Be who you truly are, but also be prepared to take responsibility for being who you truly are. Know that what you say will affect people and how you say it will affect them even more. So take responsibility for what and how you speak. Keep love in your heart and on your tongue so that all you do, all you say, and all that you are is loving indeed. Be responsible in all ways. But perhaps the biggest and most important responsibility is that to be who you truly are requires being true to yourself. Take responsibility for that!
The heart pounds so hard it must be audible to others. The muscles seize in momentary paralysis. The face flushes, the throat tightens, the breath is halted, the body vibrates. This is divine encounter, a numinous experience.
A man looks at his partner and is overtaken by the beauty of divine glow. So powerful is this encounter with numinous energy that his humanness is overwhelmed with premature ejaculation.
A woman stands before a large gathering. She is there to perform. Looking out at the crowd she is overtaken by the vastness of presence. She straddles anxiety and dizziness. Is she ready to channel the divine through her instrument? Her first challenge will be to steady her smallness in her numinous encounter with the divine as felt through the bigness of the crowd.
An ordinary dream escalates to a nightmare. Before we are able to awaken we are seized by terror as we are cornered by overwhelming odds. Waking with a start, our sleep is finished for the night. Our numinous encounter with the divine terrible leaves us anxiously counting the minutes till daylight.
As helpful as our rational mind may be in orienting us to ordinary predictable life, reason is no match for the power of the numinous. Until the light of day, awakened by the tremendum of a nightmare, we remain in the grip of the monster.
Similarly, in waking life, no amount of reason can free the afflicted from the power of a compulsion. Compulsion is the energy of the numinous imposing itself upon the smallness of ego. Ego can be coached to refuse compulsion’s will, but it cannot escape the resultant crucifixion by anxiety, the consequence of refusing the will of the compulsion.
The smallness of our ego as it is overtaken by the all-consuming energy of a numinous encounter, bidden or unbidden, is the core challenge of this life. For a child, parents loom as the first numinous encounter with a power greater than themselves.
Freud’s vast contributions on the legacy of these early relations attest to the power of these numinous encounters to control and define a lifetime. How are we ever to discover ourselves if the image or actual person of our parents continues to rule and preoccupy life throughout adulthood?
Jung discovered that the numinous character of these encounters originates in the vastness of the collective unconscious, home of the archetypes. Archetypes are the gods of yesteryear that were formerly projected onto Mt. Olympus or some other heaven. Modern humans have conquered space; the gods are now operating internally through numinous encounters within the self, projected outward onto normal humans experienced as gods and goddesses.
The truth is that we are seekers of numinous encounters. They are the experiences of divine communion that lend ordinary life its luster and meaning. They can be found in an impulsive Tinder hookup. They can be experienced in the elevating music of a rock concert or the Philharmonic. They can be experienced in religious or civil rituals, in the union of marriage or the finality of death. They are certainly the draw of most mind-altering substances.
The energy of the numinous at the human animal level is instinct. Animals become instinctually driven to mate, human animals are no exception. The human spirit elevates an instinctual act into an ethereal one. The act of sex can combine with love in union of body and spirit. The projected archetypes of god and goddess imbue the perception of lovers with spiritual depth and awe.
The human challenge is to engage these heightened energy states with sobriety. For some, the attraction to heightened energy is like a moth drawn to a flame. This is addiction, whether it be to substance, sex, a person or the news. The major challenge in addiction is to find a non self-injurious way to numinous encounter. The dry drunk alternative merely relegates one to addiction to negativity, also a powerful numinous force.
The development of control enables the ego to be nourished and broadened in numinous encounter, but not possessed and taken over by it. We start with the reality that we are small and vulnerable, the numinous is large and powerful. No point in inflating, i.e., “I can handle that.” No, the fact remains that numinous anything is more powerful than the ego. Be humble, but be an adult. If the Queen offers an audience with her numinous energy, be the knight who humbly receives her blessing.
The instinctual fear activated by encounters with numinous energy is a natural reaction to the presence of autonomous power greater than one’s ego. Turning to the body to regulate the inner influx of energy is far more effective than turning to the mental plane for support. The mind is likely to be inundated with thoughts that intensify the fear—no help there. A deep breath is a far greater regulator of numinous encounter than rationality, which is already in an experience outside its league.
Pranayama breathing, biofeedback exercises, and the intent to commune in flowing calm are practical technologies for the ego to practice to facilitate its ability to calm and regulate the central nervous system’s ability to go with the influx of heightened numinous energy.
Ultimately, the ego has no choice but to encounter the numinous. Our world now reflects this reality. The numinous is playing outwardly with abandon in the Gotham City world we are now living in. How the collective ego of humankind handles this encounter is a work in progress.
The playing field within the individual is equally as powerful but on that playing field definite progress can be made. Every individual encounters the numinous. Through suffering the encounter and holding one’s own we are nourished and guided to further our individuation and advance the world.
Let the light in your heart show you the darkness it hides. Let the darkness reveal the light it conceals. Let your heart be your guide in the dark and the light and let be revealed the truth of your being, that you are both light and dark, revealing and concealing, and know that this is your wholeness. At the same time that you accept these two sides of the self, seek to know yourself in all aspects, light and dark, so that your wholeness may be fully explored and understood. For if you do not fully know yourself, how can you truly know and understand anyone else? Seek knowledge of self. That is where contentment lies.
Certain things are worth repeating. Hold yourself accountable for your decisions and your actions. Take responsibility for how you go about your life, for how you treat yourself and others, for how you determine what is right and important, for what you think you need and want. Your own desires are yours to fulfill, for no other being can possibly meet your expectations. So take note to charge yourself with these tasks: be accountable to your deepest self, be responsible for yourself, live an honest and truthful life, within and without, and make the world a better place by being a better steward of yourself and your personal life. As within, so without. That too is worth repeating!
Separation and integration are necessary operations in the growth of our wholeness. Before the cake batter can be mixed the ingredients must be carefully separated and measured. Next comes the stirring of all the ingredients as they are prepared to be baked into an integrated whole and delicious cake!
The human being is comprised of many separate parts that must be integrated for effective functioning. Take for instance an emotion, be it love, anger or sadness. The river of the bloodstream carries the energy of these emotions as they flood the body in an activated state. If the psyche is uncomfortable with the intensity of these emotional energies it likely stiffens the body’s muscles to dam up and contain this heightened emotional state. This results in a loss of integrated functioning of mind and body.
This in turn can lead to chronic muscle fatigue and depressed mood as the vital energy for life is dammed up in the musculature while what little energy is available is spent largely in a separative defense rather than in a wholistic pursuit of release, joy, and satisfaction.
Yoga and mind/body modalities highlight the use of the breath to support the metabolic processes of the body but also to allow the free flow of dammed emotions and traumatic memories that restrict integrated wholeness and an enlivened spirit. Deep breathing promotes calmness and the ability to release powerful emotions safely. A simple practice of taking a deep abdominal breath several times a day can initiate mind/ body integration.
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico point out that the lion’s share of energy in modern humans is spent on the presentation of the self in everyday life. Thus the ego, with it’s separate concerns about how it looks, how others validate it, and its overall craving for attention, is the largest ingredient of modern life. We readily see this modeled in our current world leaders.
The Shamans recommend that we identify and largely separate out this preoccupation with self-importance from our daily routines and habits to better integrate our energetic reserve for the practices of intent, dreaming, and manifestation.
Those Shamans literally make a written inventory of their typical daily behaviors, eliminating unnecessary attention-seeking energy consumption. If we allow ourselves to reflect on our day, we are able to separate out that which facilitated and that which interfered with a greater integrated functioning of self.
Although I find it disheartening to see the disintegration of the world as we have known it, I am convinced it was unavoidable. I think it is fair to say that the election of Donald Trump was as surprising as the election of Barack Obama. I am still amazed that we saw the election of a black person to the presidency in my lifetime. I am equally amazed by the election of a character like Donald Trump to the world’s highest office.
On the one hand, the Greek principle of enantiodromia was clearly at work here. That principle simply states that one extreme will bring forth its exact opposite. The classic example of this is Saul on the road to Damascus. He begins on a mission to persecute Christians. Suddenly he has an extreme conversion where he becomes Paul, the devout Christian. Trump has defined himself as the exact opposite of Obama.
On the other hand, I think, like Jimmy Carter, that Obama was ahead of his time. In fact the stage was next set for the raising of the feminine to royal status with the election of Hillary. Although this portended the greater integration of human wholeness, it too was ahead of its time. The ingredients for that cake were simply not properly measured nor were they ready for mixing. Instead, we were thrown into an incredible time of separation, worldwide.
A word like immigration has become a four letter word in our time. Nonetheless, this extreme separatism of now allows us to clearly see our differences, which must be faced and reconciled in a very real, not fake way, if we are to once again be able to approach the integration and elevation of the feminine to its rightful ruling authority, Yin and Yang as a balanced whole.
The truth is, America rushed the making of the cake with Obama and nearly did with Hillary as well. But fate intervened, for America had truly not faced nor reconciled its shadow yet. Well, it is reckoning with it now!
You simply can’t force wholeness prematurely. We are in the time of separation and we must accept that. Inwardly we can use this time to face our divided selves and set into motion practical behaviors to shore up our greater integration and evolution into wholeness. Elmer Green,* who recently died at age 99, left us with the vision that in 125 years we’ll be there. Let’s all do our part to make it happen. Begin with the self!
Chuck
* Elmer Green, PhD, noted biofeedback pioneer is also the author, among other books, of The Ozawkie Book of the Dead: Alzheimer’s Isn’t What You Think It Is
