & Practice (1968), p. 87

Wanting to understand the difference between complexes and archetypes better, I found an interesting article published by a Jungian analysts, Frith Luton in Melbourne, Australia. She quotes extensively from the Collected Works of CG Jungof which there are many volumes. A couple excerpts from her article are illuminating to my quest to understand the differences between an archetype and a complex:

"Complexes are in fact “splinter psyches.” The aetiology of their origin is frequently a so-called trauma, an emotional shock or some such thing, that splits off a bit of the psyche. Certainly one of the commonest causes is a moral conflict, which ultimately derives from the apparent impossibility of affirming the whole of one’s nature. [“A Review of the Complex Theory,” ibid., par. 204.]

Everyone knows nowadays that people “have complexes.” What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us." [Ibid., par. 200.]

“A Review of the Complex Theory,” ibid., par. 204

Luton points out complexes often form around an archetype like the mother or father. When they become “constellated”, they are invariably accompanied by affect, which is always relatively autonomous.” She says, “Jung stressed complexes in themselves are not negative; only their effects can be. In the same way that atoms and molecules are the invisible components of physical objects, complexes are the building blocks of the psycheand the source of all human emotions.” She quotes him writing:

"Complexes are focal or nodal points of psychic life which we would not wish to do without; indeed, they should not be missing, for otherwise psychic activity would come to a fatal standstill. [“A Psychological Theory of Types,” CW 6, par. 925.]

Complexes obviously represent a kind of inferiority in the broadest sense … [but] to have complexes does not necessarily indicate inferiority. It only means that something discordant, unassimilated, and antagonistic exists, perhaps as an obstacle, but also as an incentive to greater effort, and so, perhaps, to new possibilities of achievement. [Ibid., par. 925.]
Some degree of one-sidedness is unavoidable, and, in the same measure, complexes are unavoidable too." [“Psychological Factors in Human Behaviour,” CW 8, par. 255.]

— Collected Works of CG Jung — Volumes 6 and 8

Luton further says having a complex is not the problem, believing one does not have one is a problem. She says, “As long as one is unconscious of the complexes, one is liable to be driven by them.” Quoting Jung, she writes:

“The possession of complexes does not in itself signify neurosis … and the fact that they are painful is no proof of pathological disturbance. Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness. A complex becomes pathological only when we think we have not got it.”

“Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life,” CW 16, par. 179.

In short, understanding is the best way to come to terms with a complex. I love how she  ends her article quoting Jung who says:

“A complex can be really overcome only if it is lived out to the full. In other words, if we are to develop further we have to draw to us and drink down to the very dregs what, because of our complexes, we have held at a distance.”

“Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype,” CW 9i, par. 184.

I believe what I have drawn is a complex lodged deep inside my psyche. It has been there for a long time; in fact, it has been handed down to me from one generation to the next through my bloodline. It is not so much I need to destroy it or dissolve it or doing anything to it, but rather to be a witness to it through the loving light of the beautiful being inside of me. This simple act of witnessing can bring about transformations that unfold over time. This is the journey life affords us. This is the gift of being present with conscious awareness of the goodand the badthese complexes reveal to us over time. Perhaps through conscious awareness the dull conglomeration of rocks (aka living complexes) might be polished and turned into a precious jewel fit to serve at a center of a node in Indra’s Net.

Postscript I

What if the Gods and Goddess of our ancestors are really the stories about the archetypes living inside of us? And, what if complexes are what the gods and goddesses do to us over time? Every human being is connected to incredible inner worlds where endless stories are unfolding inside us all the time. Physics tells us the visible universe is less than 4% of the total universe. The rest is Dark Matter and Dark Energy. It is called dark because we cannot see or perceive it, thus it remains beyond our ability to divide, categorize, or measure. Though we virtually know nothing about it, we know our physical realm of existence (reality) would not be possible without Dark Matter and Dark Energy.  

What if we humans are windows or portals into the unseen parts of our universe? It’s a strange idea…I know, but what is the soul, a spirit, the psyche rises from this realm of our universe? Throughout human history, we have celebrated explorers and voyagers who ventured to the furthest reaches of our planet and brought back stories of strange lands and people. We continue to celebrate voyaging into outer space using with robotic spaceships and cameras that send back spectacular images of our solar system with dreams of humans to follow. But, we have precious few stories and maps of voyages into inner space. Many people do undertake journeys into inner space; however, in Western Civilization, due to our inability to verify such journeys, the stories and maps brought back are disbelieved, doubted, deemed untrue, unreal. Our science for exploring this realm of existence is neonatal in Western culture. We are still stuck in our thinking functions that need to see and measure and divide the world into fragmentary pieces. Most of us who live in the Western modern world remain blind to what really powers us as human beings. Living within Western Civilization, we have become cut us off from our vital inner selves. We no longer can hear the beautiful being who lives inside us. In fact, we no longer believe there is anything inside of ourselves expect a complicated assortment of cells—nothing more than a magnificent machine. Using our thinking, we have built a jail that we now happily sit alone inside cut off from each other and from all of life. We live inside our self-created vacuums (fueled by narcissism and arrogance) and this has made us castaways from our true potential and destiny as a human being. Inside our soul prisons, we live cut off from what really powers us…cut off from what powers all life on our beautiful planet. Confined within our tiny jail cells, we can no longer access the wisdom that wells up inside of us and is needed to sustain us through this journey we call life. 

Since archetypes can act like gravitational forces that constellate complexes, I wish to highlight a discussion with Jürgen, one of my dialogue partners, about the shadow. This archetype is frequently a troublemaker, and many of us end up with pretty big constellations of complexes that swirl around it. In a comment, he wrote from my pervious blog, he says: 

"Quite fascinating what you are pulling to light from your inner world. It reminds me, btw, often times of observations that Paul Levy has made in regard to our challenged psyches and toxic relationships (He calls it 'malignant egophrenia' = ME, = the 'wetiko' of the Cree). In his book, 'Dispelling Wetiko. Breaking the Curse of Evil', he (Levy) writes:
"Modern civilization, though outwardly highly developed, is inwardly very primitive and preadolescent, an institutionalized form of barbarism in modern drag. It makes sense that Native peoples would know about malignant egophrenia, as they were oppressed by civilization yet weren’t, at least initially, under the “curse” of modern civilization. Being under the sway of modern civilization can feel as if something foreign to our nature is being imposed upon us, as if we are living in an occupied land. Modern civilization suffers from the overly one-sided dominance of the rational, intellectual mind, a one-sidedness that seemingly disconnects us from nature, from empathy, and from ourselves.
"It is important for us to become acquainted with the peculiar nature of the beast with which we are dealing. Strictly speaking, the wetiko virus doesn’t exist as a “thing” in the third dimension the way a biological virus does. In our Western, scientific, materialistic culture we have an absurd prejudice that something is real only if it exists in physical, quantifiable terms, while the indisputable fact is that the only form of existence we have immediate knowledge of is psychic. Wetiko can’t be objectified and said to be “this” or “that,” as it is a non-objectifiable phenomenon that is embedded in, operates via, and potentially alters the way we see. Wetiko acts as both a filter through which and a mirror in which we see ourselves. Wetiko is “ineffable,” in that it transcends both of the extremes of existence and nonexistence. From the absolute point of view, the wetiko virus doesn’t actually exist as a substantial entity. If we think wetiko is real, however, we have seemingly made it real, and fallen under its spell, simply by thinking so. And yet, if we decide wetiko doesn’t exist, and that we shouldn’t give it our attention, this stance is a form of ignorance which only ensures wetiko’s continued reign over our psyche. This shows us that wetiko, though ultimately having no substantial existence, is more than merely just an “appearance” conjured up by the way we are viewing it, while at the same time it is a “no-thing” that is precisely a display of how we are viewing it.
"So, ME is not simply evil; made conscious and treated with compassion it becomes a force of creation. Here, I think, we arrive at the point where his writings and yours complement each other in displaying the dreamlike nature of reality. Thank you once more for your writing and art."

— Jürgen Hornschuh quoting and synthesizing from Paul Levy

Postscript II

As I became fascinated, well, let’s be honest–obsessed in understanding the differences and relationships between archetypes and complexes…I did some research. Initially, I found a blog (Analytical Psychology on Complexesthat listed a wonderful list of complexes—some famous, others not so much. I was simply going to summarize this list when I got the idea to include some background of the complex from its originating myths or story for most of the complexes we refer to today have derived their names. 

This is when things got really interesting, and I began to discover divergent themes in the storylines of the myths as well as divergent theories proposed by great thinkers in psychology, psychiatry, symbolism, and other specialities. Some of these ideas delved much deeper into the complexes. Upon closer and deeper scrutiny, it became clear to me that there is much more going on inside the psyche and with complexes than we think—indeed they are living and growing and evolving. For instance, I found a fascinating article about the Cain Complex written by Richard A. Hughes. This lead me to discover a series of letters between Professor Hughes and Dr. Leopold Szondi. Here I discovered a vast, uncharted territory both men were exploring on how complexes impact not only individuals, but also families over generations. This discovery validated what my dream had told me about the Thing That Feeds on Fear and Sadness—that it has existed for generations and was passed down to me through my bloodline. 

The more I dug into each complex, the more mysterious each became. I began to ponder what if complexes not only impacted individuals and families over many generations, but also define the culture and civilization people live inside over time. What if a group of people all became impacted and affected by the same complex or group of complexes…say for example, the Cain Complex? What if this complex (or group of complexes) became constellated not only in the individual and the family, but also in the group (i.e., culture or civilization)? If this is so, then new psyches being born into (or brought into) the group would need to be broken in similar ways to activate the complex and ensure the new individuals fit properly into the accepted behavior and beliefs of the group. Thus, culture might also serve as a mechanism to impart the same psychic brokenness necessary to survive and thrive in the group. Individuals with the correct complex would understand the challenges the complex imparts, and they could share strategies on how to cope with the complex—some good, some bad—but shared.  As a culture evolves, perhaps growing into a civilization, the shared complexes create a foundation for the future members of the group. They create a bedrock and the banks for the river of consciousness new members will flow down through their lives. All who are born into the civilization would need to be broken in specific ways to create the wounds required to activate the complex(es) needed to be a member of that civilization–an indoctrination to civilize the untamed mind of a newborn psyche so it flows properly within the confines of the civilization. For those who are not born into the civilization, this indoctrination can be brutal and cruel.

If complexes can be harnessed by a civilization to make its citizens fit into the collective cultural flow (i.e., the reality the civilization operates and embraces), then the stories about them are a trail of bread crumbs of how we have come to be as a group of people. I think Western Civilization has taken a very specific course that can be traced through common complexes. The story of Western Civilization seems to begin with the myths and stories and later complexes surrounding the Death of the Mother (i.e., the decline and ultimate end of matriarchal societies). Replaced by the rise of patriarchal societies (Patriarchy literally means “the rule of the father”) that are powered by Cain-Abel and Oedipus cycles. These persisted for thousands of years, interspersed with cycles of the Death of the Father mythical stories, which suggests the overthrow of the political structures represented by the father and replaced with the new political structures of the son. Such cycles have defined Western Civilization for centuries, but there have been terrifying aberrations such as Hitler. Professor Hughes and Dr. Leopold Szondi theorized Hitler broke both the Cain-Abel and Oedipus cycle because of a significant paroxysmal drive (i.e., a drive that causes fits of rage akin to an epileptic attack but that manifest as emotional outbursts) combined with paranoia and sadism. 

This is all completely speculative, but it is clear to me that we humans (especially those of us submerged in Western Civilization) are barely scratching the surface in understanding our own psyches and how complexes affect us (i.e., their origins, their influence on individuals, on families, and on civilizations). All I can do is leave a mind trail of my questions and quest. I doubt most will find what follows very interesting, but for those who do… this is packing a backpack for a long journey into soul.

First, what is a complex?

"A complex is a core pattern of emotions, memories, perceptions, and wishes in the personal unconscious organized around a common theme, such as power or status.[1] Primarily a psychoanalytic term, it is found extensively in the works of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.
An example of a complex would be as follows: if one had a leg amputated when one was a child, this would influence one's life in profound ways, even if he or she overcame the physical handicap. A person may have many thoughts, emotions, memories, feelings of inferiority, triumphs, bitterness, and determinations centering on that one aspect of his or her life. If these thoughts were troubling and pervasive, Jung might say he or she had a complex about the leg.[2]
"Complex existence is widely agreed upon in the area of depth psychology, a branch of psychology that asserts the most significant parts of one's personality are derived from one's unconscious.[2] It is a way of mapping the psyche, and are crucial theoretical items in therapy. Complexes are believed by Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud to influence an individual's attitude and behavior."

— Above From Wikipedia

A good place to start is the ego. Immediately here I ran into trouble in the definition of exactly what it is. Some say it stems from an idea of the “I” being the self believes itself to be the center of the Universe and requires instant gratification. I think this is rather the Id, which is where we all begin and then as we go through life we have experiences and are taught things that leave their emotional mark on our psyche, and this constellates and becomes our ego. The Wikipedia article says, “Jung included the ego in a broadly comprehensive theory of complexes, often referring to it as the ego-complex as illustrated when he said “by ego I understand a complex of ideas which constitutes the center of my field of consciousness and appears to possess a high degree of continuity and identity. Hence I also speak of an ego-complex.” 

I think it is a fair assessment that we would not want to do without our ego complex for without it we would surely be silly putty in the world, incapable of doing much of anything without this constellation of feeling, emotion, and intelligence. Now, as discussed in the main part of this blog, Jung (and many others) observed there are times when our ego complex gets usurped by other entities in our psyche, and these are the complexes. We all have them. This is not the problem. It is remaining unconscious of them that can produce unexpected and unintended consequences in our lives—good and bad.  So here are some of the most interesting complexes that seem to have significant long histories in our psyches, especially as Western Civilization rose and expanded over time. It is important to understand other civilizations took different routes that did not necessitate the Death of the Mother or the Father, and thus they have charted very different realms of inner space that we in the West remain mostly ignorant of.

Foundational Complexes

Mother Complex – Symbols and Names of the Mother

Nature, motherhood, fertility, earth (e.g., Hathor, Isis, Gaia, Rhea); Mary, Mother of Jesus (e.g., motherhood, protective); creative force (e.g., birth/rebirth, growth/regrowth, regeneration); moon (e.g., Selene—Titan goddess; other moon goddesses around the world and time: Gleti, Mawu, Ilargi,  LosnaKuu, Selardi, Silewe Nazarate, Myeongwol, LonaHinaMahinaCoyolxauhquiMetztli, Arasy, Mama KillaKa-Ata-Killa,Hanwi, AwilixXbalanqueHuitacaChía, Jaci); snakes, triangles, and squiggles (e.g., triangles symbolize the female private area with entrances to old churches built with the symbol of the female private area to signify entering the womb); the Chalice/Cup; (e.g., womb of a woman, chalice is the symbol of the Holy Communion); Crow Mother or Angwusnasomtaka (e.g., nurturing, loving mother); Tapuat (e.g., labyrinth is the Hopi symbol for mother and child, it is the cradle, also the symbolize of from where we all come and shall eventually return); there are many more symbols for mother)

This complex is a group of feelings and toned ideas associated with the experience and image of mother. Clearly it is a symbol of source of life and nurturing and it foundational for humanity to even exist at all on Earth. From the Analytical Psychology Blog

"Mother complex’ stems from the same roots as the ‘Father complex’, however in mother`s case it might take more serious and bigger dimensions as a mother is the one, who constantly remains with a child. ‘Mother complex’ differs from ‘Father complex’ also for the cause of her pregnancy and a necessity to carry a child throughout 9 months, which can be also saturated with a fear of losing a child or giving birth to an unhealthy person. The mother is the one, who is the most connected to the child and all her life revolves around the urgent necessity to care about him/her. The complex’s manifestations are practically the same as in the father`s case, however, it might take the feminine forms in particular situations, which is individual for each case ‘Mother`s Complex’ is not grave as long as it does not grow into obsession and does cause complications for mother`s life and that of a child."

Analytical Psychology Blog

Then, discovering Daryl Sharp’s Jung Lexicon from Frith Luton material, the depth of mother symbolism and impact on the psyche indeed goes deeper.

"The mother complex is a potentially active component of everyone's psyche, informed first of all by experience of the personal mother, then by significant contact with other women and by collective assumptions. The constellation of a mother complex has differing effects according to whether it appears in a son or a daughter. 
A man's mother complex is influenced by the contrasexual complex, the anima. To the extent that a man establishes a good relationship with his inner woman (instead of being possessed by her), even a negative mother complex may have positive effects. 
[He] may have a finely differentiated Eros instead of, or in addition to, homosexuality. . . . This gives him a great capacity for friendship, which often creates ties of astonishing tenderness between men and may even rescue friendship between the sexes from the limbo of the impossible. . . .In the same way, what in its negative aspect is Don Juanism can appear positively as bold and resolute manliness; ambitious striving after the highest goals; opposition to all stupidity, narrow-mindedness, injustice, and laziness; willingness to make sacrifices for what is regarded as right, sometimes bordering on heroism; perseverance, inflexibility and toughness of will; a curiosity that does not shrink even from the riddles of the universe; and finally, a revolutionary spirit which strives to put a new face upon the world.[Ibid., pars 164f.]
In the daughter, the effect of the mother complex ranges from stimulation of the feminine instinct to its inhibition. In the first case, the preponderance of instinct makes the woman unconscious of her own personality. 

The exaggeration of the feminine side means an intensification of all female instincts, above all the maternal instinct. The negative aspect is seen in the woman whose only goal is childbirth. To her the husband is . . . first and foremost the instrument of procreation, and she regards him merely as an object to be looked after, along with children, poor relations, cats, dogs, and household furniture. [Ibid., par. 167.]
In the second case, the feminine instinct is inhibited or wiped out altogether. As a substitute, an overdeveloped Eros results, and this almost invariably leads to an unconscious incestuous relationship with the father. The intensified Eros places an abnormal emphasis on the personality of others. Jealousy of the mother and the desire to outdo her become the leitmotifs of subsequent undertakings.[Ibid., par. 168.]
Alternatively, the inhibition of the feminine instinct may lead a woman to identify with her mother. She is then unconscious of both her own maternal instinct and her Eros, which are then projected onto the mother. 
As a sort of superwoman (admired involuntarily by the daughter), the mother lives out for her beforehand all that the girl might have lived for herself. She is content to cling to her mother in selfless devotion, while at the same time unconsciously striving, almost against her will, to tyrannize over her, naturally under the mask of complete loyalty and devotion. The daughter leads a shadow-existence, often visibly sucked dry by her mother, and she prolongs her mother's life by a sort of continuous blood transfusion.[ Ibid., par. 169.]

Because of their apparent "emptiness," these women are good hooks for men's projections. As devoted and self-sacrificing wives, they often project their own unconscious gifts onto their husbands. 
And then we have the spectacle of a totally insignificant man who seemed to have no chance whatsoever suddenly soaring as if on a magic carpet to the highest summits of achievement. [ Ibid., par. 182.] In Jung's view, these three extreme types are linked together by many intermediate stages, the most important being where there is an overwhelming resistance to the mother and all she stands for. It is the supreme example of the negative mother-complex. The motto of this type is: Anything, so long as it is not like Mother! . . . All instinctive processes meet with unexpected difficulties; either sexuality does not function properly, or the children are unwanted, or maternal duties seem unbearable, or the demands of marital life are responded to with impatience and irritation.[Ibid., par. 170.]

Such a woman often excels in Logos activities, where her mother has no place. If she can overcome her merely reactive attitude toward reality, she may later in life come to a deeper appreciation of her femininity. 

Thanks to her lucidity, objectivity, and masculinity, a woman of this type is frequently found in important positions in which her tardily discovered maternal quality, guided by a cool intelligence, exerts a most beneficial influence. This rare combination of womanliness and masculine understanding proves valuable in the realm of intimate relationships as well as in practical matters. [Ibid., par. 186.]
At the core of any mother complex is the mother archetype, which means that behind emotional associations with the personal mother, both in men and in women, there is a collective image of nourishment and security on the one hand (the positive mother), and devouring possessiveness on the other (the negative mother).

Daryl Sharp, M.A. Jungian Analyst, Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms & Concepts

Connected to the Mother Complex is the Dead Mother Complex.

The dead mother complex is a clinical condition described by Andre Green involving an early and destructive identification with the figure of a 'dead' – or rather depressed and emotionally unavailable – mother. Green introduced the concept in an essay written in 1980, published in 1983, and translated into English in 1986.[1] He saw the dead mother complex as involving a mother who was initially emotionally engaged with her child, but who then "switched off" from emotional resonance to emotional detachment, perhaps under the influence of loss and mourning in her own family of origin.[2] The impact on the child, when it finds itself unable to restore a feeling contact, is the internalization of a hard unresponsive emotional core, which fosters a destructive form of narcissism,[3] contributes to attachment disorders,[4]and reveals itself as a major resistance to progress in the transference. Later, writers have argued for differentiating a range of responses within the dead mother complex, reserving the name dead mother syndrome for the most acute form.[5]

— Wikipedia — Dead Mother complex

Father Complex – Symbols of the Father

Sky, Stars, Time (e.g., Zeus, Chronos, Rangi); Sun (e.g., Apollo, Ra, Grandfather Sun); Oak Tree; Raven (e.g., the messenger of Apollo, Raven Father, also Falcon and Eagle); Stag (e.g., antlers symbolize dominance, tools, weapons, and status)

The father complex is pervasive and even the most learned of men in psychology and psychiatry have succumb to its powers and been blinded by its effects. For instance, Freud and Jung seem to have fell under its influence and yet denied they had. According to Wikipedia, Freud argued the father complex consisted of fear, defiance, and disbelief of the father. He felt this is why some of his male patients resisted his treatment. Freud writes about this complex, which isthe conceptual core of his book Totem and Taboo (1912-3).  Wikipedia says: 

"Freud and Jung both used the father complex as a tool to illuminate their own personal relations. For example, as their early intimacy deepened, Jung had written to Freud asking him to "let me enjoy your friendship not as that of equals but as that of father and son".[14] 
However, in his own efforts “to struggle free from his psychoanalytic father figure (Freud), Jung would reject the term "father complex" as Viennese name calling—despite his own use of it in the past to illuminate precisely such situations.”[18]Continuing from Wikipedia: “After the Freud/Jung split, Jung had equally continued to use the father complex to illuminate father/son relations, such as in the case of the father-dependent patient who Jung termed "a fils a papa" (regarding him, Jung wrote "[h]is father is still too much the guarantor of his existence"),[11] or when Jung noted how a positive father complex could produce an over-readiness to believe in authority.[12] Jung and his followers were equally prepared to use the concept to explain female psychology, such as when a negatively charged father complex made a woman feel that all men were likely to be uncooperative, judgmental, and harsh in the same image.[13]Eating disorders expert Margo D. Maine used the concept of "father hunger" in her book Fathers, Daughters and Food (Nov 1991),[24] with particular emphasis on the relationship with the daughter.Jungians have emphasized the power of parent hunger, forcing one repeatedly to seek out unactualized parts of the father archetype in the outside world.[28] One answer men have been offered is to move into generativity; to find the lost father within themselves, the internal father, and hand him on to their successors,[29] thereby shifting from demanding parental guidance to providing it.”[30]

Wikipedia — Father Complex

Then, summarizing a very compelling definition from the Analytical Psychology Blog

“This complex is described as deriving from a natural habit of constant preoccupation and care about child that can grow into a complex. Possessors of it usually publicly call their fathers ‘good fathers’ or “ideal fathers” (i.e., a father who gives their offspring the best without asking any remuneration or gratitude in return). This can set up mental dilemma where the child becomes a kind of parent obsessed. Even when all needs of a child are satisfied and they are grown up, a parent remains ready to run to the ‘child`s rescue’ as he is used to. If he does not do so, he becomes anxious. And even when he does so, he is anxious that is why this complex resembles a sort of vicious circle.
All caring male parents who are sensitive possess a ‘Father complex. It is practically difficult to avoid it as this type of father tends to spend his free time with a child, helping him/her learn the world and providing a happy and adequate life for a child. The father is teacher, guide, protector, advice giver, even if the child does not seek advice, the father gives it. When a child becomes an adult, he/she always remains a child for his/her parent—that is why the ‘parent-child relation’ does not change significantly even as children become adults.  This can lead to an even closer relationship or it can cause a ruptureand alienation.”

Frith Luton (the Zurich-trained Jungian analyst and psychotherapist in private practice in Melbourne, Australia) provides a compelling definition of the Father Complexthat draws from C.G. Jung’s Collective Works (which comes from © from Daryl Sharp’s Jung Lexicon, reproduced with kind permission of the author). With his permission, she shares that: 

“Father complex is  group of feeling-toned ideas associated with the experience and image of father. (See also Logos.) In men, a positive father-complex very often produces a certain credulity with regard to authority and a distinct willingness to bow down before all spiritual dogmas and values; while in women, it induces the liveliest spiritual aspirations and interests. In dreams, it is always the father-figure from whom the decisive convictions, prohibitions, and wise counsels emanate. [“The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales,” CW 9i, par. 396.]

Daryl Sharp, M.A. Jungian Analyst, Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms & Concepts

I will not reproduce all this valuable material for I do not know Daryl Sharp, but this entry ends with this vital insight—something I have never heard about this complex in relation to how it can impact a woman. He writes

“What has been spoiled by the father” [A reference to Hexagram 18 in the I Ching (Richard Wilhelm edition, p. 80): “Work ok on What Has Been Spoiled.”] can only be made good by a father. [“The Personification of the Opposites,” CW 14, par. 232.]

Daryl Sharp, M.A. Jungian Analyst, Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms & Concepts

Powerful indeed. I think culturally, we all remain very much under the influence of the Father Complex—both men and women. And, the father has most definitely become infused with the idea of God. As one looks across religions and time, one can see this transformation.  Here are just some of the names of God as Father. Names of the Father:

Judaism – Elohim, I AM, YHWH, "Adonai" ("Lord")—Almost all Orthodox Jews avoid using either Yahweh or Jehovah altogether and use the term HaShem (השם) as an indirect reference to God or Lord; Christianity – “Early Christian writers, such as Clement of Alexandria in the 2nd century, had used a form like Yahweh, and claim that this pronunciation of the tetragrammaton was never really lost. Other Greek transcriptions also indicated that YHWH should be pronounced Yahweh.” “God is quoted as saying‘I am the Alpha and the Omega.’ Some Quakers refer to God as The Light. Another term used is King of Kings or Lord of Lords and Lord of Hosts. Bog is the word for God in most Slavic languages.The term is derived from Proto-Slavic*bogъ, which originally meant "earthly wealth/well-being; fortune", with a semantic shift to "dispenser of wealth/fortune" and finally "god". The term may have originally been a borrowing from the Iranian languages.” Mormonism – the name of God the Father is Elohim, the name of Jesus in his pre-incarnate state was Jehovah. Together, with the Holy Ghost they form the Godhead; God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.Mormons typically refer to God as "Heavenly Father" or "Father in Heaven". Islam – Allah—meaning "He Who is Worshipped by Right" in Arabic—is the name of God in Islam.God has many names in Islam, the Qur'an says (translation) to Him Belong the Best Names (Lahu Al-Asmao Al-Husna), examples like Ar-Rahman (The Entirely Merciful), Ar-Rahim (The Especially Merciful). Sufism – In Tasawwuf, the inner, mystical dimension of Islam, Hu, Huwa (depends on placement in sentence), or Parvardigar in Persian are used as names of God. Bahá'í – their scriptures often refer to God by various titles and attributes, such as Almighty, All-Possessing, All-Powerful, All-Wise, Incomparable, Gracious, Helper, All-Glorious, and Omniscient.[36] Bahá'ís believe the Greatest Name of God is "All-Glorious" or Bahá in Arabic.Hinduism – The Sanatana Dharma focuses only on formless God. There are multiple names for God's Various Forms worshiped as Demigod Deities (Devata and Devi)— कृष्णKrsna, Bhagavan, भगवान , Brahman,ब्रह्मन् ,Isvara ईश्वर , Brahma, ब्रह्मा ,Maha Visnu/Adi Narayan विष्णु , Siva शिव, Shakti शक्ति. Arya Samaj – Maharishi Dayanand in his book Satyarth Prakash has listed 100 names of God each representing some property or attribute thereof mentioning “Om or Aum” as God's personal and natural name. Jainism – rejects the idea of a creator deity responsible for the manifestation, creation, or maintenance of this universe. According to Jain doctrine, the universe and its constituents (soul, matter, space, time, and principles of motion) have always existed.Jains define godliness as the inherent quality of any soul characterizing infinite bliss, infinite power, Perfect knowledge and Perfect peace. However, these qualities of a soul are subdued due to karmas of the soul. One who achieves this state of soul through right belief, right knowledge and right conduct can be termed as god. Sikhism – some of the popular names for God in Sikhism are: Akal Purakh, meaning timeless beingIk OnkarOne Creator, found at the beginning of the Sikh Mul MantarNirankar, meaning formless; Satnam meaning True Name, some are of the opinion that this is a name for God in itself, others believe that this is an adjective used to describe the "Gurmantar", Waheguru; Waheguru, meaning Wonderful Teacher bringing light to remove darkness, this name is considered the greatest among Sikhs, and it is known as Gurmantar, the Guru's Word. Waheguru is the only way to meet God in Sikhism; Dātā or Dātār, meaning the Giver; Kartā or Kartār, meaning the Doer; Diāl, meaning compassionate; Kirpāl, meaning benevolent. Zoroastrianism – there are 101 names of God (PazandSad-o-yak nam-i-khoda) is a list of names of God (Ahura Mazda). The list is preserved in PersianPazand and GujaratiParsi tradition expanded this to a list of "101 names of God.

I explored this a little bit in my Divine Dodo blog

The Divine Dodo — Names of the Allfather:

Dodo hangs in the silence of the black void… stunned. https://sapience207.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/the-divine-dodo-names-of-the-allfather%EF%BB%BF/

Death of the Mother

One of the first things that seems to have occurred in the psychology and rise of Western Civilization is the death of the mother or the ending of the rule of the matriarchy. In the selection below, it is of particular interest to note Robert Graves (mythographer) who translated and interpreted many of the legends and myth fragments about Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, and Orestes. He believes some of these suggest a ritual killing of a “king” (Agamemnon) in very early religious ceremonies, which were suppressed when patriarchy replaced the matriarchies of very ancient Greece.

Orestes Complex – This complex’s hallmark is a suppressed desire of a son to get rid of his mother by all possible means. The Analytical Psychology blog says initial stages may manifest as a son totally isolating himself from his mother until a total cut-off of between mother and son occurs. Final stages can include a son`s manifested aggressive behavior towards the mother, but this can take different forms depending on the mother`s response. 

What Happened: "In the Homeric telling of the story,[2] Orestes is a member of the doomed house of Atreus, descended from Tantalus and Niobe. Orestes is absent from Mycenae when his father, Agamemnon, returns from the Trojan War. He brings with him the Trojan princess Cassandra as his concubine. Orestes is not present when Agamemnon, Cassandra, and their two children are murder by his wife (Orestes’ mother) Clytemnestra's lover Aegisthus. Seven years later, Orestes returns from Athens and avenges his father's death (with the help of his sister Electra)by slaying both Aegisthus and his own mother—Clytemnestra. [It should be notedthat Clytemnestra held a grudge against her husband for agreeing to sacrifice their eldest daughter, Iphigenia, to Artemis so he could send his ships to fight in the Trojan war.]
 
The Consequences: "In Aeschylus's Eumenides, Orestes goes mad after the deed and is pursued by the Erinyes, whose duty it is to punish any violation of the ties of family piety. He takes refuge in the temple at Delphi; but, even though Apollo had ordered him to do the deed, he is powerless to protect Orestes from the consequences. At last Athena receives him on the acropolis of Athens and arranges a formal trial of the case before twelve judges, including herself. The Erinyes demand their victim; he pleads the orders of Apollo. Athena votes last announcing that she is for acquittal; then the votes are counted, and the result is a tie, resulting in an acquittal according to the rules previously stipulated by Athena. The Erinyes are propitiated by a new ritual, in which they are worshipped as "Semnai Theai", "Venerable Goddesses", and Orestes dedicates an altar to Athena Areia.
 
Deeper MeaningEnd of the matriarchies in the Western World: "In The Greek Myths the mythographer and poet Robert Graves translates and interprets the legends and myth fragments about Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, and Orestes, as suggesting a ritual killing of a "king" (Agamemnon) in very early religious ceremonies that were suppressed when patriarchy replaced the matriarchies of very ancient Greece. Graves interprets the sacrilege for which the Erinyes pursued Orestes, namely the killing of his mother, as representing symbolically the destruction of the ancient matriarchy and its replacement by patriarchy. He suggests that worship of the female deity Athena was retained as a cult because, despite the overthrow of matriarchy and woman-rule generally, it was too strong to be suppressed; Graves thinks she was recast as a child of Zeus (born without a mother, directly from Zeus' head) in the new patriarchal myths. As a character in Aeschylus' trilogy, Athena was given the previously incomprehensible role of justifying the overthrow, rationalizing as a "new way of justice" what would have been a horrific crime against the old, matriarchal religious customs. Graves, and many other mythographers including most notably those of the Cambridge Ritualist school, were influenced by The Golden Bough of James Frazer, who postulated that myths often reveal clues to ancient religious practices and rituals.

– WikipediaOrestes

The Divine Dodo — In Maidjan

As Dodo falls back towards the beast, he hears birds chirping, water running, and wind blowing through trees—such sweet, nourishing sounds that remind him of Earth—his lost paradise, which makes Dodo sad for he remains stuck in the endless vacuous void—Hell! The bounce DJ and the drummers gave him was not strong enough to help him escape the gravity of the beast. And so, the only thing he can do is spiral down again towards the beast comforted only by his sadness.

See: https://sapience207.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/the-divine-dodo-in-maidjan/

Rule of the Father – Reign of the Patriarchy: 

social system where men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authoritysocial privilege and control of property (to the exclusion of women).

With the mother suppressed, the rule of the father and reign of the patriarchy begins. With it a new psychic struggle for power and control begins as depicted in myths and stories about this struggle. One of the key stories is that of Cain and Abel.

Cain Complex – This complex is primarily viewed as a rivalry between brothers or/and sisters for all-inclusive parental love (in childhood) and highest social status (in adulthood). The Analytical Psychology blog says, “Competition may take violent forms and accepts victory (supremacy) only of one of the siblings.” Another traditional interpretation of it comes from Alchemipedia

Cain Complex Facts: 
1) The Cain complex is characterized by rivalry, competition, & extreme jealousy (or envy) of a brother, leading to hatred; 
2) In Psychiatry, this complex is recognized as a destructive form of sibling rivalry which may lead to fratricide; 
3) There is usually perceived favoritism from a parental figure.
Cain Complex Biblical Origins: 
1) Cain was the first son of Adam & Eve. (Bible - Gen. 4.); 
2) Cain murdered his brother Abel (see painting) out of jealousy & was condemned to be a fugitive by God; 
3) The 2 brothers, on one Sabbath(?) presented their offerings to the Lord; 
4) Abel's offering was of the "firstlings of his flock and of the fat," while Cain's was "of the fruit of the ground." 
5) Abel's sacrifice was considered "more excellent" (Heb. 11:4) than Cain's, & was accepted by God. 
6) From this event Cain was "very wroth," & cherished feelings of murderous hatred against his brother; leading to the murder of Abel (1 John 3:12). 
7) For this crime Cain was expelled from Eden, & henceforth led the life of an exile.

–From the Alchemipedia Blog

As with the other complexes, I think there is more going on with this complex. A journal article by Richard Hughes in the American Imago (Fall, 1979) entitled Szondi’s Theory of the Cain Complex suggests indeed there is a lot more to this complex. He writes: 

“It is customary within modern religious thought to interpret the nature of evil on the basis of ancient myth. This is because modern scholarship has revealed that the forms of religion are dependent on archaic sources. Frequently, the interpretations of human action are developed with concepts borrowed from psychiatry, particularly psychoanalysis. Based upon the Oedipus Complex, the psychoanalytic view narrates the rebellion of the sons against a primal father. They conspire against him, murder him, and replace him with their own political organization.The political community is organized around a totem and the incest taboo.The spirit of rebellion continues to inform political activity, since it consists of aggressive young men who, with sexual desire, plunder their enemies and possess their women. In this vision, evil comes from an original crime, the components of which are aggression and sexuality. The paradigm of evil is the murder of the patriarchal authority. 
The psychoanalytic interpretation of evil has influenced considerably recent theological discussions. For the mythical vision of the primal murder translates into a ‘Death of God’ theology. This conversation implies that the reality of God is incompatible with radical evil. Thus, the massive release of evil in the twentieth century—the wars, terrorism, the Holocaust—are analogous with the slaying of God. The provide the occasion for widespread unbelief.
The aim of this essay is to explore an alternative myth structure. While not rejecting the Oedipus Complex as such, the essay discusses the Cain Complex and seeks its religious implications. The Cain concept appears throughout the writings of L. Szondi, a Hungarian psychiatrist who, for several decades, has been practicing in Zurich, Switzerland. Though not well known in this country he has…” 

— Richard Hughes, American Imago (Fall, 1979), Szondi’s Theory of the Cain Complex 

That is all I can read from this excerpt, but what Hughes is suggesting is profound, even if it is not entirely accurate for how could one theory encompass what has become a global civilization that being Western Civilization with a hallmark of expansion, plundering, and possession of women, but also precious resources in the lands where Westerners have expanded. Perhaps every person who depends on Western systems to survive (e.g., economy, politics, culture) has at least one foot in this complex, if not being completely submerged in it. And so, the son kills the father, which symbolize the replacement of the father’s rule with the son’s version of patriarchal rule, and with each version Hughes and Szondi suggest there was a murdering the previous polytheism beliefs until arriving at to monotheism, and then the final father is murder…the Death of God… arriving at atheism, but also as Hughes says above the massive release of evil in the 20thCentury… a toxic release we have still not let completely out. Hughes and Szondi suggest the Cain-Abel cycle is a necessary balance between the opposites. From a webpage dedicated to Szondi, I found this explanation:

Cain, Abel, Moses
Szondi's show of reality is marked by the experience that in each complementary pair of opposites (polarity) the poles are dynamically and inseparably connected, thus forming an entirety.
Therefore, it must not be one-sidedly aimed at the good and fought the evil, but rather good and evil must be understood as two sides of a unity which to keep in a dynamic balance. To understand human affective dynamics, Szondi attached much importance to the polarity of Cain and Abel.
The duty of man to recognize the complementary opposites in him and to live them, finds its symbolic interpretation in the integrating figure of Moses. In the person of Moses, the outstanding human achievement of conscience and ethics takes shape through the dialectically combined activity of Cain and Abel.

— Above from Cain, Abel, Moses — Life and Work of Szondi

Several other readings that were stimulated from a discussion on the Cain Complex include:

  • Moulton LavaThe Mark of Cain and the Mark of Pain: An emphatic retelling of the Cain and Abel story and penetrating questions such as Can you recognize an anguished Mark of Pain on the soul of a fellow traveler?
  • Cognition, Affect, and LearningThe Role of Emotions In Learning: “Our species, Homo Sapiens, is the being who thinks. But we are also the beings who learn, and the beings who experience a rich spectrum of affective emotional states. This article presents research and theoretical models relating emotions to learning and cognition.” I love Figure 4: The Roller Coaster Learning Curve, which also looks like a snake and Jung says the progression between conscious content and unconscious content is always like the motion of a snake… just like this learning curve: “In the above slide, we can see the ups and downs of the rollicking learning curve. We call this ‘Non-Monotonic Learning’ to remind ourselves that sometimes we acquire erroneous beliefs and misconceptions which we eventually have to discard. In that slide, I’ve superimposed a ‘Frowny Face Scowl’ and a ‘Happy Face Smile’ to point out where the emotional states are variously negative valence (unhappy) and positive valence (happy).”
  • Contagion by Barry Kort – This is short (unlike my blogs) and very important. Here are key take away from the end, but it is worth reading the 5 stages: “The 5-stage pattern can be observed to repeat at all levels of power and for all rivalries and competitions. The most virulent conflicts are over respect, attention, money, power, sex, land, cultural values, or ideology. Ethnic conflicts, political conflicts, and culture wars typically follow this model. At every stage of the model, we need to be mindful of the dynamic we are caught up in, and consciously elect to run the model in reverse. Until now, the great theologians and peacemakers presented this as tenets of important religions or as tenets of ethics or morality. Girard has taken us to the next step of reckoning this model as a sociological or systems theoretical model capable of guiding public policy, especially policy regarding the way we think about law and order or crime and punishment.”

Death of the Father 

In the age of the Death of the Father, the archetypes, complexes, and stories diverge in all sorts of ways that continue to fracture and diverge to this day. There is no straight line in the psyche. For instance, there continue to be pockets on Earth where matriarchalsocieties survive, also where the rule of the first patriarchal societies survive, but also where the overthrow of the father by the son has occurred, many times. Hughes and Szondi (cited above) suggest the Death of the Father corresponds with the death of God, which has unleashed untold abuses of power and authority in the 20thcentury. Regardless of which patriarchal rule women have had to survive under, Western patriarchal have tended to be brutal to woman and put them in terrible situations where they have loss of control of even their own bodies and self-determination. Thus, the stories and complexes that follow the Death of the Father seem to be what happens to men and women over time after the Death of Mother.

The most famous story about the death of the father is the Oedipus and Elektra story, but there are others found throughout other times and civilizations. Freud thought these two complexes were the only complexes that affected the human psyche. He built his whole analysis around them. While they are deeply significant, the rift between Freud and Jung started with their differences on complexes. Jung saw there were many more, leading him into his groundbreaking work about them, the archetypes, and collective unconscious. 

Complex of Oedipus\Elektra – These complexes are famous and complicated as their myths reveal, thus beware of over-simplified definitions of them. The best-known version of the Oedipus myth is:

Oedipus was born to King Laius and Queen Jocasta. Laius wished to thwart a prophecy given to him that his son would kill him and marry his wife, so he sent a shepherd-servant to leave Oedipus (his newborn son) to die on a mountainside. However, the shepherd took pity on the baby and passed him to another shepherd who gave Oedipus to King Polybus and Queen Merope to raise as their own. Oedipus learned from the oracle at Delphi of the prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother but, unaware of his true parentage, believed he was fated to murder Polybus and marry Merope, so left for Thebes. On his way he met an older man and killed him in a quarrel. Continuing on to Thebes, he found that the king of the city (Laius) had been recently killed, and that the city was at the mercy of the Sphinx. Oedipus answered the monster's riddlecorrectly, defeating it and winning the throne of the dead king – and the hand in marriage of the king's widow, who was also (unbeknownst to him) his mother Jocasta. Years later, to end a plague on Thebes, Oedipus searched to find who had killed Laius, and discovered that he himself was responsible. Jocasta, upon realizing that she had married her own son, hanged herself. Oedipus then seized two pins from her dress and blinded himself with them. – From Wikipedia
In women, this complex is known as the Elektra Complex. In Greek mythologyElektra was the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus princess of Argos. She and her brother Orestes plotted revenge against their mother Clytemnestra and stepfather Aegisthus for the murder of their father. This is because when Electra’s father, King Agamemnon, returned from the Trojan War,  he brought with him his war prize from the Trojan War Princess Cassandrawho had already borne him twin sons. Upon their arrival, Agamemnon and Cassandra were murdered by either Clytemnestra herself or her lover Aegisthusor both. Clytemnestra had held a grudge against her husband for agreeing to sacrifice their eldest daughter, Iphigenia, to Artemis so he could send his ships to fight in the Trojan war, thus she killed him upon his return. Eight years later, Electra plotted and helped her brother, Orestes, murder their mother and step-father. – Partially from Wikipedia

Jocasta complex – This complex also originates from the Oedipus myth and it typified by a mother’s obsessive fixation of her son leading to an adoration cult of son. From Wikipedia: In psychoanalytic theory, the Jocasta complex is the incestuous sexual desire of a mother towards her son. Raymond de Saussure introduced the term in 1920 by way of analogy to its logical converse in psychoanalysis, the Oedipus complex, and it may be used to cover different degrees of attachment, including domineering but asexual mother love – something perhaps particularly prevalent with an absent father. The Jocasta complex is named for Jocasta, a Greek queen who unwittingly married her son, Oedipus. The Jocasta complex is similar to the Oedipus complex, in which a child has sexual desire towards their parent(s). The term is a bit of an extrapolation, since in the original story Oedipus and Jocasta were unaware that they were mother and son when they married. The usage in modern contexts involves a son with full knowledge of who his mother is. Theodor Reik saw the “Jocasta mother”, with an unfulfilled adult relationship of her own and an over-concern for her child instead, as a prime source of neurosisGeorge Devereux went further, arguing that the child’s Oedipal complex was itself triggered by a pre-existing parental complex (Jocasta/Laius). Eric Berne also explored the other (parental) side of the Oedipus complex, pointing to related family dramas such as “mother sleeping with daughter’s boyfriend … when mother has no son to play Jocasta with.”

Medea Complex – This complexrefers to a disturbed mother-child relationship with obvious destructive aspects. An article in the Jung Journal says: “It evokes a central theme that Jung articulated in his writing about the Terrible Mother. The best-known story of Medea is based on the mythical figure portrayed in Euripides’s fifth-century BCE play. The complex, as well as this story, includes elements of betrayal, abandonment, stealing, and vengeance directed at helpless children.”In Euripides’ play, Medea is a woman scorned and rejected by her husband Jason, and thus seeks her revenge. 

"In the play, the Nurse gives descriptions of Medea in the prologue, highlighting comparisons to great forces of nature and different animals. There are also many nautical references throughout the play either used by other characters when describing Medea or by Medea herself. By including these references, Boedeker argues that these comparisons were used to create connections to the type of woman Medea was. She holds great power (referred to by the comparisons to forces of nature), she relies on her basic animal-like instincts and emotions (connections to different animals like bulls and lions), and it draws the audience back her original myth of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece and the sea voyage taken by Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts.
Emma Griffiths adds to the analysis of Medea's character in Euripides's play by discussing the male/female dichotomy created by Euripides.[2] Medea does not fit into the mold of a “normal woman” according to Athenian philosophy. She is depicted as having great intelligence and skill, something typically viewed as a masculine trait by Euripides' original audience. On the other hand, she uses that cunning in order to manipulate the men around her, and manipulation of other people would have been a negative female trait to the Athenian audience. There is also the paradox of how she chooses to murder her victims in the play. She poisons the princess, which would have been seen as a feminine way of murder, yet kills her children in cold blood, which is seen as more masculine. She also has dialogue about her children and shows a strong maternal love and connection to them, something that was essential to “normal women” in Athenian society. Yet at the end of the play she is able to kill her children as part of her revenge. It is through these opposites that Euripides creates a complicated character for his protagonist.

From Wikipedia — Medea

Griselda Complex – This complex is misunderstood. Some say it embodies a father’s obsessive desire of a father to keep his daughter by his side, impeding her getting married. But the roots of this story are much deeper than this. It is a story of a monstrous husband and in-laws and the gentleness and unquestioning obedience of the wife, Griselda. In the book Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, I think she hits upon the heart of this complex as she traces this story to the emergence of the Western system of a bride price that transformed into the custom of giving a dowry when a woman married. This particularly become embedded as a ritual custom with the emergence of money and the acceptance of the rights of male heirs only to inherit their father’s estate to the exclusion of female members. She points out that the men of the woman’s clan do this partly to endow the wife as worthy since she is essentially an alien member to the husband’s family lineage. This is really important. We think we are so evolved as modern humans, but deep roots clearly descend down to our most primitive instincts around resource guarding and lineage purity. The story of Griselda is one of husband cruelty and her acceptance of it. 

From Wikipedia: In the most famous version of the Griselda tale, written by Giovanni Boccaccio c. 1350,[1][2][3] Griselda marries Gualtieri, the Marquis of Saluzzo, who tests her by declaring that their two children—a son and a daughter—must both be put to death. Griselda gives both of them up without protest, but Gualtieri doesn't actually kill the children, instead sending them away to Bologna to be raised. In a final test, Gualtieri publicly renounces Griselda, claiming he had been granted papal dispensation to divorce her and marry a better woman; Griselda goes to live with her father. Some years later, Gualtieri announces he is to remarry and recalls Griselda as a servant to prepare the wedding celebrations. He introduces her to a twelve-year-old girl he claims is to be his bride but who is really their daughter; Griselda wishes them well. At this, Gualtieri reveals their grown children to her and Griselda is restored to her place as wife and mother[4].Returning back to Klapisch-Zuber’s book, she says (and I think this is getting at the heart of the matter of this story and this complex, which may really be a group complex): “In order to cross the frontier that separates the human world from the supernatural, Griselda has to take on, then rid herself of, the clothing appropriate to that passage [Note: this refers to jewels and wedding dress the husband might adorn his new bride]. Rites of clothing have a profound unity, whether they signal a passage from this world to the supernatural or, as here, are taken by Florentines almost as law. This unity emerges clearly in the formula Tibi res tuas habetothat Apuleius puts in the mouth of Cupid as he rejects Psyche (another version of the same tale), since this was the very formula that signified divorce in classical antiquity. Similarly, a Florentine widow would carry away her dowry goods, and Griselda only her chemise, leaving the rich garments and jewels offered by the husband under his heirs’ roof. Both wore their finery and their jewels only as long as their marriage lasted, be that for a long period of conjugal union, sometimes further prolonged by a chaste widowhood, or for the short span of the nuptial period.”  

I leave the reader to parse out the truth of this complex if it be a complex, I believe it is possibly a cultural or collective complex we all fall victim to.

Adonis Complex – This complex occurs in men stemming from a perception he is singularly unique because of his beauty. This belief is enhanced by people around him who notice and are affected by his good looks. In Greek mythology, Adonis was the mortal lover of the goddess Aphrodite. Let’s just say it didn’t end well for Adonis. A man with this complex demonstrates a constant perception of his own physical attractiveness. He plays with the power of his beauty and charm. He can be extremely selfish. This complex can take a grave form and threaten the safety of the others, which can lead to forceful isolation of the ‘sufferer’ from the rest of the world. 

God Complex – This complex consists of a widespread illusion of unlimited personal potential and/or power. In Greek mythology, Narcissus suffered from this complex. He was so proud to the point “he disdained those who loved him, causing some to commit suicide to prove their unrelenting devotion to his striking beauty. Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, a fixation with oneself and one’s physical appearance or public perception.” (Wikipedia) A person with this complex can become the source of serious troubles between him/herself and society. The idea of being omnipotence can lead to substances use and the constant need to stimulate the brain core (e.g., either regular occurrences of life-threatening accidents or engaging in life-threatening risky activities). Another hallmark is stubbornness and a categorical unwillingness to admit one`s own faults. A person with this complex regularly ignores the opinions of others, especially if they do not agree with their own ideas. This complex tends to grow into a maniac syndrome if treatment and consciousness is not brought to it.

Cassandra Complex – This complexrefers to a belief destiny can be known in advance. In the Greek myth, Cassandra was cursed to utter prophecies that were true but that no one believes her. Such an individual has a superordinate amount of empathy and a strong certainty they have an important mission to accomplish that is informed through insights, visions, and constant warnings about the consequence of incorrect behavior. This strong calling and visions can cause the person to experience physical and emotional suffering that is exacerbated when they try to share the source of their worry or concern because others do not believe them. Their inability, ignorance, or unwillingness to understand cause suffering worse than the visions.

Antigone Complex – This complex is extremely complicated. From what I have read, it is sorely misunderstood, especially by Freud. The best analysis I found is a blog by Mark Thorn in which his last paragraph summarizes a very complicated complex better than anything else I read. He says: “ ‘Antigone’ literally means ‘against birth,’ or ‘contrary birth,’ which most have interpreted to indicate Antigone’s status as the product of incest, a perverse or ‘contrary’ union. However, a literal interpretation of ‘against birth’ is perhaps more significant. Antigone unconsciously wished to return to the womb, to pre-birth; she truly wished to undo her birth throughout the action of Antigone. Antigone embodies the human predicament: the forced renunciation of primary and secondary love-objects, the subsequent substitute-gratifications, the perpetual conflict between social demands and instinctual aims, and the clash between the two irresolvable fundamental drives—one seeking life and pleasure, the other wishing to undo life altogether.”  

"Before this Thorn describes the situation and motivations that lead Antigone to kill herself saying: “In Greek mythology—and Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy is but a dramatization of the Oedipus myth—Earth was an animate being, Gaia. Hence when Ouranos stuffed his newborn children into the Earth, he was literally returning them to the womb of their mother, Gaia; he was essentially undoing their births. Antigone’s wish to bury Polyneices in the Earth may accordingly be considered a symbolic wish to envelop him in a womb, the sexual nature of which is made clear by the psychology of Otto Rank.

In The Trauma of Birth, Rank proposed that the shock of being born leaves indelible impressions upon the human psyche, “that man never gives up the lost happiness of pre-natal life and that he seeks to reestablish this former state, not only in all his cultural strivings, but also in the act of procreation.”[4] Rank views the sexual act as an attempt to restore the primal intra-uterine pleasure—physically direct for the male, physically vicarious for the female. Accordingly, Antigone’s burial of Polyneices, her father-surrogate, may unconsciously signify his entry into her womb and the attainment of the sexual love which she had hoped to receive originally from Oedipus.”
"(…)  “As the story progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that Antigone does not fear but anxiously awaits death. But what compels her to seek death? A closer analysis of her suicide elucidates the unconscious forces at play.

Throughout mythology and dreams, the cave frequently symbolizes the womb. Therefore, hanging in a cave, as Antigone does, symbolizes inhabiting a womb, in which one hangs by the umbilical cord. So perhaps Antigone’s evident wish for death was in fact a wish for a pre-birth state, a desire encompassed in Thanatos, Freud’s death instinct.

Freud supposed that human life was motivated by two fundamental drives: Eros, the life instinct, and Thanatos, the death instinct. While Eros seeks proliferation and activity, Thanatos seeks homeostasis and inactivity; the Death instinct strives toward nonexistence, the state preceding birth. But why was Antigone so anxious to meet death, or rather return to pre-birth? Why was her life governed by Thanatos? Could returning to her mother’s womb satisfy either her primary love for her father or her secondary love for Polyneices, her father-substitute?”

— Above from Mark Thorn

After reading Thorn’s piece, I categorically reject the other interpretations of this complex. It is worth reading his piece in its entirety to draw your own conclusions.

Complex of Don Juan – Don Juan is a wealthy libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. He takes great pride in his ability to seduce women all ages and stations in life, and he often disguises himself and assumes other identities in order to seduce women. During the 1918 influenza epidemic in Spain, the figure of Don Juan served as a metaphor for the flu microbe. Anthony Powell in his novel Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant contrasts Don Juan, who “merely liked power” and “obviously did not know what sensuality was”, with Casanova, who “undoubtedly had his sensuous moments”.

Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms & Concepts by Daryl Sharp, M.A. Jungian Analyst:

The mother complex is a potentially active component of everyone's psyche, informed first of all by experience of the personal mother, then by significant contact with other women and by collective assumptions. The constellation of a mother complex has differing effects according to whether it appears in a son or a daughter.
Typical effects on the son are homosexuality and Don Juanism, and sometimes also impotence [though here the father complex also plays a part]. In homosexuality, the son's entire heterosexuality is tied to the mother in an unconscious form; in Don Juanism, he unconsciously seeks his mother in every woman he meets.[Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype," CW 9i, par. 162.]
A man's mother complex is influenced by the contrasexual complex, the anima. To the extent that a man establishes a good relationship with his inner woman (instead of being possessed by her), even a negative mother complex may have positive effects.
[He] may have a finely differentiated Eros instead of, or in addition to, homosexuality. . . . This gives him a great capacity for friendship, which often creates ties of astonishing tenderness between men and may even rescue friendship between the sexes from the limbo of the impossible. . . .In the same way, what in its negative aspect is Don Juanism can appear positively as bold and resolute manliness; ambitious striving after the highest goals; opposition to all stupidity, narrow-mindedness, injustice, and laziness; willingness to make sacrifices for what is regarded as right, sometimes bordering on heroism; perseverance, inflexibility and toughness of will; a curiosity that does not shrink even from the riddles of the universe; and finally, a revolutionary spirit which strives to put a new face upon the world.[Ibid., pars 164f.]

Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms & Concepts by Daryl Sharp, M.A. Jungian Analyst

From the Analytical Psychology Blog

Complex derives from constant personal frustrations incurred in intimate relations with women. Sad love story with a broken-heart-end or sexual traumatic experience might also be in the roots of this masculine complex. Complex`s manifestations vary from case to case, whereas, common aspects are the following:
  • Psychological perception of a woman as a source of pleasure;
  • Ignorance about women;
  • Easy-going and superficial attitude towards all women;
  • Tendency to change the intimate partners frequently, without concentration on someone in particular;
  • Dramatization of the relations with women, i.e. leaving without saying ‘good-bye’ etc.;
  • Habit to live at woman`s cost;
  • Incapacity to love a woman truly and to build a long-term stable relation.
Such people are not capable of raising a family. However, if this person aims at changing his life, psychoanalysis and personal-relations therapy shall be applied.

Superiority complex

Superiority complex is a term coined by Alfred Adler in the early 1900s, as part of his school of individual psychology.

A superiority complex is a defense mechanism that develops over time to help a person cope with painful feelings of inferiority.[1][2] Individuals with this complex typically come across as supercilious, haughty, and disdainful toward others. They may treat others in an imperious, overbearing, and even aggressive manner.[3][4]

In everyday usage, the term “superiority complex” is used to refer to an overly high opinion of oneself.

— Above from Wikipedia

America’s Top Case Study — Trump’s personality provides for a fascinating psychological case study

Written by Noam Shpancer Ph.D. for Psychology Today — 12/26/16

“According to Adler, people with a superiority complex often deploy “safeguarding tendencies”—maneuvers for protecting their underlying fragile sense of self. These safeguarding tendencies commonly include aggression, which, according to Adler, tends to manifest through “depreciation,” undervaluing others’ achievements and overvaluing one’s own, and “accusation”—the tendency to blame others for one’s failures and to seek retribution.”

“Adler was doing all this theorizing about the superiority complex in the early 1930s. In the years since then, psychological science has come to widely recognize the need for power and domination as one of the basic motivations directing people’s personal and social lives. In particular, more recent empirical evidence has highlighted a link between the need for power and dominance, particularly in its heightened form (akin to Adler’s superiority complex) and various forms of destructive psychopathology.”

“Much of the empirical and theoretical work on power motivation has been pooling under the notion of ‘Dominance Behavioral System’ (DBS). According to an extensive review of this literature by Sheri Johnson of the University of California Berkeley and colleagues (2012), Dominance Behavioral System, “encompasses a series of biological, psychological, and behavioral components. These components serve the organism’s goal of control over social and material resources that are critical for survival and reproduction. The DBS motivates behavior, directs sensory processing, and ensures efficient, rapid learning of behaviors that increase the likelihood of attaining this goal.” 

Of interest in the context of this discussion is that Johnson’s review finds that high DBS is strongly correlated with three types of psychopathology: Externalizing disordersNarcissistic disorder, and Mania.

Externalizing disorders are a group of disorders characterized by disruptive behavior; chief among them are antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy. Antisocial personality disorder is defined by, “persistent and pervasive disregard for, or violation of, the rights of others.” Psychopathy closely overlaps with antisocial personality, but tends to relate more to internal states; it typically includes “emotional traits (e.g., a lack of shameguilt, or remorse), interpersonal traits (an absence of empathy, an egocentric perspective), and behaviors reflecting poor self-control (e.g., impulsive behavior, difficulty maintaining employment, and financial debt).”

Narcissism is characterized by “a set of stable traits that interfere with functioning, including an exaggerated sense of self-importance, fantasies of unlimited success and power, beliefs that one is special, excessive need for admiration, proneness to envy, contemptuous attitudes and behavior toward others, entitlement, exploitive behavior, lack of empathy, beliefs that others are envious of oneself, and arrogance.”

Mania is characterized by periods of “distinctly euphoric or irritable mood, accompanied by other symptoms, such as being overly confident, requiring less sleep, increased talking, racing thoughts, and engagement in rewarding activities without regard for the negative consequences (e.g., risky sexual activity, excessive spending, and other disinhibited behaviors).” 

Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology: The Inferiority and Superiority Complex

William Blake – Nebuchadnezzar (Tate Britain)

Carl Jung on Superiority and Inferiority Complexes

“To become one of the few who exists in a state of harmony and who can state with confidence “As I am, so I act” we must be willing to look within, to shine a light on the darkness of our unconscious and to integrate what we discover into conscious awareness. Jung places so much emphasis on the power of the unconscious to transform who we are due to the fact that it is the far larger realm of our total psyche. What we are aware of, or what exists in the field of our consciousness, is only ever a sliver of our total personality. We repress much about who we are, forget even more, and there even exist, according to Jung, potentialities and instinctual energies of which we may spend our entire life in total ignorance.”

“But even if we accept that the unconscious contains much that could be integrated into our character is there not a good reason why these things are unconscious in the first place? Is it not better to allow some elements of our personality to reside outside of our awareness? Jung answers this question with an emphatic no and for the simple reason that the elements of our unconscious continue to influence us even though we are unaware of their existence. The main difference, in other words, between a psychic element that we are aware of and one that is unconscious, is that what exists in consciousness can potentially be controlled, while what exists in the unconscious has an autonomous existence and therefore will often produce effects inimical to our well-being:

The rejection of the unconscious usually has unfortunate results. . . The more negative the attitude of the conscious towards the unconscious, the more dangerous does the latter become.” — Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation

“A further reason for becoming more self-aware, is because the unconscious is not only home to elements of our character which conflict with our self-image and elicit shame, such as our character faults and weaknesses, but it also contains much of what is best about us. This is especially true in the modern day, where we tend to rely too much on our social role, or what Jung called the persona, in the building up of our character. In so doing we make…

“. . .a formidable concession to the external world, a genuine self-sacrifice which drives the ego straight into identification with the persona, so that people really do exist who believe they are what they pretend to be.”  

Carl Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology

“Our persona should never define us, it should merely be a role we play at appropriate times. For when come to believe we are the masks we wear we will have sacrificed all the good of our character that does not align with the trends of conformity upon which our persona was sculpted. Our true self retires into the background and gives place to social recognition” (Carl Jung) and we become a mirror of what we think others want us to be. This all comes with a sharp price to pay, for too much is left in the dark, too much of our character is denied and a divided self is created.

“A man cannot get rid of himself in favour of an artificial personality without punishment,” wrote Jung. “Even the attempt to do so brings on, in all ordinary cases, unconscious reactions in the form of bad moods, affects, phobias, obsessive ideas, backslidings, vices, etc. The social “strongman” is in his private life often a mere child where his own states of feeling are concerned; his discipline in public (which he demands quite particularly of others) goes miserably to pieces in private.” 

Carl Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology

“To cultivate a great character, we must be one of the few who heals the internal division that arises from too strong an identification with our social role. We need to accept that our persona represents only part of our total character and it must become our imperative duty to strip away our social mask and to learn what lies beneath. To achieve this task Jung suggests that we start by adopting a more collective view of who we are. Our gaze should turn outward and we should observe and take note of the character traits of those around us. This advice may seem paradoxical, as our persona is formed primarily through the observation and imitation of other people. But the point of this exercise is to learn about what resides behind the masks of our peers and to expose ourselves to the elements that occupy their unconscious. For it is far easier to look beyond the persona of another person, to notice the discrepancies in their behaviour, the cracks in their armour, so to speak, than it is to recognize these same elements within ourselves. Furthermore, due to the tendency to project unconscious traits of our character on to those around us this exercise will also bring us into contact with these projected elements.”

To finish this very well-written article, go to Carl Jung — Inferiority Complexes and the Superior Self — and/or watch the video below:

Carl Jung – Inferiority Complexes and the Superior Self — Sep 8, 2020

The number of complexes are probably as many as the number of people alive. The Analytical Psychology on Complexes blog lists many more ranging from Messianic/Redeemer Complex to Complex of an Excellent Student and Complex of Non-Love to Oneself or Complex of Loneliness. Indeed, we may create new complexes with every new generation of human born given the stresses of our modern life. Here are the ten most common psychological complexes:

  1. Oedipus/Electra Complex
  2. Madonna/Whore
  3. God Complex
  4. Persecution Complex
  5. Martyr Complex
  6. Inferiority Complex (see above — added 12/27/20)
  7. Superiority Complex (see above — added 12/27/20)
  8. Guilt Complex
  9. Don Juan Complex
  10. Hero Complex

All we can do is pay attention and hope we can make our way back to the beautiful being who lives inside all of us and is a witness and force of transformation to whatever constellation of complexes and archetypes we have inherited or created in our journey through life.

Happy traveling fellow voyagers of the soul!

The Boy Who Ate the Wrong Part of the Crocodile

Chris Cuomo said on Valentine’s Day: “The opposite of love is not hate—the opposite of love is indifference.” When someone plainly sees an injustice or wrong occurring and does nothing about it, this person is choosing to let the fabric of our shared reality rip and become ruin. Cuomo made a direct link to the role indifference played in the rise of the three brutal Dictators of World War II. After the chaos of WWI and global economic depression, great numbers of people were left without means of meeting their basic needs. Many looked to strong men with bold visions who said things like: “I can fix this! I, and I alone, can make our country great again!” These strong men possessed an uncanny magnetism that attracted people to them—people being crushed by their circumstances. These men were of course Adolf Hitler of Germany, Benito Mussolini of Italy, and Emperor Hirohito of Japan. 

At the beginning of WWII, the United States refused to enter it, fed up after the extraordinary loss of life, resources, and money poured into Europe during the first Great War. This combined with the Great Depression left Americans sunk deep inside a well of isolationist thinking. Many believed Europe needed to work out its own problems, which they felt were rooted in ancient tribal differences and racists tendencies played out over centuries. This thinking prevented Roosevelt from sending U.S. ships to help Churchill get his army out of Dunkirk where they were penned in by Hitler’s army, which was sweeping across Europe in a frightening and virtually unstoppable power grab. I believe Roosevelt sent some airplanes, but they had to be pushed over the Canadian border, not driven or flown, so they could take off from Canada allowing Roosevelt to claim he was not helping Britain, Canada was. Churchill was left in an impossible position for he did not have enough naval ships to evacuate his men. Without a British army, Hitler would invade the island nation forcing Churchill to surrender. Imagine the world if this had happened. Fortunately, Churchill prevailed by using every private water vessel available to cross the English Channel to get his men out.

After Pearl Harbor, America could no longer remain uninvolved in the second Great War now erupting just as brutally in the Far East. To help change public opinion and prepare men for battle, the United States government commissioned a series of movies to explain and justify involvement in yet another war. One of these movies was Prelude to War made by Frank Capra depicting the Nazi propaganda machine and disinformation being put out by the 3 dictatorial regimes. Inspired by Leni Riefenstahl‘s Germany propaganda film Triumph of the Will, Capra sought to create a movie that would counter hers, but to do so, he knew he needed a powerful idea. From Wikipedia:

Capra made his primary focus the creation of “one basic, powerful idea” that would spread and evolve into other related ideas. Capra considered one important idea that had always been in his thoughts: ‘I thought of the Bible. There was one sentence in it that always gave me goose pimples’:Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”[3]

As a result, his goal became to “let the enemy prove to our soldiers the enormity of his cause—and the justness of ours”. He would compile enemy speeches, films, newsreels, newspaper articles, with a list of the enemy’s hostile actions. He presented his ideas to other officers now assigned to help him: ‘I told them of my hunch: Use the enemy’s own films to expose their enslaving ends. Let our boys hear the Nazis and the Japs shout their own claims of master-race crud—and our fighting men will know why they are in uniform.’[3]

Weeks later, after major efforts and disappointments, Capra located hard-to-reach archives within government facilities, and by avoiding normal channels was able to gain access: Peterson and I walked away on air. We had found the great cache of enemy films—and it was ours![3]

If interested in these historical strands of fate and destiny, watch Capra’s Prelude to War and the Darkest Hour (an interpretation of Churchill and Dunkirk). After watching or reading about this time, I believe it is possible to grasp just how precarious human time and attention was during this moment as strong men worked day and night to divert and misdirect human attention to obscure their evil deeds. It is a timeless story repeated over and over in the human world. However, Now, here we stand again, this time closer to the edge than ever before, and yet so many people seem blissfully unaware, or worst, indifferent to the danger. 

Or, perhaps it is not an edge at all. 

Perhaps we face a collision of two different consolidations of human consciousness. What if every moment of our lives and every other human being’s life leaves a trace upon the warp and woof of space and time? What if these traces create a substrate from which our shared conscious reality rises and is expressed? One of the most fundamental expressions of this consciousness is through relationships (i.e., family, friends, community, country, world). Sometimes these relationships are strong, balanced and healthy, and they put good into the world. Sometimes these relationships are broken and unhealthy, and they pour bad into the world. These bonds and the traces they leave behind are immeasurably subtle and elusive for they are of an emotional-psychic-spiritual nature, thus escape our eyes, and even our minds, but not our hearts.

What if these traces of consciousness, this subtle energy, bump into each other and form bonds just like electrons and protons do in the visible universe? What if these bonds glob together and create landscapes, even planets or consolidated bodies of consciousness? Of course, these places would be invisible to the eye for they are spaces created from psychological-emotional-spiritual expressions or memories of our collective co-existence as human beings up to this point in time. There would be beautiful and safe places in this realm as well as dangerous ones. There would be ancient places charted long ago by our ancestors but Now forgotten. And, there would-be dried-up places, submerged places, verdant places, and crowded places. One would need to learn how to navigate these terrains just as one learns how to navigate the physical world, and these places would create the bedrock for our collective conscious co-existence. In short, they form the fertile invisible ground from which new conscious life sprouts and is expressed through time. 

Now consider two different consolidations of conscious terrain have formed over the expanse of human conscious co-existence and share the same orbit around the sun of humanity’s awaken consciousness—just as Earth shared the same orbit around our sun with Theia , which is believed to have been a Mars-sized planet orbiting the sun in the same Goldie Locks trajectory as Earth. Scientist believe Theia struck Earth about 4.5 billion years ago in a collision so massive it knocked Earth off its axis, sending it spinning so fast that one day was completed in 5 hours. The colossal amount of debris thrown into space created our moon, which eventually slowed Earth’s spin from 5-hours to 24 hours and created Earth’s tides once water returned. As life emerged, Earth’s crooked axis was transformed into our seasons, and from this destruction and chaos, a new equilibrium rose—one where life could thrive.

Further imagine the destruction and tragic loss of human life that happened 100 years ago and again 75 years ago were near misses of this other consolidation of human consciousness—merely pass-byes, not collisions, but nevertheless capable of generating tremendous gravitational forces within both consolidations of consciousness, which would widen and deepen natural riffs existing within these spheres of consciousness. This fracturing would prevent either sphere from seeing or taking necessary action to avoid a collision with the other. The question becomes can we absorb a direct impact, heal from it, and return to a new dynamic balance—one that supports  life—all life. 

After writing these strange thoughts, a friend posted one of Rumi’s timeless poems. I believe Rumi felt the possibility of such other realities existing beyond our visible one. Born September 30, 1207, he says so beautifully:

“I have abolished duality from myself.

I have seen the two worlds as One!

One I seek, One I know,

One I see, and One I call.”

~ By RUMI

Returning back to Western Civilization’s definition of reality, Cuomo went onto connect what happened 75 years ago to what Republicans are doing now by protecting a person proving himself to be a pathological liar and holding the most powerful office in the country. Barely two weeks later, Michael Cohen arrived on Capitol Hill to testify before Congress where the gentle Republican men and women came at him hard, employing virtually the same tactic, which was to call him a liar, attack his integrity, and suggest he is simply seeking to profit by his lies. Many gave passionate 5-minute speeches to their base using emotion like super weapons to inflame them (e.g., “I told my wife don’t listen to this, please don’t listen and she said to me don’t worry honey, I won’t listen.”)—all to protect a man shown to have made 6,420 false or misleading claims since he took office (Washington Post, 11/2/18). Of course they were angry, Cohen was no longer lying to protect their man—the President. Many wouldn’t even let Cohen answer their questions saying things like: “This is my time. Don’t interrupt me!” Halfway through his testimony, Cohen admonishes Congress for by now even the gentle Democratic men and women are using their time not to question Cohen but to make counter statements to combat the highly charged mini emotional speeches made by the other side. The result was a shredding of any truth to be found and trampling on the remnants. One of the most profound statements Cohen made was that what people surrounding Trump are doing Now is what he did for him for 10 years, and they will end up where he is Now. He also said when Trump took office he became the very worst version of himself (I’ll get back to this). Don Lemon added later that people protect their own,which is tribal behavior (e.g., BBC interview of U.S. 2020 voters 3/7/19, “Do I vote for character? No, I don’t vote for character… character doesn’t put money in my pocket.).

This idea of social reality as tribal is critical to understand and get underneath in order to grapple with the realities facing us Now. Tribal co-existence is one of the most natural states for human beings to exist. Throughout human civilization, tribes have been the building blocks for how to live together. Tribes protect and nurture their members, and when threatened, fiercely defend them. With the rise and dominance of Western Civilization, the physical embodiment of many tribes around the world has been greatly diminished—which is a tremendous loss of the magnificent diversity and vibrancy of human civilizations as it has evolved on Earth. A question to consider Now is this (Western Civilization) the most stable consolidation of human co-existence we can create? Are there perhaps other more stable and life sustaining consolidations of human conscious co-existence that are more balanced and capable of recognizing and nurturing the realities of inner and outer space. 

Despite the dwindling number of so many of the world’s native tribes, tribal ways of thinking have not disappeared. Indeed, with the rise of social media, they are resurging in ways never previously imagined possible. And, why wouldn’t this be so for humans have always found tremendous comfort in groups of other liked minded humans. Tribes, as previously stated, protect and sustain their members from harsh realities of life, and this is true of virtual tribes as it is for real tribes. In essence, they create an external model of reality that reflects and protects the internal world experienced by most of its members. They also serve as effective mechanisms to teach young members about beliefs, traditions, rituals, and knowledge deemed essential for survival in an uncertain world. A tribe is not inherently good or bad—be it ancient or modern—rather it is as good as the human beings making it up and their thinking. However, if a tribe becomes off balanced, its members tend to become off balanced too.  

Veering sharply from present to past, I want to contrast current political tribalism with the challenges faced by a real, living tribe. I’ve selected two stories from the book my friend M. sent me to help me cope with my father’s death, child of the jungle, which is about the Fayu tribe in New Guinea. This tribe was facing a serious crisis after having become deeply knocked off balanced by vicious revenge killings. These imbalances permeated into every aspect of their lives, including how they treated their own members and families. As this more aggressive and cruel side of the Fayu’s collective psychic-spiritual landscape grew bigger, it submerged their more loving and nurturing side. Failing to recognize their lopsidedness, they became locked in a tangled web of cruelty. 

I am very aware how Western colonization often took place first through missionary work; however, through this story, I have come to understand it is how this work is done that makes the critical difference. In this real-life story, the father felt deeply called to be with the Fayu people, and he did so with a compassionate heart. He did not enforce his way of doing things, nor impose his beliefs, but rather sought to learn their language, engage in conversation, and demonstrate through his own life kinder, gentler ways of being and living together. This was not a one-way street either for he and his family learned from the Fayu people as well. In fact, the family’s very existence in the jungle was only possible because of the Fayu’s help and knowledge, which they shared freely and frequently to help the family live and survive in the jungle—a place of daily wonders and danger. Most importantly, it was only by the invitation of one of the chiefs who expressed how tired he was by all the killings that the family came to live with the Fayu.

Two key moments that vividly demonstrate to me just how far off balanced the Fayu had become are as follows:

Painting By Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Chapter: Nakire — The Woman and the arrow

“It happened while I was playing outside. Several women were heading into the jungle. The husband of one of the women called her back, but she did not immediately respond. When she finally did step out of the trees, he took his bow, notched an arrow, and shot her in the breast.

The Fayu are excellent marksmen. The husband knew exactly how much pressure to exert on the bowstring so that the arrow would wound but not kill his wife. The woman collapsed, groaning, onto the ground. I felt sick. I wanted to scream, to run away, to kill that man. Everyone could see that this woman was pregnant.

Mama heard the cries and came running out of the house. When she saw the scene, she lost it. I have never seen Mama roar as she did on that day. Mama ran over to the woman, extracted the arrow, and helped her to the house. The man was standing there, laughing at our reaction. I threw him a look of contempt as I followed Mama and the woman into our house. Papa was also very upset, but when he confronted the Fayu about it, they just laughed at him as well.

Today it is different. Over the years, the Fayu watched the relationship between my parents, and what they saw – their respect and love for each other – began to change the way they treated their own wives. It was a new concept for the Fayu that a man and a woman could work together, be happy at it and be able to incorporate humor into their relationship. With my parents, they could see how important love was and the argument didn’t have to be settled by arrows or death.”

Painting By Donna Alena Hrabcakova

Chapter: My Brother Ohri — Boy who ate the wrong part of the crocodile

“But this time our concern was justified. When I saw Ohri step out of the brush, I shouted for Mama and hurried to him. He collapsed to the ground, weak and with a high fever. I wanted to help him up but didn’t know where I could touch him. His entire chest was a huge, infected wound covered by a thick layer of green-grey fungus. The Fayu had shot him with an arrow and left him for dead in the middle of the jungle.

Mama came running and helped Ohri into our house, Papa asked the Fayu what had happened and was told that Ohri had eaten a forbidden piece of a crocodile. This was his punishment. They completely ignored him and acted as though he didn’t exist anymore.

I started to cry when I saw his pain-streaked face. He smelled like rotting meat. The wound was obviously gangrenous. I sat next to him and held his hand. Mama brought bandages and medication and rolled Ohir on to this side. She mixed potassium permanganate with water and poured it over his chest. An inch-thick fungal growth slowly loosened itself and fell off him onto the leaves we had placed underneath him.

Ohir was in great pain. His entire chest was an open wound filled with maggots. Mama cut a bedsheet into large strips, covered them in antibiotic cream, and bound his torso with them. She changed the bandages every day. Papa took the leaves and dressings out behind the house and burned them.”

Ohir would survive his ordeal, and he would be accepted back into his tribe. The author does not tell us if the Fayu changed their ways after this event, but you see love and compassion demonstrated by the family as the Fayu watched, and most importantly, paid attention. The author does say later: “Words alone are empty. You have to live out what you hold to be true. The Fayu needed to decide for themselves whether they wanted to change, for true change comes only from the heart.” Thus, it was the compassionate, tender, and loving side of the Fayu people re-emerging simply by watching and paying attention to how these strange, white people did things differently. This simple act empowered the Fayu to remember the submerged parts still existed inside of them (like an energy being activated through the mere act of observation). The change was slow, one person at a time, one choice at a time, but little by little they began to bring this side of themselves back into their shared psycho-social-spiritual conscious sphere. Thus, this is how a gentle transformation occurred. 

When we strive to become the best version of ourselves, we pay attention to our inner life as well as our outer life. We learn how to channel our most destructive human emotions and nature in less destructive ways. We help others learn how to do this too. This is love.  Love is simply paying attention to ourselves and helping each other do this too. It is doing what we can with what we have to make the world a little bit better. It is helping each other heal wounds (those inside of us or inflicted on us by outside forces or fate) for we are all human beings making a wondrous and perilous journey to become more conscious, and hopefully kinder and more loving beings as well, but this is a personal choice. The journey begins by looking inside and seeing and validating our inner truth and reality. This can feel risky and even dangerous because most of us are taught that our inner realities are nothing more than crazy mutterings, insane ramblings, or unhinged thoughts. Correcting this imbalance in our collective vision (i.e., verifying and validating the truth of each person’s inner reality in balance with every other person alive) may be the only way to move forward together. This can only happen by paying attention to what is happening inside and helping each other do the same—one person at a time. It’s not too late to change our shared reality. As long as we have life, we have choice, and until our dying day, we leave traces upon the warp and woof of space and time. 

* * *

One More Story about the Cost of Indifference: In this story, the price of indifference is human life. 48 Hours In Syria is a powerful story told by Kassem Eid about spending two years living in a city under siege. It began after he and his neighbors took part in the protests during the Arab Spring in 2011, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad began to punish towns like Kassem’s. His forces bombed them, surrounded them, and starved them. That’s when Kassem decided to fight back.  

The Dalai Lama Talks About How to Tackle the Indifferent Mind: How to Train Our Mind: His Holiness the Dalai Lama explains how to train the mind to tackle destructive emotions during his meeting with a group from India at his residence in Dharamsala, HP, India on February 11, 2019.

Stories About Weaving Strong (Even Destructive) Emotions into Making Legal DecisionsRadioLab: Null and Void – These stories tell about jury nullification with a particular passionate interview and story beginning at 40 minutes into the show. 

Stories About the Vortex of Conspiracy Theorists: Beware the Jabberwock: Stories from the upside-down world where conspiracy theorists dwell – These are stories about Lenny Pozner whose son, Noah, was killed at Sandy Hook. In the years after Noah’s death, Lenny and his family were harassed by people who believed the shooting at Sandy Hook never happened–that it was all a conspiracy. Until one day, Lenny decided to fight back.

1A: Male Masculinity in the 21stCentury: How to Raise Boys –  How do we teach men how to acknowledge that “I feel pain, I feel fear?” This is an in-depth discussion about the messages and confusing narratives that swirl around men and boys today and how it shapes their understanding of what it means to be a man and how they should act.

One Way a Different Consolidation of Consciousness Might Split Off from the Whole and Grow:  Conflict and strong emotions have always been hard for humans to navigate, especially in groups—be it a group of 3 or a country of millions—but navigating them together may be our only evolutionary option. Some groups favor acting on strong emotions and openly engaging in conflict (tic for tac approach), but this can escalate or lock a conflict into a static pattern. Some groups prefer ignoring conflict and strong emotions, pretending it’s business as usual, while the intense emotional energy is submerged into the unconscious realms where it tends to grow and morph out of sight of conscious awareness, typically transforming into something much worst (to play the unconsciousness game, see the animation-graphic above).

Unconscious Forces Rising — by Bébé

Some groups don’t believe they have any responsibility to guide the emotional energy of its members at all, rather believing this is the job of family and friends to soothe disaffected individuals. But we’ve seen this play out with middle income and middle of the country Americans, many who are white and feel the systems that once supported and elevated them left them behind. They face uncertain futures where they cannot care for themselves and their families. They feel pain and fear that can surge very strongly at times and need to be sorted and channelled. But with broken systems, their voices go unheard, and so they do talk to their friends and family, and they are angry too. The result is a splitting from the whole and formation of a consolidation of individuals who weld enough will and power to elect Donald Trump.

Whenever a whole is divided and becomes polarized due to lack of effective strategies to channel strong emotions that can flow from time to time within groups, the polarized sides can begin to fracture, allowing even more powerful, destructive potentials (forces) to fill the cracks. Repairs might be attempted on both sides (i.e., the stained glass), but without dealing with the originating causes of the fracture, these repairs are often too little, too late, and too weak to hold the whole, causing everything to break apart—a story as old as time. See The Divine Dodo — In Maidjan (The Corruption) for the story for which the gif below was created to tell.

Repairing the Cracks: Venus Rising — by Bébé

Thank you for your time and attention.