Great essay Guy. I felt like I had a sudden flash of all evil realisation 2 years ago, 15th June to be exact! You don't forget that kind of thing. It felt like seeing everything at once. I wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and die if I'm honest. But then I was overcome by the sense that I needed to be exactly what I wanted to see, what I wanted to believe in, compassion, joy, kindness. I have striven every day since then to embody this. I have failed often but I have changed beyond measure. To see it and to keep going every day trying to be the light to counter it. What more can we do? Only this, it is all we have. If enough of us are doing this then what might be? I had another of those moments on 19th June this year (would have suited my obsessive statistical nature if it had been the same date) but this time it was the opposite type of vision. I tried to explain it to a few people because it felt like THE answer ha ha, but I realised that it was too individual to put into words. My picture will be different from your picture but I knew it was momentous and since then I have been filled with an incredible gratitude. Nothing has changed and everything has changed. Courage. I pray everyday for strength and courage to face whatever is.
Hola, April and again to Bradley! OMG, this is a great comment, and yet likely so small compared to your 'enlightenment' experiences. You have written this with exquisite accuracy, sensitivity and heart. And the conversation that you and Bradley extend touches the core of being human.
You comment, later, about the circling nature of human cruelty/discovery. I revised my vision of that to 'helical' quite a long time ago. More recently and if it is okay to compare, an even better analogy is fractal, especially those called Lorenz fractals. We don't actually really circle back to our original start point, it only seems or looks that way. And the mathematics of fractals comes very close to how the physical aspect of life appears to make itself manifest out from the non-physical: we know there is a difference, and yet the 'border' is lost in an unseeable or perhaps untouchable limininality.
So glad you read this and found that it provides some value and, maybe, hopefully even most importantly, a kind of word-centric beauty analogous to van Gogh's search for the perfectly exrpessed tree in this perfectly happily, imperfect world that our words are inadequate to express! LOL! And that is what we have limited ourselves too, most of the time. Not all of the time, thank ... Something Bigger Than Me. Life really does have a wicked sense of humour.
Indeed it does, I relish even the words separately 'wicked' 'sense' 'humour' and I love the idea of the fractals and this is something I will explore today! Thank you as always
i love what you just wrote -------- it is to individual to put in to words but i would love to hear it --------- you really hit the target by saying Nothing has changed and everything has changed----------- Guy s followers are my fovorite reads on substack by far no one comes close ------ your personal expression of realness is so rare i wish there were more individuals like yourself
Hola, Bradley. I commented on April's great comment, and it applies to you too. I don't know how Substack notifies you about comments you comment on so, this is to let you know.
Thank you for extending this really beautiful discussion with April, with whom I do feel a strong sense of kinship or of being intimately connected on our own individual journeys. And I lovied, *loved* **LOVED** the van Gogh triple tree syncrhronicity. Life is magical.
Fabulous comment - thank you. I always appreciate feeling 'understood', always so exciting for me. Within the confines of a comment - almost impossible to explain but as I am always up for a challenge.... It seemed that the whole of my selfish story was revealed to me. Not in a horrible way but in a gentle way that showed me how important I am and how unimportant. That I am an insignificant ant with the whole universe available to me in my mind if I allow it. To try to explain feels like trying to explain a work of art. I cannot really explain to you how Van Gogh's trees make me feel but they may speak to you in the same way and in that moment as we looked at a painting sitting side by side in an art gallery - the beauty would speak to us and we would sit in that second and just sigh. The hairs on our arms might stand up, the tingle down the back of our necks. Without the story of our 'life' just in the precise moment of NOW it feels like we have all beauty and good, all joy and kindness, all compassion and understanding at our fingertips. If we can let go of our fear that we must be something, achieve something, leave something behind of ourselves as amazing as the genius of written words from our favourite author that speak to us, as a great artist has left us such works. Then what we can be in that moment is all of love for our fellow humans. I am not saying our ego is a bad thing or that our story is wrong. It is part of our human condition and it teaches us everything that we need. But at any moment we have access to so much more than we believe ourselves to be if we can let go. When we are faced with humans perpetuating evil and it has been this way forever, throughout history is circles, over and over, if we can recognise it then we can let that go also in ourselves and be the lightness and greatness that humans are also capable of. Don't misunderstand and think I am a saint ha ha ha, I see myself clearly now and that way I can correct it. Day by day I can work on myself and inch my way forward to the vision of love and beauty that I saw. I will probably die before I get there, in fact I am almost sure of that, but in each second I observe, I am curious and I am completely free!
That's the best I have with words for the moment. Thank you for challenging me to try! 🙏
thank you for your lovely reply i just got a classic Van Gogh bio art book 2 weeks ago and the trees are of great interset to me and my artist friend she has them tattooed on her arm with some spokey crows flying around i am not makeing this up and you just describe it WOW !!!!!-------there is a new book out called {{ the joy of selfishness}} its a beauty--------- the vibe i get on your writing is very similar to Guys writing its what i call parallel reatlities i see it in many of his readers comments it has an attraction although in an unexplainable sense but its totaly real just like your writing humble personal open loveing but very sharp and intense at the same moment ----------if you want to chat about Van Gogh my email is mznhiz@yahoo.com i dont write on substack i am just reader and commentor
How wonderful! Truly wonderful. Ahh the trees. What interests me also is that he did not really get recognition for his work during his lifetime and I feel this speaks to me hugely. That he pursued his passion regardless (and even into perceived madness) because he was constantly seeking the right beauty, the right light, the right expression. We have to decide what we seek, the joy in the moment of expressing how we need to express or with a need for someone else to recognise our expression. If just one person or two people read something and enjoy some of my weird poetry or my fiction short stories or my essays then I am very excited by that. To just be heard! I have very few books that I own now because I felt the need to clear out all of my possessions, but one I do keep is a book on Van Gogh's trees because sometimes I need to be absorbed by and reminded of a person doing what they do without it meaning anything other than his own need to explore it. Did you imagine that for a moment we sat together in that gallery and looked in wonder? I did. How wonderful these synchronicities are - this is a word Guy uses a lot and I have come to see exactly what he means and pay more attention. It is all part of what we are meant to be learning, all laid out in front of us and we are encouraged to explore step by step. I love that your friend has tattoos of the very trees and I am a big fan of spooky crows ha ha!
Wonderful piece, Guy, and thank you for dedicating it to my question! I appreciate your lengthy description of your daily practices, and I love that you specifically point to *personal responsibility* as most important.
If even half of the world population took responsibility for their health and well-being, the world would be a vastly different — and I mean *better* — realm. But they are beholden to "experts," "officials," and "authorities," denying their God-given senses and propping up the Slave Torture Matrix.
And so, in today's clown-world shit-show, it is vital for us to maintain higher consciousness and to live life fully as our Creator intended! We were never meant to be either slaves or slave masters.💖
Great to see you here and that you appreciated that point about personal responsibility.
The next one, which I just published, took some very very unexpected turns. Again, it clarified things, connected unexpected dots between CG Jung, Nietzsche and William Blake. And I was surprised and then delighted to be given an even greater incentive to extend my personal responsibility even more.
Yes, to live with our God-given ability and really a kind of gentle directive to be expressing 'appropriate eccentric action' in all ways in our lives. A fantastic work in process.
The idea of a centralized conscious evil force has been and will be around humanity.
The newer version of ghosts and angels/demons are aliens/UFOs.
Robert Anton Wilson's review of a book that has an interesting take on this:
"Daimonic Reality by Patrick Harpur examines UFOs and a wide variety of “paranormal” phenomena from a rather unique angle. Although Harpur never fully defines the daimonic—“the daimonic that can be defined is not the true daimonic,” as Lao-Tse would say—it seems to exist both inside us and outside us. Like the Greek daemon and unlike the Christian demon, it takes both good/healing and bad/terrifying forms, depending on our commitment to rationalistic ego states.
In a sense, the daimonic is like the collective unconscious of Carl Jung, inside us as a part of our total self that the ego wishes to deny, outside us in all the other humans who ever existed and in the dreams, myths, and arts of all the world. But Harpur follows Irish poet (and Golden Dawn alumnus) W. B. Yeats as often as he follows Jung, and traces some of his ideas back to Giordano Bruno and the alchemical/hermetic mystics of the Renaissance. The daimonic is just a bit more personalized and individualized than Jung’s species unconscious.
Harpur’s major thesis is that unless we recognize the daimonic (make friends with it, Jung would say) it takes increasingly malignant and terrifying forms. For instance, the Greys of UFO abduction lore, he says, are deliberately mirroring our ego-centered and “scientistic” age—showing no emotions of the humans they experiment upon, just as the ideal science student feels no emotion and has no concern with the emotions of the animal being tortured in his laboratory."
Despite dealing with many subjects common to conspiracy theories, this book does not quite fit into that category. We are the conspirators, so to speak. We have repressed the most creative part of ourselves and now it is escaping in terrifying forms."
This sounds like an interesting read, and I'll take a look for it.
'“the daimonic that can be defined is not the true daimonic,” as Lao-Tse would say"' is fun. And I'm thinking that Jasun's comment on the ultimate 'objectivtity' of good is a kind of expression of that, in an upside down way: the good that can be named is not the true good. I'll likely look at this in Part 1 following this foray.
Jung wrote a very interesting take on the phenomena of UFOs becoming popular in the late 40s and into the 50s, Flying Saucers: A Myth in the Making. I read it thirty years ago and the deails are fuzzy. (I don't have it any more, after downsizing out from having a library.) Jung didn't care, in a way, if they were objectively real because the psychological reality of them was, to him, perhaps more important and/or interesting. And they may be real - I think I may have seen one when I was young - how their existence impacts is a mind-psyche phenomena regardless.
Someone nicely summarised the book as follows:
"Written in the late 1950s at the height of popular fascination with UFO's, Flying Saucers is the great psychologist's brilliantly prescient meditation on the phenomenon that gripped the world. A self-confessed sceptic in such matters, Jung was nevertheless intrigued, not so much by their reality or unreality, but by their psychic aspect. He saw flying saucers as a modern myth in the making, to be passed down the generations just as we have received such myths from our ancestors. In this wonderful and enlightening book Jung sees UFO's as 'visionary rumours', the centre of a quasi-religious cult and carriers of our technological and salvationist fantasies. 40 years later, with entire religions based on the writings of science fiction authors, it is remarkable to see just how right he has proved to be." https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315724652/flying-saucers-jung
By this description Harpur does align with Jung's shadow integration ideas as critically important. And his comment echos, from my memory of Jung's book, that idea very closely. The 'reality' of ufos becomes irrelevant when the *idea* of them floods the mind-psyche.
Thank you, Rob, this looks like a good resource. The books that don't quite fit in are often the most interesting ones. All the best.
While poking around looking for more on Jung's book on flying saucers, I came across a curiously engaging and wide ranging discussion that begins with a funny and sharp comment about Jung's ideas about flying saucers, then connects it up to religious visions and ultimately drug trips to other dimensions and Alex Jones, Aleister Crowley and .... Well. It is kind of fun.
"Carl Jung's BIZARRE Take on Aliens and UFOs" by Uberboyo
Forgive me for the rambling here but this video reminded me of my past views on UFOs, God etc.
I used to be part of a forum online that was big into the hyperdimensional idea of aliens, gods, fairies, etc. It was fascinating to learn about this without the religious aspect!
At the time that the dimensional explanation made a lot of sense to me in that it connects with physics. Quantum theory and it's mysteries, multiverse theory and so on were fascinating to me.
These days I've learned that a lot of physics has become much like religion, because they infer things of invisible particles. Yes, even quantum theory and the big bang are being challenged. Here's a short clip of Heinz von Foerester on the issue with physics inventing more and more things to explain other things:
I came at an impasse. I didn't get why despite the numerous cameras everywhere, we still get blurry photos and dots in the sky. Even the mainstream release of Air Force video of the jet pilot chasing a dot was suspicious after I found out that pilot was not military, but a contractor. Hmmm... shady
A couple of years ago, I had a bad fall at work.
I had a near death experience while falling where time slowed down greatly where I was able to accept the result, that I will wake up in the hospital... Perhaps paralyzed. I landed on my back and didn't hit my head. No broken bones, just bruises. But that near death experience gave me a new ability!
I could induce an out of body state with meditation!
I joined a forum to learn more and see if there was anything we could do to verify what was really going on in this state.
So I started experimenting with this, trying to see if it's real or just a dream state that feels real. On my lunch breaks, I went obe and entered locked rooms at work by going through the wall and wrote down what I saw in those rooms. After a while I gained access to those rooms to verify what I saw. Turns out that none of what I saw matched what was there. Small things like a desk or cabinet could have matched, but overall I was way off.
It made me question what exactly is the point of going out of body if things are different? I wondered if obe travelers were able to meet and share information and later verify the message. Nope. I got excuses why there was nothing hard that could be verified, because the astral realm, connected to this will not be the same as reality. I felt this was bullshit, creating more subjectivity of something that could very well be a trick of the mind.
I have yet to see anything conclusive about out of body, much like UFOs etc.
The hallucinogens angle is very curious and reminds me of a story.
A Christian missionary was in the Amazon, doing work with tribes. He met tribes that saw the stars and god using hallucinogens. He thought they were very wise and tried to learn from them. But one day he got to witness savage brutality between two tribes. He couldn't understand why despite their spiritual connection to the unseen via hallucinogens, they would fight each other.
So he took a tape recorder and went to each group and spoke to their elders to find out why they fought each other. He also asked them to explain what would they need to agree on for peace. He translated between groups and they ended up having peace because their worries and concerns of each other were clear and easy to resolve.
It's ironic that tribes that could see beyond the world, couldn't think to talk to each other! The missionary was flabbergasted and started to question the wisdom of the "other world", which had failed to prevent violence between the groups.
It just reminds me of how subjective this "other side" is, reminding me that it's most likely an inner dimension, like archetypes etc, instead of a dimension "out there".
Here's an interesting interview with Iain Mcgilchrist and a kabbalah expert which has an interesting part on the takes of what is god.
First one is traditional religion. (God is there, and we are here.)
Second is what Spinoza (and I see) where god is equal to everything that exists, no more, no less. I see the force as nature which everything is a part of.
Third is what this hyperdimensional idea follows, that our reality is a subset of another higher one of God. This is where Jung strayed into and he became big into the occult to try and connect to this "other world".
Jung was onto something with archetypes. I see them as tendencies of groups of humans, depending on environmental and social conditions. In difficult times, people look to the skies for an answer and many see "the gods".
I may give that a go. I've found, so far anyway, that my good intentioned reading of e-books simply doesn't happen! Old school, or perhaps already too much computer time?
I think it is important not to psyche ourselves out and disempower ourselves seeing ghouls in everything everywhere. This is a magical, mystical world of wonder, we are meant to participate.
I agree 100%. This is also a world of the less than wonderful. It is a curious balance. If our eyes had been open to the malevolence that has been creeping in slowly over the years, we wouldn't be getting whacked so hard by it now. So... see what is real, and practice the yamas and the niyamas and know the joy that is who we are. We were remiss in not really shining a light into the machinations of the UN WEF Health Craziness and the marriage of our politicians with the corporate masters the last 50+ years at the very least. It is when we really see them with the joy of who we actually are, not the splintered people we were traumatised into being, that the 'devils' and mara's armies simply dissipate like the smell of a foul fart on a windy day.
And yes, we are born to participate here! Now! That has been a long process for me to recover that. And here I am, full on participating with fun, love and joy. Amazing.
Thank you , William, for reading and commenting. And for your obvious concern. My yoga practice is intense and is keeping me joyful, energised, healthy and seeing with, I think, clearer eyes than at any time before in my life.
Someone was just talking about this same thing on a podcast recently. The specific one is escaping me at the moment, but I chuckled as I read your essay. Because I can't believe that this has never occurred to me! As I read your words, my stomach had a flash of anxiety and a little snap of nausea. What a ridiculous, disgusting book to have adolescents read at the height of their awkward, insecure season. Ugh.
Feels dirty to think about all the molestation of plastic brains.
And then to accept the tainted waters in which we swim, day in and day out, for our entire lives.
It's even harder to think about music that invokes joy... or nostalgia, being the messenger of nefarious strings subliminally hooking us under the surface...
Broad nets, dragging the water in this direction or that.
That Madonna performance was FUCKING DISTURBING. Thank you for the forewarning.
Also...
I have just never liked Philip Glass.
And I still don't.
I am pretty confident that it is attached to some trauma, due to my noticeable reaction after listening to only a few bars.
Wow, that stomach reaction is really telling the truth. IMO that kind of reaction confirms that I think that nearly 100% of us are quite deeply traumatised in a multiplicity of ways that have nothing to do with the 'natural' experiences of birth into a material world, and all to do with splitting us off into controllable bits and bytes.
I talked with a Mexicana here, whose parents sound remarkable and gaver her a very strong inner strength and resiliences. She is awesome to talk to. I asked her if she read the book in school. Yes, so it is in at least a part of the Spanish curriculum. For her she was able to dismiss it as a story and did not, she thinks/feels, create trauma and dissociation from trust in her Self.
Yes, that madonna performance was, my body says, an actual ritual to create hurt. And it was cheered, as was the DL tongue kissing a boy and as was Krishnamurti praised as wise instead of helped with the severe ptsd that is clearly visible in his body and his 'sage' advice.
Yes, I understand about Philip Glass. Interesting to think that your reaction may be associated with a trauma-rooted response. He is a challenge. And not everything he has done 'resonates' positively with me for sure!
During this essay I puzzled about being drawn to that difficult piece and it struck me that I was feeling a huge, odd and even intimidating energy flow in my body that was, at times, leading up towards feeling faint. I've experienced this a couple of times before, with writing in the last few months and before that with asana practice and breath. I have actually fainted twice during particularlly intense asana practices.
So this time I had the intuitive awareness that my nadis were being cleaned out! So I muscle-tested around that, and yes, that was the effect that music was having on my energetic and thus somatic body. At least per my own muscle testing.
If you find that podcast, that would be nice. Although don't sweat about it. It is great to know that my taking this out of the closet is being done by other people! The time for seeing is all around us, and that is powerful. And, of course, another of those odd synchronicities occuring between us, confirmation that the Universe, or whatever this big thing bigger than us is, is directing each of us towards clarity of awareness and that we are helping each other in that process. Amazing.
Guy, I could write an essay delving into all the aspects of YOUR essay. So rich with thought provoking concepts. One I’d like to tackle here is good and evil. When I first moved to Boulder Colorado in 1992 I was introduced to Unity church. Being raised in a reformed Jewish synagogue, and not really practicing, I decided to give it a look. The pastor, Jack Groverland was quite compelling. But I didn’t go back after a few Sundays. The group praying thing has never been my thing. Like yoga classes. I never liked contorting myself into unusual positions in front of others, especially women. So I do my morning yoga with only one other person present, my wife. I’m happy to expose myself to her. And I do my prayer and meditation in private.
Regarding good and evil. One takeaway from my brief time at Unity was something that Jack said that’s stuck with me for 30 years now. He said there are only two true emotions, Love and Fear. I often contemplate this and find myself connecting to it more and more. In the context of good and evil, IMHO I think they are both constructs of language, requiring definition but impossible to grasp and truly define because they are relative to the person, the culture, the particular situation and the time. So, I fall back on love and fear. Good being the outgrowth of love and evil being the manifestation of fear. Just a thought. Thanks.
Wonderful that my writing was able to stimulate your thinking in diverse ways.
Yes, the duality Love and Fear. I've been presented with this ideas as well. Thank you for bringing that forward in this context. I'll allow it to percolate through my system in the next few days and I will see how it gets incorporated — or not in my continuation of the 'good - evil' theme. Right now I am leaning towards a more Gautama look at things, I think. Although often I'm not exactly sure where my writing will take me. Or why I would think, right now, that somehow that would exclude love and fear!? LoL!
In this last essay I had absolutely no thought of LotF when I started off. I was headed towards, I thought, a very different direction. Somehow the ideas began to rise up and direct my fingers in a different direction than what, ostensibly, my mind had initiated. An interesting process. As much learning for me as any of my readers at the very least, I think.
Thank you for your story and share. Most excellent and appreciated. They are rumbling around inside me.
As my espresso percolates through the portafilter and goodness flows, I'm contemplating your words and smiling. I just watched an interview with Paul Simon and Dick Cavett from many years ago. Cavett asked Simon how he created Bridge Over Troubled Waters, one of the great pop songs of all time. He said one thing that I wrote down and seems appropriate to your comment about not knowing what direction your essay was going to go. Here's what he said: "Everywhere I went, lead me to where I didn’t want to be. So I was stuck." I wrote it down because it was so simple yet so profound. He created a masterpiece yet also found himself going in the wrong direction many times. What a life lesson Huh?
I also enjoyed the story of the boys of Ata and their rescuer. I read Lord of the Flies at least twice and saw the original British version of the movie. I wouldn't say it disturbed me. But I believe, at an unconscious level, it imbued in me the belief that we humans are savages at the core. I don't believe that anymore, and the Ata story helped to confirm this hopeful message in my heart. Peace brother. Your writing is amazing.
'"Everywhere I went, lead me to where I didn’t want to be. So I was stuck." I wrote it down because it was so simple yet so profound. He created a masterpiece yet also found himself going in the wrong direction many times. What a life lesson Huh?'
Yes, huge! Thank you for sharing that.
And that unconscious 'idea' that we are savages has been useful to keep us afraid. It was a huge part, I understood quite a long time ago in my own recovery of Self, of the blockage towards trusting my Self enough to heal. My childhood contributed to the impact it had on putting my body into a quasi-immobility and lack of freedom. I couldn't trust myself to be kind because at my core I would kill Piggy and those like him. Wow! That had been implanted so deeply.
So great that I was able to help you with a confirmation that the LotF was a kind of fictional lie and that real life has debunked the lie. And it was fascinating to me that in my previous writing I discovered that Krishnamurti was in severe untreated ptsd that was actually lauded. And now the same with William Golding. Fascinating times.
Thank you for you comment about the quality of my writing. Often lately, I think that it has gone off in some strange world that ... I have no sense if it will have value to others. And then I carry on, with some inspiration from the amazing French writer, Montaigne, who in his essays simply expressed himself as he wanted, being true to his core and trusting his instincts. And his essays are in print 550 years later. So... I'll carry on trusting myself and my Self and see how that goes. For me, personally, it has been a huge journey of self discovery that is helping heal my body/mind/soul back to integrity.
Again, muchas gracias. And thank you for the really wonderful Simon observation. A real keeper, as you so astutely understood at the time.
Which argument do you think I am wrong about? It's not at all clear to me, so I presume it isn't to others.
I was talking about denying Objective Reality being absurd, btw, not evil. There are certainly arguments for denying the existence of objective evil, and probably necessary ones.
You are right that I wouldn't agree with a definition of evil as that which knowingly causes suffering... "knowingly" is a tricky thing to gauge, but what about your dentist? Is he evil for doing things he know will make you suffer? What about marriage, in which we knowingly enter prepared to suffer, and often do things we know will hurt one another? & to cut to the chase, how about God in the Book of Job, who knowingly lets Satan afflict Job with suffering?
If I had to define evil, I would say it has to do with what is anti-life, and that this has to do with the intentional distortion of reality. (NB: In the passage you quote from the sermon on the Mount, Jesus refers to his audience as evil.)
Thank you for the correction and comment —I've updated the post and revised my question to my readers about your argument.
And thank you for JC's reference to the audience 'as evil'. I'll pursue that a bit. Does JC's explication make it objectively so, it coming, after all, from the (human) mouth of God?
I'll pursue this in my next essay. At least that is my intention. :-)
I was looking to see if anyone would jump in with their own 'subjective' response to your argument and my questioning of it. Ah well, no one took me up on that. LoL!
Hello, Guy! Such a rich tapestry and so many patterns to pick out!
The thread you keep weaving in is intergenerational trauma. And I love that you're doing that. It's something I'm paying more attention to, thanks to you.
Letting go of the trauma is in recognizing that the stories we were told were lies. Lies told for the purpose of inflicting psychological trauma and a belief in our own wickedness. I too was VERY traumatized by LotF. It was 'proof' that people are inherently bad ... and that only gov't and authorities are what keep us from killing each other. What a crock of shit!
It may have been the exact story where I started recognizing 'this is a story.' The teacher is making us analyze it as if it's reality but it's just a story. And those other traumas we've talked about--Night and Fog was categorized as fiction. When asked by his rabbi if it was true, Elie Wiesel said, 'sometimes a story is more true than the truth.' Fiction!
What the Course says isn't that evil is the absence of good, because that would make 'good' into a 'thing'. It says that darkness doesn't exist, only the absence of light. When we close our eyes, we think the light isn't there but it still is. It says there's only love and the call for love; whatever isn't the first is the latter. Love is everywhere but our belief in sin or evil is closing our eyes to say it doesn't exist and scare ourselves.
I did read Jasun's story on Jacob (on which I already had a theory) but I read a comment exchange that seemed very harsh and even authoritarian on his part. Both he and the commenter, I thought, were taking this story as if it was reality. It didn't seem like fertile ground for my comment.
I think that every time one of these stories is defused, depotentiated, a trauma evaporates and isn't passed on. The story of Satan is another one like that. These were silly boys playing at war, scared out of their wits, in 70 CE. The 'winners' felt terrible guilt about what they'd done--even though it had seemed to have no effect! So they made up a story about demons. And we're forcing others to keep enacting this violence by giving it credence. We're telling them they're unforgivable and only the devil could love them. Do you want revenge or to end it? That's the only question.
Hola Tereza. I hadn't thought of my writing as being about intergenerational trauma, which is kind of funny because that is very clearly what it is. It wasn't a purpose I had when I started to write these essays. Interesting. Thank you for the insight. And what was the purpose? Hmmmm. Sharing experience and the joy of writing with strength, maybe.
I wonder how many of us were really badly traumatised by LotF and then how it was pushed as being THE TRUTH about human nature. And similar books, too. I think that Golding's book was really strong because it was expressing his own trauma with an authenticity that had the power to create in many/most of us some kind of similar trauma.
Regarding Jasun. [Soft laughter.] Yes, he does actually present himself that way. I think it is part of his armouring. He isn't in reality as harsh as he sounds. Although I think he may be digging into Christianity quite deeply, which as a practice, going deeply I mean, he has that tendency. He also is high on the autistic scale and has a 'natural' harshness to his demeanour.
Hey, Tereza I assure you that you're tough enough to stand up to him. And I will be countering his 'harshly' stated thesis about 'good and evil.' I think he is fundamentally wrong there. (And I laugh at that because, as Montaigne wrote, really, do we need any more words to create a peaceful life? Oy vey, I do like playing with words though.)
Thank you for the clarification on the CIM's take on the absence of evil.
"Do you want revenge or to end it?" Yes! The challenge for we the truly traumatised is to begin to see that that is actually a choice. Getting to the place where choice is possible requires a kind of willingness, perhaps even the highest courage, to see things exactly as they are, without any sort of self-deception of illusion, as the I Ching puts it so wisely.
Thank you for reading and commenting! I enjoy your comments and they often help hone and sharpen my ability to see with greater courage. Good night.
I'll look for it. sound like a great combination! Flies forming en mass? LoL!
And I'm enjoying your Greece Fires ;-) "lightning". It takes me back to my days of diligent economic attentiveness. I remember most of what you are discussing and learning more too.
just a heads up Terrence McKinny on youtube is a great source of deep info on the I Ching i wish i new more about it its a fasinating topic subject and i love listening to you disscuses it and how you have integrated it into your life i love it it is most mentally stimulating etc. etc.----------- your followers are by far my favorite reads on substack most lovely indeed!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you for jumping in and reading and commenting. Yes, the people who are finding these essays and commenting are amongst the best. And thank you for the resource. I'll look. him up. I am curious to see what Terrence McKinny has to say!
Great essay Guy. I felt like I had a sudden flash of all evil realisation 2 years ago, 15th June to be exact! You don't forget that kind of thing. It felt like seeing everything at once. I wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and die if I'm honest. But then I was overcome by the sense that I needed to be exactly what I wanted to see, what I wanted to believe in, compassion, joy, kindness. I have striven every day since then to embody this. I have failed often but I have changed beyond measure. To see it and to keep going every day trying to be the light to counter it. What more can we do? Only this, it is all we have. If enough of us are doing this then what might be? I had another of those moments on 19th June this year (would have suited my obsessive statistical nature if it had been the same date) but this time it was the opposite type of vision. I tried to explain it to a few people because it felt like THE answer ha ha, but I realised that it was too individual to put into words. My picture will be different from your picture but I knew it was momentous and since then I have been filled with an incredible gratitude. Nothing has changed and everything has changed. Courage. I pray everyday for strength and courage to face whatever is.
Hola, April and again to Bradley! OMG, this is a great comment, and yet likely so small compared to your 'enlightenment' experiences. You have written this with exquisite accuracy, sensitivity and heart. And the conversation that you and Bradley extend touches the core of being human.
You comment, later, about the circling nature of human cruelty/discovery. I revised my vision of that to 'helical' quite a long time ago. More recently and if it is okay to compare, an even better analogy is fractal, especially those called Lorenz fractals. We don't actually really circle back to our original start point, it only seems or looks that way. And the mathematics of fractals comes very close to how the physical aspect of life appears to make itself manifest out from the non-physical: we know there is a difference, and yet the 'border' is lost in an unseeable or perhaps untouchable limininality.
So glad you read this and found that it provides some value and, maybe, hopefully even most importantly, a kind of word-centric beauty analogous to van Gogh's search for the perfectly exrpessed tree in this perfectly happily, imperfect world that our words are inadequate to express! LOL! And that is what we have limited ourselves too, most of the time. Not all of the time, thank ... Something Bigger Than Me. Life really does have a wicked sense of humour.
🙏❤️❤️🙏
Indeed it does, I relish even the words separately 'wicked' 'sense' 'humour' and I love the idea of the fractals and this is something I will explore today! Thank you as always
i love what you just wrote -------- it is to individual to put in to words but i would love to hear it --------- you really hit the target by saying Nothing has changed and everything has changed----------- Guy s followers are my fovorite reads on substack by far no one comes close ------ your personal expression of realness is so rare i wish there were more individuals like yourself
Hola, Bradley. I commented on April's great comment, and it applies to you too. I don't know how Substack notifies you about comments you comment on so, this is to let you know.
Thank you for extending this really beautiful discussion with April, with whom I do feel a strong sense of kinship or of being intimately connected on our own individual journeys. And I lovied, *loved* **LOVED** the van Gogh triple tree syncrhronicity. Life is magical.
Beuno.
Fabulous comment - thank you. I always appreciate feeling 'understood', always so exciting for me. Within the confines of a comment - almost impossible to explain but as I am always up for a challenge.... It seemed that the whole of my selfish story was revealed to me. Not in a horrible way but in a gentle way that showed me how important I am and how unimportant. That I am an insignificant ant with the whole universe available to me in my mind if I allow it. To try to explain feels like trying to explain a work of art. I cannot really explain to you how Van Gogh's trees make me feel but they may speak to you in the same way and in that moment as we looked at a painting sitting side by side in an art gallery - the beauty would speak to us and we would sit in that second and just sigh. The hairs on our arms might stand up, the tingle down the back of our necks. Without the story of our 'life' just in the precise moment of NOW it feels like we have all beauty and good, all joy and kindness, all compassion and understanding at our fingertips. If we can let go of our fear that we must be something, achieve something, leave something behind of ourselves as amazing as the genius of written words from our favourite author that speak to us, as a great artist has left us such works. Then what we can be in that moment is all of love for our fellow humans. I am not saying our ego is a bad thing or that our story is wrong. It is part of our human condition and it teaches us everything that we need. But at any moment we have access to so much more than we believe ourselves to be if we can let go. When we are faced with humans perpetuating evil and it has been this way forever, throughout history is circles, over and over, if we can recognise it then we can let that go also in ourselves and be the lightness and greatness that humans are also capable of. Don't misunderstand and think I am a saint ha ha ha, I see myself clearly now and that way I can correct it. Day by day I can work on myself and inch my way forward to the vision of love and beauty that I saw. I will probably die before I get there, in fact I am almost sure of that, but in each second I observe, I am curious and I am completely free!
That's the best I have with words for the moment. Thank you for challenging me to try! 🙏
thank you for your lovely reply i just got a classic Van Gogh bio art book 2 weeks ago and the trees are of great interset to me and my artist friend she has them tattooed on her arm with some spokey crows flying around i am not makeing this up and you just describe it WOW !!!!!-------there is a new book out called {{ the joy of selfishness}} its a beauty--------- the vibe i get on your writing is very similar to Guys writing its what i call parallel reatlities i see it in many of his readers comments it has an attraction although in an unexplainable sense but its totaly real just like your writing humble personal open loveing but very sharp and intense at the same moment ----------if you want to chat about Van Gogh my email is mznhiz@yahoo.com i dont write on substack i am just reader and commentor
How wonderful! Truly wonderful. Ahh the trees. What interests me also is that he did not really get recognition for his work during his lifetime and I feel this speaks to me hugely. That he pursued his passion regardless (and even into perceived madness) because he was constantly seeking the right beauty, the right light, the right expression. We have to decide what we seek, the joy in the moment of expressing how we need to express or with a need for someone else to recognise our expression. If just one person or two people read something and enjoy some of my weird poetry or my fiction short stories or my essays then I am very excited by that. To just be heard! I have very few books that I own now because I felt the need to clear out all of my possessions, but one I do keep is a book on Van Gogh's trees because sometimes I need to be absorbed by and reminded of a person doing what they do without it meaning anything other than his own need to explore it. Did you imagine that for a moment we sat together in that gallery and looked in wonder? I did. How wonderful these synchronicities are - this is a word Guy uses a lot and I have come to see exactly what he means and pay more attention. It is all part of what we are meant to be learning, all laid out in front of us and we are encouraged to explore step by step. I love that your friend has tattoos of the very trees and I am a big fan of spooky crows ha ha!
Wonderful piece, Guy, and thank you for dedicating it to my question! I appreciate your lengthy description of your daily practices, and I love that you specifically point to *personal responsibility* as most important.
If even half of the world population took responsibility for their health and well-being, the world would be a vastly different — and I mean *better* — realm. But they are beholden to "experts," "officials," and "authorities," denying their God-given senses and propping up the Slave Torture Matrix.
And so, in today's clown-world shit-show, it is vital for us to maintain higher consciousness and to live life fully as our Creator intended! We were never meant to be either slaves or slave masters.💖
Hola, Sharine.
Great to see you here and that you appreciated that point about personal responsibility.
The next one, which I just published, took some very very unexpected turns. Again, it clarified things, connected unexpected dots between CG Jung, Nietzsche and William Blake. And I was surprised and then delighted to be given an even greater incentive to extend my personal responsibility even more.
Yes, to live with our God-given ability and really a kind of gentle directive to be expressing 'appropriate eccentric action' in all ways in our lives. A fantastic work in process.
I look forward to reading your next post!
The idea of a centralized conscious evil force has been and will be around humanity.
The newer version of ghosts and angels/demons are aliens/UFOs.
Robert Anton Wilson's review of a book that has an interesting take on this:
"Daimonic Reality by Patrick Harpur examines UFOs and a wide variety of “paranormal” phenomena from a rather unique angle. Although Harpur never fully defines the daimonic—“the daimonic that can be defined is not the true daimonic,” as Lao-Tse would say—it seems to exist both inside us and outside us. Like the Greek daemon and unlike the Christian demon, it takes both good/healing and bad/terrifying forms, depending on our commitment to rationalistic ego states.
In a sense, the daimonic is like the collective unconscious of Carl Jung, inside us as a part of our total self that the ego wishes to deny, outside us in all the other humans who ever existed and in the dreams, myths, and arts of all the world. But Harpur follows Irish poet (and Golden Dawn alumnus) W. B. Yeats as often as he follows Jung, and traces some of his ideas back to Giordano Bruno and the alchemical/hermetic mystics of the Renaissance. The daimonic is just a bit more personalized and individualized than Jung’s species unconscious.
Harpur’s major thesis is that unless we recognize the daimonic (make friends with it, Jung would say) it takes increasingly malignant and terrifying forms. For instance, the Greys of UFO abduction lore, he says, are deliberately mirroring our ego-centered and “scientistic” age—showing no emotions of the humans they experiment upon, just as the ideal science student feels no emotion and has no concern with the emotions of the animal being tortured in his laboratory."
Despite dealing with many subjects common to conspiracy theories, this book does not quite fit into that category. We are the conspirators, so to speak. We have repressed the most creative part of ourselves and now it is escaping in terrifying forms."
Yes, Rob (c137)!
This sounds like an interesting read, and I'll take a look for it.
'“the daimonic that can be defined is not the true daimonic,” as Lao-Tse would say"' is fun. And I'm thinking that Jasun's comment on the ultimate 'objectivtity' of good is a kind of expression of that, in an upside down way: the good that can be named is not the true good. I'll likely look at this in Part 1 following this foray.
Jung wrote a very interesting take on the phenomena of UFOs becoming popular in the late 40s and into the 50s, Flying Saucers: A Myth in the Making. I read it thirty years ago and the deails are fuzzy. (I don't have it any more, after downsizing out from having a library.) Jung didn't care, in a way, if they were objectively real because the psychological reality of them was, to him, perhaps more important and/or interesting. And they may be real - I think I may have seen one when I was young - how their existence impacts is a mind-psyche phenomena regardless.
Someone nicely summarised the book as follows:
"Written in the late 1950s at the height of popular fascination with UFO's, Flying Saucers is the great psychologist's brilliantly prescient meditation on the phenomenon that gripped the world. A self-confessed sceptic in such matters, Jung was nevertheless intrigued, not so much by their reality or unreality, but by their psychic aspect. He saw flying saucers as a modern myth in the making, to be passed down the generations just as we have received such myths from our ancestors. In this wonderful and enlightening book Jung sees UFO's as 'visionary rumours', the centre of a quasi-religious cult and carriers of our technological and salvationist fantasies. 40 years later, with entire religions based on the writings of science fiction authors, it is remarkable to see just how right he has proved to be." https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315724652/flying-saucers-jung
By this description Harpur does align with Jung's shadow integration ideas as critically important. And his comment echos, from my memory of Jung's book, that idea very closely. The 'reality' of ufos becomes irrelevant when the *idea* of them floods the mind-psyche.
Thank you, Rob, this looks like a good resource. The books that don't quite fit in are often the most interesting ones. All the best.
Here's a way to get an ebook if you have a hard time finding it.
http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=daimonic+reality&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def
While poking around looking for more on Jung's book on flying saucers, I came across a curiously engaging and wide ranging discussion that begins with a funny and sharp comment about Jung's ideas about flying saucers, then connects it up to religious visions and ultimately drug trips to other dimensions and Alex Jones, Aleister Crowley and .... Well. It is kind of fun.
"Carl Jung's BIZARRE Take on Aliens and UFOs" by Uberboyo
https://youtu.be/T-kA-Y-iNCg
Forgive me for the rambling here but this video reminded me of my past views on UFOs, God etc.
I used to be part of a forum online that was big into the hyperdimensional idea of aliens, gods, fairies, etc. It was fascinating to learn about this without the religious aspect!
At the time that the dimensional explanation made a lot of sense to me in that it connects with physics. Quantum theory and it's mysteries, multiverse theory and so on were fascinating to me.
These days I've learned that a lot of physics has become much like religion, because they infer things of invisible particles. Yes, even quantum theory and the big bang are being challenged. Here's a short clip of Heinz von Foerester on the issue with physics inventing more and more things to explain other things:
https://youtu.be/2KnPBg-tanE?si=TESC-v4avlnCnW7E
I came at an impasse. I didn't get why despite the numerous cameras everywhere, we still get blurry photos and dots in the sky. Even the mainstream release of Air Force video of the jet pilot chasing a dot was suspicious after I found out that pilot was not military, but a contractor. Hmmm... shady
A couple of years ago, I had a bad fall at work.
I had a near death experience while falling where time slowed down greatly where I was able to accept the result, that I will wake up in the hospital... Perhaps paralyzed. I landed on my back and didn't hit my head. No broken bones, just bruises. But that near death experience gave me a new ability!
I could induce an out of body state with meditation!
I joined a forum to learn more and see if there was anything we could do to verify what was really going on in this state.
So I started experimenting with this, trying to see if it's real or just a dream state that feels real. On my lunch breaks, I went obe and entered locked rooms at work by going through the wall and wrote down what I saw in those rooms. After a while I gained access to those rooms to verify what I saw. Turns out that none of what I saw matched what was there. Small things like a desk or cabinet could have matched, but overall I was way off.
It made me question what exactly is the point of going out of body if things are different? I wondered if obe travelers were able to meet and share information and later verify the message. Nope. I got excuses why there was nothing hard that could be verified, because the astral realm, connected to this will not be the same as reality. I felt this was bullshit, creating more subjectivity of something that could very well be a trick of the mind.
I have yet to see anything conclusive about out of body, much like UFOs etc.
The hallucinogens angle is very curious and reminds me of a story.
A Christian missionary was in the Amazon, doing work with tribes. He met tribes that saw the stars and god using hallucinogens. He thought they were very wise and tried to learn from them. But one day he got to witness savage brutality between two tribes. He couldn't understand why despite their spiritual connection to the unseen via hallucinogens, they would fight each other.
So he took a tape recorder and went to each group and spoke to their elders to find out why they fought each other. He also asked them to explain what would they need to agree on for peace. He translated between groups and they ended up having peace because their worries and concerns of each other were clear and easy to resolve.
It's ironic that tribes that could see beyond the world, couldn't think to talk to each other! The missionary was flabbergasted and started to question the wisdom of the "other world", which had failed to prevent violence between the groups.
It just reminds me of how subjective this "other side" is, reminding me that it's most likely an inner dimension, like archetypes etc, instead of a dimension "out there".
Here's an interesting interview with Iain Mcgilchrist and a kabbalah expert which has an interesting part on the takes of what is god.
https://youtu.be/rQ2uKbLhzKY?t=403 go to 6:44
First one is traditional religion. (God is there, and we are here.)
Second is what Spinoza (and I see) where god is equal to everything that exists, no more, no less. I see the force as nature which everything is a part of.
Third is what this hyperdimensional idea follows, that our reality is a subset of another higher one of God. This is where Jung strayed into and he became big into the occult to try and connect to this "other world".
Jung was onto something with archetypes. I see them as tendencies of groups of humans, depending on environmental and social conditions. In difficult times, people look to the skies for an answer and many see "the gods".
Gracias!
I may give that a go. I've found, so far anyway, that my good intentioned reading of e-books simply doesn't happen! Old school, or perhaps already too much computer time?
Thank you.
I think it is important not to psyche ourselves out and disempower ourselves seeing ghouls in everything everywhere. This is a magical, mystical world of wonder, we are meant to participate.
Yes.
I agree 100%. This is also a world of the less than wonderful. It is a curious balance. If our eyes had been open to the malevolence that has been creeping in slowly over the years, we wouldn't be getting whacked so hard by it now. So... see what is real, and practice the yamas and the niyamas and know the joy that is who we are. We were remiss in not really shining a light into the machinations of the UN WEF Health Craziness and the marriage of our politicians with the corporate masters the last 50+ years at the very least. It is when we really see them with the joy of who we actually are, not the splintered people we were traumatised into being, that the 'devils' and mara's armies simply dissipate like the smell of a foul fart on a windy day.
And yes, we are born to participate here! Now! That has been a long process for me to recover that. And here I am, full on participating with fun, love and joy. Amazing.
Thank you , William, for reading and commenting. And for your obvious concern. My yoga practice is intense and is keeping me joyful, energised, healthy and seeing with, I think, clearer eyes than at any time before in my life.
All the best!
We will defeat them by shining bright like we are meant to. Yes, enjoy it.
🙏❤️🧘🏿♀️😄🙌😄🧘🏿♀️❤️🙏
Namaste!
Lord of the Flies...
Someone was just talking about this same thing on a podcast recently. The specific one is escaping me at the moment, but I chuckled as I read your essay. Because I can't believe that this has never occurred to me! As I read your words, my stomach had a flash of anxiety and a little snap of nausea. What a ridiculous, disgusting book to have adolescents read at the height of their awkward, insecure season. Ugh.
Feels dirty to think about all the molestation of plastic brains.
And then to accept the tainted waters in which we swim, day in and day out, for our entire lives.
It's even harder to think about music that invokes joy... or nostalgia, being the messenger of nefarious strings subliminally hooking us under the surface...
Broad nets, dragging the water in this direction or that.
That Madonna performance was FUCKING DISTURBING. Thank you for the forewarning.
Also...
I have just never liked Philip Glass.
And I still don't.
I am pretty confident that it is attached to some trauma, due to my noticeable reaction after listening to only a few bars.
Wow, that stomach reaction is really telling the truth. IMO that kind of reaction confirms that I think that nearly 100% of us are quite deeply traumatised in a multiplicity of ways that have nothing to do with the 'natural' experiences of birth into a material world, and all to do with splitting us off into controllable bits and bytes.
I talked with a Mexicana here, whose parents sound remarkable and gaver her a very strong inner strength and resiliences. She is awesome to talk to. I asked her if she read the book in school. Yes, so it is in at least a part of the Spanish curriculum. For her she was able to dismiss it as a story and did not, she thinks/feels, create trauma and dissociation from trust in her Self.
Yes, that madonna performance was, my body says, an actual ritual to create hurt. And it was cheered, as was the DL tongue kissing a boy and as was Krishnamurti praised as wise instead of helped with the severe ptsd that is clearly visible in his body and his 'sage' advice.
Yes, I understand about Philip Glass. Interesting to think that your reaction may be associated with a trauma-rooted response. He is a challenge. And not everything he has done 'resonates' positively with me for sure!
During this essay I puzzled about being drawn to that difficult piece and it struck me that I was feeling a huge, odd and even intimidating energy flow in my body that was, at times, leading up towards feeling faint. I've experienced this a couple of times before, with writing in the last few months and before that with asana practice and breath. I have actually fainted twice during particularlly intense asana practices.
So this time I had the intuitive awareness that my nadis were being cleaned out! So I muscle-tested around that, and yes, that was the effect that music was having on my energetic and thus somatic body. At least per my own muscle testing.
If you find that podcast, that would be nice. Although don't sweat about it. It is great to know that my taking this out of the closet is being done by other people! The time for seeing is all around us, and that is powerful. And, of course, another of those odd synchronicities occuring between us, confirmation that the Universe, or whatever this big thing bigger than us is, is directing each of us towards clarity of awareness and that we are helping each other in that process. Amazing.
Thank you for reading!
Guy, I could write an essay delving into all the aspects of YOUR essay. So rich with thought provoking concepts. One I’d like to tackle here is good and evil. When I first moved to Boulder Colorado in 1992 I was introduced to Unity church. Being raised in a reformed Jewish synagogue, and not really practicing, I decided to give it a look. The pastor, Jack Groverland was quite compelling. But I didn’t go back after a few Sundays. The group praying thing has never been my thing. Like yoga classes. I never liked contorting myself into unusual positions in front of others, especially women. So I do my morning yoga with only one other person present, my wife. I’m happy to expose myself to her. And I do my prayer and meditation in private.
Regarding good and evil. One takeaway from my brief time at Unity was something that Jack said that’s stuck with me for 30 years now. He said there are only two true emotions, Love and Fear. I often contemplate this and find myself connecting to it more and more. In the context of good and evil, IMHO I think they are both constructs of language, requiring definition but impossible to grasp and truly define because they are relative to the person, the culture, the particular situation and the time. So, I fall back on love and fear. Good being the outgrowth of love and evil being the manifestation of fear. Just a thought. Thanks.
Hola, David S.
Wonderful that my writing was able to stimulate your thinking in diverse ways.
Yes, the duality Love and Fear. I've been presented with this ideas as well. Thank you for bringing that forward in this context. I'll allow it to percolate through my system in the next few days and I will see how it gets incorporated — or not in my continuation of the 'good - evil' theme. Right now I am leaning towards a more Gautama look at things, I think. Although often I'm not exactly sure where my writing will take me. Or why I would think, right now, that somehow that would exclude love and fear!? LoL!
In this last essay I had absolutely no thought of LotF when I started off. I was headed towards, I thought, a very different direction. Somehow the ideas began to rise up and direct my fingers in a different direction than what, ostensibly, my mind had initiated. An interesting process. As much learning for me as any of my readers at the very least, I think.
Thank you for your story and share. Most excellent and appreciated. They are rumbling around inside me.
All the best!
As my espresso percolates through the portafilter and goodness flows, I'm contemplating your words and smiling. I just watched an interview with Paul Simon and Dick Cavett from many years ago. Cavett asked Simon how he created Bridge Over Troubled Waters, one of the great pop songs of all time. He said one thing that I wrote down and seems appropriate to your comment about not knowing what direction your essay was going to go. Here's what he said: "Everywhere I went, lead me to where I didn’t want to be. So I was stuck." I wrote it down because it was so simple yet so profound. He created a masterpiece yet also found himself going in the wrong direction many times. What a life lesson Huh?
I also enjoyed the story of the boys of Ata and their rescuer. I read Lord of the Flies at least twice and saw the original British version of the movie. I wouldn't say it disturbed me. But I believe, at an unconscious level, it imbued in me the belief that we humans are savages at the core. I don't believe that anymore, and the Ata story helped to confirm this hopeful message in my heart. Peace brother. Your writing is amazing.
Hello David.
That is a great quotation from Simon:
'"Everywhere I went, lead me to where I didn’t want to be. So I was stuck." I wrote it down because it was so simple yet so profound. He created a masterpiece yet also found himself going in the wrong direction many times. What a life lesson Huh?'
Yes, huge! Thank you for sharing that.
And that unconscious 'idea' that we are savages has been useful to keep us afraid. It was a huge part, I understood quite a long time ago in my own recovery of Self, of the blockage towards trusting my Self enough to heal. My childhood contributed to the impact it had on putting my body into a quasi-immobility and lack of freedom. I couldn't trust myself to be kind because at my core I would kill Piggy and those like him. Wow! That had been implanted so deeply.
So great that I was able to help you with a confirmation that the LotF was a kind of fictional lie and that real life has debunked the lie. And it was fascinating to me that in my previous writing I discovered that Krishnamurti was in severe untreated ptsd that was actually lauded. And now the same with William Golding. Fascinating times.
Thank you for you comment about the quality of my writing. Often lately, I think that it has gone off in some strange world that ... I have no sense if it will have value to others. And then I carry on, with some inspiration from the amazing French writer, Montaigne, who in his essays simply expressed himself as he wanted, being true to his core and trusting his instincts. And his essays are in print 550 years later. So... I'll carry on trusting myself and my Self and see how that goes. For me, personally, it has been a huge journey of self discovery that is helping heal my body/mind/soul back to integrity.
Again, muchas gracias. And thank you for the really wonderful Simon observation. A real keeper, as you so astutely understood at the time.
De Nada mi amigo.
Which argument do you think I am wrong about? It's not at all clear to me, so I presume it isn't to others.
I was talking about denying Objective Reality being absurd, btw, not evil. There are certainly arguments for denying the existence of objective evil, and probably necessary ones.
You are right that I wouldn't agree with a definition of evil as that which knowingly causes suffering... "knowingly" is a tricky thing to gauge, but what about your dentist? Is he evil for doing things he know will make you suffer? What about marriage, in which we knowingly enter prepared to suffer, and often do things we know will hurt one another? & to cut to the chase, how about God in the Book of Job, who knowingly lets Satan afflict Job with suffering?
If I had to define evil, I would say it has to do with what is anti-life, and that this has to do with the intentional distortion of reality. (NB: In the passage you quote from the sermon on the Mount, Jesus refers to his audience as evil.)
Hola, Jasun:
Thank you for the correction and comment —I've updated the post and revised my question to my readers about your argument.
And thank you for JC's reference to the audience 'as evil'. I'll pursue that a bit. Does JC's explication make it objectively so, it coming, after all, from the (human) mouth of God?
I'll pursue this in my next essay. At least that is my intention. :-)
it overlaps, I think, with my next post, which I was working on between comments....
I still don't know which argument you are arguing against BTW!
Yes. I left the precise definition of which argument open deliberately. :-)
And I look forward to your overlap.
Because?
I was looking to see if anyone would jump in with their own 'subjective' response to your argument and my questioning of it. Ah well, no one took me up on that. LoL!
Hello, Guy! Such a rich tapestry and so many patterns to pick out!
The thread you keep weaving in is intergenerational trauma. And I love that you're doing that. It's something I'm paying more attention to, thanks to you.
Letting go of the trauma is in recognizing that the stories we were told were lies. Lies told for the purpose of inflicting psychological trauma and a belief in our own wickedness. I too was VERY traumatized by LotF. It was 'proof' that people are inherently bad ... and that only gov't and authorities are what keep us from killing each other. What a crock of shit!
It may have been the exact story where I started recognizing 'this is a story.' The teacher is making us analyze it as if it's reality but it's just a story. And those other traumas we've talked about--Night and Fog was categorized as fiction. When asked by his rabbi if it was true, Elie Wiesel said, 'sometimes a story is more true than the truth.' Fiction!
What the Course says isn't that evil is the absence of good, because that would make 'good' into a 'thing'. It says that darkness doesn't exist, only the absence of light. When we close our eyes, we think the light isn't there but it still is. It says there's only love and the call for love; whatever isn't the first is the latter. Love is everywhere but our belief in sin or evil is closing our eyes to say it doesn't exist and scare ourselves.
I did read Jasun's story on Jacob (on which I already had a theory) but I read a comment exchange that seemed very harsh and even authoritarian on his part. Both he and the commenter, I thought, were taking this story as if it was reality. It didn't seem like fertile ground for my comment.
I think that every time one of these stories is defused, depotentiated, a trauma evaporates and isn't passed on. The story of Satan is another one like that. These were silly boys playing at war, scared out of their wits, in 70 CE. The 'winners' felt terrible guilt about what they'd done--even though it had seemed to have no effect! So they made up a story about demons. And we're forcing others to keep enacting this violence by giving it credence. We're telling them they're unforgivable and only the devil could love them. Do you want revenge or to end it? That's the only question.
Hola Tereza. I hadn't thought of my writing as being about intergenerational trauma, which is kind of funny because that is very clearly what it is. It wasn't a purpose I had when I started to write these essays. Interesting. Thank you for the insight. And what was the purpose? Hmmmm. Sharing experience and the joy of writing with strength, maybe.
I wonder how many of us were really badly traumatised by LotF and then how it was pushed as being THE TRUTH about human nature. And similar books, too. I think that Golding's book was really strong because it was expressing his own trauma with an authenticity that had the power to create in many/most of us some kind of similar trauma.
Regarding Jasun. [Soft laughter.] Yes, he does actually present himself that way. I think it is part of his armouring. He isn't in reality as harsh as he sounds. Although I think he may be digging into Christianity quite deeply, which as a practice, going deeply I mean, he has that tendency. He also is high on the autistic scale and has a 'natural' harshness to his demeanour.
Hey, Tereza I assure you that you're tough enough to stand up to him. And I will be countering his 'harshly' stated thesis about 'good and evil.' I think he is fundamentally wrong there. (And I laugh at that because, as Montaigne wrote, really, do we need any more words to create a peaceful life? Oy vey, I do like playing with words though.)
Thank you for the clarification on the CIM's take on the absence of evil.
"Do you want revenge or to end it?" Yes! The challenge for we the truly traumatised is to begin to see that that is actually a choice. Getting to the place where choice is possible requires a kind of willingness, perhaps even the highest courage, to see things exactly as they are, without any sort of self-deception of illusion, as the I Ching puts it so wisely.
Thank you for reading and commenting! I enjoy your comments and they often help hone and sharpen my ability to see with greater courage. Good night.
Good night, Guy. I'm going to continue the LotF theme in a new post on Mattais Desmet ;-)
I'll look for it. sound like a great combination! Flies forming en mass? LoL!
And I'm enjoying your Greece Fires ;-) "lightning". It takes me back to my days of diligent economic attentiveness. I remember most of what you are discussing and learning more too.
🙏❤⚘
Hola, Heidi.
Thank you for reading. How are you?
🙏❤️🧘🏿♀️🙌🧘🏿♀️❤️🙏
Hi Guy. 🙏 I llove your whole article. So many interesting parts to it that tied together.
Love the Fool. It's one of my favorite videos. Invite the Trickster.
Thank you for being beautiful you Guy. I appreciate you and your amazing contributions.
Peace and joy always 🙏❤
So grateful you find it valuable. And by that, helpful (I hope!).
Thank you and I likewise appreciate your contributions here and elsewhere in the stack.
All the best!
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Thank you for being you, sharing your gifts and beauty with others.
Love Peace and Joy to you always Guy ❤
just a heads up Terrence McKinny on youtube is a great source of deep info on the I Ching i wish i new more about it its a fasinating topic subject and i love listening to you disscuses it and how you have integrated it into your life i love it it is most mentally stimulating etc. etc.----------- your followers are by far my favorite reads on substack most lovely indeed!!!!!!!!!!!
Hola, Bradley.
Thank you for jumping in and reading and commenting. Yes, the people who are finding these essays and commenting are amongst the best. And thank you for the resource. I'll look. him up. I am curious to see what Terrence McKinny has to say!
Muchas gracias. 🙏❤️🙏