In recent weeks I have explored, from the shamanic perspective, the role of the petty tyrant in preparation for the definitive journey at death. As reactions to these blogs demonstrate, it is extremely challenging to fathom anything positive emerging from such horrific encounters with pure evil as the Holocaust or a personal holocaust of childhood sexual abuse. As a clinician, I have spent much of my professional career questioning how an adult could sexually violate a helpless child. The very idea of such an interaction is so devastating, repulsive, abhorrent, and painful that we quickly turn away from even allowing such an image to present itself in our mind’s eye. Is it no wonder that the world’s conscience has remained dormant, as denial has prevailed well into our modern age, refusing to acknowledge the reality of a worldwide epidemic of childhood sexual abuse?

In my personal quest for understanding, and as I have accompanied many clients through their journeys of recovery, I have learned much about the underlying psychology contributing to the psychopathic behaviors of perpetrators. This understanding, however valid, is still limited to a focus on the individual perpetrator, his or her individual life and individual history. This focus does not allow for the broader view, the fact that we are all part of an interconnected whole. How could it be that a massive worldwide phenomenon of childhood sexual abuse could have such a prominent role in the life of the interconnected unit we call the human race? Every individual who commits an act of sexual abuse is responsible for his or her behavior, end of story. No excuses. However, is it not time for the human race to examine itself and question how such an aberration could be part of our interconnected whole? Is it not the responsibility of the human race to address its own shadow?

This collective issue appears ripe for discussion as the reality of sexual abuse has now stained the hands of, for Catholics, God’s #1 representative on earth: The Pope. The Catholic Church, like most institutions, has denied, minimized, or turned a blind eye, for centuries, to the large-scale sexual exploitation of children by its priests. It has taken our modern age, with its unrelenting waves of information, to finally topple the Vatican’s solidly built wall of denial. As significant as this process of acknowledging the truth is, I wish to focus instead on the aberrant solution of the dilemma of the spirit and the flesh in these abusing priests: the ultimate “spiritual” representatives on the one hand now revealed as the ultimate “physical” violators.

The Catholic religion has been the major religion to insist upon celibacy for its priests. This absolute separation of spirit from flesh presupposes some kind of tenable reconciliation of spirit and matter; meaning, in effect, that the completely repressed sexual side of a human being could be transformed and brought into balance with the spiritual side. I don’t doubt that this transformation can take place; in fact, celibacy is a central feature of the shaman’s world. However, it is obvious that for the Catholic Church it has failed miserably for many of its ordained priests, resulting in a backlash of ravenous, blind, instinctual exploitation of innocent children.

In a book entitled, The Myth of Meaning, Aniela Jaffe, analyst, editor and Jung’s personal secretary writes:

“Because the primitive is so close to nature, the meaning of his myths gives him a sense of security. Everything he does, everything he experiences, is intimately connected with the cosmos, with the stars and the wind, with sacred animals and gods. Modern man, with his incomparably more differentiated consciousness, has lost touch with nature both without and within, with his psychic images and therefore with meaning. He is one-sided, and he goes on developing one-sidedly along the path of intellectual differentiation. The primitive child of nature, who yet dwells within him, was repressed, consequently it degenerated and from time to time goes berserk and turns him into a pitiless barbarian. Contact with the unconscious, which heals and makes whole, restores the connection with his origin, with the source of psychic images. This is not a reversion to barbarism, but regeneration through a renewed and conscious relationship with a living spirit buried in the unconscious. Every step forward on the way to individuation is at the same time a step backwards into the past, into the mysteries of one’s own nature.” (p. 148-9)

Herein lies the crux of the problem, I believe, for our interconnected human race, which the Catholic dilemma serves so well to illustrate. We are all children of nature; animalistic, primitive and deeply instinctual, whether we acknowledge or experience it consciously. But, we have become so one-sided, as Jaffe states, in our intellectual, rational, scientific, mental, technological, interneted-friended-texted-facebooked selves, that we have divorced ourselves from our own true human nature, which is non-rational, instinctual, physical and yes, primitive and animalistic. This worldwide dissociation from our instinctual selves, this lack of integration and reconciliation with our mental/spiritual selves, has created a ravaging, feelingless ferocious beast in our human race, which strikes back as the predator who preys upon the innocent. Even animals in their predatory behaviors do not come near the cruelty of the rabid human animal in its predatory revenge for its exclusion from the true human equation.

I am proposing that, from a human-racial perspective, the psychopathic manifestation of sexual abuse is a ruthless compensation by our inner nature to level our spiritual one-sidedness with instinctual devastation, so aptly illustrated by the abuser priest. This type of compensatory balance is unacceptable and is finally being made available to the world’s conscience. Perpetrators must be exposed and held fully accountable. However, as a race, we humans are responsible for taking back the night, not just in an outer sense of physical safety, but in an inner claiming and reconciliation with our own irrational, instinctual shadow natures. As Jaffe points out, reconciling with our instinctual nature is not a reversion to barbarism, but a “regeneration through a renewed and conscious relationship with a living spirit buried in the unconscious.” We must make contact with our instinctual natures and take up the challenge of integrating our instinctual selves into our modern lives in a healthy balance. Furthermore, we must have the moral courage to face the feelings and images of our animalistic selves. We have consciousness and the ability to choose how these impulses are understood and lived. The fact that we have feelings, impulses, and desires, which run counter to our moral and ethical code, does not make us pathological. Too often we are so disturbed by the occurrence of an unacceptable thought or impulse that we immediately repress it or see ourselves as somehow deviant. If we can suspend judgment and look upon the products of our inner nature with a curiosity and quest for understanding we will discover what nature is truly trying to show us. If we deny our natural, primitive side, we create the conditions of impoverishment that can force nature to violent extremes.

Nature, from this viewpoint, will not be denied without serious consequences. To sleep, to dream, to face our deepest unconscious selves, embracing our wholeness, is the individual and human challenge in order to achieve ultimate balance and reconciliation of the spirit and the flesh.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck