Despite all the manipulations of public thought, driven by master political hypnotists and well-endowed special interests, the root cause of the Tao of Now is the refusal to feel. At a global level, the collective will insists upon unlimited more, refusing to feel the impact of its actions, as the world heats up and overflows daily, and all of its people with it .

The fallout of such a one-sided refusal to feel and act upon emotional knowing is a transmogrified fervor of eruptive passions, gathering in the streets of Ottawa, as well as on the borders of Ukraine. On an individual level, the ego finds its fragile boundaries on guard against the tsunamis of dreams and its inner terrors projected fearfully and aggressively upon others.

Individuation, what Jung defined as the spiritual goal of human life, is the achievement of conscious wholeness. Conscious wholeness first requires the full knowing of all parts of the self, no secrets in the form of projections, dissociations, or rationalizations distorting the truth of self.

If I am to recover my lost parts, I must be willing to fully feel them. I must be willing to allow them the release and expression of all their emotions, however uncomfortable, unnerving, or threatening. I must grant the truths they reveal the right to exist, regardless of their shattering impact upon my ideal of self, or my idea of other. I must accept their contributions toward the greater truth, however limited they be, due to their one-sided perspectives.

Having felt the emotions of these parts of self, and been physically reshaped by the release of them and their revealed truths, I must endeavor to bridge these parts with the greater whole of the self. Wholeness is not perfection; perfection finds wholeness through the full integration of its parts into a comprehensive  whole. The collaboration of all parts for the best balance of the greater whole is true perfection, however momentary.

Reshaping the self, like reshaping the world, requires action. Though we are capable of stillness and concentration in meditation, we really exist in this space/time plane to experience physical action and reaction. The physical world is our sandbox. I might have to take a journey into deep sadness, as I overturn the blockade to primal pain, but then I must forge new pathways of action, beyond the pre-established habits of suppression and sublimation.

This might include full breathing, where once it was only shallow. This might mean presence, where once there existed only a freeway of ceaseless thought. This might include communication, where once there was sulkiness. This might require movement, where once there was rigidity. This might include allowing the trickster to live all the cardinal sins, as it travels kundalini’s arduous path to enlightenment. This will definitely require full transparency, to self and other, combined with awakening compassion.

The destruction of now is the karma of the refusal to feel. If we look around, at self and other, we see it all around us and know this to be true. The obvious antidote is to learn to feel, compassionately.

The construction of now is the Path of Heart that is guided by transparent mind and loving kindness for all parts of self, and all parts of other, however good, however bad. Oneness, after all, requires all its parts to be whole.

Not refusing to feel,

Chuck

*Title inspired by a talk by Darryl Robert Schoon with Jeffrey Mishlove