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Endless Whisper

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Getting to Know One's Inner Enemy
« on: June 01, 2008, 11:24:37 AM »
Getting to Know One's Inner Enemy

by Ralph Metzner

In some of our experience, the duality of good and evil is felt as a defensive stand-off, a separation, a guilt, a rejection. We are unconscious of the shadow aspects, blind to our faults, we want to separate from that in us which we feel is rotten. In other phases of our experience, there is a more active struggle of conflict going on. We may love and hate simultaneously, or feel both attraction and aversion toward the same object or person. We may be in turmoil as our fears and inhibitions struggle with impulses of lust or aggression. In meditatie states, or dreams, or psychedelic visions, we may witness what seems like a clash of opposing tendencies in our psyche, like armies battling in the night.

The task of personal transformation is to turn this inner warfare to inner peace. We need to come to terms with "enemies," both inner and outer. The clashing opposites must be reconciled. Forces, tendencies, and impulses that are locked in seemingly endless conflict must learn to co-exist. I used to believe one had to make friends with the inner enemy, the shadow self. I now feel that making friends is perhaps not necessary, that this "other side" of our nature may always stay in opposition with our true nature. We may want to keep this figure, to function as what Castaneda's Don Juan calls "a worthy opponent" for warrior training. But we need to understand this enemy. Making friends with the inner enemy may be possible. Getting to know him or her is essential.

All spiritual traditions agree that the seeds of warfare, the violent, destructive forces are within us, as the peaceful, harmonizing forces. A Hindu teacher, Swami Sivananda, writes, "the inward battle against the mind, the senses, the subconscious tendencies (vasanas), and the residues of prior experiences (samskaras), is more terrible than any outward battle." A text by one of the fathers of the Eastern Church, from the Philokalia, states, "there is a warfare where evil spirits secretly battle with the soul by means of thoughts. Since the soul is invisible, these malicious powers attack and fight it invisibly." The good Christian, in order to be saved, is exhorted to battle temptations, to ward off demonic invaders and harmful external influences. A poem by the Persian Sufi Rumi states: "We have slain the outward enemy, but there remains within us a worse enemy than hey. This nafs (animal self, or lower self), is hell, and hell is a dragon..." I cite this imagery because it illustrates how widespread, across many religious traditions, is the symbolism of inner warfare.

As a psychologist, I have been investigating the many metaphors used to describe the transformation process in order to determine their origins. I pose the question: How does the feeling of being in a state of inner conflict arise in us in the first place? And I suggest partial answers to this question from three different perspectives: the personal/developmental, the evolutionary/historical, and the theological/mythical.

The personal/developmental basis for the experience of conflict may very well be (in part) the phenomenon of sibling rivalry in early childhood. Competition between brothers and sisters for the attention and approval of their parents and other adults is extremely common. This competitive attitude may be maintained into adulthood and carried over into personal and work relationships with peers. Alternatively, it may be internalized, so that one feels that there is an inferior and a superior self-image competing and struggling with each other. The founder of gestalt therapy, Fritz Perls, called this the conflict between the top dog and the underdog.

There are numerous myths about bitter and protracted competition between rival brothers such as Cain and Abel, or Osiris and Seth, and stories about hostile sisters, such as Cinderella, or the daughters of King Lear, that illustrate this theme of sibling competition. From the perspective of the psychology of transformation, we interpret such stories as referring to an internal process. Both the good sibling and the wicked sibling are aspects of our own nature. In the words of the English Boehme disciple, William Law: "You are under the power of no other enemy, are held in no other captivity, and want no other deliverance but from the power of your own earthly self. This is the murderer of the divine life within you. It is your own Cain that murders your own Abel."

In addition to its childhood origin in sibling rivalry, this theme of inner conflict also has probably evolutionary and historical antecedents-- the age-old, long-continuing struggles between tribes and societies for territory and economic survival. The cut-throat competition of the haves and the have-nots is a deeply ingrained factor in the consciousness of the human race. whether humanity, as a species, can transform this territorial and economic competition into peaceful and cooperative co-existence is perhaps our most difficult challenge.

Going even further back into mamillian evolution, one could speculate about the possible residue in human genetic memory of the millions of years of competitive interaction between predators and prey.  The ecologist Paul Shepard has argued that the predator carnivores developed a different sort of consciousness, a different kind of attention from the prey herbivores, related to their different lives of hunting or escaping. Predator intelligence is searching, aggressive, tuned into stalking and hunting. Prey intelligence is cautious, expendant, tranquil, but ready for instant flight. I suggest that these different styles of awareness, these opposing modes of relating, form a kind of substrate to the human experience of aggressors (predators) and victims (prey). Don't we still hunt, prey on, in the paranoid mode, vigilantly watch for threats, prepared to flee or defend?

In the human imagination, the encounter with the shadow is often experiences as a confrontation with a dangerous beast. When this ideal-ego feels attacked by a monster, who emerges out of unconscious, it feels like a victim. Transformation involves realizing that this ideal-ego is also the beast, the aggressor, the predator. We are both the hunter and the hunted. When we realize this, then the two can make peace- first within, and then in external relationships. In the final days, when planetary transformation is completed, according to ancient prophecies, "The lion and the lamb shall lie down together"; erstwhile victims and aggressors will coexist peacefully.

(continued):




Endless Whisper

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Re: Getting to Know One's Inner Enemy
« Reply #1 on: June 01, 2008, 12:05:10 PM »
The third perspective on the origin of inner conflict is theological/mythical. Many ancient mythologies offer a cosmic story of the world inheritently split by discord and strife. heraclitus said, "War [of opposites] is the father and king of all." In the Zorastrian religion of ancient Persia, competition between the forces of light and darkness was given a most dramatic expression: here we find the myth of the long-drawn struggle, and alternating rulership of the world between Azura-Mazda, the Light Creator, and Ahriman, the Prince of Darkness. This Zorastrian conception of a fundamental cosmic dualism undoubtedly had a profound influence on both the Jewish and Christian religions. The Manichaens and and Gnostics were particularly affected by this myth, with their strong emphasis on the fundamental duality of the Creator, and the parallel duality of the created cosmos.

In this complex of conflict and warfare, made up of personal, evolutionary, and mythological elements, we find the story of man's inhumanity to man-- destructiveness, violence, cruelty, sadism, intentional injury, and violation of another's physical or psychological integrity. Recalling the earlier discussion of judgment, I offer the following perspective on these manifestations of human evil: They represent a combination of judgmentalism with violent rage. The judgment is expressed and acted upon in a destructive and aggressive way. Those who are judged 'bad' or 'evil', or 'opposite,' are attacked and destroyed.

To put it another way, the judgment that is rendered serves as a rationalization for the naked expression of rage. The rationalization may be literary or aesthetic, as with the Marquis de Sade; or it may be spuriously racial or genetic, as with Hitler's genocidal holocaust; or it may be religious, as with the torturers of the Inquisition- the pattern is everywhere the same. The conflict of the judge-persecutor with the judged victim is perhaps the most vicious of all the warring opposites we know. This variant is also played out within the psyche: We are ourselves the punitive judge (In Freudian terms, the super-ego), and the punished victim of persecution (psychologically, the guilt-ridden ego).

For transformation to take place, we need to learn to become wise, impartial judges of ourselves, not punitive, vindictive judges. And again, we must start by realizing that the opposing enemies, the clashing and competitive forces, are all within-- both the judge and the accused, the jailer and the prisoner, the executioner and the condemned.

(continued)

Endless Whisper

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Re: Getting to Know One's Inner Enemy
« Reply #2 on: June 01, 2008, 12:37:39 PM »
On facing one's demons

In traditional and contemporary folk religions, demons are the relatives of the devil- they are personifications  of evil forces, of alien and destructive influences and impulses. They are definitely regarded as something outside of us, something not-self. In primitive or native cultures, living in a state of 'participation mystique' with Nature, demons, like giants, often represent the destructive, violent energies of hurricanes, storms, lightning, wildfires, avalanches, floods, earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions. By inventing or imagining living beings, whether spirits or demons, who guide these forces, their terrifying character is somehow made more tolerable.

Conversely, our own inner states may at times feel to us to be out of control, like the forces of Nature. We then find it natural to describe these inner states as analogous to these forceful aspects of Nature. We speak of someone as a tempestous character, or of being in a stormy mood, or flooded with grief, or having a volcanic explosion of temper. Our inner life, like Nature around us, seems at times to be dominated by violent, clashing energies that seem alien and overwhelmingly powerful to us. This is one aspect of the experience of the demonic.

In the East, both Hindu and Buddhist mythology offer a somewhat different perspective on demons, or asuras, also known as 'angry gods.' or 'titans.' In many myths, the asuras are seen as playing a kind of counterpart role to the good gods, the devas. They are the opponents of the gods, analogous to a kind of cosmic Mafia, with values opposite to those of normal humans and gods. In the Buddhist Wheel of Life, which symbolically portrays six different types of lives one can be born into, the world of asuras is one of the six worlds, one possibility for existence. Buddhists say these demons are dominated by feelings of pride, jealousy and anger, and are engaged in perpetual competitive struggle and conflict.

From a psychological point of view, we are in this world of demons when we are dominated by feelings of pride, jealousy, anger, and competitive struggle. The mythic picture of the asuras is shown to us as a kind of reminder of how our feelings, our thoughts, and our intentions create the kind of reality in which we live. The chaotic, murderous existence of the demons and of humans dominated by demons, is an external consenquence of an inner state.

In Western culture the concept of demon has an interesting history. For the Greeks and Romans, the 'daimon' (Latin: genius) was not evil at all, but was a protective spirit, a divine guardian, something like what later European folklore called the guardian angel. Socrates was one to say that he would converse with his daimon in order to obtain guidance. It is only under the later influence of Christianity that the word demon came to connote something malevolent or destructive. As is well known, Christianity tended to turn old pagan gods such as Pan and Dionysus into devils or demons.

Generallys peaking, there appears to be a much greater tendency in the Western, Judaic-Christian tradition to polarize good and evil as absolute opposites. Only the three monotheistic religions have a concept of an evil deity-- the devil or Satan, who opposes God and the spiritual aspirations of human beings. In the Asian traditions and in the Egyptian and Greek polytheistic religions, we more often find a pluralistic view that accepts a multitude of different perspectives and states of being of various origins and values. And although there may be numerous harmful spirits, demons, and enemies, there is not one personification of evil. There are gods of death-- Hades, Pluto, Yama, Mara-- but these are not like the devil or Satan.

The figure of Satan, at least in western culture, has all the traits and qualities that are part of our shadow or unacceptable side. He is the liar, the slanderer, the destroyer, the deceiver, the tempter, the one who brings guilt and shame, the adversary, the unclean and dark one, who denies and negates everything that enlarges and enhances life, who opposes everything that we value and hold most sacred.

In Jungian terms, the devil represents or embodies the collective shadow of the entire Western Judaic-Christian civilization. He is an amalgamated projection of the shadow image of all the thousands and millions of individuals who have believed in him through the centuries. As with other projections, by attributing dark impulses and feelings to the devil, some not-self, one is relieved of any responsibility for them-- as expressed in that most classic of all excuses, -- "The devil made me do it." Satan exists in the same sense that the ancient gods and goddesses exist and live in the psyches of individuals who express their qualities and characteristics, whether consciously or unconsciously. The legion of forms and names that the devil can take, the many variations on this theme of clashing opposites, are a tribute to the creative imagination of human beings.

This is the multifarious figure whose features can be detected somewhere behind the persona-mask of every man and woman. It is the beast that haunts every beauty, the monster that awaits every hero on his quest. But if we recognize, acknowledge, and come to terms with it, a great deal of knowledge, formerly hidden, unconscious, in the shadows, becomes conscious. When we recognize this devil as an aspect of ourselves, then the shadow functions as a teacher and initiator, showing us our unknown face, providing us with the greatest gift of all -- self-understanding. The conflict of opposites is resolved into a creative play of energies and limitations.