All Plumber and Electricians are not Created Equal

I slept in this morning. Unintentionally. I usually wake with or without the alarm just before 6:00am, regardless of the time I go to bed. Seems like I have an internal alarm clock. Not this morning. I was surprised to open my eyes at 6:30am. Even the dogs did not disturb my extended sleep. I guess we are all more tired than we know. So, the day is 30 minutes behind expected. Nevertheless, the coffee is good and the discipline of this blog beckons. I write to start the work week. I write not so much what I know, but I write to know.

The last few weeks in the analyst’s chair have been tough. I am reminded of the CoVid years. Seeing people on both side of the divide is a challenge. Holding the tension is a mental and emotional effort. I remember the vaxers and the anti-vaxers. So much suffering. Now it is the elated and the despairing. The red and the blue. The conservatives and the progressives. As an analyst, I am in a unique position I think. Most of us don’t bear intimate witness to such honest and thoughtful expressions on both sides of a collective issue. Legacy media no longer reports both sides. Alternate media is time consuming. We are stretch taunt. My task is to hold the tension, bear witness, and listen deeply to how the deeper stratum of psyche expresses itself. In some cases, psyche is totally disinterested. In other cases, psyche is compensatory. In the expressions of deep despair and terror at the political events unfolding, psyche offers hope. In the expressions of elation at the turn of the political tide, psyche offers caution. Seems to me that psyche is the true centrist. I have said before and I will say again, politics flows down river from psychology and psychology flows downs river from spirituality. What if these times are a call upward, higher, toward the summit of our core values as human beings? Let me restate that. What if these times and these political events were a call toward destiny? Not just yours, but the destiny of all of humanity? That would be something.

At the end of the day, the end of the year, the end of an era, we find meaning. It is in their ending that things and people and movements are judged. Perhaps that is why the Book of Revelations is at the end of the Cannon. It is apocalyptic in the full sense of the word. The etymology of the word apocalypse means to uncover, to reveal. All judgments, all endings, are in fact, revelations. They reveal the meaning of things. That is not the same as one side being right and the other side being wrong. Paradox rather than contradiction is the essence of consciousness. And human beings, if nothing else, are called to become conscious. I have no idea what the meaning of these times will reveal. Anyone who thinks they do might just be caught in a deflation or an inflation. I was so disappointed last night to read a person who I admire and follow as teacher wade in and choose a side. The implicit bias, the polarization, and the axiomatic suppositions were startling. I guess we all get caught. Some would say to not choose a side is aiding and abetting the rise of totalitarian. Make no mistake, there is tyranny on both sides of the divide. The tyranny of the left has as startling a body count as the tyranny of the right. The only antidote to this polarization carnage is authenticity. Authenticity aiming toward the highest value for us all. And this authenticity is not the same as individualism, diversity, or even individuation. As a Jungian analyst, that is a controversial statement. Bear with me. Whatever we are, whatever we are called to do or manifest, if it is not directed to something transcendent, we are not aiming high enough. By transcendent I do not mean a fabled throne or castle in the heavens. What I mean by transcendent is the willingness to sacrifice on behalf of something greater than your own suffering. There was a Teacher from the middle east who showed us the way. Who held the tension. Who went beyond all that was known at the time.

C.G. Jung said that mankind can bear any suffering if he or she knows its meaning. Perhaps our task is not so much to discern the meaning of our times, but rather, to engage willingly in the suffering. To accept our lot. To carry our burden. To see it through until the end, and in the end, we will be judged. Make no mistake about it. We will be judged. All of us. Not judged by some religious form, but rather by the end itself. Something of who we are and what we did or did not do will be revealed. To lock it all in too soon, to turn a value into a god, is where we get lost. Our values are hierarchical. Hierarchical and inclusive. That is the structure of reality. All plumbers and electricians are not created equal. Some are better at their trade than others. To deny this is to sit in the cold dark or in the swirling water of broken systems. All that we value rises from the hedonistic expression of our instinctual selves toward the altruistic whisper of our potential. Our values should be progressive, but progressive in the full sense of the hierarchy. Conscious. The lower serves the higher and the higher includes the lower. We will be seduced by both the angels and the demons of our lower selves. Angels and demons are forms given to ideas and desires. If what we value, what we believe, what we labour toward is the not highest expression for all of humanity, not the most integrated expression for the whole body, we have been seduced. We must organize our ideas and our desires toward something beyond our knowledge and comprehension. Otherwise we get bogged down and get into political scrapes. We turn on one another. We can’t see the forest for the trees.

What if love and tolerance were higher on the pyramid than identity? Red states, blue states vs united states. What a concept! What is the ultimate unity? Diversity without unity is chaos, in the individual and in the society. Unity without diversity is dogma, in the individual and in the society. Recognizing this, embracing this, living this consciously is the willingness to suffer. The willingness to suffer in service to a higher purpose. Not money, not power, not identity, not feelings, not even values. But, something yet unrevealed. As I said, I slept in and I am both bone weary and inspired. The day is starting late. Yet, even today, I will reach up and out. I will carry my share of the burden, even in the flooding of emotions and the dark and cold of this cultural outage. Anyone know a good electrician or a good plumber? Or a better poet?

Our lives are Swiss—
So still—so Cool—
Till some odd afternoon
The Alps neglect their Curtains
And we look farther on!

Italy stands the other side!
While like a guard between—
The solemn Alps—
The siren Alps
Forever intervene!

Emily Dickinson

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