What struck me about the Dark Knight was its psychological bravery. Mainstream entertainment meets CG Jung’s ‘Tension of the opposites’.

Whether it was conceived or understood that way by the creators is not my angle here. My angle is how well the story managed to get close to a viewer and drag their perspective into this new territory. The territory of transcending the Ego, the individuation process to becoming Self oriented.

I believe The Matrix, did a great job at pointing thematically to ‘awakening’. The ‘dark knight’ did a profound job at pointing at ‘meaning’.

Batman sees The Joker as chaos, and that by seeing chaos as the enemy he attempts to control it. Chaos is nature, our purpose is to live with it – it ain’t going anywhere. Batman sees this eventually, and sees that the final cost is being true to reality. He must go beyond his egoic needs for control and societies understanding, and follow the only path that has energy, the only path that gives him his real strength and meaning. His own purpose. This is to follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell would say. Though it is not the Ego’s idea of bliss. There’s the rub.

This film really made me think; how do I become that brave? That responsible? It was marvelous, and easy to become enamoured with the righteousness of such a good cause as ‘saving a city’. How do I follow my bliss, how do I bypass the deception of my own mind, and walk my path?

I spoke with a young woman administrator at my local Yoga studio last week; she intends to go to an ashram in India for six months. I joked with her that I hoped she didn’t come back as a Yoga Hippy. She laughed and said ‘I think I might be one already’. My comment struck a chord with her though, and she spilled her story and desires about her journey. We had a lot in common. That same issue of ‘killing the ego’ came up. She thought she had to do that.

Obviously when I was her age I thought the same. It seems to take a long time to develop a different understanding, but following a false lead seems such a shame, albeit all roads may lead to the same place.

I pointed her in the direction of ego health and some books, she read a book a day she said, and she felt very happy to have bumped in to me. I remembered thinking at the time, why on earth do I feel I have had my sense of meaning topped up like a full tank from that exchange? What is it about helping others that feels so good, and so dangerous too!

And that’s the interesting shadow dilemma that came into my mind. Wow, she is young, beautiful and interested in your ideas, what more do you want, an invitation? Years ago I would have been very self-reproachful about thinking that – ‘what a thing to think, why does sex and power drive everything!’. But the drive for a woman is very strong when I do not have one! I would have been tempted enough and rationalised it enough to act on it. Now I feel a much more interesting blend of connection. I think I might call it integrating the shadow face of responsibility. Nothing is dismissed, it is all there, only this time I see cause and effect. At the same time I see her struggle as keenly as it were my closest friend, I admire her beauty and the azure of her eyes, and feel I can help point the way a little for her. But all within a sense of flow and containment.

Finding responsibility is the whole task. The whole goal of our life I think. We are driven by passions, but can we let them guide us to our destiny without crashing into the barriers?

I often have trouble with that. But passions are where there is infinite energy, the energy to create anew, to bring new life and ideas. To live a new life, our very own unique and unjudged capacity to become responsible for what and who we are.

Genpo Roshi, whom I admire so very much, put it this way ‘The servant of the house has come to think he is the master.’

Is the master in the house?

Can we be Dark Knights?

Palin, what is the fuss?

I’d like to propose a methodology to help those of us in confusion with how global politics and candidates should be considered. Rather than rely on our own emotional attraction to a party or candidate, we have to suspend our reflexive thoughts, and consider the brutal facts. The President and Vice President jobs in the White House are the most powerful positions in the world. Some consideration by the voter is required, surely.

We look for integrity. Does the candidate have enough? Do they talk of small issues, or big issues. Have they the humility to display personal error? Or do they change their story and cover it up?

We look for incisiveness. Do they show the capacity of a chess-player to see a few moves ahead? Do they have the required street smarts to take on deceptive nations. Can they see through the smoke and spin that surrounds them?

We look for charm. Do they show a relaxed confidence, even in the most daunting of circumstances? Do they make us feel like we have chosen the right person?

We look for discipline. Do they show tenacity with dealing with the details that really matter. Do they understand cause and effect? Will the candidate be smart, diligent and prepared before they do anything that will incur huge consequences.

We look for action. Do they seem capable of making a big decision - quickly if need be. When decisiveness is required, will it be thought through? Do they gather the necessary input, while under pressure, until they have the best solution. Or do they shoot from the hip with a hunch, as their main solution to the problem.

We look for vision. Does the candidate see ahead, see the complexity of the situation? Is the candidate reflective and patient enough to get past the surface in order to see the real motivations of lobbyists, corporations, institutions, nations and societies and most importantly self-interest.

We look for peace. Do they understand that the majority of wars have been based on poor understanding of cause and effect? That pride and prejudice have played their hands too many times in the lives of human kind, and that our place on the planet as the smartest mammal has not proven itself yet. Does the candidate understand that the USA and the rest of the world need to work on being friends much harder than we work on being enemies, and to work toward a global move toward this end.

We look for perspective. The people that are most effected by poor management and poor decisions, are the workers. We live on a planet full of bad and poorly trained managers and disenfranchised and pissed-off workers. We need competition to evolve, and we need social responsibility to protect the lesser-gifted. This tension of opposites is the mother of our political reinvention. This perspective is the only creative energy we can use. Is the candidate in touch with this reality? Or are they one-sided and fixed in old thought.

We look for wisdom. Wisdom comes from patience and awareness. It is not intelligence or knowledge. It is experience that has been reflected upon and seriously reviewed against the history of thought, and the modern fields of sociology, psychology and philosophy. Wisdom is the ground on which we rely being there when we fall down. Does the candidate offer this? Can they help us live with uncertainty when wisdom has not caught up with the situation?

We look for safety. We want protected, but at what cost? Have we thought about the cost of oil-dependance on our grandchildren, when there may be none left, and nations are fighting over the dregs? Has the candidate thought about this? Or are they stuck in a short-term fix over a long-term (and way more complex) solution.

We look for a hero. The role of the hero is to bring new life to the land of the wounded king - in order to revive it. This is not an easy job, and this is why we call it heroic. The public is usually against change, even when it is sorely needed. Does the candidate offer something new that is not entirely popular and do they have what it takes to see it through?

We look for someone to blame. We all need a surrogate, we all need someone to take our annoyance and disbelief. Will the candidate be able to bear this uncomfortable position without causing reactionary action as punishment?

We look for someone who punches their weight. Do they understand the sheer magnitude and intricacies of what they will become involved with. Could the candidate potentially be in over their heads?

Your decision

You vote. It is your responsibility. You pick the best all-round player, not just for the USA, but for the world. Your decision will reverberate around the globe, just like the last one. Are you going to act before you think?

It’s not about Palin, it’s about you. We project all these requirements on our leaders, but we need them in ourselves in order to make good choices.

Ask these questions of yourself first, who you vote for then should be pretty easy, you will feel like you know what they have to do, and what kind of person that looks like.

And if the answer is Republican, then you are not being honest. Honesty is seeing reality. Try again. Take the red pill.

p.s. I will blog about the movie The Dark Knight soon. It has some very clear messages about the price of responsibility.

Things are pretty awful at work. Not much business. I thought about losing my job, even though I am very employable, my ‘scared’ voice spoke up and clamped its hands on the adrenaline pump and gave me a jolt. But you know, I have been practising being mindful for quite a while now, so I thought I'd take this one on, and not just 'do something'.

So I thought… hmmm lmy 'control' mind wants control again, lets examine this…This is a kind of blow by blow - like minutes of a meeting...except the committee was in my head!

-    when a negative thought (my job my future!) invokes self/ego it seems to close down the mind space where opportunities and ideas that would otherwise be liberating would flourish – the change process is not easily welcomed by the self/ego.

-    Words like disruption came to mind, the negative mind just fills my head with pessimism.

-    This creates anxiousness

-    This then leads to some sort of survival mind taking over, speeding up breathing, limiting options to fight or flight. This is felt immediately.

but then i held that and decide to 'think' that the problem was someone elses, to see if that would change how I felt...

-    ...and so if it is not you, but someone else having this problem, you the observer are not overwhelmed with anxiousness, and can think of alternative ways out of the situation with given experiences and the resources available to them.

- Though this is difficult to do if you are projecting your fears onto the other and then feeling overwhelmed on their behalf. This would be a sort of pathological empathy. Not understanding but appropriating.

I have found some of this very helpful.
And this
And this
And this
And this

First: like you I am a learner. I’d like to breath easier, be a better human, and I don’t have a big beef with Eckhart. But I think his work is partial to our life, it is not the whole thing. I do not intend to diminish anything he posits, because his perspective is almost entirely spiritual, except we are humans, and we are not entirely spiritual. And this is what I am exploring. I am open to feedback on all this – what do I know?

I love Eckhart dearly and sincerely. He has us tuned in, and our left-brain switched off, and here were are in the ever present Now. Now is where it is at, make no mistake, if you don’t know what Now is you better find out now. Otherwise you won’t have a clue, you’ll be thinking about sex, or food, or a nice glass of Brunello. Yum. And there, I just lost it, I was thinking sincerely pleasant thoughts, and here I am in the pain-body again, where did Now go? What is this pain-body thing? Where did my fantasies go? My desires?

My actual problem with Eckhart and sex, is that making love is a lovely thing to anticipate. But anticipation is not in the Now. You see the problem. Eckharts book leaves us out to dry on this horny question. Ahem.

But to begin my story, have you read ‘A New Earth’? In it, Eckhart Tolle makes a brilliant and mostly eloquent drilling down and expose of our one dimensional unconscious life, and following the Buddhas path, takes us through our pain barrier. He trains us for the great trek out of the wilderness of our empty life, and, and…Except just as we get to the punch line, there is no sense of what to do next, or rather now, except be in the Now.

And that’s my problem, and probably yours too and perhaps for similar reasons. The path that our lives have taken - where I am writing this and you are reading it, is that we have suffered and tried to overcome the suffering, at some point recognizing that we are our own agents consciously and unconsciously and are getting mixed messages about what the best way out of all the shit is. But that is not my problem with ET, he does point the way, and he is beautifully on the mark with the approach and method - Get out of your own head. But what do we do when we need our own head. Its not just there for decoration!

What do we do when Now is not a good time, like when we have to actually do something like plan, think or take action. Planning your meals for the week, what car to buy, whether to chat with the cute girl at the party?

But being all in the Now, leaves something out, something lively, something earthy and sucks the fizz, sparkle and life-force kind of right out of us. It all becomes too serious, too utterly demanding, and too friggin boring if you ask me. There is a pithy statement: he has the stink of Zen. You know your gonna smell spiritual and compassionate if you take this book directly to heart. And you will want to wear the t-shirt too. And I will avoid you at a party. I would avoid me, if it was me.

‘A New Earth’ ejects us out the other end of our pathological Ego, unborn, in beginners mind, where Ego is seen as a bad thing, a painful thing, something you DO NOT WANT anymore. That’s repression that is – help, help I’m being repressed! That just becomes Shadow, as C.G. Jung called it. ET explains that the Ego as the cause of suffering. Or is it. Its not that ET has gotten it wrong, he hasn’t, he just doesn’t point anywhere past the Now with as much clarity as he did exposing the Ego’s corrosiveness in the book.

We need, after this books main point of stressing the mind of ‘Now’, to go to the next phase of our journey. To the non-pathological Ego. As C.G. Jung stated, to build our ‘Container’. Or as Genpo Roshi would say to become a ‘Human-Being’. The cause of suffering is also our cause of salvation. Our Egoic mind needs to be seen as our friend but only after serious effort at studying the Ego and it’s many ways (voices and shadow). Our Ego that is, not anyone elses. This is what zen practice seems to be all about, as the goal. This is what Jungian analysis is also all about. To build up the strength to seemingly surrender the Ego, allow the Self to be the Big Boss, and then come down off the mountain to daily life, where the Ego knows its way around. But back to Eckharts demand for Now.

For example, with the Now perspective, there is no later. Think about trying that when you get off the phone with your new hot lover whom you will see later that evening. In the Now there is NO anticipation. No anticipation of making love with your partner. Or even anticipating an cold drink after a game of sports, having an ice-cream at the beach, or trekking up a hillside and watching the sun come up. With Now, there are no love songs, no where the fuck have you been its two o’clock in the morning!, no tears at death. Now is alert, Now has no fear. It is beautiful, but it’s not a passionate lover who wants to get hot and sweaty with you. It is passive. It doesn’t need to do anything.

Now is not Home. Now is essential. It is not the essence. The essence is to bring the Now together with the Ego and holding them in unison and learning how to do that. This is Home. This is being a human being. This is understanding the Power of Now, and washing dishes. This is not needlessly worrying about your partner being late, until perhaps you should make a phone call. Its not the Now that makes the phone call. It’s the human being, it’s the part that IS attached to your partner (Now is NOT attached). The Ego actually would care very much if she got hit by a bus. Now sees it as an energy in the firmament.

So this question and answer from Eckhart’s website, takes a specific perspective to a specific question. He does not answer the question, he maintains the perspective of Now. This is fine for a spiritual teacher to do, because he is pointing in order that we figure out our own answers. But it would be nice once and a while to see what he would do too, I am from Missouri, don’t tell me, show me! Telling us that we ‘may find sex enjoyable’, is a bit funny. May find? Oh my word. Lets just say that sex in general is enjoyable. But if you have a dysfunctional perspective, it’s not just affecting your sex life. The question has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with who you are, and to a great degree, how well have you practiced understanding yourself. The question is about discipline.


Thus if you read A New Earth, realize that its job, like that of the first phase of zen practice, is to bring you to a first enlightenment. That you are not just Ego.

There is an alternative practice called BigMind that I feel goes further than ‘A New Earth’. What BigMind does extra, is to very quickly in the space of a day give you the pleasure of a Kensho experience (a first brief enlightement, or epiphany, in the moment of Now) and then deflating the Now, and then presenting the Ego back to you, to take home with you floating on a cloud of Now. But that doesn’t last, as Genpo Roshi will say. You have to live with the Ego again

…except you have been awoken - you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave…

This Zen Koan
First there is a mountain (ego - self)
Then there is no mountain (BigMind, No Self)
Then there is a mountain (integration of both self and No Self)

My point in the end is that I have made all these mistakes myself, and I’d rather point them out, like pot-holes in the road to a fellow cyclist. Not so much suggesting you avoid the experience of doing all this yourself, but not getting stuck focusing on some misinterpretation of a glorious and timely book.

As my favourite zen teacher Doen Sensei would say ‘Have fun, be a little nicer, appreciate your life, dont be afraid, we are all just passing through’.

Playing with my new headphones, hmm very different mix to the speakers, so go set up the equaliser in itunes: how does Stevie Ray's 'Wall of Denial' sound, wooww too much bass, now lets try some Balligomingo 'falling', cellos a bit tiny where is its whole voice?... tweak a little more. Now, oh yeah, Jeff Buckley...

And so he sighs, and picks that telecaster, and it builds...

Its new Jeff. My little headphones have illuminated Jeff, they have brought him back right into my mind, I can commune with Jeff in a whole new intimate way, I am there with him, he breathes anew, he lifts me up with him to that place beyond sound.

I had to check, do I have some other version, how come it sounds so very clear and present? No, its just the new aural perspective. A new window into someone whom I, and everyone else I know, will know, and will not know, loves. Isn't life spectacular sometimes. A little shift in perspective, and a whole new world opens...

And what does he sing so sweetly, what does he breath into soul...

Words of course by Leonard Cohen

i heard there was a secret chord
that david played and it pleased the lord
but you don't really care for music, do you
well it goes like this the fourth, the fifth
the minor fall and the major lift
the baffled king composing hallelujah

hallelujah...

well your faith was strong but you needed proof
you saw her bathing on the roof
her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
and she tied you to her kitchen chair
she broke your throne and she cut your hair
and from your lips she drew the hallelujah

hallelujah...

well baby i've been here before
i've seen this room and i've walked this floor
y'know i used to live alone before i knew you
i've seen your flag on the marble arch
but love is not a victory march
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

hallelujah...

well there was a time when you let me know
what's really going on below
but now you never show that to me do ya
but remember when i moved in you
and the holy dove was moving too
and every breath we drew was hallelujah

well, maybe there's a god above
but all i've ever learned from love
was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
it's not a cry that you hear at night
it's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

hallelujah...

Dith Pran died today.

I remember watching The Killing Fields and realising how brave and committed he was in showing the world what was really going on in his homeland.

It made me think of other people who have taken something on, something so big it seems (to everyone else an even to themselves) overwhelming, and certainly puts them within the reach of death.

I think there is a distinction we can make here about choice. About some obvious factors in our own heart/mind that we may always worry about. Would we do it? Would we put our life on the line for a great cause?

I think I would. But sometimes I also think I am missing the point - If I can commit to something with all my being (as Dith Pran did), how do I bring that into intense commitment for my own awakening? A cause that has at its core, the ultimate sense to embrace the connectedness of all things. Which in the 'absolute' realm, is what Dith Pran wanted too. Like us all.

We seem to overcome fear when it involves some greater good for others, but boy, thats a hard task for the individuation process!

(thanks to insideowl)

Scary! Very Scary! Run for your life!

I am going to go off in a few tangents, and then somehow tie them up at the end. That's what Billy Connolly does, so since I am from Glasgow too, I am gonna do it that way!

First off,  Mr. Julian Walker has started the ball rolling with his latest ‘shadow’ inticement.

To which I suggested we start unpacking the whole notion of what it looks and feels like going through the process. But first, the tangents.

Has anyone seem ‘No Country for Old Men’ yet? I just finished the book, and I’d love to talk about that one quite soon it’s an amazing piece of work, by all accounts the movie is amazing too. I get my chance on Wednesday. Anyways, there is this character in it who personifies ‘evil’, or so it would seem. Later in the film/book, if you are tuned in, you might rearrange your notion.

This leads me to the first issue with starting shadow work. You do not want to be doing shadow work! Like Evil, it is so fearful an idea to take on, you will just wanna run away.

Example: You’re a boy, grow up in a nice family, they go to church, and you are taught good manners. For some reason one day you get the notion that being loud and aggressive doesn’t work to well in the house. So since you don’t yet have an inquiry-based practice at 8 years old, you hide your loudness and aggressiveness. But your eight, the only thing you did was bury it, and lie about it. This methodology unbeknownst to you is called practice. And when you get good at it, as anything, it becomes habitual. Add another twenty years, you might even think you are a nice person, and everyone believes you.

Now we might just leave the story there, but you start having problems at work, or with your girlfriend and you might even feel angry, but you don’t want to be so ‘neanderthal’ as to speak your mind. Maybe its getting so uncomfortable, you need to go see a counselor, and need to bang some drums or a pillow or something. Maybe its suggested that you just ‘vent’ a bit. This makes you highly doubtful, since everyone thinks (and so does your persona) that you’re a nice person. You have a lie to live up to, and that lie if it gets unmasked will be a huge horrific problem. Disgrace, shame etc.

Now, at this point you may be having dreams that you are getting chased or hunted by some dark figures. And you want to kill them or run away as fast as possible, you have an utter dislike for them, they are crude and nasty, nothing like you. Sort of people you would cross the street to avoid.

Guess what they are. Yup, your shadows.

Now how does that work? I will throw my own evaluation on that one. It works for me. If we consider that we all have the potential to create and to destroy, given the right circumstances, then we have all the faculties in our possession to be either. Survival is in our genes. Procreation, nurturing, and defence are all there. Sex, care and violence.

So, the same methodology you used to pack the shadow in the first place is what you need to do in reverse. You learn to un-hide it, and not lie about it. But it took your twenty years to perfect, so it’s a little like changing which hand you write with.

You start of really slowly and clumsily, and if anyone saw your writing they might laugh at you. So this doesn’t make you feel particularly motivated to continue. But maybe your girlfriend is the best person you have ever known, maybe she has faith in you, or maybe you are fed up getting sand kicked in your face…

This is where the second tangent comes in.

In the book Good to Great, by Jim Collins, he discusses the results of his and his teams five-year research into what makes a company go from being Good to Great. They found only 11 companies that fit the bill by the way. They were that great.

Whats that got to do with Shadow? Well, one of the points was, there are lot of good companies, its normal. Most ‘normal’ folks do not do shadow work. Just as most companies do not become great. Its VERY hard. But what else were you doing with your life?

In the book the methods of the best leaders I found strikingly similar to a person directly engaging in shadow work:

1. They make sure they are surrounded by the right people.

2. They confront the brutal facts, but never lose faith.

3. Finding your own vision (The Hedgehog concept – who you really are)

4. Being rigorous and disciplined

5. Uses the flywheel concept – consistent application of energy in a specific direction at a constant rate that builds momentum.

All these factors combine into the practice necessary to undo the damage. To do the Shadow Work.

As a process it’s like learning to ride a bike, except it will take many years, under many situations.

Back to our now 28 year old fella. What is the process? You know already what it is. If you despise loud and aggressive people, you have to become that which is already you. Your inner Mr Loud and Aggressive. But wait, let e be clear, you do not go from wallflower to floor-trader – and certainly not in a month. You take small steps, as you try doing things a little more assertively for example, you can understand its energy, your new friend, the inner guy that helps stop sand getting in your face. That way you will integrate the ‘benefit’ of clarity and assertiveness. It’s the fear of becoming what your Shadow IS, that is throwing you for a loop. The shadow is clumsy, undifferentiated and powerful. You FEAR being overwhelmed by its crudeness. But, you still have your Ego. It’s the shadow-traffic controller. Its job is to help keep the real nasty stuff in check. Only those folk who are psychotic have a problem with that part. You will be strengthening your Ego. Or as Jung called it, creating a container.

Integrating the shadow is hard work, changing slowly, but it is invigorating, releasing much energy to you in the process. The fact that there are ways to find your own inner gold, by applying some concepts to the journey, and being with the right people that can help. Don’t do this yourself – you need a 3rd Party to give you impartial feedback, including dream analysis has been the method for me. So go to your yellow pages and find yourself a Jungian Analyst, and invest in yourself! Its the best band for the buck!

Oh, and the idea of evil? Evil is a shadow. Think about that one.