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Thought of the Week Archives
August 1999
August 2
[Bly here is writing about Jung's archetype of the Shadow, that part of
our subconscious where, as we are growing up, we stuff all of the feelings,
emotions, desires and actions which are not socially acceptable. Unfortunately,
no matter how much we try to deny them, these energies are a real -- and
important -- part of us. -- RHarris]
We spend our life until we're twenty deciding what part of ourself
to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get
them out again. Sometimes retrieving them feels impossible, as if the
bag were sealed. Suppose the bag remains sealed -- what happens then?
A great ninetheenth-century story has an idea about that. One night Robert
Louis Stevenson woke up and told his wife a bit of a dream he'd just had.
She urged him to write it down; he did, and it became "Dr. Jeckyll and
Mr. Hyde." The nice side of the personality becomes, in our idealistic
culture, nicer and nicer. ... But the substance in the bag takes on a
personality of its own; it can't be ignored. The story says that the substance
locked in the bag appears one day somehwere else in the city. The substance
in the bag feels angry, and when you see it it is shaped like an ape,
and moves like an ape.
The story says then that when we put a part of ourselves in the bag
it regresses. It de-evolves toward barbarism. ...
Robert Bly
A Little Book on the Human Shadow
August 9
"According to the traditional Buddhist understanding, our human nature
is without ego. When we have not idea of ego, we have Buddha's view of
life. Our egoistic ideas are delusions, covering our Buddha nature. We
are always creating and following them, and in repeating this process
over and over again, our life becomes completely occupied by ego-centered
ideas. This is called karmic life, or karma. The Buddhist life should
not be karmic life. The purpose of our practice is to cut off the karmic
spinning mind. If you are trying to attain enlightenment, that is part
of karma, you are creating and being dirven by karma, and you are wasting
your time on your black cushion..."
- Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind
Comment:
- by Reg Harris
Karmic action is action done with a motive. The motive separates the
"dooer" (ego/subject) from the "deed" (event/object), and ties the ego
to a desire. One of the most important lessons of the Hero's Journey is
that during the journey, in the Abyss, our Ego must die. We must surrender
ourselves completely to the journey. We cease to become someone "taking"
the journey; we become the journey and the journey becomes us.
With all thought of goals, self and future stripped away by the challenge
of survival, we are absorbed completely into "being." The journey then
draws from our subconscious new strengths, new perspectives, a new way
of being which is compatable with our new world. The journey really doesn't
"change" us; the "us" which exists after the journey is not the same "us"
which began the journey. We have become someone new, irrevokably and forever.
To clutch at ego and, subsequently, at the idea of a goal or future
separate from ourselves (or ourselves as someone else), is to refuse the
call to the journey. We act, but our acts are not "pure," that is without
attachment to an idea, so the acts and the journey don't change us. Our
ego is still in charge, and when it encounters the dual-natured journey
(diety/demon), it finds the demon, the threat.
Threatened, the ego throws up defenses, and the journey turns into
its negative. Challenges which, if embraced and assimilated, would be
growth inducing become terrible mirrors that throw back at us the reflection
of our own fearful and imprisoned ego. Until it surrenders its being,
the ego will be caught in an ever-intensifying cycle of challenge-defense.
Three eventualities present themselves to the clinging ego:
- exhaustion and surrender to the journey (the saving path);
- retreat from the world behind walls of anger, bitterness, and victimhood
(which may include addictions or evangalism, which can be a form of
protection);
- death. (In the case of the tragic hero, often we see surrender,
but too late to avoid death, as is the case with many of Shakespeare's
characters.)
Suzuki's words are directed at Zen, at meditation, but they are equally
valid in terms of all action and the Hero's Journey. Karmic action, action
with the intent to control or seeking a specific, ego-centered goal, binds
us to ourselves (which is nothing but the past in the form of memories).
Action which is spontaneous to the moment, done without motive, is not
tied to the past and thus engenders growth and enlightenment.
The operative word in the Hero's Journey is not "goal" or "victory."
It's surrender. Only by surrendering can we win.
August 16
Most Native American sacred traditions have a common belief that humor
is a necessary part of the sacred and a belief that human beings are often
weak -- we are not gods. Our weaknesses lead us to do foolish things.
Therefore, clowns and similar figures are needed to show us how we act
and why.
Alfonso Ortiz...said [religion] helped "make endurable" certain things:
death, separation, sorrow, hunger and other times of stress. The object
of a great part of the sacred traditions of The People was and
is to ease the journey on the Path of Life. Too much power and too much
seriousness were to be feared for they too could "unbalance" life in the
community and the environment. Clowns teach us, among others, not to take
ourselves too seriously. This means not to make ourselves too important.
We are not that imdispensable.
Peggy V. Beck, Anna Lee Walters, and Nia Francisco
The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life
August 23
...Quoting Manfred Lurker, "The meaning of the symbol does not lie
in the symbol itself but points to something else outside. According to
Goethe, true symbolism is found wherever 'the particular represents the
general, not as a dream or shadow, but as a living, momentary revelation
of the inexplicable.'"
"The 'hidden persuaders' of modern advertising," wirtes Gerhart Wehr
(1972), "know how to use the power of images. They know how to subject
the Average Joe to an even greater loss of freedom--by manipulating symbols
that lead the unsuspecting fellow to spin fantasies." Usually discussing
symbols is a benign activity, one that points the way to the intellectual
treasures of the past and revitalizes them. But unscrupulous use of this
coded world can trap people and turn them into robots."
Hans Biedermann
Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and the Meanings Behind Them
Comment
As the windows to the subconsious (the spirit, the "inexplicable"),
symbols, metaphor, and myths are sacred in the sense that they connect
us to the deeper emotions and meanings in our lives. We repond to them
at the deepest level of our awareness. They activate archetypes, emotions,
instincts and longings that are the foundation of our being.
In traditional times, the use of symbolic language was usually reserved
for the shaman, the monk, the priest, corandara or magic-user, the person
whose character and training had prepared him or her to live on the dangerous
interface between the temporal and eternal. The shamans had transcended
the basic attachments to life, including greed and a desire for power.
They could be trusted to use the symbols and retell the myths. They could
be trusted with the symbols (the spiritual language) of their cultures
because they were concerned with the good of the community and the individuals
in it.
Today, however, things have changed. The symbols, myths, metaphors
(including heroes) -- those traditional guides to our greater spiritual
self -- are now being used not by the trusted shaman, but by those who
wish to manipulate: the advertisers, the politicians, the pseudo religious
leaders. These people have discovered the power in the symbols, and they
are using our sacred language to manipulate and control us.
The Hero, formerly a symbol of the highest values of a culture, now
is paid tens of millions of dollars to use his/her sacred role to convince
us to buy shoes or subscribe to a certain long distance telephone service.
Recently, the American women's soccer team won the world championship.
The women on the team were touted as role models who could motivate girls
on their journeys through life. Last night I saw a commercial in which
one of those soccer players was pushing beer. As a cultural hero (at least
for the moment), the young lady was in position to be heroic; she
chose instead to be part of the manipulation, to strengthen the tie between
alcohol and sports, telling those young ladies who look up to her that
drinking is ok, even for athletes.
But heroes are not the only cultural symbols being used to control
and manipulate us. The symbols of the archetypal energies which are the
core of our sense of being have become tools in the hands of advertisers.
The "Anima" and "Animus" now sell products through references to sex.
The Warrior now sells us video games, guns or tickets to WWF. Our Orphan
archetype is activated to generate fear -- of rejection, of the future,
of abandonment -- to sell us soap, deodorant or a political philosophy.
The Shadow, perhaps the most powerful of all, is used the drag us into
violent video games and movies, to convince us to support a war against
"them," and to manipulate us into striking outward instead of looking
inward.
Who are the most succeptible to these manipulations? Our children.
They are the primary targets, and they are the least prepared to see the
manipulations for what they are and to resist them.
Is it any wonder that many children feel like violence it their primary
mode of expression. Their sacred points of passage have been turned into
marketing opportunities. Their sacred stories have been twisted into movies
and books designed to earn money rather than to point to growth and understanding.
Their sacred symbols are used to take from them rather than to give to
them. When our young people go to the symbols, the myths, the heroes --
those sacred windows to their deeper selves and sense of true meaning
-- they find someone trying to manipulate them, to take their time, their
money, their minds.
The one refuge from this attack has been the school. Traditionally,
schools have been free of the pressures of the media and advertisers.
In school we can take time to look, to explore and to understand. The
words school and scholar come from the Greek schole,
which means leisure employed in learning. Even the word educate
-- from the Latin ex-, meaning out, and ducare, meaning
to draw -- suggests schools should be places where we can take time to
explore ideas and to draw out the student own understanding.
But the school's role as a refuge from the pressure of life and the
media bombardment is changing. Many schools have bought into the message
of business, which is that we should train their workers, not educate
our young. Many schools have sold out to the advertisers, with exclusive
contracts for soft drinks, athletic equipment, and food. More and more
schools buy texts which use brand name advertisers (who pay for the privilige)
in examples of math problems. Many schools use slick, "free" lesson packages
created and provided by businesses, businesses which have their own agenda
to promote. The leisure is gone and the refuge is gone.
Where is the individual's Hero's Journey in all of this? Unfortunately,
it has been subverted for the pseudo journey created by the media, the
advertisers, the manipulators. Is this why children feel frustrated and
too often violent? Are we stealilng their childhood from them by pressuring
them onto the "road to success" and by treating them not as exciting,
growing intellects, but as cogs in our culture's capitalistic machiner?
Our children are thrust into in an accellorated, consumption-oriented,
thought-discouraging competition to reach the top of some ladder. Will
they thank us for the shove we give them on their way up. Probably not.
To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, most of them will struggle up that ladder
toward what they have been taught is success only to discover years down
the road that, in the rush and confusion, they've put their ladder against
the wrong wall.
When the language of the spirit, of the unconscious, of the Self is
appropriated to manipulate, the connection with the spirit is damaged.
When this happens, we are damaged because a vital aspect of our lives
is missing. In our compulsion with progress, consuption and technology,
we are damaging our children in countless ways. That damage is only beginning
to manifest itself in frustration and violence, violence made easier because
the sense of Self and the capacity for deep thought have been stolen and
replaced by a fear of the future, by a rushing to keep from being lost,
and by the conditioning to be a good consumer, a good worker -- but never
oneself.
The Hero's Journey may still be a part of our children's lives, but
the din of "false calls" from the advertisers, the media, the politicans,
and the businesses make the genuine Call harder and harder to discern.
Even when one hears the Call of the Self, that voice may do nothing more
than mock our inability to act. When the Self is crushed and the Journey
is gone, what is left? Bitterness, anger, frustration -- dangerous emotions
in a world which teaches you that violence is the first resort to solving
problems.
What do we do? Schools may be the only hope to begin the process, but
not until we decide that "job training" is only a small part of education.
We can do little until we decide that it is more important to help our
children sift through the media din to hear their own Call. We can do
little until we decide that wisdom is the first step toward growth and
trust facts and information to come along naturally when the time is right.
The first step may be to reclaim ownership of our sacred symbols. Teach
students how they are being manipulated by these powerful carriers of
meaning. Teach them to use the symbols for themselves, to gain insight
into life and themselves through their literature, their films, their
history, and their own experience. Otherwise, Columbine will be just one
of an ever-growning number of violent expressions of a youth which has
lost touch with its spiritual side. We can never return the sacred language
to the control of the shaman, but we can help our students see how the
language is used to manipulate them and how they can resist the manipulations
and hear the Call to their own journeys.
Reg Harris
August 30
The Japanese math teacher, by contrast [to his/her American counterpart],
works in a different way, according to [James Stigler or the UCLA]. He
or She will begin by posing a new kind of problem -- double digit multiplication,
let's say -- then wait for a "painfully long time" while students struggle
with 43x57, or whatever the sample problem may be, on their own. Eventually,
the teacher will solicit ideas from the group on how to solve the problem,
acting as a discussion moderator to draw out the students' own explanations,
rationales, and supporting arguments. Japanese teachers refuse to be authorities
in the classroom, Stigler observes, even when students present blatantly
wrong solutions. Instead, they steer the discussion toward a collective
agreement of what makes sense to the students and how to relate it to
earlier procedures like addition or subtraction, and not toward a single
correct answer.
Stigler recently borrowed a day's math lesson from a Japanese teacher
and presented the material to two American fourth grades: one in the Japanese
style and one in the typical American style. He then tested both classes
for how well they understood the lesson he taught. Both groups were equally
good at picking out the relevant events -- the tips and steps needed to
work the problem. The American students taught Japanese-style, however,
could also distinguise and discard irrelevant events, while the students
taught American-style could not. This shows, says Stigler, that the Japanese-style
lesson required thinking while the American one required mostly
memorization and guesswork. Guessing-what-the-teacher-wants is a motivating
game only when you play it consistently well. After a few wrong answers,
it's safer to clam up, whether you understand a lesson or not.
Marian Diamond, Ph.D., and Janet Hopson
Magic Trees of the Mind (p. 271)
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