March 29 What You Resist Persists

What you resist persists.
Carl Jung

The concept that “what you resist persists” is a hard one for many of us in Western society to grasp. We have so bought into the storyline that fighters are heroes that we find anything else confusing.
But in fact, fighting against something makes it stronger. When we make something into an enemy, we magnify its importance. As we give our attention to it, we make it bigger and more powerful.
When we focus on fighting the enemy, we only see part of the picture: a one-sided reality. But if we look at the bigger picture we see that everything has consequences. For example, if we kill someone we disagree with, we create a martyr. We then guarantee that the fight continues for the next generation.
This is the difference between a society that values brute strength and a society that values wisdom. Instead of focusing on fighting against enemies, wisdom suggests that we concentrate on the solution we want and put our effort into creating it.

March 28 Peace and the Senses

The sense of taste can help provide a feeling of comfort and peace.
We all have favorite tastes. Many of us crave chocolate, especially on a bad day; others find ice cream soothing.
Some foods remind us of memories. You may find that something your grandmother used to fix makes you feel better. Tastes we remember from our childhood bring back the feeling of simpler, happier, times.
Ideally, food makes us feel nurtured and cared for. “Comfort foods” are filling and help relieve anxiety. They nourish the soul as well as the body.
When we try to eat healthy, this sometimes means that we give up the foods that bring us joy. We may feel as if we are missing something.
What food or drink makes you feel at peace?
Today, treat yourself to a taste that makes you say, “aaah”.

March 27 Mediation

So, if this world is stuck in the shadow Warrior, how can we help move it along to something better?
One way would be for more of us to learn mediation skills. Mediation can be used as an alternative to fighting. Its goal is to create a win-win solution. The process requires each party to show respect for the other’s perspective, their view of the world, their need for validation without giving up their own perspective, view of the world, or need for validation. Each side wins on the points that they value most and concedes on the aspects that they find less urgent.
Mediation has notably been used in divorce, but that is only one application. It can be used in business, with labor problems or internal disagreements. Some communities are using mediation to solve problems, from small disputes to major feuds. Those who learn mediation find it a useful skill to address problems in their own lives and with their families.
Mediation programs and centers exist in many areas. Some religious groups train people in mediation skills. Other mediation centers are located at educational institutions or in communities.
Knowing mediation skills can be helpful for all of us in our everyday lives. In addition, many people serve as volunteer mediators who may be called upon for disputes between individuals or community groups. Paid mediators go through formal mediation training and receive certification. They may work with the courts or with attorneys.
Mediation is a valuable skill for a society that wishes to have more peace. Today, find out whether there is a resource in your community that teaches mediation skills.

March 22 Thanks, But I'll Pass

For me, last week brought one annoyance after another, ending with the day I had to deal with customer service. I had two problems, so I had to deal with two different companies, a process that took four hours altogether. It was everything we expect these days from customer service. One guy was surly and accused me of doing stuff I didn’t do. Another person couldn’t get anything straight.
They grudgingly agreed to let me return the nearly-new gadget that wasn’t working, but the return process was complicated and involved warnings that if I didn’t do it EXACTLY right, they would refuse to repair it. Next, I had to order some catalog items. After the order was complete, the clerk tried to sell me stuff I didn’t want. When I declined, she argued with me.
When I finally finished, I realized that for these companies, I was the enemy.
This wasn’t always the case. At one time, successful businesses considered their customers to be assets. Their goal was to provide what customers wanted and needed. They knew that keeping customers was important if they were to stay in business. The understanding was, “we provide what you want and need, we make you happy, and you’ll tell your friends and come back next time.” Customer service was the basis for everything they did.
The change seemed to happen in the 1980’s, about the time Gordon Gekko announced in the movie Wall Street that “greed is good”. Now the goal is to make as much money as possible. The customers are just an obstacle, stubbornly holding back money from the business, so they must force us to give it up. Corporations have made us into enemies by deciding that their interests are not the same as our interests.
Many procedures are clearly planned to be so complicated, such a hassle, that we will give up and quit trying. I have seen health insurers do this – they deny coverage for legitimate conditions, then make the appeals process complicated so people give up rather than pursue the appeal. We feel the hostility when we deal with these companies. It definitely does not contribute to having peace.
This experience, and my resulting lack of peace, set me thinking about what I could do to not be an enemy. I think I have come up with a solution.
I decided I will send these two companies a letter or email and tell them I’m not going to do business with them any more because they treat their customers like enemies.
Then I wondered what would happen if we all did that. I’ll have to admit that the idea makes me smile.

March 20 Archetypes

Martha posted this comment on March 16:
I tried to read your blogs on the archetypes but the feminist in me finds the Warrior, Wizard, Hero all so very wearisomely male. Being a pagan I prefer the traditional pagan Maiden, Mother, & Crone. When you return from your rest you might give them some thought. They are so in keeping with the concept of peace...

Thanks for bringing this up, Martha. It raises some important issues. Archetypes are only useful if we find them helpful, and we don’t all find meaning in the same way.
For me, they can be of value in a couple of ways. They can be descriptive, allowing us to recognize the pattern we have been following. (“Oh, so that’s what I’ve been doing.”) Or they can serve as a guide, a model for ways we can make our lives different.
The reason the Warrior seems so tedious to many of us is that the world is in the grip of the shadow Warrior. We have done it to death, over and over, and we don’t seem to be learning its lessons. I suspect that you are looking for the same thing I am looking for; a way to move on.
I see two different groups of people who might be interested. One group would be those who can see the downside of the Warrior and want something different. Your suggestion of the Maiden, Mother, and Crone may be what they are looking for.
I am not as worried about that group. Those who are looking will probably find what they need, sooner or later. The group I am more concerned about are those who are stuck in the Warrior. For those who believe the Warrior is the top of the Winner Ladder, there is nothing beyond. For them, this is the highest one can aspire to, to spend every day trying desperately not to be a loser. They believe they have no choice but to always fight: every dragon must be slain. And since Warriors run most of our institutions and our businesses, what they do affects all of us.
I don’t think the answer is to give up being a Warrior or never learn Warrior skills. That leads to living in fear – fear of bullies or anyone who is strong and threatens. The journey calls us to move through the Warrior, while retaining Warrior skills.
Carol Pearson prefers to use gender-neutral language for her archetypal framework. I agree with this strategy. I believe men’s and women’s journeys are becoming more and more similar as time goes along, and while they are not identical, the resulting wisdom is universal. You might prefer Pearson’s more in-depth framework of 12 archetypes in Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World: the Innocent, Orphan, Seeker, Lover, Creator, Destroyer, Warrior, Caregiver, Magician, Sage, Ruler, and Jester.
Most men would not identify with the archetypes of the Maiden, Mother and Crone. Nor would a woman in midlife who does not have children or who has to multitask, dealing with a Warrior-world job and other stresses. The Crone has an image problem. We associate it with being physically unattractive – the Halloween cartoon witch. Even the Mother archetype has a shadow side: think of the nosy, domineering mother, or the Texas mother who tried to murder her daughter’s cheerleading rival.
I prefer to use a framework that has more general appeal, and particularly one that makes sense to those stuck in the shadow Warrior. And I think we need to understand the Warrior in order to move beyond it.
It is not my intent to turn this into a Jungian theory blog, and I promise to get back to more practical posts. But you raise some good points. I hope my response is helpful.

March 19 Dragons

J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, wrote a lesser-known story, Farmer Giles of Ham. In the story, Farmer Giles lived in a place called the Middle Kingdom, where a giant had been trampling on animals and buildings. He shot at the giant, chasing him away. Because the giant had done so much damage, Farmer Giles became the Hero of the Countryside. The townspeople cheered, and the King even sent congratulations, along with a belt and an old sword he found lying around the armory.
When the giant returned home to his land far away, he told stories of his travels, which he embellished a bit. The dragons listened to his stories, and one dragon decided to pay a visit to the Middle Kingdom.
The dragon also brought destruction. He burned up the crops, destroyed buildings, and took animals. Most people stayed inside their houses, but the parson came out and tried to convince the dragon to mend his evil ways. Instead, he ate the parson.
Farmer Giles discovered that the sword the king had given him had a name – Tailbiter – and that it had belonged to a great dragon-slayer. No dragon could resist it when it was in the hands of a brave man. Farmer Giles went after the dragon and, wielding Tailbiter, wounded his wing so that he could not fly.
Although the dragon said, “Knights always kill dragons, if we don’t kill them first,” Farmer Giles didn’t kill him. Instead, he went into the dragon’s cave and took his treasure, which would pay for the damage to the town. He strapped the treasure onto the dragon’s back and they walked back to the Middle Kingdom. People came to see the dragon Farmer Giles had captured, and he became very rich. He was the Darling of the Land.

March 15

Good morning, and thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate the feedback, and I’m glad that some of you have found the posts helpful. I really enjoy writing them. However, I’m getting worn out and I need to take a break.
I truly admire people who can work full-time and still write. I just don’t seem to be one of them. If I try to keep up this pace, the posts will start being really grumpy. That kind of defeats the purpose, don’t you think?
And something else has been nagging at me. I have the sense that there are more urgent matters that need to be addressed. Specifically, the shredding of the U.S. Constitution, and the sports tournament that we call an election, which allows us to choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, on voting machines that do fishy things.
I still have another fun dragon story and will plan to finish it in about a week. In the meantime, I’m thinking maybe I should follow my own advice. I’m going to take a nap and then go for a walk in the woods.
Thanks again for your feedback and encouragement.
One more thing – if you live in the United States you might want to consider getting some of your news from at least one source outside the U.S. It’s easy to do on the Internet. Just a suggestion.

Karen

March 13 Dragons

For Western cultures, the classic hero is the Warrior. The hero must prove he is a Warrior, usually by killing a dragon. When we encounter a dragon, the implication is that we only have two choices: kill the dragon or be killed.
But after a while, that story gets old. Eventually we have found every possible way to kill dragons. We become weary of patching up the Warriors who return alive but burned, gored or hobbling. We start to wonder whether the battle is worth the cost, or if there is another way for the hero to prove his worth.
If we have more than one kind of hero, there must be more than one way to handle a dragon. And so it was for Jerome the frog.
In Philip Ressner’s children’s book Jerome, he is turned into a prince by a witch. The townspeople inform him that since he is now a prince, they expect him to slay the greasy, smelly dragon that is burning up their houses and forests.
(I believe the description of dragons as greasy and smelly is supposed to make us more willing to kill them. But I digress.)
Jerome finds the cave where the dragon lives and announces that he plans to slay him. But the dragon protests, saying that he can’t help himself. He says that breathing fire is what dragons do.
This puzzles Jerome, who did not expect an assertive dragon. He thinks for a while, and then proposes a deal.
Now the dragon burns the town garbage on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The other days he rests and tells lies.

March 12 The Hero's Journey

The Innocent comes through the journey and finds peace. The Magician comes through the journey and provides healing for the self and the world. The Magician goes beyond ordinary reality.
We can see the Magician in champion athletes who play with elegance and grace, without apparent effort. They achieve this grace only after years of discipline and practice. But once in the game, the baseball pitcher doesn’t think about every detail – the wind speed, the curve of his arm, the position of the batter. Instead, he lets go and lets his body do what it knows how to do.
The traditional Western warrior fights directly against the opponent, perhaps using a battering ram to break down resistance. But Magician warriors use Eastern martial arts such as aikido. In this style of combat, they do not fight against the challenger but instead turn around and move in the direction the challenger is going. The opponent then becomes unbalanced and falls.
Just as the aikido practitioner aligns with the force of the foe, the Magician harmonizes with the forces of nature. The Magician physician understands the wisdom of the body and its natural ability to heal, and plans treatment that will enhance this ability. Balance is important for the Magician. Just as in the martial arts, where grace and balance are more powerful than brute strength, our bodies and lives need to be in balance if we are to heal.
The Magician does things we think are impossible. But this is partly because they are willing to try. Certainly more people could do “impossible” things if they were willing to make an attempt, and then had the patience and discipline to perfect their skills. Sometimes magic is in believing you can do something and then doing it. To be a Magician, we must go beyond apparent boundaries and give up self-imposed limits.
Magicians understand that we are all connected. They know that we are all children of the Creator and that truth wears many faces. Magician Warriors have respect for their opponents and see divinity in them. For the Magician, the world is too small to have enemies. The goal is wisdom, harmony, and peace.

March 11 The Hero's Journey

We start our life’s journey as an Innocent. For a time, our needs are taken care of and we live in paradise. For those with a happy childhood the Innocent journey continues, a time of being loved and appreciated.
This Innocent stage, however, is shorter than it was a generation or two ago. The harsher realities of the world intrude through television, music, and other influences. School may be a place of bullying and shaming. Schools often have a Winner Ladder as rigid as any we will ever face in our lives. Too soon, we encounter the Orphan and the journey begins.
Each stage of the journey has a gift of wisdom. The hero becomes skilled at handling the pitfalls along the way. Those who persist, facing their fears, coping with dragons and muddling through the dark woods, encounter a surprise. As they come out on the other side of the woods, they find themselves in paradise again.
It is paradise because it meets our needs. It might not be a paradise for someone else, but because we have taken the journey, we know ourselves and what we need. We can ask for what we want without fighting. We know who we are and we don’t bother trying to fit somewhere we don’t belong.
The Innocent finds peace as a result of going on the journey. Peace comes because we have nothing to fear. We know that to be loved the secret is to be loving. We no longer have anything to prove. We have turned the journey into wisdom, and when we know how to solve problems, they have no power over us.
However . . . .
The journey is not a straight line but a spiral. So the end of one journey is the beginning of the next. Eventually something happens, we are thrust onto a new journey, and we are on our way to greater wisdom.

March 10 The Hero's Journey

The Wanderer’s journey leads away from home into the unknown. The journey is a search for healing of the self and the world.
Wanderers are pulled onto the journey by a feeling that something is missing, although they may be unable to name it. They may feel trapped, as if they are in a cage. They sense they no longer fit into their lives, or maybe that they have never fit. They escape from a world that seems hostile or empty.
In the fairy tale, the prince goes looking for Cinderella, visiting every home in the kingdom to see who will fit the glass slipper. When he arrives at Cinderella’s house, he finds that one of the stepsisters has cut off part of her foot in an attempt to fit into the slipper.
This is what many of us do. We cut off part of ourselves in an attempt to fit into the role we are trying to fill. Parts of ourselves are numb or missing because we don’t accept them or we fear that others won’t approve of them. When we are the Wanderer we search for our missing parts; we seek wholeness.
Many people avoid going on the Wanderer journey. They may be obsessed with safety or bound in fear. They may be afraid that the journey would change them, and they are probably right. They forget that life is supposed to be an adventure.
Eventually the Wanderer returns from the journey, bringing answers to problems, answers that were not available at home. These solutions bring new life to the kingdom. But the hero gains the treasure only by going on the quest. The prince would never have found Cinderella if he had not gone looking for her.

March 9 The Hero's Journey

Each of the archetypes is an important part of the spiritual journey; each has a gift for the journeyer.
The Altruist teaches us to care for others.
The Warrior, the “official” hero, is revered and celebrated in the media, but in reality most of us spend our time and energy being an Altruist. We provide for our families, we look after our neighbors. A great many of us donate our time in volunteer work. Collectively, we contribute huge amounts of money to charities. We are everyday heroes.
The Warrior’s separateness and individuality are a valuable stage of the journey; the Altruist provides connection. With the Warrior we learn freedom; with the Altruist we find meaning. To ask whether the Warrior or the Altruist is more important is to ask a Winner Ladder question. In fact, both are necessary.
We are all connected, and we all affect each other. The Altruist teaches us to go beyond ourselves, to look to the needs of the family, the community, and the world, even to those who are different from ourselves. We learn to give something back.
Higher-level Altruists want to give, not out of obligation or fear of what comes after death, but because they want to, because they believe they can make a difference.
The shadow Altruist’s gifts come with strings attached. These people want to control others and do not respect their boundaries. They are the helicopter parents, who hover over their children even when they go away to college. The shadow Altruist may try to live through others instead of taking the individual spiritual journey.
Most Altruist jobs are poorly paid, low on the Winner Ladder. But they are essential. Many, many people give up higher-status jobs to take an Altruist job that provides meaning and a sense of satisfaction.
It is hard to live in peace when others around us are not doing well. If we are to have peace, we must look after the needs of everyone.

March 8 The Hero's Journey

When we suffer a loss and find ourselves adrift, the Orphan archetype is prominent in our lives. We may feel abandoned or betrayed, thrown out of our comfort zone. Maybe we trusted someone who let us down, or the perfect job turns out to be awful. Perhaps we lose money on a house or a business.
We have this idea that life should be smooth, that if we have problems we have done something wrong. But all of us have wounds of some sort, and the wound is what propels us onto the spiritual journey.
The Orphan teaches us to be more realistic and to trust wisely. We learn that we can take what life dishes out, that we can survive the problems and the dramas and still be standing. We learn that we must each be responsible for our own happiness; if we entrust our happiness entirely to someone else, they will sometimes let us down.
Those caught in the shadow side of the Orphan remain caught up in anger and bitterness and never grow beyond the loss. Those who remain stuck in the pain pay the price of the Orphan journey without collecting its gifts.
The journey out of the loss may be long. It may be that you don’t recover from the loss in the sense of returning to who you were before, but move forward into something new, something you have never been before. The problem, the loss, allows you to move ahead and live a larger life.
Peace is not living forever in the Garden of Eden. Peace in this world is knowing that you can handle what will come along in the future.

March 7 The Hero's Journey

The Warrior archetype is an essential part of the spiritual journey. Our inner Warrior allows us to defend our boundaries, to fend off those who try to trample on us. Without the Warrior we are vulnerable, always in fear of threats from outside. Without it, we cannot live in peace.
Each archetype has its positive side and its shadow side. The shadow side of the Warrior is familiar to all of us. Warriors, originally the defenders of the weak, become bullies. They are obsessed with power, always looking for enemies, seeing everything as a competition.
According to Carol Pearson,the plot of the Warrior story is hero/villain/victim. This is the traditional format for a hero story. It makes for compelling drama, but when every story must fit into the same formula, it becomes tedious and confining.
The journey is a spiral rather than a straight path. It leads to the Warrior archetype more than once, each time at a higher level. The advanced Warrior knows how to fight, but prefers more elegant solutions to problems. The wise Warrior understands that ultimately we are all on the same side.

March 6 Emptiness

Some obstacles to peace are obvious, but others are less apparent. When the barrier is fighting or anger, worry or fear we can usually identify it. But for some, the problem is more subtle.
Someone may be following the rules, doing what they think they’re supposed to do, but have a sense of emptiness, of something missing. This emptiness can be an obstacle to peace.
Jungian Carol Pearson believes that this feeling of emptiness is a sign that the individual has not been willing to pursue the spiritual journey. The journey is the purpose of life. Although it is challenging at times, it allows us to grow and mature. We can then use the gifts of the journey and our resulting wisdom to help heal the world around us.
For each of us, the journey is ours alone and we will have to discover it for ourselves. But there are guideposts to point the way, in the form of archetypes.
In Pearson’s The Hero Within she describes six archetypes that reflect aspects of the spiritual journey. All are important – each helps us gain a different aspect of wisdom.
When the Orphan archetype is prominent in our lives, we may feel abandoned or betrayed. We learn to be careful where we put our trust.
The Wanderer breaks out of captivity and goes on a quest to find the true self.
The Warrior archetype teaches us how to be strong, to maintain our boundaries and defend the weak.
When we are the Altruist we learn generosity and begin to connect to others.
Before the journey, the Innocent has a naive, childlike trust in the world. Those who pursue the journey return to a new level of the Innocent, where they create a peaceful life with wisdom they gained along the way.
The Magician has the skill and knowledge to transform the kingdom into a better world.
For Pearson, the spiritual journey provides us with the skills and the knowledge to create a more peaceful world for ourselves and those around us. Those who avoid taking the journey out of fear or a preference for safety may feel a sense of emptiness or hollowness that is an obstacle to peace.

March 5 Alternatives to Fighting

We view the health care system as waging a heroic fight against death and disease. The immune system is the corresponding fighter inside the body. Our image of the immune system has it battling enemies that invade the body from outside.
Although the warrior image seems obvious to us, it is a concept of our own creation. It is not the only way to describe what the immune system does.
The immune system demonstrates the wisdom of the body. It must know which cells are part of “me” and which aren’t. Its job is to distinguish self from not-self, to discover what doesn’t belong – an impressive feat, if you think about it. If we look at this aspect of the immune system, we could consider it to be a sage instead of a warrior, or maybe a radar system.
Once the immune system detects the presence of what doesn’t belong, we could say that it cleans up, takes out the trash. We could picture it as a housekeeper or repairman.
People who are ill are often urged to fight the disease, especially if they have cancer. But fighting is not the only choice. In their book Speak the Language of Healing: Living With Breast Cancer Without Going to War, Susan Kuner, Carol Orsborn, Linda Quigley, and Karen Stroup describe their experiences with breast cancer. All chose to approach the cancer without fighting. For each of the four authors, this choice came from a religious or spiritual point of view.
Those who have an illness are urged to fight and may be told “you have no choice.” But there are always choices, and the person with the illness is the one who makes the choice. Fighting is only one option.

March 4 You Can't Be Serious!

Thanks to Martha Schram for this entry in the "Peace is Funny" contest.
Finding Peace

She held on to anger, she held on to woe,
She held them both tightly and wouldn't let go.

She cherished resentment and worked hard to judge.
She felt herself stuck there and tried not to budge.

She frowned, and she fussed, and she worried, and such.
She huffed, and she growled, and she barked way too much.

She felt awfully heavy all burdened and low;
She saw it was silly so she let it all go.

She felt so much better and that made her grin,
She noticed a dimple erupt on her chin.

She built to a titter, an enormous tee-hee!
She couldn't stop giggling, at last she was free!

She snickered and hooted, guffawed, belly-laughed;
She didn't much worry if folks thought her daft.

She let trouble lighten, vexation release.
She learned that a smile is conducive to peace.

For more details about the contest, see the February 29 post.
If you would like to enter, please send your entry to 365Peace@gmail.com

March 3 Whose Life Is It?

Some people believe that when others dare them or threaten them they have no other choice but to fight.
They assume they must fight or otherwise they’ll be losers; or that they have to choose between fighting and being a victim. Maybe they want to preserve their position on the Winner Ladder, or maybe they don’t want to be considered weak.
But if they truly have no choice, it means that they are not in control of their lives.
A fight makes people into enemies. If they were not enemies before, they are enemies when the fight begins. Having an enemy takes a lot of energy, and it is usually a long-term project. You may not want to spend your energy in that way.
Other people can dare you, hate you, threaten you, or even take a swing at you, but they don’t rule your life. If someone wants you to fight you can choose whether or not you will.
Remember that another person cannot be an enemy without your permission.

March 2 Not My Problem

Do you know someone who doesn’t like you?
This used to really bother me. If I thought someone didn’t like me, I worried that maybe I did something wrong, maybe I was lacking something important. I worried about what they were saying about me to others.
Then when I was in my forties, which is the age when we start to figure out a lot of things about ourselves, I realized something. Some people just don’t like me, no matter what I do. Other people seem to think I’m great, no matter what I do. But I’m still me. I don’t do anything different with one person than I do with the other.
I realized that what they think of me is more about them than it is about me. Maybe they don’t like me for their own reasons. Since there’s nothing I can do to change that, it isn’t my problem.
Some people are annoyed that it doesn’t bother me but I spend a lot less time trying to make other people happy than I used to. It’s OK with me if someone doesn’t like me.

March 1 Enough

In order to have peace, we must have our basic needs met. Those who do not have enough to eat or a warm place to live cannot be at peace. Those who fear for their physical safety in their homes do not live in peace. And because peace is contagious, when those around us don’t have what they need, their lack of peace affects all of us.
But the problem is different for many of us.
For us, an obstacle to peace is our focus on all the things we want that we don’t really need. Those of us who have our basic needs met still think we need lots of stuff. The power of advertising makes us want things that aren’t necessities and sometimes aren’t good for us.
There seems to be no end to what we want. We want things that we think will make us happy or better looking. We want things that will raise our status on the Winner Ladder. We want to measure up to people in the ads who seem to enjoy life so much more than we do.
If we are to live in peace it helps to decide that we are attractive enough, thin enough, well dressed enough, that we can live on our current income. It helps to decide that what we have is enough.
It might help to remind ourselves every now and then, “All those possessions are nice, thank you very much, but I prefer peace.”