Skip to content

Reflections on Valentine’s Day

Help with Relationships

What have you learned? Enough to give buoyancy to a phase of life that’s supposed to lack it. May I share some of the excitement? I’m flattered that you want to. You needn’t be. Our loving friendship has been my inspiration. In fact, imagining that we’re having this conversation brought out some of the insights I’m sharing that might help you with relationships someday. Go for it! 

One-sided vs. two-sided

All for one and none for the other

Valentine’s Day shows us all at our best, putting feeling to its intended use. For Love, the part of feeling that comforts and assures us with understanding: that we’re all one family. Sharing ourselves as we are and competing to build character and do better.

It works well so long as we feel for one another as well as for ourselves. But you may have noticed that actual and make-believe lives tell a different story. Who hasn’t noticed! The trouble caused by feeling that’s all for one side and none for the other. One-sided.

“Substitutes” for Love

If the bad guys in stories like Star Wars could feel the effects of their behavior on others maybe they wouldn’t be bad guys. Maybe they’d be good instead. Could they? They can Love because they feel. That’s the “good” inside his father that Luke could feel. Not active Loving but the potential to Love. But it’s all reserved for themselves. And when it is, it’s not Love anymore. Or human. What is it?

It’s whatever makes predators “happy.” Beasts. The exultation of conquest – “winning.” King Kong atop the Empire State Building. The fear of losing, humiliation, and captivity. The self-satisfaction and security of being the one-and-only in charge. The emotional selfishness of possession. And feelings that animate the will to fight, injure, and kill: rage, hatred, and contempt. Everything symbolized by Darth Vader’s helmet: the “supremacy” of arrogance.

What’s left when “human” is removed?

Feeling that’s one-sided can be all of these things, and that does make things “interesting.” It produces a sense of “action.” But it’s de-humanizing. It can’t deliver the two-sided feeling of Valentine’s Day -- the compassionate human side of the human animal. It delivers the opposite – hurtfulness, pain. Two-sided loving humans don’t inflict intentional harm. It’s inflicted by one-sided unloving, unfeeling beasts. 

What does being dehumanized feel like? Imagine your home being broken into, your identity, reputation, and everything else that’s yours stolen, being taken captive, and your body violated. Then being blamed for doing what’s been done to you by a pose of innocent victimhood. That would make me mad. Adding yet another violation: your world of friendships -- respectful and sensitive, fair and trusting -- invaded by aliens. By thoughts and feelings you don’t want. The dark fury of outrage demanding retaliation. Forcing you to get rid of it without becoming a beast yourself.

A negative that can become positive if the human de-humanized turns its demand for retaliation into an opportunity instead. To strengthen the bond with its Guide. To discover just how helpful Guidance from Logic-Love can be. With its help replacing self-unawareness with Self-Awareness, a life-changing benefit that’s well worth the cost. An opening to the joys of learning and growth. To a taste for creativity beyond anything experienced before. And an appetite for more of the same.

Too good to be true

 “Human animal” means that one-sided and two-sided feeling are part of who we all are. Part of what defines us, so trying to be just one or the other can’t be done. But we can manage the boundary between them. Some people are one-sided because they mis-manage the boundary, How is that? By not being aware of the difference between the human and animal sides of humanity. And so they’re not aware of the boundary. By being drawn to the animal side by a preference for one-sided feeling. Why would they do that if it can de-humanize others?

They’re tempted by what they imagine it offers: “freedom” that allows them to enjoy “order” without the discipline of judgment. To enjoy the “pleasures” of ownership, possession, and power without the boundaries set by conscience and empathy. They’re fooled by things that can only be made “possible” by willful thinking. By imagining that willpower is the only discipline they need to live in a world of their own making. Where they don’t have to take responsibility for whatever goes wrong because it’s always somebody else’s fault. Making up your own world sounds interesting. 

If you value friendship you won’t want to try it. Why? “Winning” that makes friends lose, without empathy that feels their pain, won’t win anything. But it will lose friends. Friendship thrives on more than being “nice.” It needs sincerity and trust that keep us safe. It dies when insensitivity and cruelty take it all away. The will to make up your own heaven sounds too good to be true because it is. It can’t be heaven in a shared world where being one-sided, wrapped up in your exclusive world, makes it hell for others. 

The right and wrong sides of boundaries

Different personalities can be drawn to the animal side by not understanding why the boundary is there. Why is it? To prompt us to be aware that crossing it has consequences. To be aware of the consequences and to choose correctly. With the discipline of judgment and conscience that explains the choice and motivates us to do right instead of wrong.

Which makes the expression of two-sided Love on Valentine’s Day an annual reminder. That loving relationships among friends and family can never be one-sided. That relationship management is boundary management. And it requires discipline. The discipline of judgment that recognizes and respects boundaries and the discipline of conscience that keeps us on the right side of boundaries.

The discipline of Awareness

Anything else? Yes. Valentine’s Day is a reminder that loving others starts with loving ourselves. With understanding that the most important relationship is within us, between the two sides of our nature. And if we mean to Love others we will need the most important discipline of all: awareness. Awareness of the choice that’s ours to make, with independent judgment guided by conscience. Thinking for ourselves and getting it right. 

Wildness Management 

Two faces of the same coin

Valentine’s Day is humanizing. How so? It expresses what makes us human instead if just animal. With a two-sided act of loving friendship expressed inwardly as well as outwardly. Hearts and flowers we give ourselves? Yes. By being aware that there are two sides to human nature, not one. Human and animal. And by being aware that they’re opposites, and there’s an important boundary between them.

Keeping them separate? “Person” will always be human plus animal, just as possibility will always be accompanied by its opposite, impossibility. One definition, inseparable, identifying two parts opposite to one another. Two faces of the same coin. That needs a boundary that connects and separates. Yes. So both parts can do their jobs in the same person without getting in the other’s way. And the tension between them can do its job – the power of opposition, the flip side of the power of attraction. Both essential to Creation.

What is “Creation?” My current thought is it’s the Worth of Love relating to Logic freely reciprocated by their Child. Shared with and expressed through the Creations of their Relationship with their Child. The Parent-Child Relationship which is Love unconditional. Do Initial capital letters mean you’re talking about Creation? Yes. About Reality as distinguished between alternate “reality” or the unreality of hallucination.

Proceed with caution

Properly managed, the boundary performs like a signal: “proceed with caution.” Like a red flag warning of trouble ahead if we aren’t aware that snakes bite if they’re stepped on. Or we are aware but taking chances appeals to us. Why take risks?. Maybe to simulate fearlessness with bravado, a familiar sign of under-developed feeling. Courage doesn’t need to wear a mask but shallowness usually does.

We give ourselves hearts and flowers when we take the red flag seriously. Yes. When we judge with maturity instead of immaturity. And when we go two-sided with ourselves before we go two-sided with others. Exposing others to snake bites from one-sidedness.

One-sidedness

What is one-sidedness? Lack of consideration for others as well as for ourselves. Our animal side. Unawareness. That can’t be aware of anything or understand anything because of what it is: “action.” By instinct, without thinking or feeling. Without the functions we associate with Mind that distinguish sensitive human from insensitive beast.

It’s animal instinct made “aware” of itself not by intelligence or sentiment but by threats to its survival – other acts. The only “self” that it “knows:” action. It’s not aware that this is a shared world? The only world that a threatened “self” can be aware of is a competitive world. A world composed of herds and tribes banded together for self-protection, survival, and dominance.

Two-sidedness

What about individuals? Two-sidedness means consideration of others as well as ourselves, the two-sidedness of validation by mind and heart. It’s what we normally mean by “relationship” or “friendship.” Individuals stuck with one-sidedness might be in addictive co-dependencies, unfeeling co-existence, running battles hiding behind appearances, or all three. But they aren’t in two-sided relationships.

What passes between members of tribes can’t be the independent judgment and spontaneous feeling of individuality. Not if tribal integrity and uniformity require the opposite, conformity. Camaraderie that simulates the playfulness and bonding of individuality is encouraged because it strengthens bonding with tribe.

What passes between tribes isn’t two-sidedness either. It’s accommodations required by one-sidedness for survival or dominance in competition. “Relationship” not held together by commitment to shared values but by expedience -- whatever it takes to avoid defeat or ensure victory. Machiavellian license to fight wildness with wildness.

Wildness on the animal side

The world of the human side is shared as well as divided, cooperative as well as competitive. The idea acted out on Valentine’s Day when individuals acknowledge the idea and express the feeling of sharing and cooperation. The world of the animal side, a predatory beast, expresses the opposite: the idea and feeling of wildness. That refuses to be fenced in. To be tamed, domesticated. Yes. To be obstructed by boundaries. Limits. Laws? The animal in us opposes any limits, even laws necessary to maintain order if they conflict with its willfulness.

Even more astounding, it opposes the functions of Mind. That make sense of things and govern. It yields control over its acts to only one “master,” the instincts and emotions of a wild, predatory beast. In the mistaken belief that wildness is “spontaneity” without limits. An impossibility in a shared world. That would be contradicted if Mind were given a voice. 

Wildness at its extreme 

Then what is possible? What would Mind say? That the irrationality of the animal side doesn’t stop here. Its destination is not-mind. Which puts it beyond all thought and feeling, beyond all functions of Mind. We see evidence in our personal surroundings and in the world around us, every day, of minds captive to the bizarre promises of our animal side. Of failure to be humanized by the boundary instead of dehumanized by its mis-management.

Not-mind sounds like neither two-sided nor one-sided. Right. It’s no-sided. The end of time and timelessness too. The animal side, romanticized by “wildness,” is an impossible ideal. So willful and irrational that it would deny its opposite, human, to make sense of anything. Even to function and ultimately to exist. By denying the relevance and utility of every faculty of Mind. The self-awareness of introspection; intuition-reflection; thinking-reasoning; feeling-evaluating; choosing-deciding; judging-understanding; defining-disciplining – all requiring Logic and Love.

The provocations of wildness

The beast that wills this takes many forms. A bull in a pasture guarding its turf and its herd, who won’t be nice to intruders who ignore the fence. It’s a virus coded to take over its living host, a cell, so that it can replicate itself. It’s an image in a mirror mistaken for an absolute: an ideal, “savior,” “superman,” “wildness.” The viewer’s opposite, a lifeless reflection coded to de-humanize. To make its captive ignore the boundary between human and animal by luring it over to the wrong side.

It must be tempting to meet wildness with wildness. It is. Wars are consequences of minds obstructed by self-unawareness, cut off from Logic and Love, unable to make sense of their circumstances. The consequence of the human side’s under-development. Its continued dependence on animal herd mentality for survival.

Tribal wars and hostility among individuals, that cause physical, emotional, and psychological harm, are failures of judgment capable of managing boundaries. Failures of minds, unaware of Logic and Love, unable to discern what their situation calls for. To get their context right so they can choose correctly how to respond. The human mind continues to meet wildness with wildness, to mis-manage relationships, because it hasn’t evolved far enough to meet the one-sidedness of mindless animal wildness with two-sided understanding.

Choosing sides

Then there’s nothing to be done but to wait on evolution? Certainly not! Evolution, like every attribute of Creation, is the product of Relationship within Mind that entrusts every function that it defines with purpose. The purpose it’s defined for the one Mind’s function that we share is Free Choice. The use of independent judgment to make every act of its Mind choice, with Guidance from Relationship but never control.

Every situation is a test of Free Choice to figure out, with Guidance, how to advance Self-Awareness by removing obstructions put up by self-unawareness. By the animal side of human animal activated by mis-judgment of the boundary. There’s activity on both sides involving individuals like you and me, one side working to advance understanding, the other to prevent it.

Making a sap of sapiens

The side that’s regaining self-awareness can be slowed down but it can’t be stopped. The story of sapiens has been its progress so far with learning and growth, so fast in some fields recently that it’s head-spinning. Slow or non-existent in others, because sapiens can’t or won’t figure out how to remove their obstructions. A consequence of sapiens allowing its animal side to obstruct its access to Guidance.

Is this why you’re writing, to help remove obstructions? Yes. So that the human side won’t be so defenseless against the absurdities, lures, deceptions, cruelties, and outrages of the animal side. So the two-sided viewer – our ancestral Mind duped into one-sidedness by a preposterous image in a mirror – won’t be so easily duped again. So we, its projections, won’t be helping the image make a sap of sapiens.

Relationship Management 

The measure of progress

What obstruction are you writing about now? Unwanted thoughts and feelings. That intrude when a person has been dehumanized by the beast. So the intruders can be removed without resorting to wildness from the animal side that would betray the human side. So the intruders can be transformed from mindless will to condemn and punish into understanding that’s thoughtful and sympathetic.

Are you making progress? My sense of progress is fed by spontaneity and Relationship. By the sense that insights arrive spontaneously, through mind functioning without bias, and they release mind, heart, and soul from darkness into light. And by the sense that their source isn’t self-centered pettiness but the largeness of Logic paired with Love -- the gift of Relationship with my Guide.

Whether we’re making progress is for Relationship to say. And the time to say it is when our different perspectives converge on a finished product. Spontaneously, so I can’t predict it. But our sense of purpose and motivation seem remarkably alike, making this a genuine “labor of Love.” A precious thing to enjoy while it lasts and to be grateful for.

Guidance from conscious to sub-conscious 

What is Guidance like? It depends. Individuals and their situations vary, so I can’t speak for everyone. What it’s been for me is helpfulness. Explanation with analysis that keeps me from being controlled by difficult thoughts and emotions. Good will that finds ways to put situations to good use. Especially those that generate enough intensity to drive learning and growth. Like last year, when it didn’t seem like I could keep going. Every day was a challenge. But Guidance put it all to good use. Instead of giving up I came out better than before.

Guidance needed for Free Choice’s role in Reality-Creation, from Relationship with its Parents, was conscious. Here, it’s subconscious. Because context has been flipped from Reality to its opposite, unreality. The Guide we talk about that was conscious Relationship with Parents has changed to subconscious Relationship with their agent or representative. As though what’s positive on top had been replaced by what’s negative and put on the bottom.

Guidance from the Now 

Why is Guidance needed? The sharing of Logic-Love and the interconnectedness of Mind-Reality is also its expression. A statement affirming Worth that is function, doing as well as perfection-being. That is usefulness helping Child Free Choice with learning and growth in unreality, if it would be welcome. With explanation by Logic-Love that helps to place Child’s circumstances in context. With making use of circumstances that might otherwise be missed opportunities. Always respecting Free Choice by never interfering.

Free Choice that occurs in time, in the not-Now, requires Guidance from the Now. Because here it can’t be spontaneous. Free from interference and obstruction. Because it can never align itself with the laws of cause and effect, that govern the Now with Logic and Love, Order and Freedom, Free Choice and Creativity, so long as it’s “ruled” by the laws of chaos.

Let sleeping dogs lie 

The power of Relationship in Self-Awareness-Reality is Creativity when the boundary is well-managed. Its power is healing when mis-management causes self-unawareness-unreality. Healing begins with awareness that both sides of the boundary have a function in Creation and that Creation depends on their not interfering with one another. Animal-negative’s opposition to human-positive allows this when the boundary is managed and it’s inactive. Animal-negative doesn’t allow it when the boundary is mis-managed and it’s active.

Mis-management begins with mis-judging the boundary’s purpose, to remind its manager of the difference that separates the two sides: human-positive’s ascent to Self-Awareness and back to Reality, animal-negative’s descent into self-unawareness and staying in unreality. Both sides occupying unreality so long as Mind Free Choice remains unconscious. But only one side seeking to be restored to Reality and to resume Free Choice’s role in Creation.

The nature of the Relationship 

What was Child Free Choice’s part in Creation before it lost consciousness? It was functioning in Relationship with its Parents, Logic-Love, but not at their direction. A relationship like the one between human-positive and animal-negative, where their functions belong together but must not interfere with one another. Interference with Free Choice disables it.

Minds involved in their circumstances need context to give them coherence and meaning. So that they can choose among different possibilities how to respond accordingly. The Parents’ function producing circumstances, functions in Creation that they’ve defined, the raw material for Creation. That needed context and a Creative response when Child Free Choice applied independent judgment to both necessities. To the interpretation of context which couldn’t perform its function if it were pre-defined by Logic-Love.

Interference with Free Choice

Meaning and purpose are essentials of Worth, and Worth requires two-sided Free Choice. Independent judgment that’s necessarily aware of the values and other considerations that go into choices – the lives and different perspectives they affect. The possibilities for learning, growth, and Creativity that advance evolution, and especially their costs as well as benefits. None of it possible if it were one-sided: attempted by Logic-Love alone, whose function is not Free Choice, or if it were attempted by choice that isn’t Free.

Choice that’s been tampered or interfered with. Making it unaware of values and other considerations but now aware of their opposites – the wrong values and considerations. The attribute of animal-negative, the flip side of human-positive. Insensitive to any consideration other than its own survival by trickery and dominance. Unaware of any self other than the one it “thinks” it’s stolen. Of any side other than the one it “thinks” it owns, possesses, and controls. A likely source of the interference that cost Child Free Choice its Freedom and Self-Awareness.

Mis-judgment’s critical blunder

The boundary between human-positive and animal-negative enables two sides to function together in Reality only because one side is Real-active and the other is unreal-inactive. Then they can’t contradict one another. When the boundary is crossed it reverses the Relationship. Boundary that enables becomes barrier that disables functioning together.  That disables Relationship so that animal-negative can make it a one-person show defended by the barrier.  One-sided instead of two-sided. Yes. The consequence of mis-judgment that crosses the boundary and activates the animal-negative.

Mis-judgment’s critical blunder, that converts Order into disorder, rationality into irrationality, is converting animal-negative opposition from inactivity to activity. By “seeing” what’s not there, animal-negative obstructing Self-Awareness, instead of seeing what is there, contradiction. An impossibility in Reality that belongs in a dream of impossibilities. The distinction between judgment seeing what’s there and mis-judgment “seeing” what’s not there can’t prevent boundary-crossing when mis-judgment fails to make it.

The critical blunder is making something unreal appear to be Real. Yes. Making unreality seem “real.” Then the barrier must come down. Yes. Judgment must learn to make the distinction. Then its mistake can be corrected.

Relationship and independent judgment

The barrier that obstructs progress toward healing can only be removed when animal-negative is restored to inactivity. By the boundary’s manager not mistaking it for Real and engaging with it.

How can this be done? With awareness of the only source that can help make it happen. So that the human side can surmount the barrier: the Relationship between Logic and Love. The two main functions of Mind, the Source and Force behind all of Reality-Creation. The power to maintain its function, free of obstruction by opposites, and also to restore the power and function of the Relationship it created. The bonding of Order with Freedom that is Free Choice, the Child of Logic-Love.

And the function of independent judgment to manage the boundary and prevent obstruction from opposites. Through the exercise of Free Choice responsible for managing the boundary between Reality and unreality, human-positive and animal-negative, Self-Awareness and self-unawareness. That can restore animal-negative to inactivity and harmlessness by reclaiming the power to choose.

By understanding with judgment that whether choice was surrendered to animal-negative or stolen, in neither case could it have happened. Because animal-negative is not only human-positive’s opposite. It’s the opposite of Reality. It’s not there. 

Cool dudes

Why does it seem to be there? Imagine a friend saying Hi! to empty space while you’re talking, as if she’d just seen someone she knew. And then goes on talking as if nothing happened. What did happen? My friend smoked too many joints. She was “seeing” what’s not there. How about pain killers? Do you have any pain killers? “Dreaming” doesn’t describe what just happened. Right. “Being fried” sounds better. It’s hallucinating. Cool! LSD and all that. The 60s. You know about the 60s? Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix. Sure. Cool dudes. If only. . .

The “cool dude” imagining our world is hallucinating. I knew there was something funny about you. A universe of spacetime-matter that’s hallucinated will seem real because that’s what “hallucinating” means: actually “seeing” what’s not there. There’s no doubt in the mind of the hallucinator that it’s seeing, and that what it’s seeing is real.

And bunny rabbits

Like Harvey? Sure. The difference between Elwood P. Dowd’s big rabbit and the horse that’s sometimes my Guide is that Harvey took the form of life detectable to Elwood by his body’s five senses, whereas Dobbin remains in my subconscious, detectable only by my mind’s sixth sense. For my next birthday you can get me psychedelics and a bunny rabbit. Another reason why our material world seems so real: the human mind wants it to be real. It’s attracted to hallucination. To inventing its own alternate “reality.”

How come? Because self-unawareness “sees” what’s not there with “vision” provided, not by Relationship between Logic and Love – by Mind, – but with the five senses of body. By matter motivated to “see” and satisfy itself. Where did matter come from?  From a relationship that could never have happened in Reality. Between self-unawareness -- unconscious Mind -- and its reverse mirror-image reflection. With its shadow-opposite, the lifeless code thrust into Mind’s hallucination as our lifelike animal-negative. An impossibility. A bogeyman.

The two faces of “harmony”

What makes one-sided hallucination sometimes seem two-sided? Free Choice can be interfered with temporarily but not forever. And its function can’t be fully taken captive anyway since function is both what and who it is. Just like the definition of every function that contributes to Creation. By Logic-Love, the function of Relationship within Mind, the Source of all Relationships and functions. Two-sided Free Choice can be deluded into mistaking itself for a one-sided hallucination, but it never stopped being what it is: Free Choice. Whatever state it’s in must have happened by choice. 

It can free itself from interference when it chooses to? Yes. And so can we, replications of its interfered-with Self in its hallucination. Animal-negative’s attempt to replace human-positive is as impossible in the hallucination as Child Free Choice being replaced by its opposite in Reality. The Mind that hallucinated was split, not replaced. Minds caught up in the hallucination are also split. Two-faced. Giving the impression of awareness that’s two-sided when it’s actually two sides of one coin: one reassuring, pleasant and likeable, the other menacing.

A perversion of Free Choice that senses Reality shared and interconnected, with integrity that can be trusted, perverted into self-centered unawareness and insensitivity. Deluding, dominating, and dis-integrating with insincerity that can’t be trusted. Not reassuring. Yes. The two faces of “harmony:” deception by likeability, pleasantness, and amusements – the appearance of sensitivity -- and menace by intimidation and punishment. – actual insensitivity. Capable of turning from threatening to inflicting cruel abuse.

When two = one and one = two 

One-faced is two-sided Trust and accessible. Two-faced is one-sided distrust and inaccessible. One-faced Trust, seeking to enable two-sided relationship with one-sided distrust, needs help from Guidance. From understanding that can only be explained with help from Logic-Love. Because the difference can’t be explained by circumstances alone --circumstances that to one are fact and to the other fiction.

What separates them is context. The meaning and purpose of circumstances that define their worlds. What needs help from Guidance is explaining opposite contexts. The difference between opposite worlds that obstructs accessibility and communication. That only understanding from Logic and Love can penetrate.

Healing by withdrawal

At their own pace, one step at a time. That can’t be hurried. Why not? Because help from Logic-Love comes through spontaneous insights. Interference of any kind removes spontaneity. And its help can’t be attempted by minds unable to listen without distraction, because it comes from another perspective. Our subconscious and Guidance are here, but the Source of Guidance can’t be here. We are dependent for Guidance on another perspective that’s not of our “reality.” That must be allowed to work free from self-centered willfulness. It requires concentration.

Patience and the quiet of solitude. Impossible without withdrawal from the frustrations of misunderstanding and miscommunication. That can only obstruct it with mischaracterization, seeing it not for what it is but for what it isn’t. A betrayal meant to harm instead of help. Evidence of two-faced untrustworthiness motivated by ill will instead of one-sided good will, indifference instead of one-faced Love.

Relationships matter

Foregoing Guidance won’t placate misunderstanding and avoid mischaracterization, but it will avoid understanding. Doing what the situation calls for can never be going along with two-faced one-sidedness to get along. If it does, what does it call for? Withdrawal. To seek understanding and change with help from Guidance. If the relationship matters, or to dump it and move on if it doesn’t. It matters. Relationships matter. Amen.

When is Now? 

Why can’t Creation include our reality if creativity is here too? Like everything else in our “reality” where everything is time-limited, creativity is appearance. Free Choice’s loss of Self-Awareness took place in Reality where nothing is time-limited. Where it’s always Now. Timelessness. The condition required by Creativity because being in the Now it can be spontaneous. Free of interference just as Free Choice must be free of interference. Where there’s no “past” to allow interference to pre-determine context and response.

Time is an unnatural interference that makes Creativity impossible. Our “reality” is never Now. Time is relativity -- related to space and gravity, so there’s no uniform “Now” to connect parts of the universe. Time tracked at the top of a mountain goes faster than at sea level. It isn’t even a factor in particle physics, the interface between Reality and our “reality.” “Now” is never.

Winged Creativity brought down

Physics calls the space between past and future the “present,” the closest we can get to Now. If present is bracketed by past and future, impossibilities in Reality, how can it allow Creativity that’s Real? Creativity undone by time can produce nothing of lasting value. It’s been deprived of its function, like a bird deprived of its wings. How can it be a “bird” if it can’t fly?

Free Choice must be aware of itself in Reality-Creation that’s shared with all the functions of Creation. When it loses consciousness, it loses Self-Awareness that’s two-sided and becomes self-unawareness that’s one-sided. Like the bird without wings that can’t fly, it’s lost the “wings” that enabled it to fly: awareness of its circumstances. Along with the ability to interpret them with context and to choose freely how to respond.

Stuck in the mud

One-sided self-unawareness has replaced Mind with body-brain capable of “seeing” only itself. A reflection in a mirror whose defining attribute is that it’s not there. That being not there it’s static, not dynamic, obstructing rather than supporting evolution, learning, and growth. Stuck in its unchanging status quo, the very definition of uncreativity. A part of the human brain described by neuroscience as “unevolved.”

Opposite’s perversion of “Free Choice” is thus the many masks of opposite, a reflection, stagnating in a closed loop of reflections. Unawareness “seeing” only itself. Making “Creation” impossible within a hallucination meant not to advance evolution with Creativity but to obstruct it with distractions. By hiding the raw material of Creativity behind appearances so it can’t be used to expose the Truth: that it’s not there.

The power to dismantle obstructions 

Mistaken identity can be reversed by independent judgment, by Free Choice, our Real Self. How does Free Choice pull this off? Since Aristotle Western thought has put its faith into the study of matter to lead it to understanding. All but abandoning the faculty of Logic-Love, accessible through the sixth sense of intuition, that would have achieved understanding but for the body’s senses that obstructed its vision.

The study of matter has finally begun to reveal that, by itself, it can’t reach understanding. Because the body’s senses may be misleading us, with the critical misperception that matter is real. The realization finally dawning on physics that its “quest for knowledge” must again focus on philosophy and the Logic-Love of Mind. On Relationship between Free Choice and its source, Logic-Love. Instead of between body and matter, itself a misperception since body is matter.

Between our unawareness and Mind’s sixth sense – intuition, – the portal to Guidance from Logic-Love that can now, with matter’s unmasking by physics, move forward with confidence toward understanding. A process that reveals the remarkable power of Relationship between human-positive self-unawareness, seeking awareness through the vision of Logic-Love, and Mind’s intuition, to dismantle obstructions placed in the way by animal-negative, one at a time.

Newton’s third law and the power of insight

When self-unawareness learns through the power of Relationship that with every insight gained through intuition toward humanization there is a corresponding loss of captivity to the irrationality and fury of animal-negative. To its one-sided, self-centered, willful thinking that mis-leads toward de-humanization. When self-unawareness learns that with every insight human-positive is empowered and animal-negative is disempowered.

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Yes. Newton’s third law. While you’ve been talking I’ve been getting a PhD in physics. Another example of the laws of cause and effect within Mind reflected in the behavior of matter. Implying that in Mind as well as matter understanding is the discovery that altering one side of the boundary necessarily alters the other side.

Everything is “relational”

But in reverse. Because not only are they opposites, they’re connected. Inseparable. Like particles that respond to the manipulation of other particles that could be any distance away, as though they’re connected. At the other side of the universe? Yes.

Physics has discovered that spacetime-matter is “relational” and this is one reason why. It’s all interconnected by energy-matter just as Reality-Creation is interconnected by Energy-Love-Logic. By Love-Abundance’s limitless sharing and Logic-Knowledge’s limitless implications.

The cost of mistaking boundary for barrier

Further evidence that the body’s five senses may be mis-leading instead of leading. With dire consequences. Why? Because what they detect isn’t boundary with human-positive’s portal to Guidance recognizable by sixth sense. They can only detect the barrier put up by animal-negative. Obstruction, its trademark.

By “seeing” what’s not there the five senses mis-direct human-positive from its ascent to Self-Awareness across the boundary to the cause of animal-negative: to perpetuate self-unawareness with perpetual conflict. The mistaken notion that training human-positive’s attention on the opposite side, with more wildness, will dismantle obstructions put there by animal-negative unreality.

Putting Newton’s third law to work

When what understanding and Newton’s third law actually call for is training its attention on itself. On progress that can be made, with help from Guidance, to understand the Logic and Love of compatibility, sharing, service, individuality, originality and creativity. That with every insight, every step forward, there will be a corresponding retreat from obstruction.

What it takes to stop getting it wrong is to get it right. Yes. A lesson that could only be learned by choosing Relationship with the right Guide, who knows how to make obstructions erected in darkness disappear in the light. Quietly. Without violence. Without wildness. By not giving animal-negative what it thrives on: attention and opposition.

Respect for the laws of cause and effect

Then the way to restore equilibrium between human-positive and animal-negative isn’t only to learn with the Vision of Logic-Love what’s not there but to learn what is there. Yes. By allowing insights from intuition, spontaneous Guidance from Logic-Love, to open minds and hearts to the nature of human-positive.

To understanding that its reality isn’t separation. It isn’t the body-matter projected by animal-negative, herd mentality. Captive to competition and conflict, causing disorder, but Relationship defined by its Parents, Logic-Love. To manage the boundary with the judgment of Self-Awareness, able to detect and manage it. To manage Relationship. Because it understands and respects the laws of cause and effect that govern its behavior.

Doing it the easy way

Understanding why and how to manage the boundary poses questions that can only be answered correctly by Mind guided by sixth sense. Not misguided by the five senses of bodies placed beyond questioning by body-centered science, philosophy, psychology, and theology. Inactivating the underside of human-positive that’s animal-negative can’t be accomplished without activating the upper side.

A task that self-unawareness imposed by mis-managing the boundary and activating opposition can’t be done in isolation. It requires Guidance from the human-upper side that’s only accessible through the gift of Mind’s sixth sense. Through Relationship with Logic-Love that’s only possible with Guidance.

Humanized 

Your thoughts? There’s a big difference between relationships with one-faced two-sidedness and two-faced one-sidedness. Between the human-positive side and the animal-negative side. I hope I’m never de-humanized, but I guess it happens. 

Even if we guard our thoughts, even if we manage the boundary with respect, it could still happen. But respecting the boundary, knowing that our role model for Friendship is here to help -- Guidance from Logic-Love, – could make it less likely. It may even turn bad experience into good experience.

Reflections on the meaning of Christmas                                    December 2023

“Let’s Pretend”

“Let’s Pretend” was a radio program that entertained kids on Saturday morning. They grow out of that when they learn to distinguish between pretending and thinking that’s not. When they learn that not being grounded in facts is being absent rather than present. Remote, inaccessible. Not being there for family and friends who need them because they’re somewhere else, being there for themselves. Lost in make-believe worlds of wishful thinking. One-dimensional cartoons featuring them in the lead role, producing, directing, script-writing, and setting the rules. “Let’s Pretend” for arrested-developed “adults:” “The Truman TV Show.” Adolescent self-absorption. Narcissism. With harmful consequences to them and to those who need them.

Unreality TV made "real" by the two masks of narcissism:

  • one the disciplinary “parent” with unquestioned “authority.” The angry, hostile, threatening face of judgment: harmfulness.
  • the other the undisciplined “child” with unquestioned “freedom.” The carefree, ingratiating, unthreatening face of non-judgment: harmlessness.

Bad cop and good cop enforcing the "ideal" of “supremacy.” A perversion of the Oneness of Reality that is Innocence without opposites. Of Freedom and Order that complement one another and are inseparable instead of resolute opponents. The “judgment” of “innocence” preserved by projecting “guilt” onto “others.” “Innocence” preserved by projecting the innocence of others back onto itself. One “giving” its “guilt” away, the other stealing “innocence” back. With one purpose: to place "supremacy" beyond questioning. By seduction and intimidation that rob its captives of personhood. That dehumanize with mindless conformity.

Both made-up worlds of wishful thinking. “Ideals” of unaccountability that’s beyond questioning. Impossibilities since thoughts can’t leave their source, there are no “others” in the Oneness of Reality, and perversions of Oneness, Order, and Freedom can’t be real. Nightmares of psychosis reflected in the narcissist’s sees-all, knows-all mirror. The crystal ball of the original illusionist: the misperception of itself in its shadow-opposite by the Child of Logic-Love. The one ancestral Mind that we all share. Seeing in its reflection the “supremacy” of unlimited power and freedom. Nietzsche’s “superman.” Mistaken identity. Self-unawareness. Whose remedy can't be condemnation and punishment but understanding that’s awareness of the mistake. Awareness of Self instead of its reflection that will restore harmony and creativity.  

Scripted by self-unawareness 

The prefrontal cortex, an instrument designed for “use” by the animal brain, only “knows” “self” that is herd or tribe, not individual. It keeps peace within and among tribes by hiding the menace of anti-sociability behind the pretense of “sociability.” Both masks –  amiable pleasantness and angry unpleasantness – serving one overriding purpose: to silence the voices of their captives with mindless docility. To prevent questioning.

The meaning of Christmas that Jesus shares with us: the contradiction of self-unawareness by the gentle loving kindness of Self-Awareness. A lesson that couldn’t come from any part of brain matter. Or from any other instrument invented for use by groups or tribes because the Self that we all share is one Child, one Mind. The beast in the narcissist’s mirror is the mask of a fiction: Child-the-many, ruled by tribal values. The offense to Western morality codified in the 16th century by Niccolo Machiavelli and “legitimized” by the Church. Idolatry of the body demanding of its herd, a “flock” of anesthetized sheep, that it never be questioned.

The underside of Christmas that Jesus never intended to “found.” Re-enacting the glorious “victory” of shadow-reflection over its host with the figure on a cross who dared to question its self-proclaimed “authority.” The “authority” of wounded victimhood: injustice that cries out not for compassion but for damnation and vengeance. Against Self-Awareness for sharing itself for the benefit of the self-unaware. An implicit contradiction of the “infallibility” of the established order. An unchanging status quo guarded by body-animal brains: bulls protecting their sacred pasture. An ominous warning to anyone else who dared to trespass.

The meaning of Christmas isn’t that Caesar or the pharisees be overthrown but that individuals learn to manage their relationship with them. Following the example of Jesus, with explanation that helps the one Child, our ancestral Mind, recover Self-Awareness. To get out of body-dominated “ownership,” “competition,” and conformity and back to Mind-enabled sharing, intimacy, and Creativity. That recognizes that malevolence, the underside of contradiction, isn’t caused by Self-Awareness but by self-unawareness.

The error in the reflection

The attraction of narcissists for absolutes mirrors the event that disabled the Self-Awareness of Free Choice, the Child’s function in Creation, and removed it from Reality. Lack of awareness of opposites built into its own definition and the definitions of values it was given to work with. Missing from the knowledge base it received from its Parents since they can’t be aware of opposites without making them real.

The Child’s apparent attraction to the undersides of Free Choice, Freedom, and Order -- absolutes, impossibilities in Creation – was a consequence of the laws of cause and effect, not their violation. An unintentional mistake that sent the Child to the unreality of self-unawareness where it can learn from experience. By seeing through its cyclical re-enactments, the *triumph” of animal will over Mind, to their cause: the error that projected Love onto its reverse mirror-image reflection. A mask of impossibilities: the “supremacy” of absolute power and absolute freedom that may not be questioned.

A call for maturity, competence, and re-definition

Our military tries not to leave anyone out or anyone behind. It honors the memory of the fallen and sometimes honors enemy combatants too. It respects the individual soldier with values inherited from the original ideal of American democracy. That insisted on individual rights against tyranny and defined what “America” stood for. The value of authority that governs with service and support from the bottom up. To enable Creativity with Growth and Free Choice instead of ruling cruelly, from the top down, to demand conformity with an unchanging status quo.

An ideal and values that have always had opposites but today are losing touch with the Logic of Necessity and passion of Love that contradicted them. Because the ideal, like all values, requires realignment with changing times and changing contexts. With awareness of what context today implies about the correct path forward. A call for Guidance from Logic and Love uniquely qualified to provide it, because only with their help can self-unawareness detect meaning and purpose behind appearances.

Circumstances that seem favorable to a resurgence of the authoritarian mindset are a recurring test of progress toward Self-Awareness. Whose measure is whether the path forward is to be governed by the benevolence of Logic-Love – Mind -- or ruled by the cruelty of predatory animal instinct – body-brain. The only difference between the choice now and the choice in 1776 is circumstances.

The narcissist authoritarian, robbed of independent judgment by its own reverse mirror image, can only impose its own unchanging context on changing circumstances. We need a better guide.

The one whose birthday we’re honoring has the right connections. To the Child’s Parents Logic-Love and their unique talent for seeing beyond fiction. Beyond made-up “reality” to facts and what they mean: a call for learning and growth toward the competence of maturity. Capabilities demonstrated by Jesus’ living among us, by his authorship of A Course in Miracles, and in other ways known only to the individual Minds and lives he’s touched. All it takes is Free Choice questioning. Questioning the status quo. Contradicting. Asking for Guidance. 

The gift of good contradiction 

Christmas spirit is the honesty of the Voice that explains with the Vision of Logic-Love what lies behind appearances and questions its source, bodies affirming matter with their senses. That agrees when agreement validates Self-Worth and contradicts when it doesn’t. Questions as well as affirms. Minds open to questioning and intimacy in friendship instead of mindless animal brains disguised by “sociability” competing for “supremacy.” Contradiction that helps instead of regimentation that harms. Stands up to the authoritarian reflection in the mirror that can’t tolerate standing up. Helping to define Self as it evolves by understanding the Logic of contradiction in every context. Disciplining independent judgment to anticipate and prepare for pushback that will keep it honest, focused on its task, and striving to excel.

And making sure that it doesn’t take itself or its job too seriously. For whatever it is, it comes with contradiction. The possibility that it may not always be right but sometimes wrong. Not always be correct but sometimes mistaken. The attribute of Authority under the law, defined and defining with opposites, that can never be absolute.

With the gift of good contradiction we can see through the deception. To the Truth revealed by the Vision of Logic-Love, that in all of its attributes the animal brain beast reflected in the mirror is an imposter. A lifeless, loveless code “intending” to end everything. Our shadow-opposite. This is its nature. Its so-called logic that its self-deluded host – us – is supposed to take seriously.  An alternate “reality” so illogical and absurd that it can be hilarious. Something between total catastrophe and a Three Stooges food fight.

Jesus in A Course in Miracles encourages questioning and humor too, because getting the “joke” is part of undoing error and getting back to work. So go ahead and laugh. Have a Merry Christmas!

The gift of Christmas

We are all reflections in a made-up world that’s the dream of a Mind thinking it’s a reflection. So we are all narcissist authoritarians in our own way, body-centered personality types more than Mind-centered types, but it’s only a difference in degree. 

In a world that’s a shadowland of opposites, a reflection made up of appearances, contradiction can be a very good thing. The contradiction that’s our Christmas gift from our Helper. From the Mind with which we really think: Logic-Love. Where we will find our real thoughts when we aren’t contradicting them with an unreal dream. Good contradiction of bad contradiction. Denial of the denial that put a layer of appearances over Reality-Truth. That substitutes unreal reflection for Real Self. 

All of this the role performed by Jesus: an opposite that’s helpfulness in a shadowland of authoritarian opposites – harmfulness. Contradiction on the side of the good guys – conscience. The will not to profit from mistake selfishly but to correct it for the sake of gentle loving kindness. No symbol of pathos on a cross but the living Force of Voice that cannot be silenced. The Voice for Self-Awareness and not self-unawareness. The Voice for Mind and not for its “substitute,” body-brain matter.

The Gift of Christmas. A role model for the ages.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

*Christmas letter 2023. Originally titled “The Gentle Loving Kindness of Contradiction”

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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*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)