Skip to content

Tag: evolution

Published on Leave a comment on A Role Model for Boundary Management

Wisdom from the third rail: “Guard your thoughts.”

If our task in this “life” is to learn to manage the boundary between opposites then it helps to understand that the boundary is friction, and friction is Energy. The boundary that divides what is from what isn’t on the top side and underside of Definition in Reality. That divides human from animal on the topside and underside of human animal in unreality. The Mind-Child hallucinating our “reality” and us stand astride the third rail.

Reason enough for Jesus’ advice in A Course in Miracles to “guard your thoughts.” Because it would have been a mistaken thought, unguarded, that dropped Self-Awareness Free Choice out of Spontaneity’s empowerment into conformity’s disempowerment. The state of self-unawareness that only Mind-Child Free Choice can experience and potentially live to tell about it. Provided that it chooses to abandon its self-delusion, put down its mirror, pick up the sovereignty of independent judgment – the power to choose – where it fell, and trust the Guide within to share its gift from Self-Awareness. As Choice seeking Freedom chooses to receive it.

The third rail that gets its power from friction between incompatibilities on either side of the boundary, rubbing up against each other like two sticks striking a spark. Teaching the function of Creation who volunteered to manage it – Free Choice – that Creation needs the friction. That the boundary was put there by the lightning strike of Spontaneity, Mind-Order’s answer to Origin-instability’s call for stability. Teaching Free Choice that it was a mistake that would have allowed underside to replace topside, removing one of the sticks, that sent it here to learn how to undo it.

By partnering in loving friendship with Guidance, through the Spontaneity of its sixth sense, to learn from Mind-Child’s Parents. To understand enough of their story, the story of Mind Logic-Love, to follow their example. For the competence to manage the boundary with Logic-Love, its mission built into the laws of cause and effect, that codifies both the hazard of friction and its Necessity. And puts both to their intended use with every spontaneous act, of every Free Choice, of Creation.

To the glory of “god”

The human animal brain rules, and is ruled by, one principle: the supremacy of the tribal self, Mind Child transfigured from one to many. In an act of arrogance by the beast in the mirror, trickery by the magician, and absurdity by the joker. Supremacy among tribes and within itself.

Yielding independent judgment to the verdict of body-brains’ five senses: that they and their sensed environment are relationship that defines, creates, and rules reality. The only “reality” possible. A perversion of Relationship that illuminated Self-Awareness and initiated Creation. More mischief from the beast, the magician, and the joker in the mirror. Perpetrating the absurdity that the legitimacy and power of authority are measured by numbers. Numbers of bodies. Herds of human animals competing in mortal combat for a non-sequitur: supremacy.

Where herds labeled “good” and “evil” – opposites – may not resolve their differences with wimpish, dithering Thought. They must instead assemble their forces at  Armageddon to engage in a test of physical strength between bodies. Requiring feats of godlike invincibility. Displays of selfless tribal loyalty and the will to dominate, heedless of danger, steadfast in the face of impossible odds. A grand finale of Olympian mythical grandeur.

All to the glory of “god:” the human body. Given its exalted place in the firmament by the supreme court of judgment: organic matter flaunting its Olympian supremacy with senses capable of sensing itself. The beast in the mirror admiring its reflection, the validation of animal brain’s arrogance. Deceit and theft that got away with it and exempts itself from accountability. 

Another perspective not of this “reality”

This is the narrative that lures the human mind away from the story of Mind. Away from following Mind’s example for managing the boundary to allowing its animal brain’s wildness, unevolved and unevolving, to rid itself of all boundaries. To substitute the self-centered willfulness of a two-year-old for the Logic and discipline of mature judgment.

If science and the other major disciplines insist on studying the hallucination, let them. But consider also the possibility that learning from Mind through its sixth sense is science too. Not in the sense that its discoveries can be “known” but in the sense that making sense with Logic-Love requires no less discipline than the “iron rule” of scientific method. More discipline, in fact, so long as science keeps the thumb of sensory perception on the scale of Truth.

Authenticity begins with Logic-Love seeking Truth, questing for Understanding where it can be found, instead of the bias of circular reasoning seeking its own validation. Truth to be intuited not in body-brains’ hallucination but in the clarity, simplicity, and Logic-Love of Self-Awareness. Another perspective not of this “reality.” Where all learning begins and never ends. Creation.

Wisdom from classical metaphysics

Mind role-modeled managing the boundary between what is and what isn’t, possibility and impossibility, from the instant lightning struck. The equivalent of Mind’s “Big Bang” when the friction caused by Origin’s inherent instability threw off a spark. The spark that set in motion an answer to Origin’s Question in the Now of timelessness.

Sorting between attributes of stability and instability and inserting between them the Force of Energy, The boundary that answers to the direction of Mind-Child Free Choice. Enabling it to maintain function in Self-Awareness or to replace it with hallucination in self-unawareness if it so chooses. In alignment with Mind’s DNA, the Force of Necessity: the preservation of friction between opposites along with the capacity of Choice to choose freely among them. Defining Order with its first boundary and Creativity with two of its founding attributes: Spontaneity-empowerment and Free Choice.

An event that in no way can parallel or emulate the Big Bang of our imagination. The event that set off “spookiness” that defies explanation – self-contradictory, inaccessible, violent, pointless, entropic, and time-limited. That defied Einstein’s striving to make sense of its “reality” when it bears all the marks of unreality. An illusion recognized as such by classical metaphysics 2500 years ago and beginning to be recognized now by mainstream physics. A milestone in the undoing of Mind-Child’s self-delusion. 

Minds at war with themselves

Mind’s response sought stability through the functions and values of Logic and Love. Through their inseparability, their Relationship, that role-modeled the power of attraction and the sharing of trust and intimacy, service and support. For Creativity in Reality that’s shared. Where stability enabled and empowered by Spontaneity – by Energy inseparable from Order – produced the conditions required for Creativity and Free Choice.

The madness reflected in the mirror produced the opposite. The madness of the human animal brain, the embodiment of a mad idea: “reality” not shared but terminally condemned to conflict among absolutes raging against it. Self-appointed “authorities” answerable to no one. Wildness demanding exemption from all boundaries, all limits. A make-believe reality consisting of impossibilities and contradictions. Everything split into opposing parts, light and dark. Minds split into opposing thoughts, at war with themselves. An unmanageable cartoon of slapstick chaos and blundering incompetence.

In the light of Awareness

The most obvious sign that Mind Self-Awareness wants to be Known is the Spontaneity-Energy that activated it is light. That it can be trusted because it has nothing to hide. Nothing that can be hidden in the presence of light that’s Awareness. Signaling, too, that it’s easy to find. Accessible. Open to friendship when friendship thrives on trust and openness.

The openness of intimacy and sharing that’s only possible between individuals. Who bring only themselves to their personal relationships. Not their insignia of tribal captivity, derived identity, power, and superiority. The openness and sharing of Innocence and playfulness. Seeking soulmates. Enriching friendships with variety and honesty free of guile. Sincerity free of deceit, clarity free of shade. Free of one-sided, two-faced predatory intent.

The judgment of Awareness

The most obvious reason why Mind-Child Free Choice was brought into Reality-Creation, brought to Life and enabled and empowered from birth to manage the boundary, is that being Choice, its doing – its function, – must be to choose. Making of every act some variety of choice. Making its function ideally suited to manage the boundary because doing so requires discretion. Independent judgment. Because the Child of Self-Awareness Logic-Love, by being itself, can’t let any attempt by impossibility to cross the boundary escape its notice. Escape validation if it’s Real, exposure if it’s not. The judgment of Awareness that knows the difference.

If everything with Free Choice is choice, everything that’s animal brain will is willfulness. Everything that it wills and nothing else. On its own terms and nobody else’s, one-sided and two-faced. Asserting its dominance with force, maintaining its dominance with seduction. The same outcome in either case: captivity willed by predator, dehumanization willed by beast.

Disfiguration just being disfiguration

Provided that its Self-Awareness has chosen to be itself rather than its opposite. Chosen to ignore the apparition spouting nonsense in the mirror. Chosen to use its gifts for the purpose intended but not willed. Rather than to be used by its opposite, the many masks of deception hiding its unreality in the dark, to oppose and delude everything including itself.

Requiring experience in captivity to its opposite in opposite’s medium: self-unawareness disconnecting, separating, splitting off, isolating. Until absolute’s ideal is attained: wildness unencumbered by relationship, alone at the top. Arrogance unencumbered by accountability. Ruling supreme with no obligation, no Necessity, to share. Expedience unencumbered by morality.

A hideous, grotesque disfiguration. Mindless and loveless, thoughtless and unfeeling. The face of selfishness and entitlement intent on pretense and hypocrisy. On persecution and bigotry. Abuse, cruelty, savagery, and depravity. On every form of self-indulgence including the self-pity of victimhood. Specialness entitled to write its own script and set its own rules. Just being what it is: an implication, a reflection. An illusion: absolute.

The task role-modeled by Logic-Love for their Child Free Choice 

Our task and what’s at stake can be inferred from the way that Mind-Order responded to Origin’s call for stability. Here, again, is one interpretation.

Sorting between attributes of stability and instability and inserting between them the Force of Energy, The boundary that answers to the direction of Mind-Child Free Choice. Enabling it to maintain function in Self-Awareness or to replace it with hallucination in self-unawareness if it so chooses. In alignment with Mind’s DNA, the Force of Necessity: the preservation of friction between opposites along with the capacity of Choice to choose freely among them. Defining Order with its first boundary and Creativity with two of its founding attributes: Spontaneity-empowerment and Free Choice.  

My interpretation from Helpfulness along the way toward Self-Awareness. In the context of Evolution -- eternal change. To be taken for what it’s worth.

Published on Leave a comment on Evolution’s Choice

The process of growth

Individuals evolve over time into agents or actors with distinct parts or functions that reveal patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior with increasing clarity. Like a blurred image that becomes recognizable with better resolution. Who they are and what they’re about – their being and doing – emerges into the clear, as though from darkness into light.

A progression from unawareness to awareness that may parallel or indicate evolution on a larger scale. As though individuals are varieties of a self or being that’s a composite. Evolving, or trying to evolve, from a kind of sleep into wakefulness. The common threads are changing circumstances – evolution – made up of different stories with different contexts, and levels of awareness ranging from unaware to aware in a before-after sequence.

The threat of elimination

All suggestive of order or a pattern whose purpose itself comes into focus with evolution. As the composite self gradually gains Self-Awareness and its individual replications undergo the same experience, one self moving its replications forward in a reciprocal process, one interconnecting with the other sub-consciously as in a dream.

The pattern that emerges on both scales seems differentiated by one dominant factor: opposites or opposition. Evolution made up of parts going forward with it and opposed to going forward. Parts changing and parts determined not to change. As though definition is either shared between co-equal partners with different agendas, content with contradiction, or contested between mortal enemies not content with contradiction. Where the outcome can only be the supremacy of one and the elimination of the other.

The remedy: embrace of change

Which takes evolution out of the context of the benign, which can safely remain out of sight in the darkness of self-unawareness and puts it into the opposite: the necessity of avoiding elimination on the wrong side of mortal combat in the darkness of self-unawareness.

The remedy being the embrace of change that’s evolution toward Self-Awareness and away from the resistance to change. The embrace of individual idealism that’s sharing and progress and the abandonment of tribal realism that’s self-serving and regress.

Two distinct visions

Two distinct sets of personality types: mind-centered and body sensing-centered. Two distinct perspectives: inward-subjective and outward-objective. Two distinct sets of values: love-logic, order with freedom, sharing-service, individuality-creativity vs. competition-combat, ownership-self-service, order without freedom, tribal supremacy-conformity.

And two distinct visions:

  • authority shared between free-spirited Logic and Love that governs family-sharing, by serving and supporting individual growth and creativity with sensitivity and respect, from the bottom up, under the law, vs.
  • absolute, unquestioned authority that rules tribal ownership and competition arbitrarily, without opposition, to preserve itself by enforcing conformity and opposing growth, with cruelty and disrespect, from the top down, above the law.

One approach self-consciously deliberate and moral, concerned with the wellbeing of all – inclusive, the other instinctively expedient, concerned with itself – exclusive. One that supports sharing, the other that insists on ownership and dominance opposed to sharing. One subjective, concerned with friendship in intimacy and harmony, the other objective, concerned with possession, control, and supremacy in combat. One devoted to mutual respect among equals under the law, the other devoted to the prerogatives of arrogance among un-equals above the law.

The correct choice is Now

The pattern that’s differentiated by opposites seems not to offer choice between one or the other but to compel it. Not to offer the opportunity to grow through mindfulness if one chooses it but to provide guidance when one chooses it. As though the outcome can’t be dictated by the self-serving arbitrary self-unawareness of opposites but is required instead by the Necessity of Reality. By laws of cause and effect from which there can be no escape, with which there can be no compromise. The definition of definition: the one-and-only absolute. Where the buck stops. The way things are. Defined of Logic-Love, by Logic-Love, and for Logic-Love.

Where the pattern leads is toward Self-Awareness competent to choose correctly between one approach or the other and to do so now.

Published on Leave a comment on Personality Type Theory: the Problem of Opposites and the Lure of the “Other”

The spoiler

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

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

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

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

The world of personality types unexamined

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

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

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

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

Schiller’s choice: idealism or realism

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

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

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

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

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

Personality type is bias.

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

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

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

Fetch!

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

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

One or the “other”?

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

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

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

The underlying Reality

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

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

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

The nature of feeling 

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

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

The 5-Factor theory: Myers-Briggs in reverse

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

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

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

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

A manifesto of tribal dominance

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

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

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

The 5-Factor theory’s real intent

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

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

Myers-Briggs is on solid ground

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

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

Captive to the dark lord of the body

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

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

“Fate” isn’t happenstance.

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

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

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

The only “factors” that matter: Logic and Love

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

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

Why opposites?

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

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

Why Free Choice?

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

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

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

Why it’s hard to understand.

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

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

The mother of injustice

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

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

The authority of making sense

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

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

How and where opposites are resolved

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

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

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

The engine of awakening

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

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

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

Which will it be?

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

Trust and Relationship begin with Fact

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

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

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

Uncompromising Fact that can’t be ignored

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

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

Form that must change, content that cannot change

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

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

The Course is an act of Logic and Love

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

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

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

The force of the tribe

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

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

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

For the Love of Truth and Honesty

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

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

Logic and Love, equal and inseparable

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

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

Mind and possibility at the beginning

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

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

The work in progress that is Reality and Creation

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

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

The dynamics of function 

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

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

The provocation that is honesty

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

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

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

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

The face behind the mask of pleasantness

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

Two perspectives, two functions

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

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

“Absence of felicity,” absence of partiality

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

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

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

Helen’s gift back to the Course

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

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

Misled by body-sensing “realism”

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

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

A taste of Heaven

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

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

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

“Success”

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

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

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

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

The authenticity of the Course and its Author

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

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

Intuition’s gift of personality type

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

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

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

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

Body-sensing’s corruption of personality type

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

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

Klaatu barada nikto!

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

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

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

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

Infinity in motion

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

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

The example set by Jesus

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

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

The call for original thinking that provokes

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

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

Choose again

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

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

The pheasant in its nest

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

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

2

Published on 2 Comments on The Agent of Soul

Jung vs. Freud: the split that still reverberates

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

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

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

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

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

Spirit and the Myth of Psyche and Eros

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

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

Guidance that’s competent

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

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

Free Choice that’s competent

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

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

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

Published on Leave a comment on Why Is Metaphysics Relevant?

Disorder careening out of control

How do individuals and groups get into situations that take them down? Like Nixon and Watergate, Japan and Pearl Harbor, Putin and Ukraine. Like humanity and global warming, mass extinction. Like us all with relationships and projects, careers and enterprises, that become train wrecks.

Situations evolve from implications of Logic plus the connections and relationships of Love -- facts, circumstances -- that require interpretation within the purpose and meaning of context. Context which requires judgment based on Logic inseparable from Love. Misjudgment --  getting purpose-meaning of context wrong, i.e. not basing it on Logic-Love -- causes misinterpretation of facts-circumstances It causes misperception.

Misperceptions resulting from misjudgments evolve into more misjudgments, an accumulation of choices and decisions out of alignment with context-reality that, over time, widen the gap between reality and unreality. Between facts-circumstances and wishful-psychotic thinking that turn orderly evolution into disorder careening out of control.

Then there’s the broader context

Misperceptions that fail to perceive hazards and obstructions -- potholes, kids on bicycles, telephone poles, drunk drivers, sharp turns, cliffs -- inevitably cause accidents. Collisions with facts-circumstances -- with reality -- that aren’t foreseen because facts-circumstances in the present aren’t seen. Because they were misinterpreted until it only took one more mis-aligned choice, one more mistaken decision, to cause a wreck. Until the mistaken-misperceiving mind behind the hand on the steering wheel made one more wrong turn and it proved fatal.

The wrong turn was the result of getting both the immediate context and the broader context -- the big picture -- wrong. It was the result of illogic -- not making sense. Choice-decision that seems “reasoned” in the immediate context, that doesn’t make sense in the broader context, ultimately can’t be reasoned and therefore cannot be the right choice. It can only be part of a mis-aligned evolution of mistakes that necessitate reconsideration of the broader context until evolution gets back on track.

How to make sense of the broader context

The correct choice-decision will get both the immediate and broader context right with Logic-Love. It requires making sense of context that’s not possible without a sixth sense. Five senses of bodies that can’t see beyond appearances aren’t enough. Relying on appearances perceived by bodies’ senses while rejecting guidance from sixth sense guarantees crackups, because their causes can’t be seen by bodies’ eyes. It’s the root of all human misadventures, the ultimate cause of all human pain.

Sixth sense connects minds needing guidance with spontaneous insights through Intuition that connects with the source of guidance. With Logic-Love, our one ancestral Mind’s Source, through the agency of Soul that interconnects all of Life, all of Creation. That interconnects all minds whether conscious or unconscious, aware of Reality or dreaming of unreality. It’s our expressway to Understanding that’s accessible if we choose to relate to it and ask for its help. So that the hands on the wheel are the hands of Relationship and not just our own. Relationship with competence to share the driving and take us forward to satisfaction and pleasure instead of in circles of frustration and pain until we get it right.

The archetypal runaway kid

Our ancestral Mind’s home in Reality-Creation was Interconnected. The alternate “reality” where we find ourselves is disconnected. That is, it appears to be disconnected because separation in Reality is impossible. Disconnection is but our unawareness of connection brought on by self-delusion: the mistaken identity with our opposite, our shadow-reflection, that projected the dream.

What produced the Big Bang? Something analogous to the atomic bomb that released an atom’s nuclear force when it was split and devastated Hiroshima. An object lesson in the hazards of separating stuff that Reality says can’t be split. Our ancestral Mind, in extremis, sought safety in escape from Reality where it had lost consciousness and had no prospects of regaining consciousness. It was so desperate that it was willing to be led into an alternate “reality.”

To do this it needed to separate from Logic-Love, its Parents. It needed to break the Relationship that bound it to Life in Reality and to its function in Creation. As insane a thought as one can imagine, but this is what the self-deluded Child that we were was desperate to do. It performed a trick that psychology knows as “projection:” projecting itself out of Reality and into an alternate reality. Imagining that it was splitting its Relationship with its Parents.

One big exploding cigar

A split powered by Energy, the Force of Soul that Interconnects all of Reality, acting as it must at the direction of Mind. So momentous in its contradiction of this Force and Reality that it caused the equivalent of a nuclear explosion. That and the Child's unbearable pain of guilt that accompanied unconsciousness and its separation from Parents. Only on an unimaginable scale. Because in enlisting Energy to split the Relationship with Parents the Child was splitting Force itself. The Energy that powers our universe (metaverse?) is the dying Energy of entropy, not the living Energy of Reality-Creation.

All of it a phantasmagoria of impossibilities, but nevertheless seeming to be real because Energy, whose source is Soul, knows nothing of boundaries. Nothing of the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness because Everything is Interconnected. Even unreality that declares itself to our bodies’ senses as disconnected. If metaphysics relying on Logic-Love is certain that our alternate material “reality” is actually unreality -- an illusion -- minds dependent on sensory perception will point to Energy, in us and all around us, stored in matter, accounting for the strong and weak nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, and gravity, and be just as certain that it can’t be an illusion.

What does A Course in Miracles say about this? That we live in an unreal world that has been “made” real. Not in a world that was created by the Relationship but in a world that was imagined by an unconscious, dreaming Mind. What will it take for the illusion to disappear? Awakening. The Child regains consciousness, reversing the projection and Energy that had appeared to enable it. Poof -- gone!

When pain is all that’s left

Until that can happen we must come to terms with unmanageability. The alternate “reality” we occupy that seems to rest on a foundation of disconnection. Separation not only between the Child and its Parents, living Force from dying Force, but Logic from Love, mind from heart. The great overriding task of humanity is to help restore consciousness by bringing Logic and Love, mind and heart, back together. By ending the absurd notion that they can ever be split. And in so doing to help bring the Child to a state of maturity and competence, because otherwise it can’t be entrusted with its function -- Free Choice -- in Creation.

It's urgent that the Relationship be restored because it’s our moral compass, the source of Plato’s Good. The reasoning with values that civilize us and supposedly reside in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. Relationship with moral character is all there is to govern the “bad thing” that Sigmund Freud observed in the human psyche: our animal emotion, our predatory will, the blind instinct of herds and tribes to dominate and kill. The great overriding task of humanity is not to let the predatory will of our animal-herd instinct dominate the civilizing functions of Logic joined with Love, mind joined with heart. Not to let the body-centered sides of our personality types dominate the mind-centered sides.

What would motivate minds otherwise content with things as they are and resistant to change? Pain. The legacy of separation in alternate reality, in all its forms, can be enormous pain. The young hedonist wedded to bodily appetites, entertainments, and socializing invests more in the avoidance of pain as time goes by. Until bodies give out and pain is all that’s left.

Nixon’s folly was everyone’s folly

Nixon, smart and able, was certain that he was “right.” His decisions were all “reasoned.” His assumptions were all “correct.” Yet something still went catastrophically wrong. His situation swallowed him up and spit him out. He still went down. Unapologetic to the end. Inattentive to the broader context to the end because he put all his faith in his body’s five senses. He dismissed both the broader context and the sixth sense needed to make sense of it. Neither was relevant, and he paid a price.

Why is metaphysics relevant? Why is the metaphysics of Parmenides and the Gnostic teacher Valentinus relevant? Why is the metaphysics of Jesus and A Course in Miracles relevant?

First of all because Nixon was by no means alone. History has entertained and appalled us with many more examples of fools toppling themselves from the pinnacles of power to abject humiliation and impotence below. Because he is us -- ourselves as individuals and humanity as a whole. We are all Richard Nixons, all fools, on lesser scales. His wasn’t an example of one individual going down. He was all of us making fools of ourselves. He was humanity going down.

The difference between Heaven and hell

Metaphysics done right, that sees beyond appearances, is relevant because it’s Guidance from Logic-Love. Guidance from another perspective accessed through the sixth sense of Intuition, toward making sense. Toward decisions and choices by individuals and groups that perceive and judge correctly. In alignment with facts-circumstances, with reality, instead of out of alignment with facts-circumstances, with unreality.

Wisdom combined with compassion and patience instead of youthful folly. Instead of eternal adolescence, the state of humanity content with things as they are, determined not to grow up. Willing itself into situations that take it down until it runs out of situations.

Metaphysics may be the difference between pleasure and pain, winning and losing, success and failure. It may be the difference between conflict and peace, survival and extinction, heaven and hell. What more can we ask? That’s why it’s relevant.