Jan and I drove into our little village of Red Hook yesterday to be greeted at the main crossroad by a pickup truck sporting a huge half- American half-confederate flag blowing in the wind in the bed of the truck. The energy of the war drums pounding is palpable everywhere. How to respond? We turn to some sage guidance from the person we consider to be the wisest of the 20th Century, whose reach has yet to be fully realized, C. G. Jung, from his collected letters Volume 2, p. 502-3.
On April 28, 1959 Jung responded to a question as to why he didn’t protest against the injustice done to Tibet by the Chinese occupation. Here is his response:
“You are quite right: I also ask myself why I do not use the means that appear to be at my disposal to do my bit in combating the atrocities that are going on in the world. I can give no rational reasons for this. In such matters I usually wait for an order from within. I have heard nothing of the kind. The world situation has got so hopelessly out of hand that even the most stirring words signify nothing. It would be more to the point, or so it seems to me, if each of us were sure of his own attitude. But an individual who thinks that his voice is heard afar merely exposes himself to the suspicion that he is one of that band who have said something in order to prove to themselves that they have done something whereas in reality they have done nothing at all. Words have become too cheap. Being is more difficult and is therefore fondly replaced by verbalizing. Unfortunately this is all I have to say on the matter.”
What Jung is suggesting is that we act when we hear the order to do so from within ourselves. That order issuing not from impulse but from the quiet certainty of the heart. In the meantime the real contribution is to take on one’s own being, truly reconciling the opposing energies within the self. This is the playing field for world peace, the holographic solution.
The heart centered communities must come together in solidarity now. It’s time to join forces in whatever way suits you, quietly in prayer and word, or outwardly in meaningful action. There are many ways to be a community. Come together in spirit with the powers of goodness, kindness and compassion at the center, the messages of love, respect and equality spread worldwide. Divisive times call for strength and unity. A community of kindred souls, good people, have the opportunity now to seize the day, so that hearts may once again be filled with joy at what has transpired. Time to get creative with heart centeredness at the core of every effort, day and night, in thought, word, and action.
My elementary and middle school years were spent at a small Catholic school taught by nuns. There were eight classrooms filled with about 60 kids per room. We all knew each other, our families knew each other, the nuns knew us all. It was an environment where if you did something good everyone knew about it. Likewise, if you did something bad everyone knew about it too.
My beautiful blue squirt gun… it all started here…
I was a poor student for the most part, often bored, except when something interested me. Then I went from an uninterested slouch to a stellar performer, but such moments were rare. I liked hands-on learning but learning back then was rote memorization, the whole class of 60 kids repetitively shouting out loud, or quiet reading of textbooks where nothing was alive.
On more than one occasion I acted out and got into trouble. Getting into trouble could mean being humiliated in front of your whole class, being sent to the mean principal’s office, made to stand in a corner for a day, or getting sent to public school, this last being the most dramatic, but it did happen. Suddenly a student would be gone and we would be told that she or he had somehow sinned and been dealt the worst punishment this side of Hell, public school! I do clearly remember one girl once telling a nun to shut up, using an expletive, and she got expelled that very day, the little heathen. Her fate was, as we heard from the satisfied nun, public school!
It was my seventh year in this school when I did something really bad. It was the fall of 1964 and for some reason squirt guns were popular. It became a big fad, both boys and girls carried them around all the time, to school and home again, around the playground at school and around the neighborhood at home. We’d carry them loaded with water, ready to fire away at a moment’s notice. There was a little general store a few miles from where I lived and it was at this store that we bought our plastic guns. They came in various colors. Mine was blue.
The impish potion…
As I recapitulate I remember the thrill of pulling out that little blue gun, taking aim and squirting an unsuspecting someone, usually a boy. I remember that a big “fight” was planned and everyone was bringing their gun. The imp in me got the grand idea to fill my gun not with water, but with perfume, specifically my mother’s Chanel No. 5 Eau De Parfum. I carefully poured from the big glass bottle directly into my gun, not spilling a drop. Hee hee, you couldn’t tell it wasn’t water!
I could barely contain myself as I got on the bus and surreptitiously pulled out my gun and started firing away. Pretty soon the entire bus stank! Clothes reeked! At school, as we played outside in the morning before being called to line up, I continued firing. The air was filled with the stench of Chanel No. 5 Eau De Parfum as I aimed and shot yellow stream after yellow stream of the stuff. Two perfectly aimed shots hit a boy in my class right smack in the eyes. Thrilling! The pistol of perfume was in my hands, and I was a champ. All my girlfriends laughed as the boy started rubbing his eyes and went crying into the school. Pretty soon Sister Mary Bernard, the Principal, came marching out, dragging the weeping boy by his shirtsleeve.
“Who did this?” she demanded.
Everyone ran. I was the only one left standing. I had to admit that it was I; I did it.
“You knucklehead, where did you ever get such an idea?” she yelled, as I stood there shrugging my shoulders, unable to answer her because I thought it was a perfectly brilliant idea! “You hurt this boy! You’ll be lucky if he isn’t blinded by what you did!”
As I remember that day, I still experience the same thrilling jolt of numinous energy that coursed through me when I loaded that gun with perfume, slipped it into my uniform pocket with a giggle of delight, and when I pulled it out on the bus and started firing. Once everyone realized what I had in my gun, it was all over. No one else in the entire school had thought of what I had thought of! I was onto something good! And boy, it was good while it lasted! And boy, was it bad when it ended!
All guns were confiscated. Parents were called. The boy had to go to the doctor. The school stank all day of perfume, we all reeked of it. And I got into trouble, big trouble, though I did not have to go to public school. At the end of the day even the bus driver finally knew who had smelled up his bus that morning. He glared at me when I got on the bus in the afternoon and said, “I’m watching you, Troublemaker.”
Not only did I get into trouble at school and at home, but everyone in the whole world seemed know what I had done. I was bad. Even my grandmother and her bevy of friends knew. People in my neighborhood knew. Kids who didn’t go to my school knew. Even the man who owned the general store knew. The next time I saw him, he grumbled at me.
“You’re the one! I had to deal with the Catholics! I had them calling me up, angry and yelling, and now I can’t sell squirt guns. Had to take them all off the racks!”
I had to apologize to the boy whom I might have blinded for life. He meekly accepted my apology when I saw him on the bus the next day. “It’s okay,” he said. I think he secretly wished he’d thought of using perfume instead of water, but he just wasn’t as inventive as I was.
I had to stand before my parents in the evening after my shameful adventure and explain to them why I had done what I had done. I remember telling them that I did it because it was fun. My father could barely contain himself, secretly pleased that he had such an impish daughter. My mother delivered the final blow, as usual. I was grounded.
“For how long?” I whined.
“Until I say, now go to your room!”
What can I say, there really was an imp inside me and she had to express herself. She was much more daring than shy me, or quiet me, or scared me. Without her, life would have been one long boring snooze! She knew how to kick up some energy and have a grand time. I never really regretted what she got up to because she brought me such exciting experiences, and the thrill of it all still vibrates through me today as I recapitulate what she did. When she showed up, it was time to have some fun!
A blog by J. E. Ketchel, author of The Recapitulation Diaries
Mother Earth and Mother Nature, body and spirit, two parts of a whole, have their ways of communicating. They have their moods, their temperaments, their means by which to speak their wisdom. Listen carefully to what they say and take action to persevere and flourish even in the worst of times. For though Mother Earth shifts and changes she cares for all of her creatures and in consort with Mother Nature, her eternal spirit, she seeks new evolution within and without. It is time now for great change and advancement, she says. Know this and abide in her beauty and her fury, under her fine sun by day and her calm moon by night. Bask in her growth and her destruction, knowing that she has things under control. Be her earthly companions and treat her well. Be her spirit companions as well and find her spirit in you and she will support you all of your days. Matter and spirit, body and soul, are everywhere and in everything, within and without, even in your eternal Mothers.
Spirit and Matter are the building blocks of humanity. Spirit is invisible, matter is substantial and therefore observable. We infer the existence of spirit by the effects it has on matter. If I decide to stand up and walk to the door, my invisible mind, the spirit dimension of my being, moves my body, the matter or material part of my being.
Thus, spirit begins with the mental plane, which, granted, uses the physical brain but is not identical with it. Consciousness functions outside the human body as an energy body capable of defying the laws of time and space. This dimension of spirit experience, though a latent potential for everyone, usually remains dormant except under extraordinary circumstances like a physical trauma, which shakes the energy body out of the physical body in an OBE. In a generally less uncomfortable way our spirit or energy body separates from the physical body in dreaming every night.
Matter is all of nature. Nature is governed by instincts and inherited programs, which at the human level are called archetypes. Archetypes are nature’s inherited programs that can assume control of human behavior from a deeply unconscious level. For example, many people who were sexually abused in childhood lose conscious memory of their experiences almost immediately after they occur. Certainly this is not a conscious decision. This amnesic reaction is governed by an archetypal program deeply embedded in nature’s program for survival at such a traumatic moment. That program reactivates—generally in midlife, to facilitate the achievement of wholeness at a mature stage of life—as memory in the form of flashbacks, beckoning reconciliation with consciousness.
Consciousness is fixated on rationality as the governing spirit of our time: spirit intellectis. Juan Enriquez, a scientific visionary, has basically stated what most people really believe: that we are God now, that our intellect is God, and that we are completely in charge of our own and the world’s evolution. Certainly the words bellowed from the United Nations General Assembly yesterday reflect such an attitude.
This kind of inflated spirit erupted with Naziism, which had as its god the creation of the perfect superior human. Interestingly, C. G. Jung stated that Naziism was the eruption of the pagan god Wotan, long suppressed in the human psyche through the impact of Christianity, which had served to help humanity advance spirit over the dominance of its nature roots.
When spirit dissociates itself from matter, matter seeks revenge. That’s where we are now: matter is at war with spirit. Matter, as nature, is deemed irrational. Spirit, as mind, is deemed rational. Thus the war is played out as the irrational versus the rational, matter versus spirit.
Nature is dealing deadly blows to humanity at present. Simply view the state of our islands of paradise in the Caribbean. My heart goes out to all my friends there in the front line of nature’s forward march. The Caribbean is at the vanguard of our changing world. This has archetypal underpinnings as a paradise lost, representing a major shift in human consciousness. We can only return to the garden now with a wholly new adaptive attitude, which is already emerging from this precious part of the world as it braces for nature’s next round of energetic impact.
In human form, nature, as the irrational, has seized control of major world leaders, particularly here in America. These untethered spirits are governed by their own whims, which change dramatically, like the wind, day by day, with no rhyme or reason, as the fate of the world hangs in the balance.
The deeper issue that all these world happenings reflect is the relationship between the irrational and rational within ourselves. Our ego spirit intellectis simply devalues and dismisses all that is matter, and the laws that govern it. Our bodies and our physical world are filled with food stuffs and objects alien to the true needs of the body and the planet. Our ego spirit cares largely about me and mine; let the world community fend for itself. Our ego spirit identifies with reason and so dissociates from or tries to control, for its own gain, the basic instincts.
The war we are in must be fought within individuals, each of us striving to reconcile our own spirit and matter selves. The ego must ground itself in the body and in deeply unconscious nature. This means facing the truths of body ailments that are expressing nature’s resentments and needs. This means facing, feeling, expressing, regulating and integrating nature’s powerful emotions, which express important needs and send archetypal messages that have the potential, if paid attention to, to steer the spirit in consort with material reality and need, that is, the true needs of the body and the planet.
We are all empowered here and now to make the changes in our own lives that are necessary to reconcile with nature. This is not the time to luxuriate in OBEs, dissociated from our body and our nature. The playing field is spirit-in-body now, doing our best to bring this yin and yang of ourselves into working harmony.
Let’s calm nature by listening to her, within and without, acquiescing to the true needs of self and planet. This is the true spirit of the matter. Have love, compassion, and care without, but seek the needed transformation within.
The truth is that our world leadership does not grasp the heart of the matter. Our greatest playing field is restoring the Tao within the self. As within, so without. This is the spirit that really matters now.
