Compensation is the action of balance. In everyday life, we work—we give of our energy and are compensated with wages. Hence our efforts are compensated or balanced by stored energy—money—that we are then freed to use as we see fit.
– Art and Photo by Jan Ketchel
Psychologically, compensation operates as the balancing agent of the unconscious to our conscious decisions and actions. If we spend our day studious and bored, our dreams may compensate by taking us on faraway adventures. In this way our conscious life is compensated—balanced—by our unconscious adventures.
The more extreme our conscious attitude, the more extreme our unconscious compensation. If we insist on keeping ourselves in flighty behavior, the unconscious might compensate with a bad mood, a depression, or a physical fall, bringing us back to earth.
This same compensatory mechanism operates on the world stage. When the ruling attitudes become extreme in any direction they are compensated by a counter movement of equal and opposite energy that reacts in its own destructive wake.
If we accept the premise that the world is an interdependent whole, then outbreaks of behavior, such as the recent horrific tragedy in Paris, should be explored as a powerful compensation for an equally imbalanced ruling principle, not necessarily within Paris or France but within the prevailing governing attitudes of our times around the world.
I have often proposed in my writings that ISIS is not simply a coincidental acronym for the Goddess Isis, but in fact has become an agent of the dark side of that Goddess, constellated from the depths of the collective unconscious. This would suggest that the ruling powers of our world have gone so far from valuing the sacred feminine Mother Earth that she is now activated, from her destructive side, to bring down the ruling order.
As we face the reality of the condition of our world, where the earth and the environment—the purview of the Goddess—have been completely denigrated, threatened with extinction, it becomes clear how a wrathful Goddess might invoke such ruthless destructive retaliation upon civilization itself.
Of course, this compensation cannot be allowed. ISIS must be stopped. But how? The outrage evoked by the destruction caused by ISIS sounds an appropriate battle cry. Nations will join forces to defeat this devil. But how? Seal the borders? Too late and, furthermore, ISIS infects many homegrown disenfranchised youths who can find no meaning in the world as we know it, though they do find meaning in bringing it down. What battle plan for this insidious entity?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
Every individual is a hologram of the entire world. Each and every one of us, in the microcosm of our lives, has a ruling ego attitude that is being compensated by our unconscious forces. Each and every one of us must study our conscious decisions and behaviors. Where are we neglecting the true needs of the Goddess? How are we out of synch with Mother Nature?
Are we so obsessed with the digital world—which is a purely masculine abstraction—that we have lost touch with our physical bodies, our true nutritional and self-care needs?
Have we so abandoned our instinctual selves and instead turned ourselves over to the Goddess Amazon.com?
Have we so abandoned human eros and squeezed it into Match and Tinder?
Do we listen to the wisdom of our birthright—our dreams—or have we completely shifted our connection to wisdom to the great god Google?
Are we so enamored by the glitter of consumerism that we cover over true need with empty objects?
We must study the nature of compensation in our own lives. If we are ridden with anxiety, fear, compulsions, and moods, these are compensating clues as to the problems in our conscious ruling attitudes. If we can humbly see the one-sidedness of our ruling attitude and change it, we will change the wrathful compensation of the dark side of the Goddess within.
If the truth is that there are very painful feelings or inconvenient truths that our ego has been avoiding, resulting in dastardly unconscious compensations, if we then turn around and face the unfaceable—mourn a deeply imprisoned feeling, for instance—then we completely shift the inner balance.
If the ego can align itself with the true needs of the self, the Goddess Isis can usher in a renewal, a new stage of fertile creation and meaningful life.
That’s the compensation we must seek now, the compensation of renewal over destruction. We are all empowered, and charged, to arrive at proper compensation within ourselves. This is how we will change the world for the better.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
Of course, there will be necessary responses to the intolerable violation of innocence in Paris. But if we are not careful we might find ourselves drawn into a purely scapegoat compensatory reaction that actually plays into and empowers the reach of the collective shadow that now threatens us.
If we collectively face the compensatory relationship within ourselves, we can shift the balance of the forces that threaten us and restore calm to the world. Ultimately, love is the key. Love rejects nothing. Love faces the truth, Love restores proper balance. Love is always the answer.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité,
Chuck
