“God is the Mind with which I think. My real thoughts are in my Mind. I would like to find them.” -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook Lesson 45
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The first draft of this essay completed May 12, 2023 is reproduced here August 7 to restart the process of writing and editing after a three-month pause. The pause was recommended by the I Ching Hexagram 34 but was necessitated in any case by mental and physical burnout. I am pleased to resume work however at a slower pace, with less intensity, and hopefully not too serious a drop in performance. Thank you for your interest and patience. -- DCH
Coming to terms with the way things are
“Confused and confusing,” an acquaintance’s judgment on a letter I’d written. “Thoughtful but somewhat disorganized,” a professor’s verdict on one of my essays. So when you’ve had enough with this essay it’s not you. No matter what the topic my poetic right-brained thinking will find a way to make it difficult. No excuses.
But it’s not all my fault. The topic is a killer. It’s defeated almost all the best minds of Eastern and Western thought, who would rather retreat into babbling mythology and mumbo-jumbo sorcery than figure it out. Mind in two states, Conscious and unconscious. Dwelling in two realities, one that’s real and one that’s not. That I call an “alternate reality” just to soften the blow, that it’s just a dream, an illusion. Our everyday world that we call home. Where the unreal has been made -- not created -- real. “Mother nature” who’s nobody’s mother but a magic trick our sleeping ancestral Mind is playing on itself.
“Conscious” and “Mind” in initial caps. To denote that they’re not of our “reality” but of Reality that is real. And quotes I often use to flag deception. That can be no part of the House of Truth that we once occupied and will again when our ancestral Mind awakens. A use of style to alleviate at least some of the confusion: initial caps to say we’re in the House of Truth. Not made-up reality but the real thing. Quotes to let you know that appearances can be deceiving, especially “reality” that’s unreality.
Some personality types can’t conceive of a Reality they can’t see, hear, and touch. For them the only help I can offer is a reminder: that we all have a sixth sense -- our intuition -- and psychic ability whether used or neglected. They can open their minds to another perspective or not -- their choice. If this is you and you’re more comfortable with things the way they are, you must be a “realist.” Which is fine with me because I’m an idealist. I’m not comfortable with the way things are and I’m talking to you. If you stick with me I might make you a little less comfortable. It could be unpleasant, yes. But for both of us it would be a good thing.
Why a good thing?
Values overlap. The vision of Logic is shared with the vision of Hope, Purpose, and Meaning. They in turn are inseparable, worthy of equal prominence among our most basic values, and yet what value doesn’t incorporate both? “Value” implies Purpose and Meaning.
Worth is a value in and of itself that’s built into every value. The affirmation and empowering of Worth could express the entire point of Reality-Creation, the cause it serves. Not just to stand for anything but to stand for what’s Good. What is “Good?” Worth with the values of morality built into it -- justice, loving kindness, reason, and more. Values that distinguish family-individuality from tribal-conformity, Mind from body-brain-matter, idealist from “realist.”
To reflect on values is to realize that logically there is no way that Reality could not stand for Plato’s “Good.” That what we experience as “life,” that seems so often detached from, or opposite to it, so often de-moralizing, could not overflow with it. That it had to be values that Child-Mind, our one Self, was given by its Parents at birth in Reality, to use in endowing the creation and affirmation of Life-Worth with their essential attribute of Free Choice.
How can values not be embedded in the core, the essence, of existence and how can they not be Good? How then can we let ourselves be gulled into dismissing the ideal of Good and embracing in its stead a conception of “reality” that’s utterly devoid of motivation? That at its core is lifeless, loveless, mindless, and soulless. A misshapen image of pointlessness that allows us no more self-worth than a dung beetle.
To reflect on values is to realize that with every choice we make we’re choosing not only among them; we’re choosing to accept or reject who and what they stand for. The gifts that they are and the Giver. We’re choosing who we are and who we want to be. An ideal that tests us every day to reach higher until we get it right. Until we’re served our purpose here, gained the competence we sorely lack, and are ready to move on. Eventually to serve a useful role in Reality. Always -- always -- with Guidance. Because otherwise we’re sure to get it wrong.
Who or what would get in the way? Who or what is holding us back now? The believer? The idealist? Passion for Psyche, Logic, and Love? For Free Choice and Creativity? For Reality and Truth? Or could it be the “realist?” Addition to the opposite.
Good neighbors
Many years ago, I was presented with a “utility index” by Dr. Ruth Mack of the Institute of Public Administration, a group of policy analysts in Manhattan who were helping my employer, the New England River Basins Commission, with flood management policy in the Connecticut River basin. The index contained nine values that stakeholders could use to choose among different ways of avoiding or mitigating flood damage: intimacy or love; aesthetics; health; freedom; safety; self-esteem; material comfort; belonging; and control. A tenth was added later: hope.
Fairness was built into the index in the idea of belonging to a community of interests that can’t last long without it. And ultimately it was fairness that set regional policy. It wasn’t fair for downstream communities to burden their upstream neighbors with the costs of their exposure to flooding, by robbing them of their free-flowing tributaries and numerous other assets. Numbers didn’t carry the day; it was human nature. Neighborliness and respect. Sociology. Psychology.
Personality, character, and values
I showed the list to my two pre-adolescent sons and was struck by how readily they connected with it. One instinctively alighted on intimacy or love, the other circled around, wanting to think about it. I knew Ruth had handed me something significant. Had I thought about it I would have realized that it was a mirror, and this is why they took an interest. They were looking at themselves. They were looking at terms that defined the persons they were or wanted to be. The persons they wanted to be to others. Their self-image. And this might have been a one-of-a-kind opportunity to consider whether they liked what they saw or might want to change it.
Already I had a sense of my sons’ personality types. They grew up. Their personalities evolved into different types that reflected not only adulthood but also the value preferences that define the different types. The images reflected in the mirror were no longer the blur of childhood innocence. They were high-resolution portraits of individuals. Persons defined by their personalities; each character defined by its values. Three components of individuality rolled into one: personality, character, and values.
Values have opposites
When persons and whole societies go off track, they’ve put down the mirror and stopped reflecting on who they want to be. On the values they want their image to stand for. Did they think that character doesn’t matter? That if they leave it to chance it will take care of itself?
If this is why they’ve wandered off track it can’t mean that they’ve left character to chance. It means they’ve put it in someone else’s hands. In the hands of someone or something who has no problem making the decision for them. As opposed to someone who would prefer to wait until they’re asked for help. The choice is between a voice that’s inherently intrusive and disrespectful or supportive and respectful. Respectful or disrespectful of our sovereignty and free choice. Clear indication that the former has its own agenda. That it’s up to no good because values, like everything in our world, have opposites. Dark sides.
Why utility index needs to be updated. . . .
it's all by intent
There’s nothing light about the disrespect of uninvited boundary-crossing. About taking advantage of someone who’s let their guard down.
It's the way of the predator who wishes no one well, not even itself since it’s an opposite. In a world of chance, accidents, and fortunate events it’s easy to assume that no mind could possibly be behind it. But this would be a mistake. Because Reality or unreality, either way, is a state of Mind. Nothing occurs without occurring within Mind. It’s where everything occurs or it’s nothing.
If voices make their presence known while we manage or neglect the profile in the mirror, pulling us one way or the other, toward the light or toward the darkness, make no mistake: they are a state of mind. If the pull is toward darkness then the state must be unconsciousness.* Unawareness that would account for neglecting the profile in the mirror and going off track. A mistake of this magnitude, that turns us from an image we want to one we wouldn’t recognize, doesn’t just happen. It's intentional. Just ask Friedrich Nietzsche and Sylvia Plath. Minds aren’t possessed by chance. They’re possessed by intent. And if possession is involved it’s ill intent.
From family spats to global mayhem
The mind that’s supposed to be doing the tracking is us, which means the intent is coming from us. it’s our mistake. The corrective can’t be to passively wait for someone or something else to take over when that was the mistake. The corrective is to pick up the mirror and take another look. To get serious about self-awareness. Is this who we want to be? Is the image in the mirror attractive or unattractive? Good or bad? The corrective is to get over the idea that self-image is a mask. A marketing brand with a thousand angles to manipulate the other. A smile painted on the snout of the big, bad wolf.
The corrective is to invite the voice we neglected when we put the mirror down to help us discard the dark side of values and choose the light side. Help that only the respectful voice can provide because of where respect comes from: from Logic that understands and explains and Love that cares and connects. Two functions of one Mind that are inseparable because they complete one another.
That can’t be taken for granted in a world of opposites. Of contradictions that systematically interfere with understanding and connecting. That systematically foment misunderstanding, misjudgment, and disconnecting. Our world of incessant friction on every level, from individual families all the way to global powers.
Avoidance of self-awareness
Let a critic or skeptic try to convince me that this isn’t so and I will be convinced: that I’m hearing the wrong voice. That my opponent may never have looked in the mirror and, if it did, it might see no reflection. Because the wrong voice speaks for no one and nothing but itself, an opposite. The defining attribute of an opposite is that it can’t exist. There can only be one Reality. A mirror held up to an opposite can only be a reminder that it's not there. Another attribute is avoiding mirrors. Avoiding self-awareness. It’s what we’re doing when we put the mirror down: listening to the wrong voice and avoiding self-awareness.
Honesty
The mirrors we hold up to ourselves regularly reveal what we are doing. Art and entertainment, work and play, built into our everyday lives. But how often do they reveal what we are thinking? How often do they question how we are thinking? Take us to the source of what we are doing and thinking and why?
Reflecting on our values confronts us with the one question for which habits of deception and avoidance have no answer: why? The question that stops us in our tracks and persuades us at least to think about changing our minds, changing course. Before fear, frustration, rage, and guilt are placed again in the care of deception and avoidance. The therapist who likes things just the way they are. “Seek but do not find.” Anything but “I would meet you upon this honestly,” the mirror thrust before us in the poetry of T. S. Eliot. The morality of Truth that puts the lie to the therapist: Honesty.
Dishonesty
What else but dishonesty would make of Jesus the champion of guilt instead of Innocence? The excuse for tormenting an entire people, the Jews, with an eternity of persecution when no life he lived, no story he told, could do that? What else but dishonesty would put words in his mouth to justify and validate what it is, the insane idea of sin, the lie of guilt. To idealize tribal supremacy in the guise of ecclesiastical virtue, appropriating his words, his values, to its own fraudulent ends?
In a “reality” born of deception and avoidance there can be no “truth,” no definitive answer. But nothing stops us from asking an honest question. From asking why and choosing of our own Free Will to answer honestly. To think differently and change our minds if we mean to be honest with ourselves.
The face and the faceless mask in the mirror
Let me hold up my mirror and ask what you see. How can I do this? By going back to the utility index I was handed years ago. By updating it to reflect a higher resolution of character and values than was apparent then. For Logic and Love don’t stand still. They’re growing along with everything else alive. With all of Reality and Creation, expanding awareness with circumstances that never stop evolving. That extend into infinity.
It’s no longer one static list of separate values. It’s evolved into two lists that are dynamic and interrelated. The first is original: the values that account for individual morality within personal relationships among family and friends. The second is derivative, that accounts for relationships within and among tribes that march to the expedience of Machiavelli’s drummer. The former sourced ultimately from Reality that’s light and the latter its opposite derived from it. A shadow-reflection of a self-deluded mind that’s dark.
It's the strange “reality” of our world, the interplay of light and dark in the dream of a split Mind. If we’ve gone off track the second image in the mirror might shock an individual into doing something about it. Into awakening, since one individual truly reversing the lie of guilt back to the Truth of Innocence is all it would take. For who wouldn’t be shocked to find in our reflection the grotesque mask of Dracula leering back at us? Character that flaunts expedience without morality is hideous even to mind possessed by it.
The challenge to choose again
That is, if mind is willing to look. If the occupants of Plato’s Cave had any interest in bringing their enchanted darkness to the light of day. The Child would never have deluded itself into identifying with a perversion of the Truth if it hadn’t lost Consciousness. If it had been capable of paying attention and thinking freely. And we, its projections, wouldn’t either. Wouldn’t identify with the wrong guide, the delusion, instead of choosing freedom from its possession. To be guided by the agent of Psyche-Soul who would never possess us, back to awareness of our real Self.
Not if we looked at the values that define its character. Not if we were aware that Child Free Choice was responsible for choosing them. That we, its projections, are who we choose to be.
What then is the mirror? An opportunity, an invitation, and a challenge to choose again.
The challenge here is to heal
How go about using Free Choice to heal a split Mind? By understanding whose Mind it is and what it does. Its function and how it functions. By being aware of the choices. The mirror provided by the defining values of our character is a device for learning how to exercise Free Choice so that we can heal the separation. Our task here, in our alternate “reality,” because Creation is beyond the capacity of a split mind.
Mind itself is a value with a function. The value of Consciousness. The Mind of the Child -- our ancestral Mind. Not the Mind of its Parents, Logic-Love, who account for Reality-Creation with their own functions on their own plane of Creation, but an extension of their Mind.
The indispensable element
The function of their Child-Mind in Reality is to introduce an indispensable element into the Creation and affirmation of Life-Worth: the element of Free Choice. Consciousness of all the possibilities. It’s who the Child is and what it does Performed on its own plane of Creation because its function and a function of its Parents, Consciousness that determines Reality, cannot intermix.
Creation is the attributes of Logic, Love, and Psyche-Soul, and the talents of Child Free Choice, playing together purposefully in harmony to create compositions of gifts-values from the raw material of Creation: the continually expanding implications of Logic, the connecting-expanding relationships of Love, the radiating light of Psyche-Soul, and the talents and values given to the Child by its Parents, Logic-Choice and Love-Freedom. That express and affirm the Worth of Creation and its source with the attributes of originality, Innocence, Beauty, and Perfection that define it. An achievement that would be meaningless if it were not performed with Free Choice. If it could not also express the value of Free Choice. The Child -- us.
Time and entropy destined to end
One Mind and one Consciousness with two distinct identities and two distinct functions. One the Parents of the other whose Consciousness determines and defines Reality. The other the Child whose Consciousness enables its function, Free Choice, by arraying the possibilities. Identities and functions that perform through their inseparable Relationship, yet without interfering with one another.
For if there were interference it would automatically trigger a response from the laws of cause and effect that structure Reality-Creation. It would redirect Energy away from Child-Mind’s function. It would cause Child-Mind to lose Consciousness and put it into another state. The state of unconsciousness that got entangled with an opposite and split itself in two. That dreamed an alternate “reality” in a state corrupted by its opposite: our material world of opposites, time, and entropy, destined to end.
Analysis at the beginning
The task of Child-Mind here is to put its situation to good use. Can it be to learn from experience how to exercise Free Choice? Does it seem that we, the descendants of our ancestral Mind, need to learn? To gain competence that will be needed in Reality-Creation when our ancestral Mind regains Consciousness. If so, how does it do this? How does the Child-Mind function? How does it choose freely?
It begins with analysis. Philosophy and psychology combined in the work of Carl Jung, Katharine Briggs, and her daughter Isabel Myers to deconstruct Mind into components that enable analysis of its function. The gift of their talents enables our talents to put it to use. Start with four components from the type INTJ: introversion, intuition, thinking, and judgment.
INTJ
Introversion is looking within, not being distracted by what’s on the outside because in Reality there is no “outside.” There are no “externals.” Reality is all one Mind. Introversion is where we get introspection, the act of looking into the mirror of our character and values.
Intuition is Mind-Energy not in the form of matter detecting its Source through the agent of Soul. Through the Force of Oneness that knows nothing of boundaries. We get understanding from Logic and Love accessible through reflection. The act of accessing spontaneous insights through the sixth sense we call Intuition, to establish context from evolving circumstances that produces meaning and purpose. That articulates what the situation calls for, the baseline condition for the next step: choosing how to respond to what the situation calls for. What we learn from Logic-Love before we get into answering is how to frame the question. Getting it right.
We apply understanding from Logic-Love to guide choices among considerations by reasoning with Mind-Logic and feeling-evaluating with Mind-Love. Inseparable elements of Thinking with Mind. Here is the nerve center of a split Mind’s attempt to choose rationally and objectively. This is where the rigor of benefit-cost analysis comes into play, measuring the quantitative and evaluating the qualitative in logical sequence, ideally without bias, honestly and transparently. Foregoing the limits of body-addicted science to bring everything that’s relevant into play with systems thinking, holistically.
We use Judgment to make choices and reach decisions that express the values and serve the causes that we stand for. That define the character that we strive to be -- the image in the mirror of our values. It does this through a process of integration that utilizes all the functions of Mind: finding consciously and intuitively among all the considerations the one that controls. The value that for each set of circumstances pulls all the other considerations into alignment.
This is how Mind functions to choose freely. An amalgam of principles and procedures from many fields, among them three with which I am professionally familiar: public policy, jurisprudence, and benefit-cost analysis. All neatly gathered under the headings of Jung / Myers-Briggs personality type theory: introversion, intuition, thinking, and judgment. INTJ -- the opposite of ESFP and ESFJ.
When Intuition is obstructed
Intuition can’t be Mind being taken captive by shadow-parasite. This was Jung’s thought about Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a misperception. Captivity by shadow-parasite is prefrontal cortex overwhelmed by animal emotion amygdala -- a brain phenomenon. Intuition that produces spontaneous insights is Mind’s portal to Soul’s agent who connects us with Logic-Love and cannot be corrupted. But Mind can be interfered with. And it is obstructed by body-brain that would have us believe that our sixth sense can’t be trusted.
It can be trusted if we are mindful of the difference between body-brain and Logic-Love, the function of Mind-Consciousness. If we are alert to what brain is up to and guard our thoughts. Most notably against victimhood, the perversion of Intuition by the. Child’s shadow opposite. The portal to the twin fantasies of absolute authority and absolute freedom that lured the Child’s impaired judgment into self-delusion. That release deluded minds not to the Reality of Logic-Love but into a never-never land of self-indulgence and cruelty.
When “Feeling” isn’t feeling
The premise by Jung / Myers-Briggs that thinking and feeling can be separated works if feeling, like thinking, has only one source and represents only one set of values. But it doesn’t, and this causes confusion. The source of thinking is one Mind-living energy not in the form of matter whose opposite is brain-dying energy in the form of matter. The source of feeling that Jung / Myers-Briggs posits is Love-Abundance and its values of caring, sharing, affirmation, and empowerment -- all the elements of morality-Good. The morality-Good of families and friendships among individuals devoted to one another.
The other source of feeling that Jung / Myers-Briggs overlooks is emotion seated in the part of the brain that connects the human animal with its pre-human animal ancestry. The amygdala that motivates behavior with the will of the predator to dominate. With the “will to power” that rules the human psyche in the fevered view of Nietzsche and the “triumph of the will” in the crazed view of Hitler. Driven by the fear, rage, and hatred of herd or tribe provoked by competition from other herds or tribes. Entirely devoid of the values of Love among individuals, replaced by devotion to herd in opposition to other herds. Offering not caring, sharing, and empowerment from Abundance but demanding ownership, possession, and control from hollowness.
The “feeling” of tribal belonging
If Logic and Love are inseparable in Reality then so must be thought and feeling. In our alternate “reality” of opposites, of entropy that sees that everything eventually comes apart that was held together by energy that’s dying, they’ve been separated, disconnected. A state of madness that guarantees personalities whose parts flip in and out of sync. Pulled this way and that by sun toward light and coherence, moon toward darkness and incoherence.
Madness is how it is in our alternate “reality.” It’s not just an appearance. But whereas mind and body can be usefully distinguished as they are with Intuition and body-sensing, and as they are with thinking distinguished from the emotion of body-animal brain, thinking and feeling are two aspects of Mind that can’t be separated. Not even in appearance if in Reality it turns out that they’re one and the same.
There are no hairs to be split between “feeling” and “emotion.” But there is a clear distinction between one kind of feeling and another. It is the feeling of family Love that forges relationships among friends not in competition that belongs with thinking and Mind-centered INTJ. It is the feeling of tribal belonging that provokes fear, rage, and hatred against tribes in competition that belongs with feeling and body-centered ESFP.
Nietzsche’s gift
The perversion of this Truth that madness has contrived is the unevolved emotion of animal will seated in the amygdala overtaking the socializing deliberation of the prefrontal cortex. Mob psychology: the herd demolishing the pretext of individual, of independent judgment.
The madness of Nietzsche renowned for his extraordinary fusion of thought with feeling in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Penguin Books 1969): “In a man who thinks like this, the dichotomy between thinking and feeling, intellect and passion, has really disappeared. He feels his thoughts” (Introduction by R. J. Hollingdale, p. 12). A talent also noted by Jung in Psychological Types (p. 319). When, in Truth, Thus Spoke Zarathustra was the voice of the Child-Mind’s shadow -- its unreal opposite -- announcing its triumph in the clear over the will of its host. Whose end would come prematurely in total captivity: mental and physical paralysis.
The opposite of thinking can’t be part of itself. Can’t be feeling whose source is Love when the source of thinking is Logic and the two are inseparable. One Mind, one definition. The “feeling” of ESFP can’t be the only attribute that’s copied from Mind-centered INTJ when all the other attributes of body-centered ESFP have their own definition. Moreover, all functions of Mind manifested in INTJ are of one Mind and inseparable. If an opposite must be found to INTJ-Mind that’s inseparable from Love-feeling then it would have to be the entirety of the opposite personality type. Not one part of it but all of it: Extravert-Sensing-Feeling with Judgment (ESFJ) or with Perceptive (ESFP).
Hostage to guilt
The distinction posed by Jung / Myers-Briggs between thinking and feeling is thus both useful for analysis and misleading. Among all the considerations the one that must control is the inseparability of Logic and Love, Child-Mind’s Parents who gave it definition: the being and doing of Free Choice. The culture of separation and opposition that dominates the corrupted Mind insists that they are separate to hide its illegitimacy. By perpetuating the injustice done to the Child when its Parents supposedly engineered its loss of Consciousness.
When the real injustice was done to the Parents. Because Logic-Love could not have done it. It was a smear perpetrated to lock in place the guilt of the Parents to go along with the guilt of the Child for its part in the separation. Guilt without which captivity to the shadow, the parasite, could not psychologically be sustained.
Humanity’s corrupted mind is held hostage to Child-Mind’s opposite by the colossal lie of guilt. By the lie that because a defenseless Child was betrayed by its Parents its self-image can’t be innocence beloved of its Parents. It must be the helpless innocence of wounded victimhood. A petulant child, gorging on self-pity, entitled to specialness. Excused from all restraint on absolute authority and absolute freedom to settle scores and even the balance. To define fairness on its own terms and no one else’s. To set the rules and write the script however it wishes. In the image of its source: Child-Mind’s opposite. An unreal shadow. Darkness. A parasite.
Toward deconstructing the Big Lie
What example can history offer of the beast that’s wounded victimhood when it’s let loose? Germany, the instigator of one World War set free to instigate another one. When it was “stabbed in the back” and treated unfairly by the peace. By the vindictive Treaty of Versailles that excused it from all restraint and accountability. The myth of wounded victimhood that started with the Child’s self-delusion. The defining values of the Child’s character from that point onward. That will go on replicating itself and re-enacting its wounding until the Mind of Free Choice puts a stop to it.
Free us of the conviction that separation from our Parents was their doing and ours, from the fear of punishment, and our begging for Innocence by any means and the mockery that is our phony alternate “reality” must end. The nightmare of helpless innocence and wounded victimhood. Freely choosing to understand: that Logic cannot be separated from Love, thought from feeling-values; that the Child’s and our Parents in Reality could never separate from us or harm us in any way, leads us toward our goal. Toward regaining our Innocence that was never lost and Child-Mind’s Consciousness along with it. Toward deconstructing the Big Lie and restoring Truth.
ESFP and ESFJ
The opposite of Mind is body-matter. Mind-Energy not in the form of matter vs. brain-energy not in the form of matter. So where do extraversion, body-sensing, feeling, and perception fit in? The layer of personality markers from Jung / Myers-Briggs theory that lie opposite INTJ. Markers that upon close examination do more than account for personality type differences. They’re an act of war.
To say that they “fit in” is to miss their source and its intent: to block awareness of Mind, the opposite of matter and body-brains that validate it with their five senses. To block access to the agent of Soul, its opposite and arch enemy. Our connection with Mind’s Logic and Love from Reality who know nothing of alternate realities or their source. That we can access through their gift of intuition, our sixth sense.
Extraversion is orientation toward “objective reality” of energy in the form of spacetime-matter projected “out there.” That’s external to Mind in a compromised state doing the projecting. Both logical impossibilities: projection and its handiwork. A world of body-brains meant to distract Mind from the truth of Reality-Mind and Reality-Creation, neither of which is spacetime-matter or detectable by the body’s five senses. By the gold standard of scientific “knowledge” known as sensory perception. Hubristic nonsense.
Body-sensing is Mind-energy in the form of matter detecting itself. Substituting the body and its five senses for the guidance of Logic-Love accessible through intuition’s sixth sense. The first step toward body’s final ascent to the throne that it imagines has been vacated by Mind. The throne of top-down authority that owns its sensed material domain and is therefore entitled to possess, control, and dominate it. Subjecting it to its mindless, primitive will seated in the amygdala, brain’s common ancestry with animal beast.
Nietzsche’s ideal of “Superman,” the figure transmogrified by Ayn Rand’s “objectivism” into Howard Roark, the noble architect atop his own towering creation. Or the neuroscientist Christof Koch, scrambling up the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in the dark of night, to proclaim the supremacy of King Kong. The beast. The “reductionist” -- romance.
Supremacy over what? Over the Child Free Choice and the Child’s Parents Logic-Love. Over Innocence laid low by guilt. Over Truth replaced by the Big Lie. The supremacy of an unreal shadow over its host, Reality. Creation that needs no Creator. Humanity orphaned and lost that needs no Parents, no guide. Buried now between Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton. The eternal adolescent, Stephen Hawking, yearning for adventure in limitless space.
The arbitrary authority so conjured dominates with absolute authority without opposites and imagines itself as “almighty god.” A perversion of the authority of the laws of cause and effect. Of the values of Logic and Love and the innocence of Soul without opposites that the laws of Reality express. The “triumph” of rage and cruelty over gentle loving kindness. The nightmare of predatory authoritarian supremacy that regularly overtakes our body-obsessed, body-possessed world. More hubristic nonsense.
Feeling that’s associated with the self mis-identified as body-brain rather than Soul-Mind is the unevolved emotion of animal-herd seated in the amygdala. Though it displays tenderness and other signs of nurturing required by procreation its dominant function is fear required for self-protection in space contested by predators like itself. Fear accompanied by rage necessary for intimidation of competitors who can be bullied and hatred for the elimination of enemies who can’t.
This is the emotion stored in body-brains that occupy a material world ruled by a perversion of authority. It is not the feeling described by Jung / Myers-Briggs personality type theory that didn’t venture into where either INTs or ESFs come from and therefore didn’t reflect on why they differ. The appearance of gentle loving kindness of the body-centered world is limited to animals identifying with herd caring for its own. To herd-tribe sharing among its own who forfeit individuality to tribal uniformity so they can belong. It isn’t about the virtue of caring and sharing. About inclusivity that recognizes and values the worth of all herds-tribes and individuals whether they belong or not. The ESF’s body-sensing feeling isn’t about Love.
ESFJ that attaches to the category Judgment becomes the animal beast that seizes control with cruel intent. With Reality’s judgment of innocence perverted by body-brain’s animal will into judgment of guilt. Justified by the perversion of innocence that is wounded victimhood. The all-purpose excuse for projection of condemnation onto “others” and execution by punishment, the infliction of every manner of abuse, every manner of persecution and atrocity available to self-pity. Guaranteed to entrench belief in the reality of its horrors and thereby perpetuate unreality -- the self-delusion of absolute authority without opposites. Tyranny.
Perceptive is brain without Mind-Judgment. Without discernment guided by introspection, reflection, thinking-feeling, values-morals, or discipline. ESF that attaches to Perceptive becomes an action comics caricature. The passive fool who fantasizes that submission to un-boundaried chance that body-brain can’t detect with its five senses attains absolute freedom without limits. Freedom from the limits of definition, the function of Logic-Love that can’t be seen, heard, or touched, and therefore must not exist. Unaware that friend chance is a parasite attached to its host, Mind-unconscious. No one’s friend. That’s all too visible, audible, and palpable to bodies in their made-up “reality.” A cartoon of impossibilities that can’t exist.
The “thinking” of a personality type: ESFP self identified with body that’s deprived itself of the ability to think. A rejection of Mind that imagines itself in a state of spontaneity attained by the magic of specialness. The mindset of a playactor in a one-dimensional entertainment. “Let’s Pretend,” a radio program that was a staple for little fantasists on Saturday mornings, a 1940s version of Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Entertainment that delivers constant “action” through contrivances: games of competition and conflict with no real substance or consequence. A world of superficiality skittering along the surface of a pond like a water-bug, unaware and uninvolved in the life below.
“War” between separation and healing
Two kinds of ESF, both ruled by authoritarian fantasies. ESF with judgment the fantasy of absolute authority without opposites. ESF with perceptive-specialness the fantasy of absolute freedom without limits. One a mask of condemnation and guilt. The other a mask of childlike innocence. Both mis-identification with impossibility, the face in the mirror that is infantile self-absorption. The arrested development of opposition to life that is lifelessness. Of opposition to learning and growth that is mindlessness.
The face of a demon conjured from the pits of hell. Not the fatuous Transylvanian count endeared to us by Hollywood and Bela Lugosi but the monster with hair on the palms of its hands scribed by Bram Stoker. The face of the predator. The face of serious terror, harm, and death.
Free Choice with Mind, no choice with body
Neither of which has any possibility of maneuverability or even existence in the presence of Mind-centered INTJ. Which makes of ESFs a mortal enemy of INTJ. Not that INTJ can return the favor since Mind in Reality can have no awareness of what’s not real. Of impossibilities like absolute authority and absolute freedom. So while conflict between them may sustain ESFs’ playacting fantasy and disrupt relationships, while it may account for the Armageddons of crazed mythology from Zoroaster to evangelical “Christianity,” all it does for INTs is move them to share the Logic-Love of understanding from intuition to heal the separation.
Two opposites that may appear to be in conflict but can’t be if one seeks Truth guided by possibility and the other escape from Truth guided by impossibility. That define our experience of life: healing and separation. And find expression in opposing personality types. In types distinguished by the values that define character. That enable analysis that leads to explanation. To asking Why and coming up with answers that make sense. That, when we hold up the mirror, we can recognize and use to arrest our arrested development and move forward. Choosing freely with Mind instead of body. Without obstruction by externals, bodies, tribal dominance, and the self-willed unawareness that is self-delusion.
Toward self-awareness. Toward Child-Mind’s liberation from self-delusion and awakening to Consciousness. To the sanity of Home in Reality-Creation. Where we started and never really left.
Where Order and Freedom reside
The values that define character flow from the definition of Self, whether in Reality it is one Child-Mind or in alternate “reality” it is many projections of an unconscious, dreaming Child-Mind. Whether it is the Relationship that is Family in Reality, the basic unit of Creation, or tribe-herd group in alternate “reality,” the only self that the dreaming Child-Mind, corrupted by its shadow-opposite, is capable of recognizing. A self composed of isolated-separated bodies whose individuality-creativity is suppressed by tribe in contrast to Family in Reality where the point is to enable it.
The Family Relationship in Reality is Parent-Child: the bonding of Life-Being / Mind Logic-Love with Free Choice. The birth of the Child thus brought into Being two actors, two Selves, essential to Creation: Free Choice and Family. Whose purpose is to extend, expand, and affirm the Life-Worth of Creation Freely Chosen. This is Creativity -- the engine that drives Creation: the bond between Parent-Child (Family) plus Free Choice (Child).
Its structure is Reality. The laws of cause and effect that apply autonomously. With the Force of Necessity that is Reality without interference by the governance of Mind / Logic-Love. In the same way, the Worth of Life-Creation is affirmed autonomously, through Free Choice, without interference by the Mind / Parents who govern. Were it otherwise there would be no kiss from a handsome prince to awaken the Sleeping Beauty. Our ancestral Mind would be just as well off here.
In both cases the Mind / Parents who govern must abstain from interference for the protection of Authority that resides in Life-Creation itself. For the rule of law. For the democracy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and not for the authoritarian beast that menaces our world. A Truth that Child-Mind corrupted by its shadow-opposite, obstructed by the body’s senses, struggles to grasp. That in Authority under the law reside both Order and Freedom. That in Authority above the law resides neither. It’s tyranny.
The Reality of Idealism and the call for healing
The values presented first are termed “idealistic” because they define the character of our ancestral Mind, the Child who is Free Choice of its Parents Logic and Love, before it lost Consciousness, lost awareness of its home in Reality-Creation, and dreamed the alternate “reality” that is humanity’s material world. Their origin is the Parents who intended the gift of values and talents for their Child’s use in applying Free Choice to Creativity. To the composition, expression, and reciprocation of the Life-Worth of Creation.
They’re idealistic because the expression of values as ideals is part of the function of Creation whereas it can’t be part of an alternate “reality,” dreamed by a corrupted Mind, that’s a perversion of Creation. That pretends to replace Authority that serves and supports the Creation of Life-Worth from the bottom up, under the laws of cause and effect, with a perversion of authority that rules arbitrarily-lawlessly from the top down, not for the Creation of Life-Worth but for its denial. To consummate the original injustice -- the turning of the Child’s Mind against its Parents by an illusion: its shadow-opposite. A virus. A parasite. By self-delusion. A world so defined can’t call for Creation. It can only call for healing.
Meant to be used
The values of Reality-Creation have no inherent ranking. They have their place in the sequence of Logic-Love that moves Creation forward and in the sequence that moves healing forward as well. From Guidance that beckons with Home and Relationship, Innocence and Beauty, Wholeness and Wellness, through Enablement and Empowerment to Spontaneity and Healing. And, hopefully, someday, back to Creativity. Like all the elements of Creation supported by Logic-Love they have functions that fit together in harmony. One no better or more important than the other. In one interconnected whole -- the Oneness that is Soul.
They also vary in their application to compositions of circumstances, the purpose and meaning of context that’s continually changing and evolving. Values can stand alone in the abstract but they’re meant to be used. To be applied to circumstances that compose each individual’s granular world. To help us navigate the ever-shifting situations that we experience as “life.”
The unreality of “realism”
The ranking of values is left to hierarchy, the perversion of authority that is the dream of an unconscious, corrupted Mind. Our material world ruled by the illusion of absolute authority and absolute freedom. By the mad idea that the Child’s shadow-opposite has replaced Logic-Love, its Parents. Where there can be but one value: the authority of the mad idea ruling over the madness of disorder, disunity, separation. An impossibility. A perversion. A joke.
But because the body’s senses anchor us to this alternate “reality,” because we “know” no other reality, the values that belong to our material world are “realistic.” What must be termed “idealistic” from our perspective is therefore realistic, and what must be termed “realistic” is actually delusional. Such is the world of opposites where Logic and Love, the ultimate values, are gone -- eliminated. Such is our perspective.
From one to two sets of values
Publication of The Prince in 1532, Machiavelli’s guidance for authoritarian rule, brought to an end the pretense that human behavior follows a single moral code. And with it the idealist’s dream of a “kingdom of heaven” on earth. The values practiced by Mind’s Family-Relationship in Reality have a place in Child’s split Mind. They’ve been adapted to its dream and are recognizably good because families of individuals reside here too. Along with Intuition and the agent of Soul that is our real Relationship.
But these values share uneasy space with a wholly different set of values. The values of tribes. Collections of individuals dedicated not to the development and expression of individuality but to its extinction in service to uniformity. To the direction not of Mind composed of Logic and Love, occupied with Peace, but to brain composed of a leash and the willful predatory instinct at the end of it, bent on war. The prefrontal cortex and the herd of animals that’s the amygdala. The beast that it’s supposed to socialize. It was for the ruler of the beast that Machiavelli shared his statecraft.
All positive values are ultimately subsets of the Energy-Force of Soul-Interconnectedness in Reality. Family Relationship-inclusiveness taking all into itself for Peace, Harmony, Freedom, and Order, and for the enablement, empowerment, and affirmation of the Worth of Relationship’s Creations. Its tribal opposite in unreality takes captive within itself for conformity, disconnection, exclusiveness, disablement, disempowerment, and conflict. This is the ultimate source of negative values -- the “dark side.”
When opposite values conflict
An impactful figure who stood for individual-family values was Jesus. He and the values he taught were not a frontal assault on tribal values but that’s how they came to be viewed by the reigning religious authorities. This is the context of his execution. He was misperceived to be a threat to their authority which, in the end, is what they care most about. Not right or wrong but their license to rule unopposed. Their rationale which holds tribes together in obedience and justifies competition with other tribes for dominance.
Jesus made it plain that he spoke for another rationale not of this world and meant no threat. But because it was attracting widespread interest it created the appearance of a movement. A movement that could replace established authority with another one, and so his innocence or guilt didn’t matter. He had to go. In Ri -- “King of the Jews” -- broadcast the point of his fate: a warning to all who would challenge established tribal authority. A warning and a lie. A projection by authoritarian rule centered on itself and only capable of recognizing itself. The judgment of guilt upon Innocence. Injustice.
Matter is the source of Consciousness?
If the laws of Necessity that govern the Reality of Mind have a perversion it would be the laws of necessity that rule the alternate “reality” of body. There, energy is under the direction of Mind. Here energy stored in matter, our bodies, imposes its will on us. Bodies dictating to mind-brain how they are to be cared for. Matter telling mind what to do, mind following the direction of the laws of necessity: body survival, body pleasure, body conquest-dominance. There, Mind over energy. Here, matter-energy ruling brains.
Not just Stephen Hawking but all of body-centered science views individual-family values as a threat to its authority. Because it’s out to “prove” through experimental science that mind-consciousness equates with matter-brain. Otherwise, it would have to concede that the only rational explanation for spacetime-matter is that matter originates with Mind, which would overturn its entire rationale. Repeatedly in his book, The Idea of Brain (Basic Books 2020), Matthew Cobb insists that the only possible source of mind-consciousness is brain matter. I.e. matter produces mind instead of the other way around -- a logical absurdity. Proof that science isn’t centered on any “quest for knowledge” but on protecting its founding premise: the reality of bodies and their material environment.
The ultimate purpose served by science and the Church both isn’t discovery and morality but the justification for their tribal authority. Their dominance-supremacy. Expedience dictated by tribal survival-dominance; the only consideration that matters to tribes that otherwise have no logical premise for their rule. Because Truth-morality contradicts tribal expedience.
United in opposition
The two sets of values are thus related to one another not by symbiosis but by opposition. Because tribal values are opposition. Individual-family values don’t recognize the reality of any other system of values since the reality that is their source is Reality-Truth itself. Is Conscience, the faculty of Mind that’s absent in Machiavelli’s tribal expedience.
It’s the same non-relationship that existed between Jesus who spoke for another Reality that can’t recognize unreality and therefore has nothing to oppose. That’s opposed by unreality, its opposition by definition. Reality can’t oppose unreality without making it real, an impossibility. But unreality can “oppose” Reality if that’s what it “is:” opposition to Reality, an absurdity.
The voices in our ears
If the choice is between two sets of values here on earth -- one set for families-individuals, the other for groups or tribes, one set moral, the other Machiavellian -- how are we made aware of it? Are we the cartoon character beset by two voices whispering in either ear, one in angelic blue under a halo, the other in satanic red sprouting horns? Actually, yes. They’re two versions of our own voice, the voice of our ancestral Mind, one Child.
The devil has it easier because it’s in this world and of it, as are we. And it was the influence of its voice on our ancestral Mind that conceived it. It’s at home here and it likes everything just the way it is: a land of contradictions where anything is possible. Absurdities like absolute authority without opposites and absolute freedom without limits. It can speak out of turn because it thinks it’s the boss, we’re wrongdoers, and we deserve no respect.
Where it can play the joker wearing a thousand masks. Likable or angry, personable and warm or impersonal and cold, reassuring or intimidating, erudite know-it-all or ignorant fool, agreeable ass-kisser or bull-necked warrior. Where it can play the entertainer with a thousand jokes, a thousand perversions of the Truth. Or a magician with a thousand tricks. Overlord, joker and magician -- masters of contradiction.
It's not so easy for the agent of the Soul. It’s in the dream, but Soul that connects with Possibility couldn’t have had a hand in designing a land of contradictions -- an impossibility. So it’s not at home here. And the forms it takes to connect with opposites can’t be contradictions. Not if it’s Soul that connects with Logic and Love who can’t pretend to be what they aren’t. It would never speak out of turn. Not if role modeling respect for the sovereignty, integrity, and Innocence of the individual and the indispensability of Free Will is what brought it here.
Transmissions in the clear
History has given us many profiles of the satanic voice, from philosophy, psychology, theology, and mythology. But why take their word for it when it does the honors itself? With works by minds either fooled or possessed by it that speak in its own words. Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Mari Perron’s A Course in Love, Jerry Martin’s God: An Autobiography. One creative talent not fooled or possessed by it, Fyodor Dostoevsky, brought the Joker into The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan’s disarming visitor to his living room. An engaging conversationalist who would be welcome anywhere.
The agent of Soul has weighed in with its own depiction in A Course in Miracles. With perfect Logic and Love: what the devil is -- the crackpot thought system of our own opposite, our ego; -- what it does -- endlessly splitting off into isolated, separated absurdities; -- how we came to be afflicted by it -- by Child-Mind misidentifying with its own shadow, its ego; -- and how we can be rid of it -- by doing our part to help the Child get its real Self and its right Mind back. By becoming friends with our light side -- the agent of Soul -- and listening to its voice instead of being fooled by our own dark side. By doing exactly what our ancestral Mind must do because that’s who we are: one Child, one Mind. Free Choice, Logic and Love, brought together as One by the Innocence and Force of one Soul.
Doubtless there are many more examples. The point being we aren’t cartoon characters and the voices whispering in our ears, with halos and horns, aren’t either. They’re part of our everyday lives. They’re making their presence felt. And the result is our everyday lives and our everyday world. Thwarted careers and relationships. Wrongdoing of every stripe on every scale. Personalities ruled by the ego striding across the world stage starting wars and taking down democracy.
Why bother?
So why bother with analysis? Why bother articulating the values these opposing influences are feeding into our ears? Because this is the line of scrimmage where the outcome will be determined. Because choice always comes down to values. We motivate ourselves to make the right choice when we look squarely at what we’re doing and what it will cost. When we acknowledge that ours is a world of competition between one way of being and another way. And the difference is expressed in what they stand for: values. The stuff of Worth which is what Reality-Creation is all about.
The mirror that a list of values holds up is the clearest expression of Self that we’re capable of. The choice of different selves that puts it to us: Who are we? Does our behavior and the state of our lives reflect the values we stand for? Is the state of our world the best that we can do? If not, who do we choose to be: our real selves or cartoon caricatures mocking us? Our own opposites. Our own shadows who speak with our own voices and aren’t real.
Why bother with analysis? Why bother holding up the mirror? This is why.
ESFs will rejoice
Ruth Mack’s utility index is one no more. I’ve divided it into two. In the spirit of Machiavelli’s honesty it now reflects the values that define the character of families-individuals and set the code of conduct for tribes. One recognizably idealistic, the other realistic. One on the side Creativity and Peace, the other on the side of obedience and conflict. One light, the other dark.
One reason for both that I find personally compelling is to part certain personality types from their habit of applying tribal values to individual family-type situations. The body-centered personality type extravert-body-sensing-feeling (ESF) programs itself to lock individuals into a tribal-social context where conformity rules. Where originality and creativity are devalued instead of affirmed. Ruinous for any personal-intimate friendship but particularly dangerous for adolescents who need support for the lives they want to live. They don’t need the crushing weight of tribal convention and disrespectful authoritarian parenting.
ESFs mean no harm. They just haven’t looked into the mirror. When they look closely at the two codes; when they see that theirs isn’t the only one; that there’s another; it’s motivated by Love instead of fear; and it doesn’t obstruct the lives of loved ones the way theirs does, they’ll choose the other. They’ll rejoice. They’ll shower me with appreciation. And I can go on being my type: fool that I am, a naïve, moralizing idealist.
*The term “unconscious” or “unconsciousness” is used herein to denote a metaphysical rather than a psychological state of Mind. The state of humanity’s ancestral Mind in the Reality not of spacetime-matter that dreamed an alternate “reality” of spacetime-matter -- our material universe. The Mind I refer to as Child-Mind in Reality who is our one real Self, not the many isolated, separated bodies that we appear to be in its dream. The “unconscious” of Jungian psychology is “an exclusively psychological concept. . . derived. . . in particular from psychopathological experience.” From experience, that is, with the psychologist’s human subjects within the dream and not from speculation about an ancestral entity from another reality. It is expressly “not a philosophical concept in the metaphysical sense.” (C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (Must Have Books 2019, pp. 613-614)
Jungian psychology does, nevertheless, leave open the door to psychic phenomena through the “collective unconscious.” While attributing these to “the inherited brain-structure” Jung includes in their definition “mythological associations. . . dreams and phantasies.” (Jung, op. cit. p. 616) Whose origins are just as readily traceable to metaphysical as to any other “reality.” In fact, the metaphysical rather than “the inherited brain-structure” is logically a truer-to-life source of insight by far into humanity’s story if its premise is correct. Which implies that “right-brained” may have little or nothing to do with it. The ultimate source of all our experience would rather be Mind in Reality, not of spacetime-matter, that’s unconscious and dreaming.
Elusive brain, elusive self
Neuroscience has tried to understand the brain by viewing it as a machine and taking it apart to see how it works since the Danish anatomist and future Catholic bishop Nicolaus Steno suggested it in 1665. It was “the moment that the modern approach to understanding the brain was set out.” [Cobb 1, 40-41]. Where things stand as of December 2019, when Cobb finished his book, is the brain doesn’t actually allow its parts to be so distinguished or localized. They overlap to the point where it can’t be said for certain, for example, that the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere don’t or can’t perform the same functions.
A useful discovery to keep in mind because despite the human tendency to separate itself out into clean divisions, say of motivation and morality, we aren’t all or none of anything. For all the limitations and transgressions I’m tempted to ascribe to personalities other than my own I’m forced to admit that more than a trace of every one lurks somewhere in my own performance. The brain responds to shifting circumstances as a collection of neural networks that shift. That refuse to be pinned down, and so it is with personality, character, and values. Much as I’m tempted to label my personality type the best and others less it won’t stick. What we’re engineered for isn’t status quo that’s static but context that’s flux. Like the brain we have to be anything and everything to be ready for anything and everything. If Darwin was right and species are geared for survival it can’t be otherwise.
From chaos to making sense
So while this essay suggests a neat division of values between idealism and realism, conscience and expedience, individual and tribe, where any individual personality fits in it, with its arrangement of faculties du jour, can’t be pinned down. Just as the law is whatever the court decides in any given case the individual’s fit is whatever choices the individual makes in any given situation. We can be pinned down but only for the circumstances du jour. If it seems I’ve got myself or you securely labeled don’t worry. Circumstances will change and we will too.
And anyway none of this is necessarily the truth. It’s just my bias. Harry Truman said if you want a friend in Washington get a dog. In our suspect reality of elusive everything -- chaos -- if you want the truth get another reality. Go home. That’s what I’m trying to do with these essays. To understand so that I can go home to a life of love, truth, and justice. Where all I ask is that it makes sense.
The Reality of unrest
Making sense can’t mean perfect Peace if by that we mean inactivity. The end of doing -- everything coming to rest. Not if there is one Reality and it is circumstance that is Mind. The original circumstance for which there can be no previous circumstance that is not Mind and so it just is. Reality is changing circumstances always needing to be fit together, always needing order, always needing the Logic-Love of Mind to do it. A state of wonder and beauty where it’s done and confusion and frustration in our alternate “reality” where it’s not. A state that, for all its wonder and beauty, is still not at rest. Is anything but inactive.
The implication of impossibility that accompanied the first premise of possibility didn’t produce a voice to be shared with the Logic-Love of Consciousness. The Parents. That’s the “reality” of our ancestral dreaming Mind -- the Child. Born of the egg and the seed of Creation, the Oneness-Soul of Innocence without opposites. But it did give Mind its ideal to pursue while searching for rest through the always evolving, always changing contexts of Creation. For coming to rest in the resolution of opposites, the perfection of Peace. An unattainable ideal so long as Mind must abide by its own Logic, the unavoidable implication of opposites.
The unattainable ideal
What does it mean? We don’t owe the movement of changing circumstances here to the intruder that interferes with Logic-Love, though it is responsible for the difficulties they pose -- the churning pressure of events and the turmoil. We owe it to Mind, the ultimate source of all circumstances. To its logical implication of opposites and to the pursuit of its ideal that opposites imply. To the Force of Necessity behind it. “Rest in peace” is no less wishful thinking in Reality than it is in our alternate “reality.” What would be the point of Creation otherwise? There is only the Peace of harmony and order that is not just being but doing. That is not and never will be at rest.
The over-arching motivation for every aspect of doing, including Creation, is to bring all of it to rest without the implication of opposites. It isn’t Perfection. It is the unending search for Perfection, a work in progress that keeps Mind and all of Reality-Creation going. A logical impossibility. An unattainable ideal.
Nothing ventured nothing gained
What, then, is Mind, our ancestral Child-Mind’s Parents? Among other things, role models for creative idealists. The point of Creation isn’t just getting there. It’s also the effort it take whether we make it or not. Striving. Because the measure of the worth of a goal can’t be whether it’s easy or hard, doable or not. It’s the strength of character it adds to those it serves and to those who pursue it. What is the planet earth but a wailing wall of grief over broken hopes, aspirations, and attachments? A constant cry of despair from striving that falls short.
If Creation is all about the expansion and expression of Worth then character that engages with it will expand and express itself as well. With striving that earns it without focusing on payback but on the worth of the goal itself. Without insisting on the rewards of success but unconditionally on the service to be provided. On the truth that striving -- the effort to make a difference -- is its own reward and character is ultimately what we have to show for it. What we the participants in Creation are building in addition to Creation itself.
Are we serious about the life of Love, Truth, and Justice that lies ahead? Will waiting for saviors to do it for us make it happen? Is this the example our role models are setting for us? The idea that “heaven” is where all is peace, quiet, and rest is mistaken. Creation is striving with a purpose. The idealist’s credo: “Nothing ventured nothing gained.”
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Where you wind up on list of values is where you put yourself -- these are defining values. List 1 = Conscious Mind Reality-Creation idealist. List 2 = Realist split mind light unconscious alternate “reality. List 3 = Realist split mind dark alternate “reality.”
[The following is a first-cut subject to extensive editing. DCH 08/07/23]
Family-individual morality (mind-centered)
- Soul-Psyche
- Guide, Psyche, Agent of Soul, escort
- Connection to Logic-Love, Reality
- Guidance, mentoring, role modeling, leadership
- Logic-Love, metaphysics, understanding, vision, recognition, awareness
- Memory, awareness-Consciousness, awakening
- Love
- Service, support
- Liberation, Free Spirit
- Gifts, Talents
- Logic
- Decision-choice, Thought-Reason, rationality, sanity
- Judgment, wisdom, discipline, making sense
Tribe-social morality (body-brain-centered)
- Will
- Tribal strength:
- self-guide, detachment from Logic-Love
- self-reliance, self-sufficiency, authorship of alternate reality
- Willful preservation of tribal authority:
- mind control, avoidance of individual questioning, understanding
- heart control, avoidance of individual emotional detachment, disloyalty
- memory control, avoidance of individual return to Consciousness, awakening
- Belonging
- Tribal strength: self-service, self-support
- Tribal liberation, individual captivity
- Tribal enablement, individual disablement
- Animal instinct
- Replacement of instinct for decision-choice, Thought-Reason, rationality, sanity
- Replacement of instinct for Judgment, wisdom, discipline, making sense
“Home” - “Relationship”
Family-individual morality (mind-centered)
- Soul-Psyche
- Family interconnectedness
- Timelessness, Here and Now
- Love
- Unconditional Love
- Family intimacy-feeling, belonging
- Inclusiveness, acceptance
- Relationship -- Family-individual, egalitarian friendship, companionship
- Logic
- Understanding, fitting together, sequence
- Lawfulness, order
Tribe-social morality (body-brain-centered)
- Will
- Tribal unity
- Time, temporal, there and then
- Belonging
- Conditional transaction
- Fraternity
- Exclusiveness
- Relationship -- tribe-member, authoritarian alliance, comradeship
- Animal instinct
- Action
- Arbitrary rule, dictation
“Innocence” - “Beauty”
Family-individual morality (mind-centered)
- Soul-Psyche
- Spirit, essence, purity, perfection
- Aesthetics, sensuous joy of nature, art or music
- Sanctuary, shelter, safety
- Peace, tranquility, compatibility
- Love
- Authenticity, Honesty, sincerity, truthfulness
- Liberation from addiction, toxicity
- Individuality-affirmation, validation, Worth
- Logic
- Definition, boundaries
- Knowledge, Truth
- Protection, security
- Awareness-Self, recognition-introspection, Innocence-harmlessness
- Awareness-Authorship, Parents-Creator
- Authority of rule of law
Tribe-social morality (body-brain-centered)
- Will
- Fortress, bunker
- Victimhood, guilt, Retribution, vengeance
- Tribal predatory will to
- conquer-replace purity, perfection
- possess-accumulate aesthetic wealth-treasures of sensory perception
- Belonging
- Invalidation, punishment
- Tribal dependence on expedience-inauthenticity, appearances-facades, deception-masks, dishonesty-insincerity, for preservation of tribal authority
- Captivity to addiction, toxicity
- Animal instinct
- Tribal predatory instinct for appearance, deception, weakness of prey
- Aggression, intrusion, invasion
- Survival, self-defense, attack, predation
- Awareness-other, extraversion, guilt-harmfulness
- Denial-Authorship, self-creator
- Self-authority, rule above the law
“Wholeness” - “Wellness”
Family-individual morality (mind-centered)
- Soul-Psyche
- Wholeness, Interconnectedness
- Health, healing
- Self-integrity
- Love
- Abundance, benevolence, loving kindness, caring
- Family belonging, equality, sharing
- Affirmation, respect, Worth
- Logic
- Reality, structure, foundation, stability
- Lawfulness, respectfulness, justice-fairness
- Judgment, discipline
Tribe-social morality (body-brain-centered)
- Will
- Intra-tribal cohesion, inter-tribal competition, conflict
- Individual provisioning for competition winning, survival
- Individual Self-surrender, sacrifice
- Belonging
- Tribal bounty, largesse, charity
- Tribal belonging
- Individual subordination, surrender
- Tribal affirmation, respect, Worth
- Individual invalidation, disrespect, worthlessness
- Animal instinct
- Tribal glory-mythology, fantasy, facade, fabrication
- Tribal arbitrary rule, above-the-law lawlessness, arrogance, injustice-unfairness
- Tribal license, individual confinement
“Enablement”
Family-individual morality (mind-centered)
- Soul-Psyche
- Love
- Growth, expansion
- Growth -- personal, character, spiritual
- Logic
- Development, competence, skill-ability, maturity
- Progress, advancement, achievement, success
- Learning, experience, discovery, exploration
Tribe-social morality (body-brain-centered)
- Will
- Tribal faith in its supremacy
- Tribal pursuit of the ideal of absolutes: authority without opposition, freedom without limits
- Belonging
- Tribal hegemony, empire
- Tribal unawareness of personal Growth
- Animal instinct
- Tribal nurturing of its young for group protection, supremacy
- Tribal training in competitive skills
- Tribal recognition for competitive superiority
- Tribal support for scripted individual learning, preservation of status quo
- Tribal hostility to unscripted individual experience, discovery, exploration, threat of change in status quo
“Empowerment”
Family-individual morality (mind-centered)
- Soul-Psyche
- Inclusiveness, Oneness, Family unity
- Interconnection
- Empowerment, strength
- Timelessness, Here and Now
- Love
- Feeling, intimacy
- Creativity
- Relationship-Connection
- Logic
- Implication, sequence, extension, evolution
- Context expansion
- Meaning, Purpose, Understanding
- Judgment, discipline
- Presence of Mind
Tribe-social morality (body-brain-centered)
- Will
- Exclusiveness, multiplicity, tribal cohesion
- Competition, separation, division
- Force, power
- Time inexorability
- Belonging
- Invulnerability, insensitivity
- Conformity, sameness
- Obedience
- Animal instinct
- Status quo, tradition
- Context contraction
- Fate, chance
- Untamable wildness
- Absence of Mind
“Spontaneity” - “Creativity”
Family-individual morality (mind-centered)
- Soul-Psyche
- Soulmates, playmates, playfulness
- Exaltation, joyfulness, happiness, laughter
- Love
- Relationship, intimacy-Trust
- Creativity, individuality, originality, eccentricity
- Free expression, diversity, variety
- Logic
- Awareness-Self, sovereignty, individual rights, Self-respect
- Free Thought, Choice, Will
- Judgment, independence
Tribe-social morality (body-brain-centered)
- Will
- Teammates, fans
- Exultation
- Belonging
- Alliance, team loyalty, suspicion-distrust
- Conformity, conventionality
- Scripted expression, uniformity
- Animal instinct
- Awareness-tribe, tribal supremacy, individual Self-denial, Self-effacement
- Scripted-ruled thought, choice, will
- Vacated judgment, dependence
