Carl Jung Archives - David Clark Harrison

Paradigm Change

Posted on November 21, 2025November 21, 2025 by David Harrison

Defects and all

We begin our thoughts on Movement with an expression of the beauty and meaning of motion. Suitably, with a girl in leotards and ballet slippers moved by the spirit of dance to give it form and function. With every gesture of grace, its architecture of inspiration. Arches and curvatures, extending and touching, lifting to the skies on the strength of an ideal. The feminine on her own two legs. Scripted and sculpted, delicate and durable. A gift of talent for the ages. Indelible. Unforgettable.

And with an expression of the beauty and meaning of imagery. Suitably, with a girl in her smock wielding her palette of colors in her studio. Moved by the spirit of vision to give it form and function. With every invention of shape, every character and movement, subject and object, that expands her horizon. Its gesture to an idea, the varieties and wonder of Life. Of possibilities that need only her imagination to become what they may be and to be shared. A gift of talent for the ages. Indelible. Unforgettable.

Who am I? Person with Femininity, talent, and possibility. Growth that nothing can keep from flowering. Vision lost in dance; dance lost in vision. Body, Mind, and talent all one with Beauty. Who you are. A girl once, now a young woman. An Ideal with a destination and a story to be lived.

I wish! A story that need not be lived to perfection and can’t be. A misconception to think of ourselves as ‘imperfect’ when it implies that ‘perfect’ is the alternative. That our situation calls for artistic perfection. What we should strive for, when it can’t be. When all that’s needed for correction isn’t looking good but being able to do whatever the situation calls for. Working around our defects so that we’re good enough to function. Better then to think of ourselves as defective than imperfect. So we can make improvements and retain function without losing our most important gift: relatability.

That this world is hell-bent to take away from us. And we must be hell-bent to protect and to retrieve when it is taken away from us. What could take it away? An idea that lodged in the Psyche of Movement as soon as it got things going. Got what going? The way things are. The metaphysics of it.

Do I want to know? If you want to take your talents and character, your possibilities as far as they can go, you might. Because everything comes with a flip side, and the flip side is opposition. Limits to what the spirit of Life and Growth can accomplish if we give in to them. My language of idealism speaks to the spirit of motivation. That won’t give in, and it may or may not be a talent to be shared with you. Either way I am moved to try. Then you would like me to try? To listen, but only if you are moved to.

How will I know? The answer, if it comes, will come from the bottom up and inside out. You’ll know. Ready for a ride into the unknown? Ready to hear what “bottom up and inside out” is all about. The rest can stay on the bottom. Then here goes, bumps in the road, defects and all.

Go-nowhere make-believe

There’s Movement that’s Growth-evolution. The Growth-Parents side of Creation that’s not susceptible to self-unawareness. Then there’s Movement beyond Growth-evolution that is susceptible to self-unawareness. Creativity that involves Choice. That to be free must be free to choose in error.

Life on Earth grows with evolution, but where Free Choice is needed for Creativity it’s blocked by games of competition. By the distractions of entertainment, the stuff of make-believe. The entire operation ‘made’ rather than Created ‘real’ by herd mentality. Willed into being by mind ‘thinking’ like a two-year-old: animal instinct, wild and willful.

Put Creation side-by-side with life on Earth and notice the contrast:

Creation setting lives free to develop, function, and relate as they wish, with Mindfulness and Energy being there for everyone. To help with the flowering of Creativity of consequence, never ending, in peace and harmony.
Life on Earth: energy locking itself up inside the cells and atoms of matt er, holding the free spirit of Psyches captive inside bodies. Psychological cages meant for wild beasts, where conformance is mandatory and creativity is blocked. Waste of no consequence, ending in frustration and conflict.

Life on Earth so far is evolution-growth in some sectors of human-animal experience where herd mentality rules and is served by it. Transportation necessary for military deployment and fighting; security for captivity and control of wild human animals; telecommunications for networking and organization of tribal competition. Anything contrary to herd mentality’s social purposes is blocked by loyalty to body-brain senses.

By body idolatry and sensory perception. The religion practiced inside the church of life on Earth under the malign rule of infallibility. The antithesis and arch-enemy of intuition, the sixth sense of classical Greek philosophy, so that it may not ever bring awareness to the fallacy of its one big answer. One big lie defending itself with endless distractions and substitutes. One big situation set in concrete, as though the magic of willfulness alone could protect it from being washed away by the tides of change. Opposing Creativity that opens minds up to new perspectives. New ways of thinking not animal-instinct.

‘Movement’ by the distractions of entertainment, fun and games, is backward. Body idolatry ossifying personality type vs. Mind movement-forward personality type. The latter the awareness and dynamism of Creativity, the former the unawareness of go-nowhere make-believe.

The ‘mentality’ of animal instinct

Why has the movement of life on Earth advanced evolution toward feats of engineering and Creativity in the arts, performing arts, literature, competition, and entertainment? In make-believe, where objects can be manipulated to form new compositions and storylines? While situations petrify. Their principles unmoved and unmoving, serving only as training modules for minds whose ideas are subjects not objects. Not susceptible to being manipulated into new compositions when they require Free Choice to evolve.

Movement of life on Earth has advanced anywhere that Growth alone can do it. As it did when ‘ape’ grew a new branch, Homo Sapiens. That struggles to evolve beyond the ape within because to do so requires that it be chosen. When the situation of Choice is blocked by animal instinct opposed to it. By the religion of body idolatry, that fears where Mind might lead if it’s differentiating with empathy, let out of its cage. By the religion of ‘science’ putting Mind’s “quest for knowledge” under the jurisdiction of matter. By the Church of hysterics, fearing Jesus’ threat to ‘realism’s’ holy-of-holies: the unquestioned dominance of body-herd mentality.

The ’threat’ posed by idealism, of Innocence and vulnerability. Of Conscience. A horror-of-horrors warranting psychological mutilation: the hollowing out of Person to replace character with ‘flock’, integrity with ‘surrender’. To the ‘supremacy’ of herd and the obscenity of hierarchy. To psychopathy — the ‘mentality’ of animal instinct. Willfully mindless, predatory, and ruthless.

Powered by gentle Loving Kindness

The central point of “Motivation” is the idea it’s based on: Movement at the beginning. The idea that there wasn’t a beginning in time but in the natural order of things. In the sequence of Logic, ‘before’ preceding ‘after’ and the two being connected by implication. The dynamic of Logic: the interconnection of ideas on out to infinity.

To infinity? Think anything and it will have connotations, implications. That want Awareness to put them to use. How? Understanding their situations’ meaning. If life on Earth is relentlessly physical Life in Creation is relentlessly Mindful. Aware of its perspective constantly expanding with new ideas, new circumstances, and new situations. That Movement brings. Life brings, that Awareness is defined to add to Definition while it’s also attending to every last detail. Horton Hears a Who. Yes. Every last Who. Aware of everything because that’s what Awareness is and what it does. By definition, the cornerstone of Creation as well as its constitution and Conscience.

The process of Creation founded on the act of Awareness being aware of it. The process of Reality coming into existence when Relationship at the core of Definition’s Meaning notices it. When it can’t help but be aware and notice since everything is of Mind’s own doing. Whole sentences capitalized. Inevitably, if insight here is working with the Source of everything. Relationship. The Source of Mind’s Self and primary function: Self-Awareness. The Source of every idea and everything Good because of who’s relating: Love and Logic. Spontaneity and Order. The source of Energy, the “force of nature” that’s powering eternal Life and Creation with gentle Loving Kindness.

Contraption not Creation

Why so? Because of the crucial distinction between Movement and its antithesis, the know-it-all’s big picture. Implied by function combining with function. Love with Logic, Spontaneity with Order, where one is completed by another and thereby produces an implication: the idea of Purpose that then leads to its formation. A third function. The idea of the coming together of parts to complete a product. Or, if you’re familiar with the Forks of the Ohio, the coming together of the Allegheny and the Monongahela to form a third river: the Ohio. The idea of confluence. Love with Logic, whose consequence was the formation of Self with Awareness of Self. Of its function, Meaning, and Purpose. Of its situation that’s Movement. Moving forward with Life, evolution, and Creation.

The phenomenon of triangulation without which Relationship couldn’t serve its Purpose of Guidance. Couldn’t provide a baseline from which to measure distance and locate position. The idea of three-dimensional here and now, so painfully absent in life on Earth. Where every coordinate, every point of reference, is a thing breaking down or breaking up. Monuments of every type not here and now but here and gone. Decaying with entropy. ‘Relationships’ between unrelatabilities coming apart with self-imagery, self-regard, and mindless authoritarian arrogance.

The antithesis of three-dimensional Movement: the one-dimensional know-it-all and its one-dimensional big picture. A cartoon character and its cartoon. Willed into ‘being’ by magic without the benefit of ideas moving forward one implication, one connection, at a time. Without the benefit of process and structure. Its crowning ‘achievement’ contraption, not Creation. A mockery of worth, not Worth. Worthy of laughter. You said it! Worthy of top billing at Minsky’s.

Their ultimate measure of ‘success’

Terminal misunderstanding. Re-enacted by the ‘living’ on Earth, fated to see everything in reverse until their birthright comes alive. Choice, given the opportunity to see differently when it chooses to be guided by Relationship with Guidance from Definition. When it chooses to lead itself out of the darkness into the light of Understanding its situation. That it has only to recognize the obvious:

That a world of condemnation for Mindfulness is madness. Science, philosophy, psychology, and theology, all caged in supine acquiescence to the tyranny of the physical.
That a world of condemnation for the metaphysical — for idealism — ruled by a ‘realist’s’ talent for make-believe — a magician, — is a sham.
That a world of condemnation for ‘speculation’ – the insights of Mind’s sixth sense and intuition – is a wart hog rooting around in the underbrush, letting its snout tell it everything there is to know. The pinnacle of savoir faire. The magic wand of ‘reality’: five-sensed gullibility. A fool and a joke when it’s not a danger to itself and its environment. Manipulative, ugly, menacing, and disgusting.

The beginning was metaphysical. It preceded life on Earth and its beginning in time and our universe. The natural order of things was Movement that evolves in logical sequence from the bottom up and inside out. ‘Bottom’ derived from the idea of structure that requires a foundation, paired with another idea, the process of evolution. Both engineering concepts signifying structural and procedural integrity essential to the idea of function. Their ultimate measure of ‘success’ being whether they work.

Planet of the reptiles

Neither to be associated with the idea of hierarchy that needs no foundation or process. Only the illusion of rank. Layers of comparative superiority having nothing to do with qualitative values and everything to do with numbers. From index fingers pointing to Number One to the size of audiences, markets, congregations, believers, and voting blocs. To the heights of buildings and the size of the apes on top of them. To the aggregation of bureaucratic fiefs under an administrative title. Having nothing to do with function and everything to do with a half-baked idea. ‘Supremacy” at the pinnacle of quantitative madness.

Process proceeding in logical order one implication-connection at a time. “One step at a time.” The process and structure of Movement serve as a prototype, a role model for all movements of evolution to follow. For motivation that serves positive values and constructive purposes in human-animal affairs. Bottom-up and inside-out, whose reverse-opposite or flip side is top-down and outside-in. The approach favored by the flip side of Movement triggered by Movement at the beginning.

The reason why is explained in the essay as “the situation at the beginning.” The situation that serves as the prototype for all situations to follow, signifying that evolution and Creation are situational. And for each situation there is questioning that requires answering by Mind thinking and feeling, using its faculties of differentiation and empathy. To define the meaning of each situation and the response that it calls for. “What the situation calls for” – a way of summarizing the challenge it poses for Mindfulness.

When we’re at a loss to understand life on Earth and our situations, when we wonder “what’s the answer?”, the answer is always “what is our situation?” And go from there. “What’s the question?” What is our individual situation and what is the situation of our herd or species? Because life on Earth’s story is the story of individual lives that can’t leave out species. The herds or tribes that inhabit it and mess with our thinking. Superimpose their mentality on ours and their stories. Beginning with the story of humanity-animal. The planet of the apes that succeeded Jurassic Park, planet of the reptiles.

The Life-giving Force

The distinction between Movement, guided by its inside-out process and bottom-up structure evolving forward, and its flip side opposed to Movement, came about because of attributes that defined the situation at the beginning. Among them the all-important attribute that it happened in the absence of anything before it. Anything in particular that would constitute a situation. Especially one that would foreclose any possibility of a situation or situations to follow. As would the know-it-all’s big picture. Encompassing all events, all knowledge, all perspectives, all causes-effects, and all sources of knowledge. So that there could be no need or occasion for Movement, the product of Relationship, to attain these things. The idea-situation of completion in perfection. Anti-movement. The idea of willfulness since such a situation could only be brought about by willing it. By magic.

The same idea, as it happens, that led to the appearance of life on Earth. A world at odds with itself, in constant conflict between Movement forward with evolution opposed by anti-movement taking it backward. A perversion of restlessness at the beginning, calling for Order, manipulated now into a mandate for disorder. The overriding situation that provides the context for all our situations in this life. Restlessness not because the archetypal situation at the beginning occurred in the presence of restlessness – there was no ‘presence’, only absence – but because restlessness on Earth is willed. By the know-it-all from the original anti-movement anti-situation.

An impossibility with Mind Awareness but not an impossibility with an extension of Mind when it’s unaware and dreaming. The Mind with a function in evolution that’s distinct from its Parent-Mind’s function. The secondary Free Choice essential to Creation, to the Integrity and Character of Creation’s cause, all of its parts caring for one another, being there for one another. The primary essential to evolution’s Movement. The ideas of Growth, the Life-giving Force of Love combined with Logic and Energy, Spontaneity with Order.

Life situational

The restlessness willed for life on Earth by the know-it-all in the Mind of Free Choice, unaware and dreaming, is the product of madness in the form of the impossible big picture-answer and its flip side. The mad idea of anything goes. The utterly fatuous idea of a ‘paradise’ willed into ‘being’ that’s one part perfect order needing nothing and therefore no Movement or Life. Another part no order consisting of actors each entitled to be and do whatever they want. Each worlds unto themselves entitled to absolute power and absolute freedom. Red meat to minds thinking in reverse: herd mentality. The situation characterized as ‘anything goes’.

‘Paradise’ now being acted out before our eyes by the wild animal herd occupying the White House. Wielding absolute power granted by herd mentality that’s taken the minds of its supporters captive. So that the dream of life on Earth – a hallucination – may stand for the implication of anti-movement triggered by Movement at the beginning in the absence of a big picture. For the half-baked idea of restlessness willed into ‘being’ by anything goes as opposed to its status as an implication, the restlessness of there being no big answer at the beginning.

Harmlessness reversed into harmfulness, if you ask me. Precisely! Taking a mole hill and turning it into a mountain. A mountain of lies. If there’s a short explanation for human-animal’s difficulties with getting along it would be this idea of restlessness willed into ‘being’ and our animal-self’s resistance to accepting that it’s half-baked. That both sides of opposition to Change are a crazy joke: the idea of one big answer that’s perfect order and anything goes at the same time. A perversion of Movement’s situation at the beginning: Order inseparable from Spontaneity.

If minds change when ideas they’re thinking change then the task of Free Choice while it’s in training ‘here’ on Earth is to get the joke. The idea behind the essay “Motivation.” Part one of a two-part essay on how things work.

Dark side make-believe is apocryphal. The make-believer manipulator is captive to manipulation, allowed to look once to detect and validate appearance but never to look twice. To reflect with intuition, because doing so will look behind appearance. A big No-No since the rule here is to maintain self-unawareness at all costs. Since the original situation was the absence of the big picture-answer and its know-it-all answer-man. Exactly what religion holds that was present. Hierarchical and genuflective with the etiquette of a planet of the apes: ‘God’ and ‘His’ ‘paradise’ of ‘Knowledge’. ‘Heaven’ under the care and wisdom of the biggest ape.

In a world ruled by craziness it’s not a bad thing to be thought of as ‘crazy’. What is hysteria? Fear of being thought of as crazy – when it is crazy. What is wisdom? Acceptance of craziness, the ‘animal’ in ‘human-animal. Awareness of unawareness and the faculties of Mind, Character, Integrity, and Free Choice that can re-reverse it. Life-situational.

Non sequiturs and all

The situation you describe isn’t anything like the one we’ve been brought up to believe. Here on Earth or at the beginning. How so? You’ve made it sound as though Mind at the beginning wasn’t the ‘Creator’ of its situation. That it was presented with circumstances, just like us, and it had to adapt just like us. What kind of ‘God’ is that? Certainly not a hierarchical God. Yet this is where thinking that’s rational seems to lead us. Or me at any rate, since you’ll see it your way. To a situation that calls for life on Earth to adapt.

Beginning with paradigm change. With an outlook divested of herd mentality’s non sequiturs and enabled, instead, with ideas capable of going somewhere. Making progress instead of being stuck in the mud of self-regard. With Movement forward capable of Self-Awareness and Creation. Divested of ownership, possession, and control: hysteria seeking insulation from awareness of its not-self. From ‘judgment’s’ ‘condemnation’ portrayed in the mirror. Questioning Movement with ‘anything goes.’ Arrant nonsense, and the lure of ‘guilt’ and ‘action’, fun and games, that Free Choice, lost in self-unawareness, must let go. That is, if we’re not to make fools of ourselves indefinitely, and life on Earth is not to disappear into mass extinction non sequiturs and all.

All that there is

Paradigm change? Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolution” employed the notion of paradigm change to characterize what happens at inflection points in human inquiry. When ownership, possession, and control of the way things are changes hands. From one generation of thought to another, one generation of thinkers to another. As Max Planck recognized, when he observed that it takes a new generation of thinkers to accept new ideas unrecognizable by the current generation.

It should have been apparent to the seekers of quantum gravity that paradigm change is in order. Yet when they professed to be open to it, as Carlo Rovelli did in “Reality Is Not What It Seems,” they react to the change needed with minds closed. As he did when, after pleading for help from philosophy, he brushed off Parmenides’ metaphysics, the very source he was looking for. Nils Bohr and Albert Einstein, no better examples of minds open and adaptable than Rovelli’s. Despite their contributions to paradigm change. Despite their training in philosophy that should have known better.

You won’t change my mind, buster! Not so long as it’s confined to the limits of your cage: ownership, possession, and control of the way things are. Not ideas but idea-killers. The ethos of herd mentality ruling human-animals with self-unawareness. Katie-bar-the-door against paradigm change until the light bulb goes off and the way things are is let out of its cage. The cage of self-imposed non-questioning and misguided questioning. Of anything goes. Whatever. Yes. Whatever. Your mind has changed and you didn’t know it.

The only way that herd mentality knows how to ‘relate’ is animal instinct capturing prey. Absorbing its victim into its make-believe stew of toxicity, treating its captive to the blessings of make-believe. Psychotic virtual reality, where the captor rules unopposed and unquestioned. A mirror-image that can’t reciprocate or evaluate. That can’t dip beneath appearances to connect at a level of honesty and open-mindedness. Only offering an act. A mask. Performance art always putting on a show. Engaged in distractions, stagecraft, theatrics, operatics, entertainment, games, “Let’s Pretend.” Never capable of offering Loving Friendship that requires substance, sincerity, instead of form, appearance, act. Incapable of going there.

Its world the big picture and its ruler know-it-all arrogance. All make-believe with no definition of its own. All derived-derivative. Capable of putting on a good show; proud of it, unaware that there’s a real Reality, it’s aware, and make-believe is derived from it. Certain that big picture and know-it-all (itself) are all there is.

A better device for curing neuroses

The story of situations evolving with changing circumstances over time can’t be captured between the covers of one book. Books, essays – the thoughts they package around situations depreciate with every passing moment. The way that ‘beginning’ flips into ‘ending’ at the moment of conception. ‘Death’ no less descriptive than ‘life’ on Earth, neither possessed of the Meaning of Movement. Neither having any basis in facts or Logic. One spiraling up to an impossibility, the other spiraling down. In either case going nowhere.

If life on Earth is situational, situation is partitionable. By essays viewing situation from various perspectives, conjunctively if the subject is stories that ideas strung together have to tell or not conjunctively, if the subject is ideas in the abstract. I prefer stories if you don’t mind. Of course. Abstract can be boring. Only in this case it isn’t.

Ideas are a kind of story in their own right. How so? Their implications and connotations never quit. Their free associations and interrelationships. There’s fascination in letting Spontaneity follow their lead. You want ‘boring’? It’s the tired old game of ownership, possession, and control. An obvious reason why human-animal struggles to get its stories right: lack of imagination that’s lack of spontaneity. Fear of threats from uncaged wild beasts – other ideas as well as ‘other people’ – that insists on caging everything in sight, including its own thoughts.

A habit of mind famously demonstrated by Freud when he let Jung go rather than listen to another perspective. Rather than release his white-knuckled grip on his ideas and let them out of their cage. So they could speak for themselves and move on, instead of being drowned out by “His Master’s Voice.” What’s that? The marketing logo on RCA Victor’s “Victrola.” The original record player I remember from my childhood home. A dog recognizing the voice of Sigmund Freud. Quite! Perhaps a better device for curing neuroses than Freudian psychoanalysis.

Help with getting it right

Your approach? Trying to avoid Meaning’s corruption by preconceived ideas. By personal and professional bias. Allowing the thought process to evolve sequentially through phases of Understanding open to changing perspectives. Dissecting ‘situation’ into its constituent parts: ideas. Following insights wherever they lead so that Mind-Spontaneity can bring relevant considerations to light without distortion by the observer’s willfulness.

The attribute that herd mentality gets wrong about Mindfulness, systematically and compulsively, is its Spontaneity. It can’t find the awareness or courage within itself to give Spontaneity a chance. There is no ‘within’ to herd mentality, the way you’ve described it. Correct. It’s all appearances. Top-down and outside-in. Relentlessly physical, like Freud.

Paradigm change calls forth the way things are: bottom-up and inside-out. Metaphysical. Movement-situation at the beginning, Sixth-sense intuition. Not herd mentality know-it-all big answer arrogance. Top-down outside-in authoritarian. Paradigm change is questioning with Spontaneity-Order, not answering with self-defeating anything-goes nihilism.

‘Structure’ means bottom-up from foundation of Character with Integrity, not top-down corruption of wildness, willfulness, arrogance. Structural integrity — the function and gift to Creation of Free Choice, learned and earned from the bottom up. Choosing to take the risk of error, that can land it in Earth’s hierarchical kingdom of madness for education or re-education. Into Plato’s Cave of self-imprisonment, self-deception, and lethal resistance to awareness. Not punishment for wrongdoing, as herd mentality would have us believe, but help with getting it right.

Situation-waiting

Situation with Movement at the beginning came with restlessness eternal. Questioning as well as Life-Creation eternal. Whose only ‘answer’ depends on ‘situation’. That can’t be psyched out with a divining rod. It takes thought. Reflection. Analysis. Explanation. Help with Guidance through introspection and intuition. Through the Spontaneity and playfulness of ideas and the Mind thinking and feeling them. Situation-waiting. For paradigm change.

A Course in Miracles Without Freudian Pseudo-Religion

Posted on June 15, 2025 by David Harrison

Manipulation

Where does manipulation come from? From our ancestral metaphysical Self’s experience with its reverse mirror-image opposite. A lifeless code that has no self of its own, no power of its own, and therefore must depend on manipulating its host to carry out its agenda. Every act, every sign of its influence, a manipulation. A clear sign that we are in the presence of predatory viciousness that can turn on us at a moment’s notice. Toxic and dangerous. Like geologic reality behind the mask of Mother Earth, waiting to crush, drown, asphyxiate, and incinerate her children at any moment.

If the hallucination is animated by Energy, Energy is part of Mind, Energy-Mind are Real, and its occupants are certain that they’re seeing what’s “there,” then why demand that spacetime matter – the form it’s taken — be disbelieved? The physics of our world isn’t owing to its lacking any sign of connection with metaphysics when it’s packed with them. Plentiful evidence that separation isn’t real even in a world conjured by a joker-magician to prove that it is.

The truth is that it’s only from the perspective of the author of the Course that our world of reversals can be understood for the Vaudeville farce that it is. What perspective is that? The perspective of Mind-Relationship Self-Awareness. That has no Awareness of anything that isn’t aware and part of Creation’s interrelationships. And so its Child, our ancestral Self in a state of self-unawareness, has taken itself out of its Parents’ awareness. Its magic kingdom of nonsense no more detectable to them than a dog whistle to a human. The gift of the biblical Jesus and the Jesus of the Course both was and is his vision from this perspective through Guidance connecting everything in any state of awareness: Definition. The principles and values of Creation. The Conscience of Mind-Relationship that no will, no manipulating reverse-reflection, can ever corrupt.

A herd of reversals

Sapiens’s strength isn’t a Machiavellian “self” pretending to be a herd of beasts instead of a moral individual. Obedient to the “law” of expedience. Speaking the language of obedience, kissing ass in a hierarchy of unrelatability and corruption. Mocking character with integrity, denied of Free Choice and intent on denying it. Its strength lies in its connection to the Psyche of metaphysics, who enjoys the Reality of what the Lombardi Trophy can only symbolize: no competition. Game over. We’ve reached the top and now that we have, every boundary of definition that led us here has melted away. Because expedience put it there; expedience depends on the unrelatability of competition; it’s temporary; and it’s gone. The goal of wildness without definition has been reached and so everything including itself has disappeared like the joke that it is, For lacking definition. Shooting itself in its logical foot.

Whereas Conscience, the constitution of Creation, can’t disappear when it’s the expression and essence of Definition. The moral individual triumphing over the immoral herd of Machiavellian beasts, brandishing their armaments of disarmament. A herd of reversals reversing itself to oblivion.

Hard to follow but at least I’m getting the idea. Whatever seems to be happening here it’s a reversal. And it can be re-reversed back to making sense if we tap into this other perspective through Guidance. That understands why and how it’s a hallucination and can help Sapiens and its ancestral metaphysical Self re-connect with Self-Awareness.

The Fighting 69^th doesn’t need Pat O’Brien.

The Course makes all this clear? Not to me it doesn’t. Convincing for being connected to this other perspective, yet questionable for some of the ways it personalizes it to the clinical Freudian psychologists who asked for its help and published it. When it connects with me and its lesson is personalized to my situation, it comes out somewhat different. So I have no quarrel with the principles at the essence of the Course or its author, just its form. Perhaps an inevitable consequence of attempting to capture the dynamics of ideas and character between the covers of a book. But I believe there’s more to it.

Why? Because Jesus recognized the religious nature of Freudian psychology and its inventor. So to communicate with the Course’s Freudian audience he spoke in their language. The language of religion, and Helen and Bill seemed OK with that. Ken Wapnick, Freud’s idolator, embraced it, institutionalized it. I reject it. I’ve worked with the Course’s metaphysics for over 25 years and discovered that its religious trappings are superfluous. Its preoccupation with guilt, forgiveness, and “special relationships” centered around physical intimacy. “Father,” “Son,” “Holy Spirit,” “Holy Instant,” “Atonement,” – terminology reeking of church hierarchy and ritual centered around Pat O’Brien priestly compassion and absolution. The Self that it implies that I am isn’t there.

Without religion Freudian or “Christian”

Likely also an inevitable consequence of trying to bring light to darkness instead of the other way around. The biblical Jesus shook things up but the darkness made sure that his “light” came to look an awful lot like itself. Hierarchical and corrupt, a tower of iconoclastic destruction, a law unto itself wielding predatory abuse in the name of “righteousness.” Presided over by unrelatability in the name of authority’s right to rule, absolute, unquestioned, and infallible.

By the time the lesson of the Course made it through the filter of its scribe’s mindset it had taken on dark overtones of its own. The authoritarian skeptic, Helen Schucman, a patriarchal-religious nobody’s-fool, drawn to Church atmospherics if not to its doctrines. Performing her assignment obedient to the restraints of her profession: the church of Freudian clinical psychology. Body-idolatry posing as scientific objectivism ruled by its god posing as an “atheist.” A violation of Psyche, our metaphysical ancestor’s Innocence, in the name of rooting out guilt.

Its dark overtones manicured into dutiful obeisance by Ken Wapnick. The Course’s illegitimate “primary teacher,” an arch-mimic of academic objectivity, intellectual purity, and loyalty to cause. Motivated by rabid Freudian bias. Exposed by an act of psychological indecency at the end: his being Jesus’ Freudian replacement. No disciple but an apostate. An agent of authoritarian willfulness, master of hypocrisy, a bastard in disguise. The one-and-only legitimate representative of Christ on Earth. Supreme manipulator — a latter-day pope.

Liberated

My enthusiasm for the Course’s metaphysics is undiminished, but there never was any for Freudian pseudo-religious psychology. Curiosity at first to understand it. Wapnick’s forte, explaining his profession but with extreme prejudice for one of its inventors and against another. As much as Freud attracted him he repels me. As much as Jung repelled Wapnick he attracts me. In the end I take away what’s useful and valid from the Course and leave the rest to the religious: Freudians and “Christians.” Wapnick now firmly confined to the role of academic Freudian explicator-priest where he belongs.

You feel better now? Got something off my chest. Much better. Liberated.

The Figures at the Foot of the Pedestal

Posted on May 31, 2025June 1, 2025 by David Harrison

Embodiment and Character

Body worship?

Rick Blaine, his heart broken, squaring around to give up his life for Ilsa with “Go ahead and shoot.” And then he farts. Ilsa bursting into his room with “Give me those letters of transit or I’ll shoot.” And then she farts. Captain Reneault tweets his whistle and closes down Rick’s Café. And then Major Strasser farts.

Is human-ape’s body trying to tell us something? Like asking Am I worth idolizing? Plato would have fallen in with Parmenides’ Logic that matter is illusory but for the visual and auditory mystique of the night sky. Matter twinkling at him from afar in the hush of silence and the purity of deep space. Wrapping his soul in the embrace of the divine. Its embodiments below no such treats for the senses. The body disgusted him, and if it were left to the body to decide he would have wrapped himself in the embrace of Parmenides’ Logic.

Do heroic warriors and gods really deserve the veneration, embodiments all, soaring on the wings of Wagnerian opera to Valhalla? Does replacing a church figurehead, an embodiment that aged and died as all living things do, deserve an epic eruption of symbolism and tradition? Of scarlet robes and smoke signals, solemn processions of more bodies, rituals and symbols piled upon more rituals and symbols? Every tiny particle transformed into a relic from a sacred past like house pets bred to pose for greeting cards in sunglasses. A transformation of make-believe into more make-believe on a scale like no other.

Why this obsession with apotheosis? Why must it center on an object pungent with odors, blemished with imperfections, and debilitated by morbidity characteristic of the hairy, smelly ape that it is? Instead of the ideal of Life that it would better represent in spirit? Aren’t these exertions wasted if all they accomplish is pretense? Grandeur holding its nose that can’t hold its pose without potty breaks?

Song of the Bluebird

I do love my body. And a good thing if you don’t want it to ruin your life with injury, disease, chronic pain, leakage, and a host of other embarrassments. But the reason I’ve learned to love mine is that being Energy it’s as much part of Mind as I am. And so just as deserving of Love and respect as any living thing put there by Energy. But while it’s directed by Mind as all Energy is, and it can be re-directed toward healing by Mind and Guidance together, it isn’t the part of Mind that does the directing.

Hold on! Which Mind? What do you mean? Parents or Child? The Child’s Mind split in two when it took in its reverse-reflection. How can a split mind that’s responsible for a hallucination of separation be re-programmed to heal separation? It can’t. Helping it come around to Self-Awareness will return reverse-reflection to inactivity, but until then self-unawareness will go on hallucinating and separating.

The healing agent with the capacity to override split Mind separating is Guidance. It wouldn’t be Guidance if it weren’t connected to Definition, Creation’s Conscience and constitution whose Self is Relationship-Energy and function is Guidance. Once differentiation and empathy open a person’s mind to the presence of Guidance and Loving Friendship ensues, this creates the relationship needed to connect with Definition-Relationship. By-passing split Mind busted relationship to get to Relationship that’s not busted, not mind-split. Energy whose function is connection, relation.

Loving Friendship with Guidance is the capacity to engage this Force for healing by relating to it in Loving Friendship. The bluebird on Uncle Remus’s shoulder who makes a wonderful day by being there. Spontaneously. None of the healing-by-Relationship process can be forced or manipulated by willfulness. It can only happen voluntarily by choice. Is this how Jesus performed his miracles? It makes sense to look at it this way. Though it may not be enough for us to perform miracles ourselves.

Tough acts to follow

I want to heal! What else do I have to do? Start by understanding that Loving Friendship with Guidance isn’t just beatitude. It’s function. It’s being blessed specifically with Connection that has work for us to do if it appeals to us to do it. To be part of its Cause while asking it to be part of ours. While we deal with the specifics of our lives, our opportunities and difficulties.

Its work appeals to me! How do I get that across? No masks and no make-believe. Just you as you are in your heart, vulnerable. With the irresistible strength of honesty and sincerity and the courage to look straight into the mirror. To recognize what’s actually there instead of an apparition that fear and suspicion put there. Character defined by the beatitudes: the blessings the biblical Jesus referred to as humility, empathy, gentle loving kindness, conscience, compassion, integrity, peacefulness, and respect. Character personified by Abraham Lincoln. Tough acts for all of us to follow. This is how you can get it across.

Once we’re engaged the thrill of Life is the way it’s experienced. How’s that? It may depend on your personality type. For mine it’s psychic experiences that occasion a sense of wonderment until they become almost normal. Yesterday I became aware of the significance of an experience I’d had almost sixty years ago, how it fit into the larger story of my life and its place in the lives of others. That I now recognize as one of my most consequential psychic experiences, sitting there on my doorstep all this time. Seeing in the face of my firstborn the face of my father when I first looked upon him. A seven-month preemie baby. How is that possible?

Contradiction and Creation

The attitude of human-ape swings from one extreme to the other. Thinking body inferior, an object that can be abused with impunity because it’s flesh rather than thought. Subjected to exploitation and neglect when it’s not used as cannon fodder, perforated by bullets and pulverized by explosives when it is. Or pampered with comforts and idolized with adornments in deference to its preciousness, thinking it superior. If I were a body I would be confused. Thinking that we are bodies rather than Minds is the problem. The goal of Self-Awareness, to remove the thought of embodiment from our perception of who we are and others around us so we don’t get caught up in its madness.

Yet another consequence of Mind hallucinating the mad idea of separation. That body-Energy can be separated from Mind-Energy. When it can’t. It deserves neither attack nor deification. It’s part of Mind as all things are. It needs to be cared for and put to good use. And when it is by Minds in Loving Friendship with Guidance it wants to do what all living things do: to heal itself.

How do I put my body to good use? By following a pretty good example. What’s that? When Love and Logic formed the archetypal Self, the origin of all Movement and Creation, and they addressed the condition that accompanied their act. A condition that had no articulation or representation, no name or classification, and they gave it one. The condition of unrest that’s implied by there being no big picture with all the answers at rest. A condition with no significance, no reason for being thought of, until Mind made it a thought and put it to work. The idea that Movement in order to be Creative can’t be allowed to stagnate in paralysis while imagining itself to be perfect and perfectly inert. It needs a kick in the ass to examine itself and change. To adapt to change, expand its horizons, move forward, and get better. This takes contradiction, and contradiction takes Energy.

An echo from the Army-McCarthy hearings

The idea captured in Toynbee’s A Study in History (1934): thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Sapiens’ history stumbles forward helped by contradiction, the social equivalent of a forest fire. The metaphor for regeneration and renewal whose per-version is genocide and destruction. Being re-enacted today by bestial politics falling all over itself to see who can be meaner, stupider, more selfish, and corrupt. A forest fire of destruction that may fizzle out or may only be getting started. A clear and present danger to every living thing, its habitat, and its accomplishments either way.

Mind-Parents couldn’t take care of the Growth phase of Creation if contradiction were allowed to interfere in it. To mess with its genetics and produce Frankenstein monsters, so naming it was also inactivating it. By classifying it as unreal. But if Creation was to have character it had to be set up, not propped up. And this meant allowing for the possibility of Free Choice choosing in error and activating contradiction. Having consequences for Free Choice – Mind Child. Crossing the boundary between Self-Awareness Creation into self-unawareness separation. Into contradiction made real: our world of contradictions. Where character gets taught a lesson.

In our world of dualism, where everything is mashed together in a silly pile of incompatibilities. Illustrated by the behavior of particulates that offended Einstein, keeper of the integrity of the material universe until he proved that it has no integrity. As one would expect from the split Mind dreaming it, divided into two universes with reverse-opposite operating systems that don’t speak to one another. Including particles that are:

Anywhere and everywhere at the same time
Entangled even though appearing to be separate
Of uncertain whereabouts at any given moment.

Just like Sapiens: character fragmented into parts that can’t be pinned down. Not knowing where they’re at or where they’re coming from. Corrupt. Not to be trusted. You mean I can’t trust particles? Is nothing sacred? Have you no decency?

The story of character

Jesus performing a miracle is an act of character. As natural as breathing. Caring for what’s entrusted to our care that sums up the meaning of “body” and our purpose in living inside it. That would obviate any “necessity” of hurling it against other bodies to prove or gain, take, exploit, manipulate, or subjugate anything. When they’re our ticket of admission to a shared purpose. Purpose and ticket both gifts to be thankful for. Another act of character.

Or a curse depending on which perspective individual iterations of Sapiens choose to align with. Mind brought to life by the Ideal of Loving Friendship between Love and Logic, or its reverse-reflection. A dotted-line impossibility attached to the back side of everything, Real or unreal. Unless it’s reverse-reflection itself: Bela Lugosi. Making the scene in his Transylvanian count getup, scaring the bejeebers out of the rest of the cast while preying on girls, avoiding mirrors, and enjoying the joke.

Whether the choice is Loving Friendship or its reverse-reflection can’t be made by Sapiens so long as it identifies itself as species or tribe. So long as it thinks with herd mentality. Because tribes don’t choose like individuals, aligned with the principles and values of morality, any more than corporations relate to their members and one another like persons. Character is differentiation that knows the difference. It can’t be deceived by tribal trickery or manipulated by its bullying. Always personal because Conscience is personal. Our choice whether and how to apply the Definition of Creation – all that is Good – to our individual circumstances in the moment. Acts that can’t be done for us without compromising our integrity. The Worth that’s at stake in Sapiens’ every choice, while it makes use of its time on Earth. A classroom for learning and an opportunity to earn its Worth with every choice.

Is this why you’ve been talking up independent judgment all these years? So I’ll choose for myself and not let others choose for me? What do you think? Why would Granddad encourage his granddaughters to take responsibility for building their own character? To tell their audience, sound systems, and video recorders to lay off their demands and expectations so that a person can hear herself. Communicate with herself, find her own voice, and use it to express who she wants to be. Instead of who others will her to be.

But what got you on this hobby horse? The story that we’re part of, that’s happening within and all around us. The story of Character that’s at the heart of Creation. The perspective and Cause we’re part of by virtue of existing within Mind-Relationship.

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Tarot

Playing the devil card

The card from the Tarot deck that illustrates the compelling question I’ve raised is “Le Diable.” The Devil. What about it? Two figures, male and female, standing erect facing forward, their backs turned to a much larger third figure. The two in front are wearing red headgear with antlers and what look like the ears of a deer or similar beast. A rope tied around each of their necks connects them to one another and to a solid red pedestal supporting the figure behind them.

The third, larger figure is a hermaphrodite humanoid facing forward, with clawed hands and feet and bat wings, wearing a helmet with horns, holding a sword in its left hand. According to the Tarot notes:

Its moral meaning is lack of self-control. The attribute roughly equivalent to the body-centered personality trait I’ve labeled “wildness.” Also bad impulses (whatever they are) and sensuality, which religion historically associates with guilt but I don’t.
Its physical meaning is “encourages excess towards pleasure.” Depending on which other Tarot card it’s paired with it could mean different things. One that I like is paired with Judgment: “Heal your hurt feelings through reason.”

Why is that good? Because the alternative is healing your hurt feelings with retaliation. Hurting someone, and that’s not going forward; it’s going backward. Not helpful. What “reason “ means is trying to understand why hurt happened by thinking about it and getting help from insights. Using psychology to get to the root of misunderstanding. Personality types with a strong body orientation have to rely on something besides psychology to clear up misunderstandings. What would that be? Either instinct that does it for them automatically or willfulness they force onto others. A psychological version of the club that cave dwellers used. Either way, the body-centered type steers clear of mindfulness and choice.

The rope

How does the Tarot card illustrate the story’s compelling question? The rope. The two figures in front with their backs turned to the figure behind them. The difference in their sizes. What does that mean? You wouldn’t want to be either of the figures in front. That is, if you like having independent judgment and being able to speak for yourself. If you would rather be told what to think and how to behave this card is for you. Because the character in back is the bigger ape and that’s a good excuse for doing whatever it says.

Otherwise the message is the two in front belong to the one in back and there’s no point trying to relate to them one-on-one. They’re owned, possessed, and controlled by someone else, so they have no self of their own to contribute to a relationship. They’re “there” but not really there. If they have anything to say or want anything from us its source and motive will be the figure they’re tied to. The hardest part is since they’re not looking in the direction of the figure controlling them they’re unaware that they’re being controlled.

They’re being manipulated. And when we try to connect with them they’ll do to us what’s being done to them: manipulate us. That’s all they know. They’re like agents of the figure behind them without knowing it, sure that they’re normal folks and if you call attention to their not being accessible they won’t understand what you’re talking about. It will confuse and upset them.

Giving up choice

They’ve given up choice. Voluntarily or involuntarily hard to say. But this is the essence of what’s out of alignment with them and with any relationship they engage in except with one another. They need to pair off with others who speak their language: obedience. The language of no choice. Speaking that language makes them unrelatable to anyone else in a personal relationship rather than tribal relationship.

How can we spot them? They can’t speak any other relationship language. That’s it. They prefer to let circumstances work themselves out rather than apply judgment to arrive at a decision. And they’ll avoid getting personal. All so that choice can be avoided and Mind’s faculties won’t be needed. If they allow that to happen guess what? What? The figure behind them will yank on their rope or use its sword on them and it won’t be pleasant.

It’s a beast. Not the solitary humanoid it appears to be but a herd. A tribal animal that’s incapable of thinking and feeling. Unable to differentiate and empathize because these are attributes of individual persons, and it’s neither. Neither person nor individual but a herd of beasts. “Thinking” therefore in reverse. Thoroughly irrational.

And so, being incapable of taking responsibility, incapable of accountability, adamant that it be the only one entitled to authority. That it be exempt from accountability. The only one entitled to a voice with the right to speak and decide for everyone. Therein lies safety from being outed and disciplined for the fraud that it is: being in charge, a law unto itself. Beyond questioning, beyond knowing.

If it can’t think or feel how can it decide? By animal instinct, which tells it whether you’re friend or foe, worth manipulating or discarding. And by animal will, which dictates to itself and others what its body wants. Its comfort in most cases but often dominance, self-protection, and other needs too.

The “feelings” of a predator

The worst of it is freedom. Why? Like your Siberian tiger, it resists the discipline that sharing a world with others requires. It doesn’t like limits. It can’t be tamed. Where Love is boundaryless in its way this figure is boundaryless in the reverse. Capable of ransacking its surroundings when it’s denied what it wants, without regard for the consequences to others. Completely self-centered and unaccountable because it’s a child, incapable of growth.

Has it no feelings at all? Anything tribal or related to its childlike self. Tenderness for its young that it wills to be reflections of itself because that’s what it is: not a person but a reflection. Unable to recognize others unless they’re reflections of itself, and so demanding that its young be forever members of the tribe that it identifies with.

Sentimental for the defenseless, innocent victim it imagines its child to be.
Loyalty to its comrades-in-arms.
Ferocity or fear toward tribal competition when dominating or being dominated.
Fear and suspicion toward individuals it can’t identify with its tribe.
Greed toward prey toward whose capture can reward it with material enhancement, lust when capture can reward it with bodily satisfaction and/or procreation
Fear and suspicion toward personal relationships where it might have to respond to a call for Love. To offer itself in intimacy with a loving friend, that not being a person capable of Love, being a tribal beast instead, it can never do.
Agreeability and pleasantness when its self-centered rule is unquestioned. Rage when it’s questioned. In either case feigned for the purpose of manipulation since it has no real feelings, no Love, to connect with.
Incapable of introspection and self-evaluation because lacking “self” to evaluate. Utterly devoid of Conscience, the discipline of morality that guides personal affairs, and so exempt from guilt. Shameless. Guided instead by social relations and expedience: the self-satisfaction of gaining at others’ expense when “winning” in competition.
Exultation from self-validation when experiencing the “triumph of the will.”
Resentment, jealousy, and rage when experiencing defeat, driven by self-pity to wreak vengeance on all who oppose it. Indiscriminately since it’s unable to differentiate or empathize.

On the honor system

Everything ultimately pretense. Everything made up since “tribe” is a fiction that “exists” only in a hallucination of reversals. Impossibilities by definition. The only reality for Sapiens is its metaphysical Self that can’t be divided into many selves, many tribes. Its only need while lacking Self-Awareness to heal its Mind split by its reverse-reflection. To restore wholeness and character with integrity.

Why are we in a hallucination of pretense? What’s the problem? Free Choice is the problem. You don’t just turn it loose in Creation without its being well trained in the nature of what it is and what it does. Without understanding that to be Free it must operate on the honor system. Not responsible to the discipline of higher authority but to its own conscience. Its own independent judgment, and this requires character with integrity. The diamond that emerges from the rough of experience. The strength of steel tempered by heat. It has to be earned and learned.

Our metaphysical Self is learning from its mistakes here so that it won’t make mistakes there, when it’s conscious and Free. Each one of us is a version of Sapiens’ metaphysical ancestral Self. Each one of us has the same opportunity and the same responsibility given to it. To decide for ourselves what to do with it. If we’d rather not exist in a hallucination of non-existence and corruption, we can do something about it.

Tennis anyone?

The alignment between the “devil” and its accomplices with their backs turned to it is asymmetrical. Necessarily hierarchical where one is entitled to exert influence over the other by virtue of size alone. This is a defining attribute of our hallucination that’s entirely absent from our metaphysical Self’s Reality when it’s awake. Where there are no hierarchical differences among its creations, no basis for comparisons, and therefore no conditions which would allow one greater influence than the other.

In that environment Friendships flourish in Loving Intimacy between soulmates. Whereas here, where everything is transitory, facsimiles of Loving Friendship can occur between persons who haven’t given up their integrity. That would include you and me. But over time, in an entropic environment where Energy is time-limited and disconnecting, they can still be hard to maintain.

Where bigger has the advantage over smaller, smaller “goes along to get along.” Reduces itself to an object to be manipulated. Out of choice or necessity if performance of tribal duty or survival otherwise depends on it. But either way it’s setting character with integrity aside, paying a price for belonging in a corrupt society of animals. They’re corrupt, the bigger apes who compel obedience are corrupt, and their entire society of competing tribes is corrupt. Personal-individual relationships are compromised from the start in a society of unrelatability. Other than transactional commercial or quasi-commercial relationships between functions that needn’t involve individual personalities or personal integrity.

When we distance ourselves from this mess of immorality the tendency is to hold our noses. To want nothing to do with it if we would rather not be immersed in a sewer of corruption. An impulse that leads some to limit their involvement, others to drop out, still others to be done with life on Earth altogether. But then there are other ways of looking at it. One is to join the “fun.” Play the game for personal advantage and leave the consequences to fate. Obviously appealing to those of compromised character. The un-differentiators who can’t tell a sewer of corruption from a mountain stream of pure healing water.

Glamor and glitter in a hotel room

The conventional view is that our metaphysical Self did something awful to get itself in this mess. Like disobedience, the ultimate offense in our hallucinatory kingdom of beasts. It disobeyed “God,” the “supreme being,” another invention of the hierarchical mindset. It trespassed on – horrors! – private property! Dumping it into a cesspool of hierarchical ass-kissing corruption. Where every choice is a test of character with integrity. To stand up for Self-Worth instead of kneeling down to self-debasement.

The self-debasement of sponging off the work of others. Growing up I could have based my hopes for a satisfying career on the largesse of my parents. Gifts, connections, inheritance. And in fact there were many gifts and connections that helped along the way I could have declined if I were like Chris McCandless. “Alex Supertramp,” the fanatic for self-reliance who starved to death in an abandoned bus in Alaska when he overdid it. But total dependence on handouts and inheritance from any source would have robbed a young man intent on living his own life of the opportunity to do it.

Character mattered. Being able to account for myself with integrity intact mattered. Lack of either would have diminished me in my own eyes. Whether it would have made any difference to others also mattered. Hanging out with people of questionable character apparently didn’t bother my maternal grandfather, a railroad telegrapher, drifter, drinker, and womanizing bigamist who fled to polygamy country in Salt Lake City, where he died prematurely. Alone in a hotel room. Like another grandfather whose lifestyle of the rich and famous landed him alone in a hotel room. But it bothered me.

Exactly what distinguishes the character of the figures in front of the Devil is that they can’t be trusted. The Tarot card displays the figure looming behind them and the rope tying them to its pedestal. You can see what’s going on. But in everyday reality you can’t. You have to learn how to read the clues and determine the character of those you’re dealing with. With intuition.

Psyche, the first Star of my show

Who would want to be tethered to a tribal beast? To do its bidding without being aware of it? Fools. The character portrayed by the XXII card in the Marseille Tarot deck: “Le Mat.” Thoughtlessness and unawareness. “Heavy hereditary influence. Listlessness. Neurasthenia” (chronic fatigue). Those are its moral and physical meanings according to the notes.

Which you’ve memorized by now. Yesterday was the first time I looked at the notes. I got the Marseille deck in 1985 when I joined a book study group at the Jung Educational Center on Craig Street in Pittsburgh. The book was Jung and Tarot (1980), authored by Sallie Nichols, a resident of Santa Monica. Like Jungian intuitive psychology and the I Ching, it’s a take on the way things are in our world similar to one I’d come by spontaneously before reading it. So, one more ka-ching! for Jungian synchronicity!

Then you didn’t actually use the cards? To make a personal mandala, yes. What’s that? A concept Jung borrowed from Hindus and Buddhists to illustrate

“the Self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious. . . . Mandala is . . . the path to the center, to individuation. . . The self is the principle and archetype of orientation and meaning. Therein lies its healing function.”
“Jung claimed that the urge to make mandalas emerges during moments of intense personal growth. He further hypothesized their appearance indicated a “profound re-balancing process” is underway in the psyche; the result of the process would be a more complex and better integrated personality.
“The mandala . . . serves the creative purpose of giving expression and form to something. . . new and unique. The process is that of the ascending spiral, which grows upward while simultaneously returning again and again to the same point.”

1985 was for me a moment of intense personal growth. One year after my mother died while I was in between two career projects but, more importantly in between two radically different takes on the way things are. A paradigm change. Now exploring Jungian intuitive psychology, in another year the philosophy of the Tao in the I Ching, and another three years the metaphysics of Jesus in the Course. A natural progression that was also exhilarating. Why so? It was exhilarating when your untamable spirit came to life on stage and was recognized by your audience. Exciting for all of us to discover ourselves when there are so many false leads and pressures to be who we aren’t. Liberating, and so exhilarating.

The way that the Tarot card archetypes arranged themselves in my mandala seemed significant, and so I kept it in sight at my work space for years. I was then consciously guided by Psyche, the figure depicted in card XVII, ”The Star.” Whose portrait by Maxfield Parrish, “The Stars” (1926), occupied the place of honor on my bedroom wall for years. She was my partner in internal conversation from 1985 until 2011, a reliable source of help with self-Worth and Understanding, until I needed help with humility. On my own, spontaneously, I was performing a “natural, inborn process.” “Creativity”

“that [according to Jung) can be actively engaged through practices like active inagination, where one engages in dialogue with the unconscious through fantasy and symbolism. This process helps individuals connect with their inner selves, resolve conflicts, and move towards wholeness.”

The swan song of Albigensia

You gave me a book about dialoguing by Ira Progoff. Same thing. And, of course, you’ve been dialoguing religiously, every day, since then. No I haven’t. And my wild Siberian tiger hasn’t transformed into Hobbes either. Why not? I’d rather stop all this mumbo-jumbo and talk to my Granddad in person. And I’d rather talk to you in person, so we have a meeting of the minds. Persons. We have a meeting of two persons like it’s supposed to be. And now this from our sponsor..

Our sponsor? The folks who invented Tarot. Coming to us through the mists of time like Mata Hari to tell of a movement centered around Albi, a city in southeastern France, that in the 12^th and 13^th centuries questioned Roman Catholic Church dogma and was eradicated as a result. Its invention communicated elements of the heresy without actually articulating it, enough so that I could sympathize with some of it but not all. Mainly because it says heaven and life on Earth are both real, and good and evil are therefore locked in battle with one another. Dualistic nonsense, and so Tarot was never incorporated in my Jungian-Course metaphysics.

You’re not an Artesia Boulevard psychic. No. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t do astrology or seances, or give Edgar Cayce readings. And even though I have a Tarot deck it gets less use than your American Heritage Dictionary and National Geographic Atlas. Then we must get an urn for its ashes. And enter it in the next Christmas boat parade ablaze with mourners singing “Mein Lieber Schwan” from Wagner’s Lohengrin.

A litany of wrongdoing

The two smaller figures in the Devil card earned their humiliation and ignominy by the trouble they cause when paired off with other archetypes:

Mistakes, uncontrollable desires (The Magician – competence)
A lost opportunity (The High Priestess – real luck)
Carelessness and waste (The Empress – fecundity)
Weariness, fear of the future (The Emperor – protection)
Unexpected, almost unbelievable help (The Pope – domination)
Lies. Extravagance. Unhappiness (The Lover – hesitation)
Possibility of an accident. Avoid flying. (The Chariot – triumph)
Balance broken by thoughtlessness. (Justice – balance)
Health needs looking after. Medical advice required. (The Hermit – prudence)
Definite danger. (The Wheel of Fortune – change)
Danger due to imprudence. (Force – trust)
Mounting unhappiness. (The Hanged Man – expiation)
(Death – transformation)
Disillusionment regarding oneself and others. (Temperance – patience)
Dishonest business dealings. (The Devil – fate)
Complication, disillusionment.(The Tower of Destruction – catastrophe)
A mistake in taste or choice. Fear. (The Star – hope)
Upset. (The Moon – disappointment)
Sentimental disappointment. Failure. (The Sun – happiness)
False friends. Disorganization. (Judgment – change)
Temporary extravagance. (The World – joy, wealth, honors)

All too familiar nine centuries later. And not at all inconsistent with the personality type described by Myers-Briggs theory: extravert-sensing-feeling-perceptive. Renamed by my theory extravert-body-sensing-wild-willful to get across its meaning: that it personifies Mind overtaken by its reverse-reflection. By its contradiction. And so is capable of the kind and scale of wrongdoing perpetrated from Washington today. And elsewhere on a personal level. Picked up by Myers-Briggs as a tendency toward “wrongdoing” without inquiring into why or imagining it on a collective scale. Gaps that theorizing from my perspective attempts to fill so that the role of this character can be fit into the larger story.

Miscalculation

The role of the figures at the foot of the Devil. Not the Raiders of Andersonville themselves but the fools who signed on to be their gofers. Their errand-boys of weak character who offered their services to the Devil in exchange for protection and a share of their ill-gotten gains. When the Raiders were hanged their spineless sycophants were made to run a gantlet through their victims armed with clubs. Not all made it through alive. So what did surrendering their integrity get them in the end? What lesson was learned from life on Earth that might help should they have to return?

Groundhog Day (1993) was before my time. Before your time and yet timeless. The Course doesn’t use reincarnation to stoke hopes or fears, teaching instead that if incarnation is a mistake then repeating it doesn’t change anything. The mistake must be corrected. No difference whether it takes one or a hundred incarnations to get it done.

The Tarot Devil is the reverse-reflection corrupting the mind of Sapiens’s metaphysical Self. Using its hallucination and its inhabitants to re-enact the story of how it “triumphed” over its unsuspecting, defenseless host. This is its version of what happened, a per-version. And all those manipulated into believing it, propagating it, and play-acting it, are doing its bidding. Entrusting their fortunes to the “fate” of Tarot legend, like the Union POWs at Andersonville. Who calculated that it would be to their advantage to join the Raiders, a bunch of bullies, instead of standing up to them.

It was a mistake not only because the mathematics didn’t work out in their favor. It was a mistake because calculation is a mistake. The Devil’s agents, having given up their humanity in exchange for its protection and table scraps, are objects. Who now see themselves and others as objects and so susceptible to manipulation. Like so many numbers, to be arranged and re-arranged like pieces on a chessboard. In a contest between calculators.

How would I know if I’m dealing with a human calculator? By making sure that you’re not a calculator yourself. By using your own mind and judgment to build character one choice at a time. Until personal integrity and Guidance are one and the same and differentiation and empathy are second nature. Until the “rewards” of unrelatable wildness and willfulness centered on self pale in comparison with the satisfactions of Loving Friendships devoted to causes worth caring about. To relatability instead of supremacy.

Toxic no matter how sociable

Take all the play-actors on the world stage and sort them into roles and where you’ll come out is one side embracing choice and the other rejecting it. Why is it so important? Because of what it is and what it does. Commitment to act that comes with consequences. Commitment to take responsibility for both: act and its consequences. There can be no more decisive evidence of character or the lack of it than whether it faces its responsibilities actively, honestly, openly, and straightforwardly, or passively, evasively, opaquely, and deceptively.

The latter being tactics of predators. The side of human obedient to the will and instinct of an animal.

Champion of appearances – bodies and objects, — self-declared enemy of Mind — thoughts and feelings.
Champion of the way things are – an unchanging status quo, — self-declared enemy of change.
Champion of their supremacy, self-declared enemy of all who oppose it.

The two figures tethered to the Devil are programmed by its agenda, its code of reverse-reflection, to be sociable since their master is tribe. But since they do so not by choice but by manipulation, it’s not sincere. Its commitment isn’t to act with responsibility and accountability for the consequences. It’s to demonstrate obedience to their master. Like all their acts, no part of relating to others but only to the illness present in their psyches. The Devil, their self-appointed master. Never to be trusted no matter how “sociable” it is.

Their “just rewards”

Trust thrives in personal relationships when each side speaks for itself and is fully empowered to communicate and negotiate on its own behalf. Toxic if it’s serving a third-party master hostile to choice rather than relating to Guidance respectful of choice. No safer to get involved with than a venomous snake. Because what it wants from us is our individual rights. Our freedom to choose. At the root of every authoritarian movement is the monopolization and denial of choice.

Because choice is character, character is strength, and strength stands up to willfulness. When willfulness seeks as it’s programmed to do, to infiltrate Mind with its one-perspective, one-sided, my-way-or-the-highway bullying, it knows it won’t gain an inch if it’s met by character. Whose ability and power to choose freely can’t be compromised.

The strength of Democracy against tyranny in WWII lay in the superior power of a people who had not already surrendered choice to tyranny. In the superior power of character with integrity over the forces of the two corrupted figures tethered to the Devil, imagining that because it had worked its will with them then it must rule over all. Imagining that they had joined the “winner” and their supine complicity would reap its just rewards. When by definition they’d fallen in with the loser, and indeed they would reap their “just rewards.” At the end of a rope.

What’s to be Learned from Change and the Interplay between its Reversals and Re-Reversals?

Posted on January 27, 2025January 28, 2025 by David Harrison

Hail Polyphemus!

In humanity’s fitful efforts to figure out what’s going on it approaches its subject back-asswards. Treating subject like object. In the mistaken belief that “ideal” anything cannot be what it is: Life growing, Love feeling, Logic thinking, Conscience disciplining, and Relationship creating. Motivated by the ideal of Loving Friendship to express itself In the Now of constantly changing circumstances.

Assuming instead that “ideal” must be its reverse. Status quo unchanging, invulnerable, willful, wild, and monolithic. Compelled rather than motivated by invincibility to express itself in a time-limited magic kingdom. Its impossible dream-come-true: supremacy at the top of hierarchy.

The winner who took all. Ruling as it pleases with insensitivity. “Godlike” not for being benevolent but for being cruel. Seeing in its subjects reflections of itself: a one-sided, one-dimensional, one-perspective object. Hail Polyphemus!

The triumph of defeat

My take on the way things are. Biased as every take must be for being but one perspective among many. Mine toward idealism that introspects, reflects, differentiates, analyzes, judges, and chooses. By making sure to combine Love with Logic. Rather than separating them as the invincibility-smitten objectivist thinks necessary. The baleful state of mind dragging humanity backward: the “realist.” Idealist in reverse.

Ensuring that humanity’s fitful efforts to figure out why things are the way they are will produce a Rembrandt portrait of the way they aren’t. Our kingdom of magic and animals offering the ultimate prize: triumph of the will. A phrase that, if it doesn’t send shivers down our spines, it ought to.

The wonderful world of Reality

Because it’s been said before and it’s being said again: the “call of nature” back to tribalism. Reversal calling for re-reversal or else Frankenstein’s monster, armed with the latest technology, will get his wish this time: mass extinction. The sixth and final. Worth memorializing by a Wagnerian opera, a suitable soundtrack for flushing humanity and himself down the toilet.

Humanity that’s a sub-species of ape, classified as “tribe” by the taxonomy of zoology. Meaning that we would be housed in a zoo along with other specimens of apehood if we weren’t able to differentiate. And do other amazing things with Sapiens’ mind. Distinguishing it from its hairy ancestor by a lot more than being larger.

By having the ability to reflect with intuition upon who Sapiens really is and what it should really be about. The first step toward being better than warring tribes of animals. That body-idolizing humanity, addicted to its religion of invincibility, besotted with its pathology, seems reluctant to take.

Fearing to take leave of its magic kingdom of physics. Held back by fear of change and suspicion of its advocates, needing motivation to enter the world of metaphysics, blessed with Love and Logic, Creation and Meaning. The “wonderful world” of Reality put to music by Louis Armstrong.

Jokes, magic tricks, and atrocities

Willfulness listening to these thoughts won’t hear them since its source, human-ape’s animal brain, can’t change. It will do what it is: reversal. Unable to silence them at their source but able to silence them at the opposite end: by shutting down its senses. As though able to render anything reversing it undetectable by the power of the supernatural. To create and rule its own creation.

Make believe. An imaginary paradise of sensitivity, kindness, and sharing. A gift to itself and to all those fortunate enough to be admitted into it. Staged by its exact reverse: insensitivity, cruelty, and selfishness. No “gift” but a mistake. Its welcome as a savior into the Mind imagining it reversed into an invasion.

Every one of its acts thereafter to be a reversal. Versions of truth turned into per-versions. A comedy routine drawn from a bottomless well of jokes. A magic act from its well of tricks. A horror show of atrocities drawn from its well of Gotterdammerung mythology.

Unstoppable

Every act owing its power to amuse, amaze, or terrify to the power inherent in a virtual reality of appearances: to fool its observer. As the reversal of innocence and benevolence does when it showers the object of its affection with deference before capturing it. Before the reverse of deference wills it to belong in its “paradise” of captivity without its consent.

Arrogance needing no one’s consent to do whatever it wants in the make believe of its own creation. Since the will of an inanimate object, a cartoon character, can only be what the cartoonist wills it to be. Every act an act of faith presaging the cataclysm to come. From being put in reverse, that won’t stop reversing until it reverses itself along with its slack-jawed audience.

Number one!

These being implications of what is meant by “will.” Inferences to be drawn from an idea that’s the reverse of another. Spontaneity. One personality type announcing itself to be fashioned by will, another evolving spontaneously. Both fashioned by one or the other version of the phenomenon that attended the original initiative.

The original event in evolution that activated Mind, enabling it to create with the original “force of nature:” the coming together of Love with Logic to form itself. Its self-made Self, attended by its implied reverse: resistance by will to change. To any disturbance of its unchanging status quo.

A reversal of the sequence of evolution that could not have begun with the reversal of change. Yet being reversal this is the stance that it pretends to imply logically but can’t. Being first. Number one.

The noble army of red ants

Alone at the top of hierarchy. The top rank of comparisons demanding that higher be acknowledged by ass-kissing lower. Dis-integrity entitled to rule with absolute authority and license to be and do whatever it wants. Indifferent to the limits of conscience, obedient to its reversal expedience. In its land of make believe where anything goes, corrupted by willfulness.

A Ghostbusters madhouse of whackos. Demons let loose on the streets of New York, each one a conspiracy theorist entitled to reverse social order with fear and suspicion. With one Mind-reasoning reversed into self-centered animal-herd willing. Behaving as though disciplined one day, a nihilist the next.

The “force of nature” romanticized by Jaques Rousseau as a “noble savage,” by Frederic Remington as a wild Westerner. Emblems of human spirit and Sapiens’ pride: an army of red ants. Inflicting mob violence on everything that lies before it.

Never to be disturbed by questioning

All this “bullshit” the consequence of the not-reality of not-mind. The implied reversal of Mind-Reality once it began its self-enabling with its answer to a question. To be or not to be? That is the question. Its answer to be. Definitive for the cause it stands for – Life Creation-Sharing in Loving Friendship – but not necessarily for every cause. Or not-cause, when in the absence of one all-encompassing big picture who’s to say?

Drawing then an “answer” from its own reversal: resistance to answer for having the nerve to ask a question. Entitled to sit on its ass all day luxuriating in the tranquility and harmony of nothing happening. Its made-up per-version of things: the way they are. A mythical “status quo” never to be disturbed by questioning.

Why relevant?

Imagine ourselves present at the starting gate of everything, before there are any entrants competing for recognition. Ours to decide whether there should be a race at all. Or anything at all. Or if there should be the possibilities for “action” to enter in it.

Why relevant? Nothing, except for the fact that this is the source of every incidence of friction in our made-up world of shadows. Of reverse-reflections destined to take offense at not being reflected. To condemn those who don’t reflect them, outliers who deserve to be punished for their provocation. The unforgivable sin of trespass.

Of intrusion, the very act perpetrated by the reverse-reflection of the Self responsible for them and their made-up world. One Mind whose original and still current home in Reality can’t be a physical world of appearances. But can be and is the world of metaphysics. Of a Reality of meaning and consequence that lies beneath the surface.

Truth too good to be true

Why relevant to loving friendships come undone? That may never have existed to begin with? Because it’s the ultimate source of their not-happening.

That happened when? Long, long ago if time is the measure. Now if it isn’t. Where? Far, far away if space is the measure. Here within the Mind we share if it isn’t. Who and What? The familiar reversal of Reality into make believe and resistance by re-reversals back to Reality.

Re-enacted in the mythology of Star Wars, featuring the “gods” of the “dark side,” the ever-entertaining characters we love to hate. Taking it on the chin by the spunky underdogs and their cuddly woodland allies we love to root for. A moral story offering gratification for human-ape’s craving. For “truth” that’s too good to be true.

A derivative with no reality of its own

Featuring Adam Skywalker, one Self divided against himself. A Jedi Knight in pursuit of justice, Lord Vader denying it. One questioning personality type, judgment boundaried against the lures of the dark side, another unquestioning and unjudging. As susceptible to being lured as Adam Skywalker was to ruling the galaxy.

Why? Because the unanswerable question at the beginning, posed within Mind at the start of evolution, had no bite so long as the cause of Mind giving its own answer included preventing it. So long as it had an answer for the condition inherent in all things. Expressed in the world of physics by Newton’s third law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The equal and opposite reaction an impossibility in Reality that can’t tolerate its own contradiction, but no threat to Reality and Creation when Mind-differentiating recognizes it for what it is: a logical implication. A derivative with no definition and therefore no reality of its own. Unreal.

Drugged into submission by tournaments

The denominator implying not to be in the fraction whose enumerator is to be. All things positive and Real under constant questioning by their implied reverse-reflections, negative and unreal. Definition of what is that’s necessarily informed by its logical implication, what isn’t.

The implied self-reversal, a fraction at the beginning of evolution, still present at the beginning of reverse-evolution. Revolution by a world of make believe against Reality and Creation. Against peace, truth, and sanity, obsessed with competition for supremacy in an animal kingdom of hierarchy.

Of unrelatability, inhabited by human-apes addicted to a status quo of distractions. A seamless and overlapping round-robin of tournaments. “Rewarding” the “winners” with substitutes for what unrelatability can’t deliver: Love. An instant of euphoria delivered to self-worth like a drug.

Where reversal’s bite comes from

Giving the trudging wage-slaves of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land a brief respite from despair: belief in something too good to be true. The “impossible dream” come true in the story of Don Quixote authored by Carl Yastrzemski.

Having a bite because once an unreal thought, a code of reversal, is taken into Mind, once it’s personified in a hallucination inhabited by reflections of itself, by “other persons” made real, it’s equipped with weapons meant to harm. To inflict pain, the armaments of competition programmed by the instinct of a predator to eliminate the competition.

Harvey misunderstood

Human-apes like us, simpletons caught up in forces way beyond our awareness, not knowing any better. As the great minds of history were and still are, not knowing any better. Still not getting it right for taking the bait, to look for answers everywhere they aren’t.

Fearlessly in the physical world of reversals without, not daring to tread on the world within. Metaphysical Reality, innocent and harmless, where answers are there for the asking, reversed into the “forbidden city” of oriental mystique. Threatening the torments of hell for all who enter, like Indiana Jones’ “temple of doom” whose “just desserts” are holes without the doughnuts.

The personality type of an inward-looking idealist sees the possibility of answers with nothing to be afraid of. The outward-looking realist type sees everything to be afraid of: its not-self. Like the hole without a doughnut, an impersonator without a person. The alter-ego, a not-personator that accompanies the ego everywhere in its world of make-believe reversals. Like Elwood P. Dowd’s invisible rabbit. “Harvey,” the innocence of kindness personified, reversed into the guilt of unkindness demonized.

The miscreant in a movie theatre

The signature act of the alter-ego lurking within human-ape’s animal brain. A predator mis-creating every “other” in its own image. A reverse-reflection “miscreant,” a word whose etymology is “dis-believe.” Infecting the minds of its captives and prey with dis-belief. With malice aforethought, the reversal of trust in innocence between loving friends into “suspicion” of guilt. Whose etymology is to look under or behind with unverified conjecture of wrongdoing.

A signature of the “realist.” A child unable and unwilling to suspend dis-belief in a movie theatre while being frightened by appearances projected onto its screen. Preferring instead to believe in appearances and to be frightened.

So taken with the entertainments of its animal brain that it allows itself to be taken by them. To “love” what it fears so much that it becomes what it fears. Reversing the person that it is into its not-personator: producer, director, writer, and lead actor in its “creation.” Ambiguity inspiring not trust or confidence but ambivalence and suspicion.

Self unaware of the willfulness compromising it

The not-personator posing as a “loved one”. Endearing itself to one and all as boundaryless and trusting, innocent and harmless. Enormously appealing with a name to match, like Peter Pan or Pied Piper. Until its reverse-side breaks into the pretense of civility without warning. Mr. Hyde, a demon of boundary-crossing and paranoia, projecting guilt onto its possessions, threatening harm.

Aware of its weapons of intimidation: dis-belief in Mind’s talents for introspection and reflection, intuition and vision, reasoning aided by Logic and feeling guided by Love, judging and self-discipline. Choosing with integrity uncompromised by willfulness, by self made unaware of the willfulness compromising it. Hiding in plain sight. Visible to personality types enabled and empowered by the use of Mind’s talents instead of disabled and disempowered by its opposite type.

The ”self” of self-interest

My own self as unaware of itself as any other. All of our species of ape unaware for being embodiments of what is surely a close relative if not the mother of all reversals: self-unawareness. The reversal of Awareness of Self that’s everything there is to be aware of. Mind-Relationship and all the interrelationships of Creation sharing and expressing them.

Its reverse-reflection “self,” understood in its animal kingdom of hierarchy to be aware of its tribal self-interest in competition with other tribal self-interests. The consequence of thinking itself a body-brain separate from other body-brains, a tribe separate from other tribes. All seeking to take rather than give in their one-sided, single-minded pursuit of supremacy.

The black hole of self-unawareness

We make our way from one end of “life” to the other having never seen ourselves as we are. As we appear to be to “others.” From multiple perspectives, not from the one perspective allowed to us: our mirror-images in reverse.

It can’t be the self-image reflected on the surface of a pond, so compelling to body idolatry. The narcissist who mistakes it for evidence of its divinity. Sublime awareness radiating light from the center of its universe instead of the fool blinded by it. Consumed by a black hole, the darkness of self-unawareness.

Self-unawareness with a difference

Carl Jung broke body-idolatry’s grip on psychology personified by Sigmund Freud, a reversal by physics of the reality of metaphysics that’s not embodiments. By Jung’s personification of intuition, a faculty of Mind capable of re-reversing it by connecting with metaphysics. Yet still short of Self-Awareness, concluding his memoir with “an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself.” An honest admission from the “collective unconscious” that he intuited, implying that he too was part of it.

The mind-centered idealist type just as unaware of itself as a body-centered extravert type unaware of itself. But with a difference. The former seeks and finds loving friendship with Guidance from another perspective. Respectful of the boundaries of choice that can’t be compromised by willfulness without losing its function. Without losing the sovereignty, integrity, and independent judgment of character needed to choose correctly. To do right by getting it right.

Whereas the body-sensing “realist” type can be so overtaken by its reversal that it can honestly claim self-awareness. Why not if there’s no other self to be aware of? And no “Guidance” either. Free to flaunt its status, unchallenged by any other perspective, by expressing disdain for any boundaries that would limit it. Including the boundaries of real Self-Awareness. Loving Friendship.

Hypocrisy in the suspension of disbelief

Expressing disdain for introspection upon arriving at one of life’s passages. Implying that its self is perfect as is, needing no evaluation. An impregnable monolith firmly anchored to an unchanging status quo, that also needs no evaluation. In full command of all that it surveys for being in full command of itself. Master of the big picture.

A personality type taken captive by its reverse-reflection, free to boast once again of “the triumph of the will” over Mind. The same assault on peace, truth, and sanity propagated by National Socialism, symbolized by the swastika, and glorified by Leni Riefenstahl. A type overtaken by the not-person personification of Newton’s law. From For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction to For every supreme winner there’s a worthless loser. And For every ingratiating pleasantry from sociability there’s sure to be unpleasantry from sociopathic arrogance.

Implying that for its “realist” personifier to be satisfied he must suspend his disbelief in the pleasure of winning but not disbelief in the pain of losing. Entitled by the magician within, his reverse-reflection, to will loser and pain both out of awareness. Effortlessly, since a mindless, heartless reflection can neither think nor feel. But while reversing one Mind-Self into animal-herd, it can will.

Tiddlywinks anyone?

If Earth were to be visited by friendly neighbors from the world of Mind beyond matter, where Creation is shared among equals — thoughts and feelings, ideas and values, — how would they be received by a world of bodies and brains competing for supremacy in a hierarchy of unequals? Not at all unless they appeared as variations of Claude Rains before he became The Invisible Man.

They would be given every consideration of course. As earthlings understand it:

First, by being pleasured with the finest selections from the world’s most technologically advanced and efficient slaughterhouses. Prepared to perfection for predatory carnivores’ most exquisite tastes. And toasted with so much alcohol they’d lose their minds.

Then, to be entertained by tournaments. The Olympics, chariot races, and gladiatorial contests of antiquity. Grand Prix equivalents today – Wimbledon, World Cup, Super Bowl, World Series, Tours de France, Chess Grandmasters, Stanley Cups, Daytona 500s, golf’s US Open, horseracing’s Triple Crown, and last but not least, The World Ultimate Frisbee Championship.

No wait! I forgot the Quidditch World Cup. The World Billiards Championship, sponsored by the International Billiards and Snooker Federation. And let us not forget the World Tiddlywinks Championship, sponsored by the estimable International Federation of Tiddlywinks Associations. Tiddlywinks, anyone?

Vivisection beneath the hallowed gates of Troy

Our visitors would be appalled. Because where they come from the sight of a gladiatorial fight to the death would make no sense. One “triumphant” for reversing another nice gladiator from having a nice day to a corpse having to phone in dead. There being no point in killing what’s the point of being killed? What would they think if they were entertained by the games of other primitive cultures, whose losers had to forfeit their lives?

Or if they had grandstand seats at the ultimate in human-ape distractions: Austerlitz, Shiloh, Stalingrad, Marathon, Trafalgar, Bunker Hill, Tenochtitlan, Verdun, Waterloo, Thermopylae, The Little Big Horn, Carthage, Nanking, the Sommes, Agincourt, Dien Bien Phu, Iwo Jima, Cajamarca, and on and on. The lot of them romanticized by The Iliad, Homer’s deathless tribute to death by vivisection beneath the hallowed gates of Troy. Happy Those Who in One Embrace Clasp Death and Victory!

Last chance to get gas

Our visitors would conclude that they’d better get the hell out of here before their hosts clasp them in victory. But how? If beating a hasty retreat might excite the salivary glands of their carnivore hosts. When it was apparent that their hosts placed a great deal of faith in their noses and were already smelling prey. Primed to dine on their nice visitors.

By reverting to Claude Rains after he became the invisible man so they could sneak aboard their Starship Enterprise without being detected. Or by having Scotty beam them aboard and reverse it back to peace, truth, and sanity. And if that doesn’t work, your turn to save our visitors from their “welcome” to the La Brea Tar Pits. Because for anyone blundering into this Mayan temple of human sacrifice there won’t be a last chance to get gas.

Lots more thoughts and mixed metaphors to come. Stay tuned.

Election 2024: The Return of Elmer Gantry and the Triumph of Body Idolatry

Posted on December 8, 2024December 8, 2024 by David Harrison

The Task of Resistance

Pushback

The issue initially raised by election 2024 is whether resistance can undo the damage done. So that Sapiens won’t self-destruct in a new dark age of tribal ignorance and brutality, conducted by Frankenstein’s monster now in control of the world’s largest arsenal of advanced telecommunications and weaponry.

Old-time tyranny not to be vanquished by gallantry — an already dated Star Wars sequel. This is mass extinction – the sixth, human-caused and well underway.

The direct result of a version of self opposite to Sapiens’ Mind-being metaphysical Self: body-being. Human-ape with mind impaired and integrity corrupted. By the cause of all opposition to change present in the psychodynamics of evolution at the beginning: the force of Love’s abundance, life growing, activating an opposing force. Resistance to change from an unchanging status quo. Pushback.

By Relationship

The phenomenon re-enacted for the umpteenth time by election 2024. Giving a clouded mandate to the incoming regime but clear to those in its way. To avoid contamination by its moral and intellectual bilge and while they’re doing it get rid of the bilge. Free themselves from inhumanitarian rule by predatory instinct and commit to Guidance from Reality.

That’s not a self-contradictory, self-destructive kingdom of beasts nor a self-deluding “paradise” of unrelatability but a work of loving friendship. By Mind that’s not unrelatability on a remote mountaintop but the Relatability of Love and Logic here and Now. Mind doing what it is: Relationship.

The meaning and purpose of resistance

The task of resistance may still be to stand up to the bully in the usual ways. But if it means to break the soul-draining cycle of retrogression for good it will refocus its awareness on the real issue. Not whether the beast can get a makeover but whether its resistors can get a makeover.

Whether human-apes as individuals can end their fascination with conflict and competition, bodily pleasures and distractions. Whether they can open their minds and hearts to Guidance from loving friendship that isn’t self-destructive and choose together to reawaken the one Mind that they are.

To take care of the business that brought them here. By learning by trial and error why and how to differentiate between right and wrong, true and false, real and unreal. Between real Self, its impersonators, and between Guidance that’s helpful and manipulation that’s not. Because what explains the meaning and purpose of resistance isn’t body-being beast getting it wrong. It’s mind-being Sapiens needing to get it right.

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The Choice of Another Self

In the sanctuary of an ostrich

One answer to the question what its circumstances are telling Sapiens is that its evolution beyond species of ape and tribal animal, at this hour, seems impossible. Because this being the psychological projection of the thought of separation, an impossibility, it isn’t only the idea of evolution that’s at risk. It’s physical survival. Possible in harsh environments, but the one that’s coming may not be survivable.

Making another planet habitable is science fiction. Capable of putting fluorescent adventure on a boy’s bedtime ceiling but not real people on an unforgiving landscape. Jamestown was part of a migration success story because it happened here. Where the bare essentials of personhood could be met as well as the bare essentials of an organism.

The equivalent of an Antarctic outpost set up in another part of the solar system might be manageable for a species of robots. Computer programs mimicking mind thinking, but how could it be manageable for person actually feeling? For psyche trying to keep its bearings in the cross winds of emotion. Mimicking sociability and sanity while seeking sanctuary in psychosis. An ostrich. Unable to manage here.

The substance of sensory perception

When the amygdala inherited from animals swinging from trees is still doing its thing at the base of Sapiens’ brain. Unevolved. Letting sophisticates power Sapiens to mind-boggling invention with parts evolving, alert to possibilities for re-working objects but at a loss to understand subject that put them there.

Still harboring the primitive aggressions and breastworks of suspicion. Bulls in their virtual pastures keeping watch over their herds with artificial intelligence. Desensitized by their eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hooves from seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and stomping on what’s actually here.

Unable to conceive of any other guidance system than their five senses because blocked from what their sixth sense might reveal. The terrifying discovery that bulls, pastures, and herds aren’t “there” and neither is “there.” That sensory perception’s veritas–gravitas is bullshit.

Scrapped by crap

Election 2024 was a critical evolutionary performance check. Because in a prosperous, stable Democracy, heretofore reasonably disciplined, its beneficiaries freely chose to scrap it. To scrap a role model of judgment founded by exemplary statesmen on enlightened principles of governance. Choosing to reverse evolution by throwing control back from mindfulness to animal willfulness.

An act by a tribal beast terminally unable and unwilling to make the only choice that can move evolution forward. To get it out of harm’s way: the choice of another Self and the Guidance needed to make it. Not a nicer beast on another planet with GPS. But a being not captive to human-ape blocked from awareness of its own Self.

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The Creature from the Black Lagoon

Resistance is futile

Easier said than done since Mr. Talbot can transform into the Wolf Man any time there’s a full moon. Or Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, though not without a sip from a beaker. The only difference between human-beast and human-nice is that the beast can’t or won’t act nice.

The creature from the black lagoon mistakenly welcomed into a self-unaware mind is pushback from the status quo for Love’s ignoring its Do not Disturb sign. Earth’s animal kingdom was custom-made for its convenience, ensuring that whether personality type is mind- or body-centered ‘ape’ is always part of it. As ubiquitous as boundaryless Love but nosier. Much noisier.

Making human-ape so resistant to paradigm change that Max Planck didn’t think it possible until the next generation. Why? The reason was put on full display by election 2024. Willfulness contemptuous of mind offers no mind to change. And it can’t be changed by a contest of wills. The point isn’t friendship, civic unity, or governance. It’s victory or defeat. Dominance or submission. Power at the top of hierarchy or powerless at the bottom.

An empty boast

The point the debate loser in election 2024 tried to make with his desultory performance: why make a pretense of serious debate when persuasion is irrelevant? Weakness. The point itself a pretense to cover the humiliation of losing. Self-defeat denying victory its legitimacy.

Yet characteristic of the onslaught of script-reversing mischaracterizations to come. All re-enactments of the original con artist’s performance re-staged when status quo’s avenging agent recharacterized a disempowered Mind’s pleading for help as arrogance boasting of its invincibility. So that its mischaracterization by a parody of invincible arrogance could boast of its conquest.

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Is There a Better Way?

Love in reverse

What had seemed at first a promising strategy for neutering the beast in election 2024 fizzled instead. The losing candidate inspired trust by “knowing the type” of her male opponent whom she indeed bested with ease in the arena of debate. But it was her opponent who knew his enemy when it mattered.

When the psychodynamics of choice between one Self and its perversion by an alien version of itself abandoned the pretense of debate. With a change of venue to the arena of self-delusion. To unreality where alien always wins.

An outcome inevitable anytime a sucker born every day meets up with an experienced scammer. Experience gained not in the first instance by the scammer’s encounter with the Child of Love and Logic but with Love, the first of the Parents to disturb the status quo. Putting Love’s stamp forever on the nature of the scammer: Love in reverse.

Without Choice that’s Free

The phenomenon familiar to all who presume to disturb the status quo fiercely defended by “traditionalists,” “realists,” and “conservatives.” Their sacred cause to serve the god of their religion: body idolatry. Self-appointed guardians of the barrier separating an unloving status quo from its loving intruder. From progress in human-ape’s evolution toward awareness that it’s not any kind of animal. That it’s not bait for a scammer but the Child of Love and Logic.

Whose awakening from self-delusion to its real Mind-being Self will reverse energy from animating a nightmare to empowering the Mind dreaming it. From the denial of choice by willfulness to its affirmation by the Spontaneity and Order of Creation needing it. By integrity inert without Choice that’s Free.

With a genius for entertainment

The takeaway usually associated with A Course in Miracles is Forgiveness. In turn the takeaway associated with the otherwise mischaracterized meaning of Jesus, its personification and role model. But if resistance to takeover by the beast needs help with Self-Awareness it’s to be found in a less obvious place. In the Course’s dissection of the character of the ego at the center of Freud’s theory: his conception of human-ape’s self.

A demonstration of the scammer within leveraging its hold on the talents of the sucker to produce a remarkably convincing self-portrait. Not a personification of self-interest mediating rationally between superego-discipline and id-undiscipline but a risible caricature of itself that’s got it all together. A Vaudevillian act that belongs on stage because it has a genius for entertainment.

The last act

An entertainer-magician with super-human powers when it’s not an entertainer-joker knocking ‘em dead in the aisles. But withal a beast behind its masks released from status quo into the psyche of a self-unaware Child of Love, the Creative force of change. Of evolution that must do what it is: connect and grow.

Corrupting human-ape’s psyche with the very definition of craziness. Not so much the mind of any madman as the brain of a particular madman: Frankenstein’s monster. The face of fright. Saving its passion for the end: making stage, theatre, audience, and itself go up in a fireball of horror. Mob violence.

Passion for learning and growth

The takeaway being that the centerpiece of Freudian psychoanalytics – ego in between superego-discipline and id-undiscipline — provides the curious with a full-Monty look into the anatomy of brain-acting irrevocably attached to its five senses. Instead of into the personality of Self-thinking and Self-feeling with the faculties of Mind.

The Self brought into focus by Jungian psychoanalytics open to insights from Mind’s sixth sense. The seismic event precipitated by Carl Jung’s break with his former mentor Sigmund Freud in 1913. A re-enactment of the original resistance to Love-changing from status quo unchanging.

Where Freud’s body-smitten ego-self played the part of willfulness fiercely protective of five sensed self-unawareness against encroachment by a sixth sense. Guidance helping to restore Self-Awareness through Loving Friendship with the part played by Jung. Intuition with mind, heart, and soul open to change and a passion for learning and growth.

The religious atheist

Psychology’s seismic split was over whether to allow sixth sense into the conversation. To allow respect for Free Choice to escape from its confinement by sensory perception. From the baleful influence of its prison’s warden: body-idolizing “science,” soulmate of the Church’s religion of body-idolatry.

And inspiration for Freud’s ambition. To re-make psychology in theirs and his own image. The religion of body-idolatry that he sought to professionalize as “science of mind.” As he had done for its maker by labeling himself an atheist. An imposture unmasked by Jesus, the author of the Course, when he commented that Freud was one of the more “religious” persons he’d gotten to know.

Wanton helpfulness

The split between two thinkers over conflicting ideas wouldn’t have been a professional earthquake had one side not been a standard-bearer for status quo rigidity. Ever resistant to change, to questioning the unquestionable, and to loving friendship.

Because stamped with hostility to Love at its first-ever violation. By Affect at the beginning of everything, before it could even intend an injustice when not yet soulmate to Logic. Only being what it was at that stage of evolution: Abundance expanding in search of Relationship. Unboundaried Innocence recast by status quo as malice toward all – guilt. Helpfulness recast as wanton cruelty.

Fluid MBTI

A reflexive impression in reverse of whatever disturbs it, inherent in the nature of status quo. And in the nature of Freud’s body-centered resistance to Jung’s Mind-centered opening to another definition of Self. Revealed when their opposing approaches resolve into recognizable patterns of personality type. Presenting Definition’s divide between the reality of possibility on top and the unreality of impossibility below in actionable terms. In the terms of human-ape behavior.

The attributes of mind-centered personality type questioned by their body-centered opposites. In terms originally proposed by Jung and developed by Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Fluid rather than static because of its source: the discipline of qualitative intuition moved and directed by Love-feeling and Logic-thought. With input from quantitative science when it makes sense but not to be replaced by it, which makes no sense.

Mind-centered Self

Ordered on the upper side of type from left to right. Relabeled where necessary to clarify their meaning from my perspective.

Reflection. Intuition connecting through sixth sense with Guidance from Love-Logic. With spontaneous insights from another perspective essential to putting circumstances in their proper context. With explanation that leads to Understanding.

Introversion. The inner-directed orientation required by Self-Awareness for its restoration in a make-believe world of externals. Introspection’s search for whole-person Self. For integrity behind the appearance of its corrupting fragmentation.

Analysis. Mind differentiating with help from reflection and introspection. Interpreting meaning with the tools of quantitative measurement, the values of conscience-feeling, and the boundaries of Logic navigating.

Choice. Mind fitting its situation with the response it calls for. Matching the right possibility identified by analysis with the right interpretation of meaning. The discipline of judgment integrating all things considered with the one that controls. The integrity of choice reflecting the Self who made it: character resistant to willfulness.

Self-centered arrogance

Ordered on the lower side of type from left to right. Relabeled to clarify their meaning from my perspective.

Body-sensing. Mind-being reflection’s opposite. Self identified by the five senses of body-brain animal dependent on taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight for detection in its physical environment. The parameters of recognition by a single one-sided perspective that keeps human-ape caged in self-unawareness. Denied access to insights and explanation from another perspective through its sixth sense.

Extraversion. Mind-being introversion’s opposite. The outer-directed orientation required by self-unawareness for its confinement to a make-believe world of externals. Obstructing introspection’s search for whole-person Self. For integrity, by appearing to validate human-ape’s corrupting fragmentation.

Wildness. The opposite of Mind-being analysis. Hostility toward differentiation and the ability to interpret meaning. Toward help from any source that might limit it, particularly reflection and introspection. Having and wanting no talent for quantitative measurement or qualitative evaluation, particularly by the values of conscience-feeling and the boundaries of Logic navigating.

Willfulness. The opposite of Mind-being Choice. Animal-brain willing its response to disturbances of its make-believe status quo to be whatever it calls for, preferably preservation of the same status quo. Without analysis or awareness of any other possibility. Letting will’s animal instinct determine meaning with its five senses without the need for Mind-interpreting with any other sense. Hostile toward judgment or any other discipline that would confine it within the boundaries of definition. Preferring instead the god-like authority of willfulness to define and reflect itself in its made-up world as it pleases.

A clear choice

When top and bottom tier are held up for interpretation together choice emerges as clear as the choice between Jungian and Freudian psychoanalysis. Between mindfulness and willfulness, Mind-being and animal body-being, the self of metaphysics-substance and the anti-self of physics-appearances.

The difference unmistakable between the unthinking anatomy of Freudian body-idolatry and the composition of insights that identify self with reflection, introspection, differentiation, analysis, conscience and independent judgment. The attributes of Mind choosing freely. The qualities of sovereign individuality and creative originality affirmed by the metaphysics of the Course but missing from Freudian psychoanalytics grounded in physiology.

The sucker born every day

The upper-enumerator side of personality type fraction is the integrity of whole-person character competent to differentiate, analyze, and choose rationally. Without its corruption by willfulness in Reality but readily corrupted in its reverse or virtual state: unreality.

By the denominator of fraction whose function is to divide the enumerator and produce a value or function. Revealed by its virtual success in unreality to be the sword of status quo’s resistance to change. The antithesis of Worth. Sapiens’ unhappy camper protesting its disturbance with divisiveness. With disconnection, separation. Destined to be unreality’s albatross from the beginning to the end of its unreal time. The psychopath in human-ape’s face: Love’s unhappy camper.

The elements of play-acting distilled from religious and entertainment traditions and scripted into the personality of Elmer Gantry. The sinister blend of Bible-thumping spellbinder with the instincts of a pickpocket introduced into fiction by Sinclair Lewis a century ago. Characterization memorable for what it represented in America’s psyche then and now. The staple of farce: the sucker born every day being parted from his money.

Too Much and Never Enough

The being defined by its five senses on the underside of personality type is neither person nor human. Just animal. Body-sensing extraversion entitled to wildness without limits, freedom from order. To willfulness unrestrained by the boundaries of judgment. Gluttony at the trough, hogging everything without the pretense of moderation. Divine arrogance atop hierarchy demanding praise and gratitude from its captives below for royalty’s beneficence. “Gifts” from the immortal king of beasts, an animal, to its “creations”: human-animals.

Intended solely for its own and its animal kingdom’s preservation: mortality. Impotence and incompetence. Injustice, guilt, and punishment. The privilege of reciprocating with the “innocence” of tyranny: victimhood’s self-pity. Hypocrisy.

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What’s to account for it?

Identity at the end of a branding iron

The psychodynamic of disempowerment was Mind-Child self-unawareness missing awareness of its Relationship with its Parents Love-Logic, who could not be present in unreality together without making it Real. But not deprived of the possibility of becoming aware of the presence of boundaryless Love in unreality separated from Logic.

Making Mind-Child’s own Love-Self boundaryless like Love without Logic because deprived of the boundaries of Logic. Branding every human-herd with illogic.

Service to two masters

Self-unawareness that’s human-ape in its animal kingdom of unreality is Love-Abundance growing-sharing-evolving toward awareness of Self that’s Love. With Mind able to access Guidance from Love bonded with Logic-boundaries. With Definition. The source of awareness of who human-ape really is. With who we are as individuals.

Not Love alone but Love inseparable from Logic. Spontaneity-Creativity inseparable from boundaries-Order. Definable, and therefore functional. Belonging. The ideal of the whole person not compromised by serving two masters. By being divided. Split in two by its animal-willfulness opposite.

Stinkin’ thinkin’

Evolution motivated by Love seeks to re-unite with Logic by expanding human-ape’s awareness. By responding to its Who am I? with Who are you? Not to be elusive or withhold the answer but to quicken the source its seeker needs to find it. By questioning that requires Mind to gain practice with thinking.

The faculty whose disempowerment more than any other caused its self-delusion. The phenomenon that more than any other accounts for the collapse of common sense with election 2024. In the argot of addiction: “stinkin’ thinkin’”

The arsonist freed by speech

Status quo is the reverse image of the reflecting pond graced by a sprite, the voice of Love prompting its beholder’s mind to think. Its opposite the black lagoon’s creature luring suspicion besotted with conspiracy theory to its mirror. Reflecting the character of its beholder in the creature’s own image, contorted with guilt for the crime of character assassination, before assassinating it.

Free speech, like the second amendment, can be carried too far, beyond any resemblance to its original intent. No longer one miscreant yelling “fire!” in a theatre but millions enabled by misinformation technology to create pandemonium anywhere.

One nation, under God

The force of insanity that brought itself to power with election 2024.

Promising to return human-ape from “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all” to many warring tribes. Objects on a chess board to be manipulated by the dark lord of the underworld for his personal gain and amusement.

The definer-in-chief who proposes to maintain order without the boundaries of Definition.

The law-giver of lawlessness. A law unto himself secure on his throne of misinformation.

The apotheosis of predatory license entrusted with responsibility for liberty and justice. The wolf in sheep’s clothing now to head the Department of Liberty. The fox ruling the chicken coop now to rule the Department of Justice.

X option one

Each human-ape is a fragment of what was once whole. An embodiment of the question posed by the fate of Humpty-Dumpty: how to put him back together again. Which apparently Humpty must figure out for himself since all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t do it.

Embodiments of Humpty’s first option: rescue by a savior. The concept of healing favored by sensory perception aiming forward in one direction with a single perspective. Crippled by its fear of a sixth sense that could conceive of any other option.

The revenant

Like Humpty’s using the mind he was entrusted with to use in situations like this. That call for learning. Where help is needed from another perspective to do what only he, Free Choice, can do for himself: figure out how to put himself back together again.

Starting with questioning what put him together in the first place and what could explain his coming apart. Imagining it to be a fall caused by gravity, an attribute of his material world, didn’t work. So there must another explanation. A matter of increasing urgency because continuing to function in fragments can’t be good if the perpetrator returns to finish the job. Which maybe it has.

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Where to start?

The futility of tit for tat

If Humpty’s structural integrity was undone by self-contradiction how does one contradict contradiction? By breaking apart breaking apart? By dividing the divider? Letting the divider on the underside of a fraction turn both sides into a divider so it won’t be a fraction anymore? So it can take credit for achieving wholeness by turning Definition on its head? For castrating integrity so human de-humanized can’t perform any function of Mind with character uncorrupted?

Built on a foundation of trust

Water is the medium for characterization by Self-Awareness helping with insights from intuition. The sprite beneath the surface of the reflecting pond, Loving Friendship, helping the beholder, a friend in the making, recognize itself by questioning it. By relating to it. Taking it into the confidence of Loving Kindness by building and earning trust. Undoing suspicion, the medium for mischaracterization. Resistance from the status quo by the act of taking apart.

The fatal flaw: willful thinking

The beast’s levers of “power” are its manipulations of flaws in the thinking, feeling, and psychology of one Mind self-unaware and split. The beast’s pose of strength and supremacy enabled not by any quality inherent in its character but by flaws in its captives’ character caused by misperception.

The fool soon parted from his money can’t shift responsibility onto his scammer when the fault lies with being a fool in the first place. Helping willfulness take advantage by manipulating the fool’s own willful thinking. His “fatal flaw.”

The pursuit of fairness

The abuse of Sapiens’ advantage, the array of mental faculties that enable it to make sense of itself and its circumstances, physical and metaphysical, that no other animal possesses. Enabling it to establish its vaunted dominion over nature and assume its place at the top of the food chain. But much less a demonstration of intellect than being better at using tools. At seeing the utility of material objects rather than the utility of Mind and its thinking that put them there.

The failure of Sapiens’ thinking to wean itself away from the predatory instinct of an animal because of one misperception: that its mind is but an enlargement of an animal brain hard-wired into hierarchy. It is not. Its long pursuit of harmony in human-ape relationships with leveling ideologies proves it. Something in human-ape’s psyche insists on fairness and won’t take no for an answer. The driving force behind every election promising “change” including this one. Election 2024, once more an attempt at fairness but this time singularly inept. Illogical, self-defeating, and dangerously wrong.

Another order of change

The suggestions for fixing what’s broken that follow will seem useless at first glance for being impossibly idealistic. Ideas that belong anywhere but in a manual for winning a political street fight. When the truth may be that they’re indispensable. Because the laboratory that gave us Frankenstein’s monster is the culture of willful thinking and fear inherited from human-ape’s animal kingdom of ass-kissing hierarchy. From tribal herd mentality that makes a mockery of Sapiens’ so-called primacy. Governance and dominion over nature so incompetent that “Anthropocene” will be synonymous with “mass extinction.”

Conditions that don’t call for subduing the monster with popguns but for fundamental change in the way human-ape thinks. In the way that Sapiens uses its extraordinary mental faculties to solve problems. Not by corner-cutting. Not by picking up the narrative somewhere in the middle but for going back to the beginning. Because that’s where the problem lies. A call for getting it right by doing it right. From the bottom up in logical sequence, one step at a time. Aligning with the way things are instead of demanding that they be what a willful two-year-old wants them to be.

A start toward fixing what’s broken

The suggestions that follow take aim at critical mental flaws propping up a culture of self-centered infantile arrogance and fear. Sapiens’ perversion of ape-world hierarchy responsible for this monster and every other one known to history. This one “strength” hoping to be recognized as the heir-apparent of Adolf Hitler, the apogee of human-ape evolution in reverse. The master will of terror. The means by which election 2024’s monster intends to consolidate and wield unlimited power.

X suspicion. Trust enables the beholder freed from suspicion to do its part for Sapiens’ cause: by learning how to free itself from the distractions of self-unawareness in its magic kingdom of hierarchy. So it can help the dream’s dreamer, the one Mind-Child, correct its mistakes in logical sequence, one at a time.

X “savior” Starting with letting go of the idea of “savior.” By understanding that in loving friendship with Guidance from Definition, Choice will free itself. By taking back responsibility and accountability for consequences willed by magic into a lurid image of guilt, sacrifice, and victimhood on a cross.

X “self” as “tribe.” Let go of ape’s prehistoric imperative of safety and survival in “self” defined as “society,” “group,” or “tribe.” An obstruction to restoration of Self-Awareness that can only be achieved by the whole person thinking, feeling, and choosing with the integrity of independent judgement. With conscience instead of Machiavellian expedience, the “morality” of tribe.

The gift of Sapiens’ mind different from ape-brain is the gift of individuality, originality, creativity, conscience, and service. Not to be wasted on mindless conformity for the sake of tribal supremacy.

X body idolatry. Be done with body idolatry. The idea inferred from sensory perception of matter over Mind. That material objects have no need of Mind or ideas to produce them. That what can’t be detected physically can be safely ignored. Professional bias propagated by physics’ marketing genius, Stephen Hawking, buried between Newton and Darwin spinning in their graves.

X “kingdom” Jesus offered himself as brother and friend. As an equal with a perspective worth sharing rather than supremacy in any form. Had he done otherwise he would have reinforced the manipulations of willfulness, intent not on service and support but on authoritarian dominance. The antithesis of the ideal of Loving Friendship at the heart of Creation.

Mischaracterization embedded in the culture of animal hierarchy by “kingdom.” One of countless misnomers by which imposture deceives its flock and keeps Jesus the shepherd nailed to his cross. Inserted into Jesus’ story to legitimize tribal authority beyond question. Less concerned with hearing the voice of Relatability than with excuses for silencing it.

X “God” Let go of the idea that Guidance to be trusted must come from hierarchy’s “supreme being.” From “God,” another misnomer passed down by the dead hand of human-ape’s past. Better replaced by “Mind-Relationship” for the truth that its evolution began with the spontaneous combining of its two central functions: Love with Logic. Ensuring that the ideal embedded in Creation’s living constitution would be Loving Friendship rather than the willfulness of a one-sided tribal animal.

X ass-kissing. Supremacy implies hierarchy where passage from lower to higher requires character-debasing, integrity-compromising genuflection. Ass-kissing. Ape-etiquette in its kingdom of hierarchy and self-unawareness but no behavior befitting Sapiens evolving toward Self-Awareness.

A contradiction of self-governance designed for support and service to those doing the creative work and play of Creation. The ideal by which Lincoln sought to give meaning to slaughter at Gettysburg. The eternal flame that election 2024 has replaced with smoke and mirrors.

The Archetypes of Function and Their Imitators: the Olympian “Gods” of Dysfunction

Posted on November 5, 2023November 5, 2023 by David Harrison

Excerpt from unpublished essay with working title “The Perversion of the Laws of Cause and Effect and the Jokes We Play on Ourselves”

Names without function, names without meaning

In common parlance, “God” often connotes Being whose doing mainly consists of “creating” and abandoning “life” divided against itself inside a temporal-material “reality” constructed only so that it can deconstruct. Hardly worthy of “reality” or its “creator.” It further connotes Being-authority whose business is to rule its “reality” without the limits of Logic, definition, or Order, then judging, condemning, and punishing its “creations” for violating its “laws” of disorder. A self-absorbed authoritarian. A narcissist-bully that many fear but nobody could “love.”

“Heaven” often connotes not the happiness of meaningful work and loving relationships but the “happiness” of idleness. Hovering above fleecy clouds plucking harps, lounging on sandy beaches beneath palm trees, sipping mint juleps on permanent vacation with nothing to do.

A cliché that owes its absurdity to “heaven’s” missing function: meaningful work and loving relationships that really are “paradise.” Because the work to be done is the creation, affirmation, and reciprocation of Worth. In a state of Mind that’s Trust, Innocence, and Intimacy. Spontaneity — the fun of playfulness. The essence of Creativity.

“Heaven” on earth?

What is Reality-Creation but Worth itself? Relationships that work. What is the purpose of Relationships if not affirming that Life is Worth and its sharing is the affirmation and empowerment of Self? Self-Worth.

Why is “Life” on earth not “heaven?” Because it’s got purpose backwards: making unreality real instead of unmaking it. Thus affirming and empowering not the Self-Worth of Truth and Honesty but the self-worthlessness of deception and dishonesty. With relationships that don’t work. With littleness captive to “fun” and games of pointless competition; to the distraction, savagery, and depravity of violence. Of mindless, pointless, authoritarian cruelty, combat, and conquest.

The usefulness of function

Misinterpretations inevitably come about when names leave out function. The working parts of every shared venture: roles and responsibilities. Left to personalities with different perspectives and priorities to interpret, the result is incoherence and confusion. The consequence of one of our “reality’s” laws of chaos: everyone is the author of their own truth.

Reality-Creation is Purpose that requires usefulness. So, in place of “God,” the terms preferred here rely on function. Indispensability that is Mind, Self-Awareness, Consciousness, and Logic bonded with Love. That is Logic-Love, the Parents of their Child-Mind, who is of a different kind of Consciousness: Free Choice. A usefulness necessarily unique, autonomous, and also indispensable.

In place of “heaven” the terms preferred here are Reality, Creation, and Truth. Terms capitalized are of Reality-Creation. The world of Mind-archetypes and not of the dream of unreality, our material world of body-brains.

Archetypes in Reality, “gods” in unreality

Function that completes Definition uncovers Mind of more than one part, more than one function. Actors whose roles combine to explain with Logic why and how Mind-Reality came about and why and how Creation-Worth is its Purpose. And by extension why and how our dream “reality” came about. Why and how healing and awakening from the illusion of separation and the projection of guilt is our purpose.

Two impossibilities that certify the insanity of Self that is Mind split into two. The original thought of separation, formed into another impossibility that is matter by the temporal, finite energy of unconscious Mind lost in a dream. By entropy, the condition of spacetime-matter that began with a Big Bang and will end with inertia. Events that we, the actors in the dream, unknowingly re-enact with the splitting of the atom and the parody of “life” that is death. The mimicking of Child-Mind’s loss of consciousness and the “death” of Life Force that cannot die. “Events” so nonsensical and unreal that they can only be a joke.

Explanation that owes much to the Logic and intuition of Carl Jung, who added archetypes to the factual basis for psychoanalysis. For its insights, and the insights of these essays, depend on them. Not the “God” of common parlance, name without function. “Creator” of this shadowland of opposites whose “plan” can’t make sense. But archetypes who are Function. Whose roles, relationships, and stories account for the coherence and evolution of Reality-Creation in the Now. Their Selves and stories re-enacted in reverse by the gods and stories of Olympian myth and legend. In the illusion of time that can’t be Now. Projections of a split Mind whose stories we have yet to get right.

Two minds evolving into one

Explanation that also owes much to the ultimate source of intuition. To Logic and Love from a perspective not bound by the body’s five senses. Accessible through a sixth sense and shared with us by the Author of A Course in Miracles. By “Jesus,” another name like “God,” obscured by misinterpretation because it leaves function to personal bias. The function identified here as an agent of Soul.

Because Soul is Oneness without opposites that knows no boundaries. Whose function is to interconnect Everything including the self-delusions of an unconscious Mind. Free Choice that chose in error. For the impossibilities that can’t co-exist with the Possibilities of Creation are derived from them. Appearances to the contrary, even opposites can’t be separate and must be included in Everything.

It is agents of Soul, boundaryless and Innocent, who can respond through our sixth sense. Who can connect our calls for Love and Guidance to the Wisdom of Logic-Love, through the innocence, trust, and intimacy of spontaneous, loving friendship. Relationship required by its purpose, the recognition of “others” as one Mind-Self, to evolve into the intimacy of two minds thinking and feeling as one.

Best friends and soulmates

“Agent of Soul” needs to be personalized if it’s to be taken into its friend’s mind, heart, and soul. The same goes for religious equivalents like Christianity’s “Holy Spirit” and philosophy’s “muses.” If the Agent’s chosen identity is taken in by the individual’s Psyche then the choice and the timing may be right. Even better if the Guide’s identify responds to the individual’s call for Love and guidance by revealing itself.

C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces (1956) recounts the moving story of Psyche, my original Agent of Soul. My Guide and confidant who got me dialoguing, first on paper and then in my head. Until our friendship and conversations became part of everyday life. Through 26 years of dialoguing that began with, “You had a job to do and I haven’t heard back.”

When I needed help handling strong emotions, “Dobbin” responded — a simpatico sorrel draft horse, massive and beautiful. A symbol of strength, patience, and wisdom at my side for nine years. A soulmate with a reminder, that my will alone is no match for the animal in my human brain. Will driven by instinct that has no use for Mind, capable of replacing my will and turning me into an image of itself. A reminder that I am Mind, and with the strength, patience, and wisdom of its Logic and Love — with guidance from my friend Dobbin — truth will prevail.

When I needed help with understanding and healing relationships, Owen became my intimate friend and constant Guide. The son with extraordinary gifts who left this life prematurely because he couldn’t use them. Including the gift of insight, because the insights that continue to move explanation toward Understanding, that replace confusion with clarity, are gifts from our two minds working together. In friendship, toward becoming one Mind, gradually and imperceptibly. Understanding that every relationship, in this life, is a call for Love.

Personality Type Theory: the Problem of Opposites and the Lure of the “Other”

Posted on April 16, 2023April 17, 2023 by David Harrison

The spoiler

Maybe it was because she was born at the turn of the 20^th century, in 1900. Her thoughts and feelings always teetering on the edge, drawn back into the 19^th century. The glory days of the Clays of Kentucky, her ancestors — statesmen, aristocrats. That gave my mother her gift for reflection. We both liked to reflect when the meal was done. Her gaze would drift out the window, through the trees into the sky beyond, and she was gone. Lost in thought. Lost to memory.

She could have gone on forever about her childhood. In a small college town in the hills of Western Pennsylvania, her family a single working mother with an only child. Church, piano, and friends. Silliness and laughter. College football and dances at the Fort Pitt Hotel in Pittsburgh. Familiar names and faces waving back from trolleys. She knew them all. An ideal of Utopian innocence that became the Utopian innocence of my childhood. Not particularly Utopian or innocent in either case, yet transcendent.

She wouldn’t go on forever if the subject was herself. She said she was afraid of what she would find if she looked too far within. Her voice went to singsong. And then it was over. The reflections stopped. Utopian beacons of innocence OK, guilt lurking in the shadows not OK. Leave it be.

Leave everything be that’s actually interesting. About ourselves and the people in our lives. Be content instead with what’s on the surface. With trinkets and dog food. Let guilt or whatever it is smash up the furniture in the darkness unmolested. Keep your distance. Don’t be unsociable. Mustn’t shine a light. Mustn’t disturb the demon. Mustn’t intrude with the Truth.

The world of personality types unexamined

Personality type theory intrudes. With analysis that would expose the fearsome thing within clinically, objectively. Deprive it of its animal passion dispassionately. The mindless will of the beast that resides in our animal brain: allegiance to the tribe, blood and soil. Honoring the code of loyalty. Unquestioning loyalty to Plato’s Cave and its Cave-master. To its unquestioned authority.

All of it a masquerade. A farce that mocks us with its provocations for being unable or unwilling to understand it. For being afraid to go there, afraid of the Truth. For being so easily separated from all that’s dear to us by a con artist behind a silly mask. A mask that goads us into making something of nothing. Whose only weapon is the treasure that we hand over to it. The cache of powers and abilities, valuables and talents, that is us. Our identity. Our Self.

Projected in two parts into a strange new world. An alternate “reality” of body-brains divided into personality types guaranteed to keep the farce going. Into compositions of parts that take the stage each in its own costume with its own tribal insignia. Ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, function and rank, talents, tastes, predatory styles, family mythology, and more. A few revealing individuality, the rest hiding it behind uniforms with numbers. Clones marching in lockstep.

All at the ready to manage the differences without understanding “there” or how or why they got there. Without self-awareness. All at the ready not to manage the differences but to bring them into conflict. To imagine that this must be their purpose and so to throw themselves into the melee with abandon. Into chaos, the state of a world of personality types unknown, unexamined, misunderstood.

Schiller’s choice: idealism or realism

Myers-Briggs personality type theory evolved from the disciplines of philosophy and psychology. Specifically from the practice and intuition of the Swiss analytical psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961) and, before him, the ideas of the German poet, philosopher, and playwright Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). Jung’s Psychological Types (1921) is the first formulation of the basic types popularized by Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers: introvert-extravert, intuition-sensing, thinking-feeling. [Isabel Myers, Gifts Differing (1980)]

The choice presented to the observer logically takes the form of competition between two Myers-Briggs personality opposites: intuitive-reflective thinking vs. body-sensing feeling. The former inherently introverted, introspective-subjective, the latter inherently extraverted-objective. The choice is thus between types fashioned by sources whose reality resides within Mind, i.e. the world of thoughts-ideas, or in the external world of bodies-brains and other objects discernible by bodies’ senses.

Myers-Briggs captures the deep divide within the self-deluded Mind of the one Child, and therein lies the brilliance of its intuition. In the clarity of opposition between two sets of faculties, one concentrated in INTJ, the other in ESFP: introversion-reflection-thinking-judging vs. extraversion-sensing-feeling-perceiving. The former entirely mind-centered, the latter entirely body-centered, although to say that feeling can be entirely distinguished from thinking is an oversimplification. Not so but close enough.

INTJ is associated with the conscious thinking of mind that subjectifies. ESFP is associated with the unthinking will of emotion, seated in the body’s animal brain, that objectifies. INTJ is associated with the deliberation and civilizing conscience of Logic and Love that resides in mind. ESFP is associated with action and its socializing discipline seated in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. INTJ is associated with being, ESFP with doing. INTJ with right, ESFP with win. Share vs. own-possess. Affirm vs. rule. Empower from the bottom up, control from the top down. Individual Worth vs. group-tribal supremacy.

The choice is between “idealism” and “realism,” two irreconcilable worlds described by Schiller as “. . . an opposition which is responsible for the fact that no work of the mind and no deed of the heart can make a decisive success with one class, without thereby drawing upon it a condemnation from the other. This opposition is, without doubt, as old as the beginning of culture. . . .” [quoted in C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (Must Have Books 2019, p. 168)].

Personality type is bias.

The mind that imagines itself to be above the fray, objective, dispassionate, and so qualified to heal the separation, only adds to the turmoil. Personality type sitting in judgment of personality types is a fool. The bias of personality type compromises the Logic of explanation. Turns discussion among friends into debate among competitors.

Plato’s virtuous philosopher who blunders into the Cave may view himself as Truth-bearing sunlight, but to the menagerie of personality types within he’s just another personality type. Who happens to be Truth-bearing sunlight, but who asked for Truth? Who wants sunlight? They don’t or they wouldn’t be there. If the houselights need to be turned up on their fun, their delusion, it’ll happen when someone gets around to it.

So let the author confess and maybe we can get on with it. Let the reader put whatever the author has to say into context where it might add to understanding instead of misunderstanding. Are you eager to listen or itching to retaliate? In either case it could be because I’m an introvert. An intuitive-thinking-judging introvert. Either the thoughtful, compassionate, accessible, respectful, lovable INTJ or the moralizing, superior, elitist, aloof, interventionist, hated INTJ. All depends on your point of view. On your personality type. If you see me as one or the other it would be because I am one or the other.

Fetch!

How does my bias affect my judgment? According to Jung, the American philosopher William James (1842-1910) “was the first to indicate . . . the extraordinary importance of temperament in the shaping of philosophical thinking,” and what James noticed was that the idealist and “empiricist” (realist) “believes the other to be inferior to itself.” [quoted in Jung, op. cit. 373-374).

I, the idealist, believe that “realists” are fools. Chasing after material objects their senses detect without realizing that they’re playing fetch. Without realizing that the objects are their own tail, put there by their own bodies’ senses, directed by their own corrupted minds. Being chased for a purpose: so they’ll make fools of themselves. So their easily distractable minds won’t realize that they’re canines on a leash. And the figure at the other end of the leash is amusing itself at their expense. Keeping them from the Truth: that it, their bodies, and their fascinating material universe, are an illusion. Action-comics escapist nonsense. A flimsy, one-dimensional joke that I find genuinely amusing when it isn’t horrifying. This is how my temperament affects my judgment.

One or the “other”?

Delving within to uncover the mysteries of the human Psyche with personality type theory has another drawback besides bias. It implicitly reinforces a lie. One of the central pillars that hold up an entire edifice of lies, the alternate “reality” that we call home. “Life” on “earth,” each an illusion. The premise that we are isolated-separated bodies with brains inhabiting a material world of objects organic and inorganic. A world of interaction among individual selves and “others.” An illusion because it’s a logical impossibility. It can’t be.

The designation of personality types for purposes of analysis necessarily objectifies them. It recognizes them as “others” separate from our one ancestral mind when logically there can only be one ancestral Mind. A Mind that metaphysics tells me is a Child. The Child of Parents who reside in Reality linked to our alternate “reality” by a sequence of cause and effect.

A Child who was given a critical role in Creation: the role of Free Choice. Who lost consciousness and mistook its own shadow-opposite for a separate self. Who was thereby misled into projecting a perverted version of itself into an alternate “reality” — the dream that is our material world — to escape Reality. Who must now pass through this world to gain maturity and the competence to perform its role. Who must, with the help of its projections — us — regain Consciousness.

The underlying Reality

If humanity is to do its part it can’t repeat the Child’s mistake. It must recognize that Reality is one Child-Mind and there are no “others.” It must stop objectifying its own dark side as an “other.” And it must stop making its own dark side and the dark sides of “others” real by projecting unwanted, painful aspects of itself onto “others.”

Unless personality type analysis recognizes the underlying Reality of one ancestral Mind, one Child, at the outset; unless it takes a position against objectifying any type as an “other,” it will be misunderstood. It will perpetuate the cycle of misperception and misjudgment instead of achieving its purpose: to break the cycle with Understanding.

Myers=Briggs doesn’t inquire into its origin in metaphysics. It doesn’t ask or explain why or how it came about beyond the study of human psychology within the physical environment defined by sensory perception — humanity’s “reality.” Beyond spontaneous insights from humanity’s sixth sense, the voice that can’t be silenced. These are my speculations. Myers-Briggs stands on the accuracy of its formulation — on how well it aligns with subjective experience and perception. That is, on whether it makes sense and delivers results, and it does.

The nature of feeling

There are two types of feeling, one that’s an essential part of thinking, the other that’s opposed to thinking. Values required for evaluation are rooted in feeling, and evaluation is required for reasoning that supports the choices and decisions of judgment. Logic and Love can’t function independently and neither can thinking-reasoning and feeling-evaluation. For the same reason: one completes the other. To be a thinking type in the Myers-Briggs sense would be to limit judgment to quantitative measurements without input from subjective values, the incomplete “reasoning” of a machine. If personality type categories are to represent complete human functions then thinking requires feeling.

The brain’s amygdala — our animal-reptilian brain — is a source of unevolved emotion that ties back to pre-human ancestors and also to tribal-predatory passion. Which makes it a source for body-sensing’s feeling-sensation and reasoning-evaluation both. Yet it makes more sense for this source to be associated with the body-sensing type than the mind-centered thinking type. Animal will is notoriously opposed to thinking. It’s the cherished ideal of those who march in lock step to the force of “nature.” To the Triumph of the Will over all opposition. Body-sensing types opposed to thinking.

The 5-Factor theory: Myers-Briggs in reverse

Albert Einstein once observed that scientists aren’t strong in Logic. Logic is the faculty of Mind that enables analysis; that in turn fits parts together in logical order to form explanation; that in turn enables understanding. Its function is to establish purpose and meaning from the baseline condition. To establish context, not to reason what to do about it which is a separate faculty of Mind.

A good illustration of Einstein’s observation is the so-called “5-Factor” theory of personality type. The theory and its five factors — extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism — claim scientific legitimacy by its use of quantitative measurements. As if this alone legitimizes its “quest for knowledge.” It can’t if their accuracy and relevance to the subject are open to question. Quantitative measurements can’t be any more conducive to legitimacy than the qualitative analysis that went into the other theory. Not if the subject is forces beyond the observable universe that shape the human Psyche.

The difference between the two theories is the difference between mind-centric and body-centric. Specifically the difference between the qualitative intuition of subjectivity which can’t be verified by sensory perception and quantitative measurements which can. The Logic of the Myers-Briggs types is based on the empirical practice of psychology as well as the a priori Logic of philosophy. Both solid analytical ground for their subject. To suggest that the 5-Factor theory is more “scientific” for being quantitative is to demean any analysis that can’t be quantitative.

Spontaneous intuition plays a prominent part in every field; science included. Intuition couldn’t have played a part in the 5-Factor theory if Jung and Myers-Briggs came first. What did play a part was retaliation: the definition of an alternate theory by its opposite. Which is all that the 5-Factor theory is: not original thinking from anywhere but a copycat version of Myers-Briggs in reverse. The difference between the two theories is the difference between sense and nonsense.

A manifesto of tribal dominance

What are its “factors” but a transparent ploy by bias? To redirect humanity’s self-identity away from the possibility of mind-awareness and individuality suggested by the intuition of Myers-Briggs back toward the body-awareness and collectivity of the herd. Back toward “nature:” the beast swinging from trees. What are the five factors but deceptions:

“Extraversion” that leaves out introversion would make of introversion an unnamed, unrecognized subset of itself. The “logic” of which can only be numbers that confirm that, yes, there are more extraverts than introverts. And so extraverts “win” and whoever “wins” dominates. The law of the animal will. Numbers deployed in service to the irrational.
“Agreeability” is sociability required by tribal conformity that triumphs over independent judgment required by individual character, honesty, and integrity. Agreeability is smiling, ass-kissing obeisance to authority, superficiality that masks its mindless animal will. Incapable of trusting or being trusted. Positive on the surface, something very different underneath.
“Openness” is the pose of inclusiveness and accessibility adopted by sensory perception. “Open” in the exhilaration of discovery to the world of its five senses, closed to the Logic and Love of Understanding, purpose and meaning, from its sixth sense. The triumph of matter and senselessness over mind and sense. Of body-sensing over mind-intuition.
“Conscientiousness” is the tribe’s self-congratulatory feeling for its own: tenderness toward its children and specialness toward its members. Set off against the unfeeling that it directs toward “others,” the competition: indifference, insensitivity and cruelty, rage and hatred. Self-justification, the false innocence of helpless victimhood that masks harmfulness and guilt. The absence of Love.
“Neuroticism” is psychosis — detachment from reality — that affirms the root of psychological pain not in Mind corrupted by self-delusion but in neurons of the brain contaminated by chemicals. That would relegate any dissent from independent judgment against the unquestioned authority of “agreeability” to the status of mental illness.

The 5-Factor theory is five values shared and reinforced by tribe. A manifesto of tribal identity over one Self, supremacy over other tribes, and dominance over individuals. Crushing the spirit out of individuality, the atrocity that is authoritarian supremacy and the global threat to democracy and world order. The opposite of science’s vaunted objectivity and anything but “conscientious.” It is the work of a con artist. A farce.

The 5-Factor theory’s real intent

If there is bias in the choice between theories it is the bias of personality type that’s built into the claim of every field whether “subjective” or “objective.” Mine is the bias of the INTJ type. But the so-called “more scientific” theory has its own bias: the extraverted objective body-sensing feeling type. Which accounts for Einstein’s observation that Logic is not the strong suit of scientists: they’re letting bodies’ senses dominate their “thinking” instead their minds. Instead of mind over matter they put their faith in matter over mind. A logical absurdity.

The 5-Factor theory may present itself as an alternative to the idealist Jung / Myers-Briggs theory but the realist’s actual intent is to replace it. Their opposition is part of a larger philosophical divide that’s been with us forever and may go on forever so long as realists cling to their five senses and fear their sixth.

Myers-Briggs is on solid ground

It bears repeating that the mindset of science is grounded in the religion of sensory perception. In the unquestioned supremacy of the body’s senses — taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound — to establish the baseline condition. Thereby denying any but a tangential role for the sixth sense of intuition. For a perspective not grounded in sensory perception that our sixth sense routinely reminds us is there. Which makes of science not a mindset grounded in Logic but in professional and institutional bias as irrational as any it’s had to deal with from its ancient enemy, the Church.

It bears repeating that personality type theory that’s grounded in the Logic of mind-centered philosophy, corroborated by the practice and intuition of analytical psychology, is on far more solid ground, more accurate and more to be trusted, than theory that relies on the quantitative measurements of a body-centered science that distrusts the intuition and Logic of Mind.

Captive to the dark lord of the body

Freudian psychoanalysis was earthbound. Centered on physiological causes of behavior termed “neurotic” because neurons — brain chemistry — explained it. Freud’s protégé, Carl Jung, broke with his mentor to look elsewhere, into what mind had to reveal about the condition of the human Psyche instead of mindless, procreative urges of the body. The distinction between mind- and body-centered psychology brought about a seismic shift in orientation away from humanity identified with tribes, disciplined by the conformity of belonging, to humanity identified with individuals liberated, enabled, and empowered by family.

The shift didn’t go far enough to liberate Jung from an earthbound perspective. But turning away from the body’s five senses to mind’s sixth sense did liberate others who followed his lead. The lead of a personality type now flooded with insights into what caused his seismic break with Freud: the baffling difference in their personality types that impeded communication and understanding and yet accounted for a remarkable intuitive grasp of moving parts that make up the personality. The psychological equivalent of physics breaking down the atom, opening up a new world of possibilities for analysis and discovery. Not without resistance, because even though analysis guided by Logic-Love from the sixth sense has made inroads, every field remains captive to the tyranny of the five senses. To the dark lord of the body.

“Fate” isn’t happenstance.

Hence the appearance of body-centered competition with Jung’s mind-centered personality type theory. The 5-Factor system that matches the number of senses that produced it. Beginning with “agreeability” that, like the other components has but one overriding purpose: to pull humanity’s identity back from the Jung / Myers-Briggs system’s focus on the individuality to tribe. Because this is how the mind of one Child corrupted by its opposite, Child-the-many, views itself. Not as an individual but as a group. Not as an individual with self-awareness and Free Choice, guided by deliberation, but as an animal-herd willed by instinct, driven by emotion.

It’s a mistake to think that because evolution seems to progress by happenstance that it’s not willed by mind. It is willed by mind but in a state that’s captive to delusion. And it’s for us, its projections inhabiting a mad dream, with guidance from Logic-Love, to help break the cycle of happenstance, restore order, and bring it back to Reality.

The captivity is intentional. Whether we are aware of it or not. It is willed by Mind in a state that’s not functioning properly. That’s corrupted — out of its mind. And the will that won’t allow us to understand who we are, that insists that we can’t be individuals supported by family, that we can only be tribes forcing their members into conformity, competing with one another for dominance, destroying one another in a mad quest to rule without opposition, to eliminate competition, is anything but happenstance. Is anything but the accidents and mistakes that define evolution as we know it. It’s purposeful. And when it shows up in the guise of “agreeability,” all good-guy likability and humor, it does not wish us well. It means to keep us captive to what it is and all that it is: self-delusion. Mistaken identity. The idea that we are who and what we aren’t: our opposites.

The only “factors” that matter: Logic and Love

By abandoning the straits of physiology in Freudian psychology Jung’s sixth sense took a first step toward accessing another perspective. The perspective of Logic-Love that never left the Mind that’s mistaken. The perspective that never deluded itself into mistaken identity. That recognizes us only for who we are and not for who we aren’t. And offers the choice of a guide who has no intention of anything but our freedom to grow and create as we will, according to our own unique gifts and our own individuality. Individuality that Jung’s intuition with personality types can now be managed not for the purpose of service to warring animal tribes but in service to Creativity — the order and harmony of Logic inseparable from Love.

This is the context of Jung’s insights and the personality type theory that evolved into Myers-Briggs. This is the context, too, of the body-centered so-called “scientific” 5-Factor theory that means to replace it. That’s doing the bidding not of science but of self-delusion. The only “factors” that matter are Logic and Love.

Why opposites?

Logic-Love says everything in Reality-Creation must have a definition that defines what it is and what it does. So that it can be known and recognized by Logic-Love, the gatekeepers to Reality-Creation responsible for fitting all its constituents together. In logical harmony or order, which means without contradiction.

The definition of anything except Oneness logically implies the existence in some form of its opposite. If one thing must exist then why not its opposite? A question that Logic-Love can’t wave away because it’s inconvenient. Or because it spoils perfection if perfection is a state of rest where there are no more implications of Logic to pursue, no more connections and relationships of Love to be made. Where Energy has no more work to do. In short, where there is no point to Reality-Creation and so what can it do but shut down.

Why Free Choice?

Eternal Peace — a state of impossibility so long as Mind / Logic-Love exists. Since it, too, is defined by what it does as well as by what it is. Since Reality-Creation is both what it is and what it does. Everything under the laws of cause and effect, the Force of Necessity: Reality-Creation is Worth and has Worth because it earns Worth. “Worth” that can’t come about any other way. Thus there can be no Being without Doing. Observing, thinking, feeling, or judging without acting.

The notion of “heaven” as eternal peace, where all is at rest and nothing happens, is the flip side of the notion that we are where the “action” is. Because we aren’t at rest. We’re in eternal conflict and therefore something must be “happening.” Both sides of an absurd notion equally deluded, equally mistaken.

The original circumstance that calls for Logic-Love to define with meaning and purpose was and is itself. Where we come from: Worth. We have Worth because we are Worth. And the affirmation, enablement, and empowerment of Worth by Free Choice is our mission whether we are one Child-Mind functioning with Free Choice unimpaired in orderly Creation or the appearance of many body-brains trying to function with Free Choice messed with in a disorderly dream.

Why it’s hard to understand.

The relationship that emerges between opposites and Reality-Creation is a strange one that’s baffled the best minds down through the ages. It’s hard to grasp that opposites can’t co-exist with Reality-Creation when it’s also true that they’re a necessary part of it. It’s hard to grasp:

when the explanation involves one Mind, one Consciousness, that performs two distinct functions that would contradict one another if they overlapped and thereby un-define all of Reality-Creation.
When one of these functions cannot encounter error and exist in a state of unconsciousness while the other can.
When the second function must operate on a lower plane of Creation since it and its plane are extensions of the first. Inferior to the superior in line of authorship-succession but not in line of control since neither superior nor inferior has anything to do with control.
When the second function encounters the parasite that is its opposite in a state of unconsciousness, deludes itself into reversing roles, and imagines that it has projected itself into a world opposite to Reality-Creation.
When the alternate “reality” is our world made “real” by Energy, the source of matter and the agent of Mind. And now the agent of its opposite, an illusionist. The enabler of a magician’s act meant to perpetuate its world of opposites. Our self-delusion.

The mother of injustice

“Control” is misperception of the laws of cause and effect of Reality-Creation, backed by the Force of Necessity, to which Mind itself and all of its definitions are subject. Think of the “Force” in Star Wars without the rule of absolute authority dispensed arbitrarily from the top down. Applied instead from the bottom up at the direction of Logic and Love in enablement and empowerment of Creation instead of itself.

Otherwise Reality-Creation is distinguished not by the presence of control but by its complete absence. A Truth that the collective mind of humanity, corrupted by its captivity to control, finds virtually impossible to grasp. A Truth that accounts for virtually every injustice known to history including the crucifixion: misperception of authority and misjudgment in its application. Injustice that breeds animal rage and hatred and accounts for history’s turn, time and again, to conflict to assuage it.

The authority of making sense

I know of one source in literature that provides a coherent, comprehensive context for understanding opposites. For understanding how they’re reconciled in Reality-Creation by both Logic and Love. Fragments have shown up here and there: notably Parmenides’ metaphysics, the Truth implied by the miracles of Jesus taught by the Gnostic Christian Valentinus, and Advaita Vedanta Hinduism. Otherwise, it’s not from Laozi’s Tao, Siddhartha Gautama’s Buddhism, Hinduism’s Upanishads, classical philosophy, biblical Christianity, or anything “new age.”

It’s A Course in Miracles, metaphysics taught by a source that appears to be Jesus but isn’t biblical Christianity. The name given to its author may not matter in any case so long as it’s an agent of Soul. Authenticated not by any earthly affiliation, by any ideology, philosophy, or religion, but by the authority of Logic and Love. By making sense. The “authority” that gave the life of Jesus resonance and the Course too.

How and where opposites are resolved

What to do with opposites is resolved by the one possibility in Reality-Creation of a state where opposites may “exist” without contradicting it: the state of a Mind that has consciousness but isn’t defined by it, so that it can lose consciousness and still be what it is. If Mind / Logic-Love is Consciousness by definition then it can’t lose consciousness. But if it extends itself to produce a Child-Mind with a different function that it Free Choice, then its extension is given a different definition that can’t be Consciousness. It’s Free Choice that has consciousness that can be lost and still exist.

And in this state of existence without consciousness, a mind, as we well know, can dream anything. Anything it wants, where what it wants lies beyond awareness and may include opposites. Opposites that now “exist” but only in a dream where they can’t contradict Reality-Creation. Where they can’t have any real consequences, and so the issue of what to do with opposites is resolved.

The one thing is Real by virtue of Parent-Mind Conscious; the other is unreal by virtue of Child-Mind unconscious. A state of Reality-Creation Parent-Mind Consciousness plus unreality Child-unconsciousness we can call “Everything.” A state held together by the attribute of Parent Mind-Consciousness that is the Interconnectedness of Soul-Energy. The attribute of Being or Oneness that is the unique state of Innocence without opposites. Soul-Energy that can embrace Everything because it knows no boundaries. Because it is its own enforcer: Energy, the Force of Necessity. And therefore it alone is impervious to the contradictions of opposites.

The engine of awakening

All attributes of Parent-Mind that is Logic-Love. Our best friend in our world of illogic, fear, guilt, and hatred. That’s accessible through the gift of Mind that is, thankfully, our sixth sense. The sense that one unconscious Child-Mind corrupted by its opposite, dreaming that it’s many animal-brains trapped in their five senses, fears for the end that it can bring to the dream. To the self-delusion that Child-Mind is its opposite.

How can Child-Mind restore sanity? Not by Logic-Love, its Parents, waving a magic wand for this would end Free Choice and their Child along with it. Not by sending a “savior” to do what Free Choice must do for itself. But by helping with explanation that leads to Understanding accessible to projections in the dream when they liberate themselves from captivity to their body-brains’ five senses. When they learn to listen to an agent of Soul through their sixth sense that connects them to Logic-Love, Child-Mind’s source.

That could never interfere with Free Choice by coercion, intrusion, or captivity of any kind but can guide with Logic-Love when asked. Because Relationship between Parent-Child has existed since the Growth of Creation when the Child was born. It can never be broken, and guidance is part of what it does. It’s the engine of Creation, and now that Child-Mind has lost consciousness it must be the engine of its awakening. Healing the separation.

Which will it be?

We can’t do what we’re here for without Relationship between Parent-Child. We don’t “exist” alone. Like the inorganic stuff of the dream we are “relational.” We only “exist” in relationship. Not with one another but with Logic-Love through one another: the understanding that our one ancestral Mind only exists in Relationship with its Parents and therefore its projections in the dream can only “exist” in relationship with the same Parents. Whether we choose to be aware of it or not.

Carl Jung’s and Myers-Briggs’ contributions to personality type theory start from appearances and let us follow theirs and our sixth sense beyond. To connect with the source of their intuition and ours that can lead us, if we let it, not into troubled encounters with others but through them to the Truth of reconciliation beyond. Get it right with Logic-Love and we do our part to help Child-Mind awaken. Get it wrong and we continue on our path to a “paradise” of “action” in a universe of violence. Which will it be?

Can One Personality Type Help Its Opposite Grow?

Posted on March 31, 2023March 31, 2023 by David Harrison

Isabel’s theory

Isabel Myers’ theory of personality types* says the answer to the question posed by this essay is yes. In theory one individual can coach a personality opposite in the use of faculties that his or her type typically underutilizes. In the example addressed here those would be introspection, reflection-intuition, thinking-reasoning, feeling-evaluation, and judging (INTJ), faculties typically under-utilized by the opposite type extravert, sensing, feeling, and perceptive (ESFP).

According to Isabel’s theory the faculties that make up our types are preferences, and since they’re largely responsible for performance it’s only a matter of preference whether we improve our performance by making better use of them, specifically by expanding into faculties associated with our opposites. This must happen routinely, for example when circumstances compel perceptives who prefer to experience life in the moment to use their judging faculty to plan ahead. What seems less likely is that any type would seek help from an opposite to gain competence with the opposite’s faculties.

Isabel’s theory is intriguing nonetheless, not just because it makes sense but because, if it could be put into general practice it would help with personal growth and better relations. How often do relationships and projects come apart because personalities lack the will or ability to share what they’re experiencing? Because, lacking a feel for other types, they blunder unintentionally into misjudgments that end goodwill and cooperation.

One faculty too many

The ideal setting assumed by Isabel’s theory would be two individuals with opposite personality types in cheerful collaboration. Two opposite types could be the best of friends, and if they are one might even welcome the other’s kindness. But what if the type being coached senses that the other is turning him into a copy of himself? Is manipulating preferences to assume control over the relationship?

It would be remarkable if even an individual crippled by ineptness with under-utilized faculties were aware of it. Or, if he were, comfortable exposing his ineptness to an opposite type for strengthening unless the other were already a trusted personal friend or a paid professional. Our personality types and how we go about relating to them are our psychological underwear. By a certain age we’re partial to our preferences. We don’t take change lightly if it can just as easily create distance as close it. Perhaps help with one or two faculties won’t feel like a humbling makeover, but what if help is needed with three or four?

Guides locking horns

Isabel’s theory would still be feasible in the right moment for the right relationships. That is, if they’re the only voices in the room. But what if one or both is self-consciously submitting its judgment — the product of its Judging faculty — to guidance from another voice? What if “opposites” are not only opposite faculties but opposite guides? The individual might be the soul of agreeability but not if his guide recoils at being sidelined by an opposite guide. By the competition. By the enemy if the guides represent opposite takes on the values of moral character or competitive prowess.

We may have begun not with John Locke’s tabula rasa but with Carl Jung’s psychological types locked and loaded for combat. Which means there could be four voices in the room to manage instead of two. There could even be a situation where two plus two doesn’t equal four. Where the guides of one or both have become so involved in shaping their personalities that the boundary between self and guide is obliterated. Two plus two could now equal three or only two. Two individuals with opposite personality types who consciously or subconsciously identify with their guides. Guides who themselves are personality types with their own faculties and preferences. Committed to blocking their host from even detecting another voice let alone listening to it.

Two models of authority

The mind’s faculty of sixth sense or Intuition that led to the theory of psychological-personality types presupposes a quasi-professional setting where self-analysis can be conducted objectively and safely. Where both parties are open to faculties of mind — introspection, reflection, reasoning, evaluation, and judging. But if one or both has identified with will instead of mind to direct behavior, for the very reason that its perceived strength compensates for weakness, then self-analysis isn’t an option. It will be strenuously opposed. The type who identifies with will won’t want anything to do with it because of its purpose: to overturn the iron rule of mindless will with the civilizing governance of mind.

The theory of personality type opposites has then strayed into the great divide in human thought and behavior: between the “realist” model of authority that deifies rule without opposition from the top down — the authoritarian “triumph of the will” that crushes individuality and free choice — and the democratic ideal of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address: governance from the bottom up that cultivates and respects individuality and free choice. Absolute authority, a mythical beast, vs. the indomitable spirit of freedom. Not absolute freedom without limits that’s another mythical beast but freedom of thought, expression, and choice that recognizes the necessity of Order in a shared world.

Respect for Free Choice

Personality types in the grip of either of these impossibilities — absolute authority or absolute freedom — will treat self-analysis as an existential threat because it threatens self-delusion, the state of mind of anyone lost to nonsense. All that can be done to rescue mind from captivity, with Isabel’s theory, is to coach an empty room, record the attempt, and leave it to the spontaneity of intuition to bring it to its host’s attention. That is, when the beast has let down its guard. When its host decides with his own intuition, on his own, to exercise his indomitable Free Choice.

It’s all an act

Alternate “reality” is an intentional act of self-delusion by Child-Mind, disabled and disempowered by unconsciousness, corrupted by misidentity with its own shadow, the code that defines its opposite, the Joker-magician. Which makes alternate “reality” an act. A performance by a magician. A magic act meant to hypnotize and captivate with its “entertainments:” hilarious perversions of Truth and horrifying perversions of Justice. All of it an impossibility that can’t be taken seriously. Adding the lure of magic and retribution — the consummation of victimhood — to the lures of the absolutes: authority and freedom. The lure of “fun.”

Plato’s Cave would then be a stage and its occupants play-acting puppets. Like the actors in the Truman TV Show, some so deluded, so closely identified with the Cave master, that they think they’re the producer. The occupants would then resist Truth because it would turn up the house lights. It would ruin the atmospherics of darkness, disembodied voices, laughter and screams, flames and flickering shadows — the smoke and mirrors required to sustain illusion and fend off disbelief. It would expose the trick and stop the show. It would take away everyone’s “fun,” and, make no mistake, they think this is fun. So long as it’s “others” who are at the wrong end of violence and retribution they’re living the dream.

The boredom of “fun”

The Cave and its magic act are the production of a split Mind that’s Free Choice as well as corrupted. Its occupants may be deluded and confused, but given direction and incentive, they’re capable of folding the show on their own. The Mind that was lured into the Cave still retains the faculty of Intuition. The portal to spontaneous insights and understanding that is the sixth sense, that can neither be blocked entirely nor indefinitely. From awareness of an incentive to stop pretense more powerful by far than the magician’s lures: the will to Freedom. The indispensable function of Free Choice. Somewhere in the back of their minds is the memory of Free Choice and the ability to reclaim it. Whenever they choose.

When “fun” isn’t fun anymore. When Pete Hamill looked down at his drink and realized he was done with it. Done with the drinking life and its one-dimensional comic book “reality.” Done with “Brooklyn.” Done with adolescence, taverns, street fights, and mock comradeship. Ready to live a life with intimacy, maturity and responsibility, talent and creativity. Ready to have fun.**

The delusion then isn’t fully a delusion. It’s a self-willed adventure-fantasy conjured by adolescence to get into mischief with impossibilities. With dangerous toys in a shallow make-believe world. A universe of scary objects like black holes that fascinates with its vastness, complexity, violence, and pointlessness. All to avoid Reality mischaracterized by the Joker as boring.***

Bubbles within a bubble

Preoccupied with its production, the Cave’s fantasy troupe is inaccessible to anyone but its own members. It can’t be concerned with consequences beyond the show that must go on. And if any of its members carry the fantasy into their own lives; if they choose to live an adventure-fantasy, they, too, will be inaccessible.

For what will their lives be but re-enactments? Mimicking the Joker-corrupted Mind’s projection of an alternate reality. Monkey-see, monkey-do. Dragooning family and friends into playing scripted parts to keep the act alive. The wishful thought that action-comic impossibilities are possible: fantastic characters, hair-raising encounters, nonstop “action.” To keep themselves persuaded that it’s “real.” To keep the “fun” going at all costs. At the cost of wholesale disrespect for character, honesty and integrity, individuality and creativity. Their own and the captives to their adolescent, senseless will.

What will their lives be but alternate realities within an alternate “reality.” Bubbles within a bubble. Detached from reality. Wholly out of touch.

Persuasion from a leash correction

An adolescent Child’s corrupted mind intentionally “choosing” self-delusion was an act of wrongdoing and so is its re-enactment. While the Cave’s troupe gets around to stopping the show it might motivate them if individual re-enactments in our midst receive a leash correction. The correction administered to untrained dogs by leashes when they race off in pursuit of prey. They learn that the costs of misadventure can’t all be displaced onto others with impunity. That there’s a price to pay — a dose of Reality.

What then is Isabel’s contribution? An intelligent analytical approach to the problem posed by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave that complements leash correction. That will work beautifully someday when its light reaches the occupants of the Cave not from without but from within. When they tire of delusion and choose of their own free will to work toward self-awareness instead. With help from Intuition’s gift: respect for Free Choice and the Logic and Love of explanation that leads to Understanding.

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*Gifts Differing (Consulting Psychologists Press 1980) based on Carl Jung’s Psychological Types (Must Have Books 2019)
**A Drinking Life (Little, Brown 1994)
***Jerry L. Martin, God: An Autobiography (as Told to a Philosopher) (Caladium Publishing Company 2020)

Whither Goest Thou? Reflections on the Missions of Institutions Devoted to A Course in Miracles and the Work of its Teacher Kenneth Wapnick

Posted on March 17, 2023March 20, 2023 by David Harrison

Tao reveals itself differently to each individual, according to his own nature. The man of deeds, for whom kindness and the love of his fellow man are supreme, discovers the tao of cosmic events and calls it supreme kindness — ‘God is love.’ The contemplative man, for whom calm wisdom is supreme, discovers the tao of the universe and calls it supreme wisdom. The common people live from day to day, continually borne and nourished by tao, but they know nothing of it; they see only what meets the eye. For the way of the superior man, who sees not only things but the tao of things, is rare. The tao of the universe is indeed kindness and wisdom; but essentially tao is also beyond kindness and wisdom. . . . [T]his life-giving activity [growth], to which all things owe their existence, is something purely spontaneous. . . . [T]ao is omnipresent; everything that exists, exists in and through it. [The I Ching or Book of Changes, Bollingen Series XIX (Princeton University Press 1950, pp. 298-299]

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Trust and Relationship begin with Fact

Jesus informs us in A Course in Miracles that we have the choice when to learn its lesson but not whether, as though it could not possibly change or be changed. As though it were cast in concrete, and yet he also informs us that it is not a “bible.” He cautions us not to treat it as the holy Word of God, absolute Truth with which to condemn and reject all who fail to accept it. Why not if he means what he says: we’re screwed if we don’t comply? All that is in the Course, that focuses on the darkness within the human Psyche, the pain and anguish of guilt, is explanation meant for us to understand just how badly screwed we already are.

Though they concentrate on why the Course cannot be a bible the reflections that follow cannot imply that its lesson can be ignored. Why? Because the laws of cause and effect emanate from circumstances. That in their constellations change but in their individual parts may not change. For these are the stuff with which the purpose and meaning of their compositions, their contexts, is revealed. This is where the Force of Necessity comes from, not their explanation or interpretation but from fact.

The works of Logic and Love in Relationship with their Child, Free Choice, that make up Creation, are part of evolution but not the facts of Reality they’re based on. The Force of Logic and Love depends upon it, for this is the immutable Rule of Law that applies to Logic and Love as to everything else. That gives them their legitimacy. That enables and empowers Trust essential to all Relationships in Reality. Fact.

Uncompromising Fact that can’t be ignored

It is fact that cannot be ignored in the lesson of the Course that takes away choice. The fact that Kenneth Wapnick, its teacher, refers to as its “uncompromising non-dualism.” Uncompromising because the human condition is defined by its unreality. Because it derives its state from the condition of our ancestral Mind, the Child: its unconsciousness. If the state of Child-Mind is defined by its unconsciousness, that cannot be part of Reality defined by Consciousness, that cannot evolve, then we, projections in its dream, are also in a state of unconsciousness. In a state of unreality.

There cannot be dual realities. Only one can be Real. Though Jesus has promised never to leave us “comfortless” he can’t do it by denying fact. The denial of fact is the stock-in-trade of the Child’s self-delusion, the magician that is the error we, projections of Free Choice, must freely choose to correct. Detectable by no more obvious attribute than its dexterity with untruth, the sleight of hand of illusion, the lies of deception. “Making it up as it goes along.”

Form that must change, content that cannot change

How we approach our task, how we apply the lesson, will vary from individual to individual. And so it compounds error to treat the Course that was addressed to two individuals, two personalities, in their time and place, as holy writ for us in our personalities, our time and place. It won’t fit. And if the task of governance is to fit in harmony it will be a violation of Logic and Love who govern in harmony.

The form of the lesson must change even if its content can’t. Our alternate “reality” is unreal. Fact.

The Course is an act of Logic and Love

The business end of Mind in Reality is its two main components Logic and Love, whose function is to source everything necessary for the Worth of Creation. Everything under the law: the laws of cause and effect that stand for the values of Logic and Love, wisdom and compassion. Maintained in place by the Authority of the Interconnectedness of Soul that is Innocence without opposites and by the Authority of Truth that is Necessity empowered by Energy — Force under the direction of benevolence, the Logic and Love of governance. Of Mind.

A Course in Miracles is an act of Mind, one part Logic, the other part Love. Each part a set of functions designed to help the unconscious Child to regain Consciousness through its projections. Through the minds and hearts of the occupants of an alternate “reality” when doing so doesn’t interfere with Free Choice.

Minds and hearts corrupted by the code that defines the Child’s opposite, its shadow. Impossibility that is unreality. The unreal code that is the opposite of Logic and Love, wisdom and compassion. The opposite of Mind, a reversion to unthinking will and emotion, instinct and action that distinguish uncivil animal from civil animal. From human. That conjure within Mind unconscious the uniquely human animal. A horror of insanity composed of impossibilities: absolute authority, absolute freedom, and absolute truth. The same impossibilities that lured unconscious Child into its dream of an alternate “reality” and now lure it toward self-destruction. The “triumph of the will” that is the Child’s shadow-code, a magician. Self-delusion.

The force of the tribe

The act of Mind that is A Course in Miracles gains traction toward the Child’s awakening from self-delusion through equal emphasis on its two main parts: Logic and Love. Emphasis that necessarily contends in unreality with resistance and opposition to both. With an authoritarian mindset deluded by absolutes into specialness: thought and feeling concentrated on itself. The shadow authoritarian ideal: self without opposites, a perversion of the Innocence of Psyche-Soul without opposites.

The pull of specialness in unreality interferes with the Course’s application by shifting its emphasis in two ways: from Logic to Love and from Love that is feeling that shares to its opposite, feeling that monopolizes. From feeling-inclusive to feeling-exclusive. Feeling that is Worth to feeling that is worthlessness.

The force behind specialness that works its will is the force of the tribe, the human version of animal-herd. The invention of the human authoritarian mindset that degenerates into mob psychology: a herd of enraged humans feeling and acting by mindless instinct as one. The force that interferes is sociability. The pretense of “oneness” enforced by the rules of going along to get along. Present in every human tribal activity, for it is the main function of brain distinct from Mind.

For the Love of Truth and Honesty

Brain whose self-identity is tribe. Whose task is tribal dominance by act of predatory animal will domesticated by sociability. Pretense that is likability, niceness, and pleasantness, that is until the inevitable conflict and civility gives way to uncivility. To the discipline not of sociability but to the law of the jungle. Kill or be killed.

Emphasis that tilts toward Love and away from Logic in the work of the Course does so in service to neither but to pretense. To the agenda of resistance and opposition to keep humanity in line through the iron will of tribe. The Love of the Course is not and never was likability and pleasantness to disarm and distract. It is and always has been caring for the values, the Truth and Honesty of Logic and Love. To enable and empower the sovereignty and Worth of individuality that is Free Choice, not will that is captive to predatory tribal instinct.

Logic and Love, equal and inseparable

Sociability is at cross-purposes with the Course. Its discipline of tribal integrity gets in our way anytime that niceness, agreeability, and pleasantness — mockeries of Love — are allowed to devalue or displace the Truth and Honesty of Logic. We serve Truth and Honesty by serving the cause of Logic equally with Love. The cause of wisdom equally with compassion. The state role-modeled by Jesus through the Course: the authority of gentle loving kindness. Authority that is the Logic of Love and the Love of Logic.

If to make the Course an absolute of anything is to kill it, to make it sociability of any kind will also kill it. If it is not “tribe” it cannot be “social.” It is an act of Mind, not brain. Mind that is in equal measure Logic and Love, equal and inseparable.

Mind and possibility at the beginning

The laws of cause and effect speak for the state of Mind that adheres at any point in evolution. In the sequence of the implications of Logic and the connections of Love in their response to circumstances that change in turn in response to the implications of Logic and the connections of Love. An interactive process mirrored in the evolution of English common law, the basis for American jurisprudence. A reciprocal process of questioning established precedent as well as its application to new issues in new contexts defined by changing circumstances. If there is no stopping change then there can be no stopping reconsideration both of the application of established precedent and the law that it’s based on.

The laws of cause and effect spoken for in the Course were not there at the beginning. What was there at the beginning was circumstance implied by Logic: Mind and possibility charged with its definition, the functions of Logic and Love, to respond to possibility with an act of Creation. With thought and feeling, ideas, reasoning, and values. An act that could not have been preceded by an opposite. By an impossibility, for opposite by implication of Logic — by definition — cannot precede the source of its contradiction.

The work in progress that is Reality and Creation

The laws of cause and effect spoken for by the Course are Necessity to that point in the evolution of Creation. Of the open-ended forward movement of Logic and Love that is implied by eternity, the eternal Now. The laws of cause and effect that are the Necessity of Truth, the Truth that supports the lesson of the Course, cannot be a “bible” because it cannot be absolute. In the movement of Logic and Love in their eternal dance of interaction with circumstance nothing can be absolute. Nothing can stand unquestioned when nothing can stop the process. When nothing can stop Creation driven by change that is question. If anything is “absolute” it is eternal question that implies the impossibility of absolute, the eternal answer that is and shall always remain a work in progress. The Course is no exception — a work in progress integral to the process Creation and the structure of Reality that are a work in progress.

Marketing its lies to an unconscious and disempowered Child as the absolute truth is the mode of its shadow code of impossibilities. Not its Parents, Logic and Love, but a predator. The illusionist that lured it into captivity and keeps it there with its illusions: absolute authority. absolute freedom, and absolute truth. With arbitrary rule backed by the authority of law that’s status quo beyond change because it’s beyond questioning: a “Holy Bible.” A self-deluded fool’s perversion of governance that enables and empowers Creation with support from the bottom up that’s under the law. Law that necessarily expands with experience and Knowledge. With the ever-broadening context that is evolution — Reality and Creation.

The dynamics of function

To focus on what A Course in Miracles does is to focus on its function. Function is an attribute of Logic-Love’s definition of Reality-Creation and every part of it. An attribute whose essence is Energy, the dynamic of Force. The Force of Soul that Interconnects and of the Authority of Necessity, the laws of cause and effect that cannot change. That define Reality and guide Logic-Love’s benevolent governance of Creation from the bottom up. Every part either has a use or it can’t exist. This applies to Mind-Consciousness and to Psyche-Soul both, the Interconnecting Force of Everything. Every part has agency under the law.

This applies to every cause including institutions dedicated to disseminating the Course and the work of its teacher. The work of doing is the work of Energy, the agent of doing for all of Reality-Creation. The dynamic of Force that gives cause its effect, the sequence of Logic-Love its forward movement. Always dynamic, always in motion because circumstances are always in motion, always changing. The Course is part of a dynamic process of growth and evolution within an alternate “reality” whose function is to guide it. To help Free Choice manage it, use it, and adapt to it dynamically.

The provocation that is honesty

The lesson of the Course is delivered authoritatively but always with gentle loving kindness. We’re given soft pillows when we board the plane, an assurance of service with wisdom and compassion. But the flight isn’t meant to lull us to sleep. Far from it. In an alternate “reality” that is dishonesty and untruth a perspective that speaks honestly for Truth is provocation. There’s bound to be turbulence. Turbulence with a purpose: not sleep but awakening. To get us off our butts and moving.

Jesus’ honesty when he walked among us showed how provocative Truth can be. The Course is sheer provocation capable of stirring the occupants of Plato’s Cave into a hornet’s nest of opposition. Into crucifying the messenger, because that’s what the crucifixion was meant to accomplish: the permanent end of messenger and message. The permanent end of fear that the Truth will ever again be told.

The comfort of gentle loving kindness, wisdom and compassion abates fear so that it won’t block accessibility. But it’s not a substitute for the lesson, nor is it meant to distract from the lesson. It only affirms its Source, the Logic-Love of Reality and its Peace. Because Logic-Love could not make its presence known otherwise.

Yet it’s provocation and a call to respond to it. A call from Logic-Love not to swoon in the ecstasy of “spirituality” but to act. Its meaning isn’t the pillow. It’s the journey out of untruth into Truth. Out of the nonsense of two realities into the sense of one Reality. The journey of provocation and turbulence that is Honesty.

The face behind the mask of pleasantness

The opposite is described in the Course as the “ego’s thought system.” It does offer substitutions and distractions. It has a thousand faces, none more sinister or familiar than likability. The devil that visited Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s novel was affable, conversational. The “god” of Jerry Martin’s God: An Autobiography is casual, erudite and entertaining, a regular guy you’d want to have a beer with. The “god” of Mari Perron’s apocryphal A Course of Love is a cheerleader for anything goes. Every one your best friend and every one a phony. Pleasantness whose purpose isn’t receptivity to Truth. It’s to hide the Truth.

Two perspectives, two functions

In applying the metaphysics of the Course to explain our alternate “reality” Kenneth Wapnick and I take off in different directions. No difference in our loyalty to the metaphysics of the Course but significant difference in what we do with it. A difference in function:

He taught what the Course says in its context: the specifics of two clinical psychologists at a medical-academic institution in mid-twentieth century Manhattan — their personalities, psychologies, and relationships. I intuit what the Course may imply for specifics beyond its original context. Not on my own but in relationship with an agent of Soul, guided by Logic and Love.
Ken helped to interpret and communicate the Logic-Love of the Course within its scope: error committed after the Child (Father’s Son) lost consciousness. I am applying it to explore its implications for issues beyond its scope. To explain the Child’s loss of consciousness and what this implies for regaining it.
Ken brought his unique perspective, individuality and creativity to his task. I bring a different perspective, individuality and creativity to mine.
We respond to two different needs: his to clarify the lesson of the Course, mine to extend it. His to explain its metaphysics, mine to expand its metaphysics. His to focus on what the Course is, mine on what it can do.

“Absence of felicity,” absence of partiality

My differences with Ken show in our takes on two topics: Helen Schucman’s apparent ambivalence about the Course and the significance of Carl Jung’s intuition about personality type. Helen was the main scribe of A Course in Miracles which was channeled by Jesus. She was assisted by Bill Thetford, a professional colleague, in a support role. In essence, they took dictation and from it produced a manuscript suitable for publication. Neither sought nor was given editorial license to modify the lesson. Neither sought a role in teaching it.

In his biography of Helen, Absence of Felicity, Ken struggled with her reluctance to involve herself in the Course’s cause beyond recording it. Being her friend and admirer and a teacher of the Course, Ken might have been moved by personal bias that even though she held back it was not for lack of conviction. For lack of love and respect for its Author, for whom she had just completed an intensely intimate labor of love.

Had Helen not maintained neutrality skeptics could have cited this as evidence of her authorship just as any court observer would cry foul if the stenographer took sides in litigation. There were enough skeptics as it was, hard-core “realists” blocked by their bodies’ five senses from having anything to do with a sixth. A common occurrence that accounts for history’s split between two schools of thought: idealism and realism.

Helen’s gift back to the Course

The viability of the Course depends upon its source from another perspective, one that’s not tainted by human ambiguity. Its author needs to be an agent of spiritual Psyche or Soul, the agent of Logic and Love that interconnects everything including our alternate “reality.” Otherwise it won’t know what it’s talking about. How can any source talk to the occupants of one “reality” about events in another without convincing evidence of connection to both? If it can’t speak legitimately for Reality and Truth how can it make sense?

The Course owes its legitimacy and acceptance as much to its Author as to its lesson. Limiting Helen’s role to that of impartial stenographer ensured that the voice of spiritual Psyche would come through in the clear, unmolested by the human psyche. Protecting the integrity of its Author may have been Helen’s last and most sensitive act of service to the Course:

Misled by body-sensing “realism”

Ken’s unfinished work about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung may have reflected something of the person behind the professional: a subconscious preference for Freud’s “realism” and indifference bordering on aversion to Jung’s intuition about personality types. Though he observed that Jung hadn’t gone far enough Ken showed no interest to that point in Jung’s signal achievement. In particular in the critical difference between body-sensing and intuition that telegraphed the difference between Jung and Freud.

That telegraphed, as well, the aspect of Helen’s personality that suited her to her role of detachment in the story of the Course. An aspect that Ken’s brand of psychotherapy seems to have overlooked. Though Helen had experienced psychic episodes they hadn’t revealed a gift for insight or the soul of an intuitive behind the exterior of a realist. If they had it seems likely that she would have been all in for the Course. What gave her pause was the same patriarchal body-sensing that prevented teacher Freud from understanding pupil Jung. For who would balk at non-dualism, the point of “miracles” in A Course in Miracles, that our “reality” sensed by the body is unreal? That it’s so illogical it can’t be taken seriously. Who else but a body-sensing “realist?”

A taste of Heaven

Jung’s intuition tells us that personalities that define our individuality necessarily define us by what we do as much as by who we are. By our function in the evolution of context through changing circumstances. As true here as it is in Reality; nothing can exist without its part in some form of activity, whether purposeful or pointless. The role given to Helen was the business end of her personality that defined who she was to be by what she was to do in its context. The integrity of her role as scribe depended not on her going beyond its limits but on her staying within.

Helen’s willingness to devote a significant portion of her life to scribing the Course expressed core human values: satisfying work suited to the worker; meaningful work for a respected authority; support for individuality, talent, and creativity; personality and task performing as one; striving attuned to Free Will instead of smothering it. None of these brought to life to the same extent, if at all, by the regular job that frustrated her. Her talents weren’t flowering into soulful poetry on the job but they were when she was moonlighting with Jesus. The boss who never insisted that she take the job. She could tell him to shove it any time she wanted.

The act of Creation in Reality is Interconnection that’s joyful as well as effortless. Striving toward the affirmation and reciprocation of Worth. An act of benevolence defined by the governance of Logic-Love, given Life by the Force of Soul. That celebrates the Creativity of every one of its parts and every contribution shaped by its unique context. Who wouldn’t give up a part of their day to experience this? Jesus didn’t offer Helen a job; he gave her a taste of Heaven and she loved it. When Jesus taught that we are perfect just as God created us, Helen felt the Truth in it. It must have felt like an affirmation of Worth like no other.

“Success”

How did Helen’s personality fare in her work environment at Columbia Presbyterian? Exactly as a court stenographer might, who had no voice in the proceeding, if asked to speak with the voice of a litigant. Out of her element. Lost. Unsure what to say but sure she doesn’t want to be humiliated for saying it. In self-defense Helen might have taken on the hardness of certainty without to hide the softness of uncertainty within. The personality of an authoritarian realist could have been so unyielding, so demanding, that she was virtually impossible to work with. A misfit. Toxic.

If Heaven is the functions of self-awareness fitting together in harmony then our opposite “reality” must be the functions of un-self-awareness that collide in friction. Because to be un-self-aware is to be unaware of self’s individuality and function. “Success” in this life is more often than not a series of fortunate events that connect personality and function we’re unaware of with situations we’re unaware of. Everything spontaneous, beyond awareness.

Our personalities should help guide us to where our individuality and its talents belong, but if we lack self-awareness, if we undervalue Jung’s personality types, it won’t happen. In the event, it’s the agent of Soul from Logic-Love — the tao — that guides us when we allow it, unseen.

The “success” of one life is but a mirror image of the series of unplanned accidents and mistakes that accounts for all of life on our planet. Not to know what we’re doing is quite in step with the nature of our alternate “reality,” and Helen was in step. Demanding that the personality of a scribe take positions, whose job description is the opposite, would have made her at least hard to work with if not toxic. Her work space would have been toxic if she wasn’t alone. As it was it was so toxic that it put out the Call for Love — for the “better way” — that gave us A Course in Miracles.

The authenticity of the Course and its Author

Contrast the friction of misfits at work with Helen’s remarkable fit with Jesus. Their compatibility further evidence that the Jesus of the Course is authentic. That he’s an agent of Soul connected to Logic and Love, the same functions of Mind in Reality that fit all functions together in harmony. Further evidence that Jesus knew what he was doing when it was through Helen’s mind, through her personality and its function — scribe, — that he channeled the Course. Probable choice because of her function, improbable on the face of it because of her personality.

The Course’s authenticity is undermined anytime skeptics can mischaracterize its scribe as one of them. She wasn’t one of them. The impartiality of a scribe is just that: impartiality. Skepticism is taking sides, and Helen could not do that. Though she was obliged to signal impartiality it’s clear that she never meant it to detract from the Course or its Author. It wasn’t a stance, thumbs up or thumbs down. A state that concerned her biographer, who sought to correct it with an interpretation of thumbs up. But Ken needn’t have been concerned. The ornery scribe took care of the skeptics on her own.

Intuition’s gift of personality type

I cite Ken’s esteem for Helen and for Freud not as an indication of questionable scholarship. He was as respectful of scholarship as he was of their achievements. His grasp of the Logic of the Course was as uncompromising as its non-dualism — reliably disciplined and on the mark. Articulate and professional. His passion for his cause and contributions almost as impressive as the Course itself. The same unerring judgment that offered Helen her job was clearly at work when it offered Ken his.

I cite it instead as an instance of a more general tendency of human illogic to overlook personality type and function in its understanding of our alternate “reality.” Of the human condition, and so to guide Free Choice in choosing how to address it. How to discern purpose and meaning correctly so that we progress beyond it instead of being stuck inside Plato’s Cave.

I cite it, too, as an instance of how original thinking with intuition can work productively with the Course when the Course itself doesn’t cover all the bases. Though he dives into the human Psyche to an unprecedented depth Jesus leaves it to us to explore its breadth. Breadth that could have included personality type to explain projection and the obstacles we face in reversing it, but it didn’t. The point being we can figure it out for ourselves. If Jesus had laid it all out for us would we still have Free Choice?

Jung and Myers-Briggs shared the gift of Mind — the sixth sense that is intuition — with their theory of personality type. With illumination that can make the occupants of the Cave aware that its darkness isn’t their only choice. They aren’t prisoners and neither are we. None of us is a victim except by our own hand. We aren’t truly stuck anywhere except by our own choice, delusion that we’ve inflicted on ourselves.

Body-sensing’s corruption of personality type

“Science” has done the opposite with its “five factor” theory of personality type. With the five senses of the body insanely fearful of what Mind’s sixth sense will reveal about them: that they don’t serve the light. That they and their captive science are instruments of the dark. Keeping us inside the Cave. Aided and abetted by Freud, adamant that Psyche is confined to body just as science is adamant that Consciousness is confined to brain.

Where does such nonsense come from? Not from the Logic of Jung’s and Myers-Briggs’ intuition that makes sense. It can only come from illogic that doesn’t make sense. From the master of the Cave. From delusion, and what’s called for is voice to speak for something better. Full-throated support for understanding personality type and function with intuition, not for overlooking it.

Klaatu barada nikto!

Jung and his successors, Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers, were guided by the same source and produced results that were equally insightful. Not flawless but equally useful if only analysts and theorists like Ken were aware of it.

A foundation dedicated to Ken’s work won’t critique it. Yet I share my critique to make a point, that acknowledging the Course’s part in a living, ongoing reflection on the questions of life’s purpose and meaning would add to its relevance, not detract from it. Would expand the reach of Ken’s extraordinary contribution, not impede it.

No one can absorb every detail, every nuance, of what Jesus and Ken had to say through the Course. But anyone with Mind and its sixth sense, along with the uniqueness of their personalities, is qualified to reflect on its implications. Is qualified to apply its lesson from one set of circumstances — the personalities, lives, and work of two clinical psychologists in twentieth century Manhattan — to another.

Policies and principles given voice in one moment are meant not to be enshrined as though time had stopped, but to be applied. Applied to other moments because time hasn’t stopped. The world of the Course and Ken’s teaching is not The Day the Earth Stood Still. We are not Patricia Neal needing Michael Rennie’s robot Gort to protect us inside his flying saucer. It’s the Cambrian era: change and diversity so powerful that nothing can stop it.

Infinity in motion

The Course is more than the comfort of sanctuary. It’s the engine of Mind and intuition that enable and empower adaptation to change. Function that asks to be recognized and put to use. To overlook it is to miss not only the Truth of what it is but the Truth of what it’s for.

We can’t do as Jesus has asked without staying in step with change. Without aligning ourselves with the Logic and Love of Creation. With work that can never be done because the implications of Logic and the connections of Love — Relationships that hold the Interconnectedness of Soul together as One — aren’t temporal. They’re infinite. Eternal. Eternally in motion. If this is the Truth of Reality and Creation, then it must be the Truth of the Course and the use we make of it. To bring us to the light of self-awareness and the end of the darkness of our Cave.

The example set by Jesus

What did Jesus mean when he admonished teachers and students not to treat the Course as a “bible?” That to do so would thwart its use, just as the intended use of Jesus’ parables and miracles long ago, in a different context, was thwarted by captivity to authoritarian hierarchy and canon. By “Bible” that distracted minds detached from Reality with the false promise of absolute Truth. Just as the Child unconscious had been misled by the two-headed lie of absolute Authority and absolute Freedom. All of it a con.

Jesus didn’t respond to Helen’s and Bill’s Call for Love with the absolute Truth. With an external deus ex machina that, once imposed on their situations, would solve all problems in perpetuity. He responded with example. He role-modeled how to address their problems without telling anyone what to do. How to explain context — individual and humanity — with Logic combined with Love that leads to understanding. So that reasoning can address purpose and meaning grounded in facts instead of magical thinking. So that it will be guided by perception and judgment instead of misperception and misjudgment. All of it grounded in Reality and Necessity — the laws of cause and effect that take the mystery out of miracles.

The call for original thinking that provokes

Above all, he set an example for the use of Logic, Love, and Free Will to expose the lie that is our alternate “reality.” Courageously and honestly, for this is anything but a convenient truth. Unless we follow his example with explanation that leads to Understanding, based on Logic and Love, that’s shared with wisdom and compassion, it will be taken by others as provocation. As attack that warrants response in kind: unthinking, unreasoning retaliation.

If we allow the Course to be treated as absolute unquestioned anything we kill it. It’s not a “bible” because its very purpose is to question and be questioned. To empower the implications of Logic that is forever asking Why. To enshrine the Course in absolute Truth is to deprive it of its power. To do the work of insanity, the Child’s shadow-code. Parsing its metaphysics and sharing lives is useful but so too is application that puts it to work. So too is original thinking that’s provocative or it’s not doing its job. A view that’s legitimate and even critical but under-represented. Why? Because it’s provocative.

Choose again

Application of its metaphysics is what makes the Course unique. Text, Workbook, and Manual. A point made eloquently through the work of its teacher, Kenneth Wapnick. Then can the Course and its teacher be honored as inspiration and guidance for their use? For their application by their students to changing contexts that require fresh understanding? Through the same independent judgment, the same sixth sense guided by Logic and Love, that Jesus affirmed when he closed with Choose again?

Institutions dedicated to the Course and its teacher’s work in their time might also help to reflect on what’s to be said through the same Logic and Love, the same sixth sense, in our time. To reflect and apply the Course as a living document in the spirit of Jesus, whose work is not done. Is this feasible? It’s worth asking.

The pheasant in its nest

The pheasant needs flight to adapt to the world around it. It can’t stay in its nest. Every institution needs to reflect on its mission to stay viable. When the Miracle Distribution Center, the Foundation for A Course in Miracles, and the Foundation for Inner Peace reflect again, what considerations arise from the example of Jesus? What suggestions might be offered by the provocation of Honesty and Truth and the dynamic of Love? By the eternal Why of Logic?

Thank you. Keep up the good work, and God bless!

The Agent of Soul

Posted on March 4, 2023March 4, 2023 by David Harrison

Jung vs. Freud: the split that still reverberates

Why shouldn’t an agent of Soul, our Psyche, be accessible to us through Intuition when it was the Force of Soul that animated the dream? Where in our minds is the agent to be found?

In the obvious place. In our Psyche where psychology looks for it. Where Carl Jung intuited the “collective unconscious.” Where his once and former mentor, Sigmund Freud, mistook it for something else. For an agent of the body, certain to the end that physiology writhed like a serpent in cosmic mud under his analytic microscope. His insights found acceptance improbably in America where its superficiality offended him. They also took him improbably not to their cause, to Logic-Love from Intuition, but circuitously back to effect. Back to the body and the chemistry of brain matter.

Jung’s psychology took what Freud started and did connect with the agent of Soul. Because he found offensive the idea that the Psyche he was looking for could possibly reside in matter. The reason why he and his mentor went their separate ways and why the break in their relationship still reverberates in Western thought.

Jung didn’t make the same mistake. While Freud went with the body’s five senses and conventionality Jung went with his sixth sense and originality. To look beyond appearances, beyond the body, and found a wealth of insights that would have progressed even farther had he lived to read A Course in Miracles. The metaphysics of Jesus that explained with unprecedented Logic, depth, and clarity the psychodynamics of another Reality. Events beyond our awareness that produced humanity’s split mind in an alternate “reality,” the source of its irrationality, contradictions, and conflicts. The haunting, pain, and torment of guilt. An alternate material “reality” of isolated-separated bodies, spacetime relativity, dark energy, colliding galaxies, and particles that defy the laws of physics. “Life” that depends on accidents of nature — random events, mutations of genes — for its evolution.

All of it a testament to the rule of lawlessness. To chaos. A systematic assault on the laws of cause and effect, the Force of Necessity that orders and Interconnects Reality and enables the harmony and peace of Creation — its Freedom, the spontaneity of joyfulness.

Spirit and the Myth of Psyche and Eros

Jung helped to change human thought from recalcitrance to receptivity with his insights into personality types, purely a gift of intuition that couldn’t be attributed to brain chemistry if it posited faculties of Mind unrelated to brain. Faculties that could only be attributed to something else. To the agent of Soul that also goes by the name of Spirit. Spirit that is the essence, Innocence, and Beauty of Soul. Spirit that in our ancestral Mind in Reality and its projections in unreality is Psyche. The same innocent, ethereally beautiful girl of Greek mythology who inspires us with the eternal love story of Psyche and Eros. Our guide and role model for performing the task assigned to us in unreality and returning, with help, back home to Reality.

If we think our lot is hard hers was literally impossible. The series of tasks she was assigned by Aphrodite, her lover’s jealous, vengeful mother, were intended to remove her from his life permanently. Yet Psyche performed them with help until she was sent down to Persephone in hell for her final errand. The one that was supposed to be her end. She lost consciousness and may never have awakened if Eros had not broken his mother’s grip and come to her side. Instead of death on earth her love was requited with eternal life on Mount Olympus. With Eros in the home of the gods. A parallel with Jesus, another tale of death yielding to the Truth of Life.

Guidance that’s competent

If the agent of the Soul is the agent of Psyche then it knows our situation and it’s well qualified to lead us through it. Our guide is Spirit. Not bodies. Not science that, like all fields of inquiry has a role to play but puts its faith in bodies’ senses. Not Freudian psychology that looks for answers in brain chemistry. In bodies’ cravings, brains’ neuroses, and nutty behavior. But the Spirit that Jung’s Intuition connected with. To “spiritual psychology,” another name for sixth sense that every field has always depended on but can’t acknowledge for what it is: another perspective than our own. Connection to another Reality.

The Reality described in the Course with helpful, harmless, loving familiarity. Demeaned and ridiculed by split minds for its strangeness. For its affront to the familiar and the conventional, to our unchanging status quo while it goes about quietly, unobtrusively with evolution. With the Interconnections of Logic and Love that, when the right constellation of circumstances forms — when the time is right, — will help us, Free Will hand in hand with Psyche, with Spirit, reach our goal.

Free Choice that’s competent

To get our dreaming ancestral Mind out of bed and back to work. No longer an inexperienced, immature Child but now grown up. Experienced with opposites. With illusion, temptation, adversity, and pain. Equipped with the Wisdom and Compassion, the Patience of its Parents but informed by its own experience that only Free Will could Live. Its own unique, individual Self with its own unique work to perform.

Made possible by what? By what we’re learning here. In this chaos of frustration, injustice, missed connections, and pain we call “life.” In this mess of contradictions we call our world. A world of split minds and their material environment that makes no sense, who would discredit perspective from another world that does make sense for being weird.

What’s to do? Embrace our sixth sense. Embrace Psyche. Embrace Free Choice and keep at it. What have we got to lose?