The Fall, Redemption and Play

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History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. ~ Abba Eban

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[Jana]

http://integrallife.com/node/76548

Regarding Ken's critique of Avatar...one can see that the Movie itself cannot be understood or given justice with existing integral theory. Integral theory itself is going to have to grow more bells and whistles...greater depth if you will to really get to the heart of this movie.

This was not simple tribalism, or a even post modern perspective of tribalism. The Navi, were certainly not in any way prerational...but exhibited a divine rationality which allowed them to be more human than the humans themselves. Although the Navi seemed not to think in terms of good and evil which is a mythic level adaptation for the control mechanisms involved in civilization building, they had a better innate grasp of right and wrong than the humans did. This is so because the Navi having lived "with" nature instead of "against" her still have the felt-sense of what is pro-lifeforce and what is anti-lifeforce. Thus the Navi morality is primordial or universal, while the humans had hardened themselves through abusive technology and greed to align their motivations to the corporate dollar.
Due to the absence of inorganic technology the Navi culture was probably much older than human culture, thus cannot be equated with the tribalism of early human heritage. The Navi indeed grew more deeply into Nature and thus grew in cognitive sophistication through primary perception, direct knowing, heart intelligence, psi and unity consciousness. Whereas humans, having lost touch with the very foundations of life itself have no idea who they even are, why they are in the universe or what to do...but instead must follow the corporate rules and directions of the all consuming machine of materialism.
The Navi did nothing less than save Jake's humanity...for those involved in the extractive corporation and the associated military were no longer truly human.

Same goes for the way that NOAA, NCAR the Minerals board, the Media and the Coast Guard are now working in collaboration with BP against the people of the US and life on earth.


I have a theory that the longer a population has been exposed to iron weapons and beyond...the more numbing, psychological scaring and dehumanized they become over the course of thousands of years. This has something to do with deforestation, the plow and the rape of the earth as well, in that this circle of devitalization and destruction is a self-reinforcing feedback loop toward ever greater loss of true consciousness and universal morality. We need to map the progress of technology through time and associate it with the spread of emotional plague and the overt and subliminal stress load of races and populations around the globe.

Technology leads directly to dehumanization if it is used in a dehumanizing, insensitive mode.

[jimtzu]

if all you have is an integral theory everything looks like a stage... state... level...line..        

[Jana]

Found a fantastic thinker...Van Wishard

“America has had nearly a century of literature, art, cinema and higher education expressing first, the supremacy and then the negation of reason; the denial of any God; freedom as unfettered ego desires; the impossibility of absolute truth; nihilism at the core of existence; the absence of any transcendent reality; unlimited material consumption and the irrationality of any degree of self-restraint; and now the arrival of the multiple de-centered self.   Evaluating this is important, because culture is to a nation what dreams are to an individual—an indication of what’s going on in the inner life, in the unconscious realm, which is the crucible of consciousness.  In this sense, the unconscious is the crucible of civilization.“

“The psychological function of religion has been at least threefold: to validate a certain moral order within a given civilization; to offer myths that connect a civilization to life’s transcendent dimension; and to link the individual’s conscious life with its unconscious grounding.  These essential psychological functions are relevant for all time; and we shall not long endure solely on the basis of humanistic scientific materialism. The question for America, and for Europe as well, is whether we’re losing that essential psychological function religion has played, and if so, what are the potential consequences.” Van Wishard, Towards a New Worldview, A More Complete Orientation (article at www.worldtrendsresearch.com)

[Jana]

“I love freedom with all my heart. It is the only condition under which the intelligence, the manliness, and happiness of the people, can develop and expand” Micheal Bakunin

Michael Bakunin, the 'founding father' of anarchism, points to two sentiments inherent in power that lead to moral bankruptcy: contempt for the masses and the overestimation of one's own merits. Imbalances of power-over and left-brain dominance corrupt the best because inflation and testosterone addiction lead to a loss of reception, listening and gnosis. Thus aggression and hubris lead to becoming mad with pride after which there is an inevitable fall followed by the submission to more sentient, feminine and inclusive traits. I agree that the institutionalization of the transcendent…"the world beyond," is the principle cause of our present spiritual stagnation. And yet it is a fictitious roadblock, for any self-respecting mind can easily see that "institutionalism" and "transcendentalism" are diametrically opposed. Therefore it is the rise of personal sovereignty, rather than resistance to the usurpation of the divine by power mongers, that should be our principle goal as a species. BUT as long as people seek to remain as children the systems of power-over will continue to suppress them both internally and externally.

[Jana]

“The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases…Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty." Chief Joseph (1840 - 1904)

The false economy can only be upheld through silence, lies and denial, and so it is time for the integrated sovereign to stand up and speak their truth…lest the material wasteland gobble up the universe. No language cuts to the heart of truth better than Native American earth-speak. Indigenous male leaders, being more right brained and heart intelligent are able to speak truth to power with the full force of universal law…through an embodied spiritual justice. We need a movement of indigenous poets and musicians to work within our school systems to teach children from infancy to collage use how to speak from the heart and embody their truth. If white males in particular were able to heal and access the power of the voice of the right brain we may be able to steer culture away from the decent into an immoral fascist corporate oligarchy.


If the U.S. government is a terrorist organization then the American Taxpayers are “providing material support” to the terrorists.

[jimtzu]

i agree totally with that. i would even include the wisdom of the feminine of indigenous peoples.. ie: the 13 indigenous grandmothers http://www.grandmotherscouncil.com/

Sequoya Trueblood is one of the more well known speakers of this wisdom. he brings with him the knowledge of the Kogi  http://tierra-y-vida.blogspot.com/2006/09/kogi-elder-brothers-warning.html

this is one facet of humanity that didn't get transcended or included in the western way of life that brings us the Borg mindset.

[jimtzu]

food for thought:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/qOP2V_np2c0&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;fs=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/qOP2V_np2c0&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;fs=1</a>

[Michael]

Very cool Jim!  A great find, that RSA Animate Youtube channel.  Been watching one after another and am having a lot of fun with them.  Sort of a flippier funner version of TED.

http://www.youtube.com/user/theRSAorg

Here's one I just watched and really like:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/u5um8QWWRvo" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/u5um8QWWRvo</a>

[Jana]

Yea, they are absolutely brilliant...
More, more!

[Michael]

I get very few opportunities to read internet articles these days, but had a moment for this one:
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/07/waltzing.html
Thought it almost worth posting.

[Daniel]

Caught wind of these as well, very well done. Thanks for posting!

[jimtzu]

nice Bageant article, Michael..  seems like a lot of people are coming to the same conclusions.  he says it as it is with a style of his own that is enjoyable to me. 

[Jana]

SHAME AND HUMAN EVOLUTION
For millions of years we have used shaming as one of the principle means of negatively controlling our fellows. Our brains have been molded by social shame such that our low sense of self worth makes us betray ourselves with all that is damaging and suppressing to Life offered freely by the distressed society. We attempt to assuage the pain of being controlled by bullying and shaming by trying to bolster ourselves with sugar and fat, with cosmetic camouflage and consumer comforts. True love bonds, regenerosity and abundance are weakened by systemic damage to the brain and heart caused by chronic or acute shame. Fundamentally shaming is an infringing upon another's sovereignty and right to self-determination. Along with bribing and threats, shame is one of the main means of child control used by unenlightened parents who themselves have been shame damaged.

Where there is abuse of another’s sovereignty, be they man, woman or child, there is internalized shame and PTSD. Not surprisingly there is a correlation between sex abuse, age of first drug use, shame and PTSD scores. Research describes self-sustaining biochemical feedback loops created by trauma and food/substance dependency. Addictions, coping mechanism and neuroticisms become locked into place through the analgesic numbing effect of trauma which feeds deep festering wounds in body, mind and soul. Due to the avoidant retreat of consciousness associated with powerlessness, feelings of inadequacy and the sensitivity to rejection generated by shame, the untreated trauma symptoms perpetuate self-destructive coping mechanisms. Therefore unless we get to the root of the problem…which is abuse of personal sovereignty…then we are all victim to internalized shame and consequent addiction to one degree or another and suffer the PTSD degradation of our brains and especially the prefrontal cortex as a result.

This “social-shame-stress-damage” phenomena runs on automatic, so unless we actually train ourselves to overcome this very common human intimidation tactic we are all at risk. At a zoo many years ago I saw a bunch of heckling teenagers intimidate a gorilla, who turned away from them to disconnect. At that point I coined a new term for Homo sapiens…”the intimidating ape.” Shaming is such a low-brow manipulation devise that there is almost never any true or upright cause for using such a method of controlling others, and yet it is the principle means of choice used by those who seek power over others…usually because they feel powerless themselves. This cycle of intergenerational traumatic stress, compulsivity, addictive self-medication, and chronic victimhood results in unrealized sovereignty and ultimately the inability to survive and look after ourselves, let alone thrive. Shame keeps the prepersonal, presovereign degenerate culture in painful evolutionary stasis.

Besides fear and the outright threat of violence shame is the next greatest contributing factor to the ongoing fall of mankind. Fix this and we solve the problem of the degeneration of the human species and provide the hope and neurological foundation necessary to get through the eye of the needle to the next stage in human evolution. If we stop toxifying and brain damaging each other and abide by the principles of sovereignty we would rapidly recover from our cultural distress and grow our brainpower to the full intelligence of the heart…to stretch our limits, develop our potential and actualize our dreams to fully explore our future.

“Adults shouldn't be treated like children...but then neither should children be treated like children.”

David R. Cook's Shame Scale describes the phenomenology of shame and its relationship to addictions and the MEMPI PK and PS sub-scales are used for PTSD.

[Jana]

Rejection And Social Bonding
It is a societal maxim that parents should treat kids equally, and yet favoritism is still the reflexive norm. Research has shown that parental favoritism among siblings negatively affects a child's psychological well-being and often triggers behavioral problems, depression and harmful health effects that persist into adulthood. It doesn't matter whether you are the chosen child or not, the perception of unequal treatment has damaging effects for all siblings. It is human nature to play sides and manipulate through exclusion and inclusion when we lack the boundaries necessary to gain a conscious “birds-eye” perspective. That is we are embedded in the involuntary game unless we have the autonomy to withdraw from the dance of manipulation and being manipulated. This autonomous stance is gained by grokking that “belonging” is the primary psychological drive originating from the infant’s biological need to connect and belong in order to survive. As we start gaining psychological and philosophical distance from the inclusion/exclusion dynamic we see that all the pathologies of interpersonal relationship are some form of deficit, perversion or disease in this principle belonging drive. In gaining conscious autonomy through healing the sovereign connection to the cosmos and cosmic Self…we rise above the debilitating morass of the push/pull of human affection and gain the power and license to become our Self.

“The autonomous person is indifferent; his life support unthreatened. The included and the excluded are far from indifferent. The included person relies on the group for his life support; the excluded person is only too painfully aware that this security is denied him…The autonomous individual is at pains not to manipulate anyone and to avoid being manipulated himself. In effect, he chooses not to manipulate and the unstated assumption is that, if he so chose he could enter the fray and manipulate along with the best of them.” P.40-41 Essays in the sociology of perception by Mary Douglas

Mary Douglas is a symbolic anthropologist who explored how “meaning making” is expressed in cultural symbols and rituals. She believed that societies maintain themselves by the active creation of meaning, by defining what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. This symbolic system gives moral order to societies expressed in religions, laws and unwritten codes. Douglas was influenced by the work of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) and his realization of the social basis for human thought. Culture or the collective nature of human existence is rooted in daily social relations and is created afresh each day. The individual self-concept and linguistic code, which the individual learns as a child is a fractal metaphor for the social body or the tribe or nation. Culture is maintained and modified as people use it in everyday social action. "The colonization of each other's minds is the price we pay for thought." Douglas

In “Natural Symbols” Douglas claimed that all societies can be compared by two cultural dimensions: “Group and Grid.” Group is the degree of division (inclusion/exclusion) between insiders and outsiders of a society. While Grid refers to the rules and roles of interrelatedness between the individuals in the group. For example, in a tribal society with strong grid and strong group, individuals are regulated for the mutual benefit of the group. Within the group clearly defined social sectors or hierarchies play specialized roles that are beneficial to the whole society. This type of society tends to be more directly interdependent (larger) than others and lasts longer due to less internal conflict. On the other hand, in a modern society with low grid and low group, people are viewed more as individuals rather than as a part of the group. Due to the lack of group mentality the social hierarchal positions are more negotiable and people can transact, transfer and transform social position according to power or merit. In such a society, egalitarian individualism is a predominant social value and society is ordered by moral-political laws to regulate individuals. Douglas classified and explained the ethical, economic and political dimensions within cultures based on her grid and group categories.

I propose that in the first social structure of strong grid and strong group found in tribes and patriarchal families, conflict is reduced through the suppression of individual truth, lack of individual differentiation, and leaky boundaries creating as it were an amorphous enmeshment. The pathology of this system is observable in addictions, codependency, incest, tall poppy and parental and sibling jealousy.  Thus individual sovereignty and maturity is sacrificed for the sake of an unquestioned unconscious sense of belonging. As the social brain grows beyond the involuntary need to belong to the group we can progress toward greater original, unique and ripened individual development. Thus with low grid and low group distinction there is potential for a higher form of belonging to occur that is derived from the actualization of individual potential, rather than the suppression of it. The whole therefore greatly benefits from the collective synergism of the evolution of all the individuals in the group…yet neither rules, roles nor rungs on the ladder are fundamentally inhibiting to the full expression of individual sovereignty. At this point we have a mature civilization in which the individual is beneficial to the whole, and the whole is beneficial to the individual. This is the culture that we are working towards in our efforts to be a benign influence in the Universe and thus discover God as Universal Compassion. As we expand our sense of self to become more inclusive of all life we reduce the insecurity, defensiveness, exclusion and biological bigotry that lies at the heart of the more restrictive and debilitating forms of social arrangement.

Perhaps the most engaging of all social anthropologists, the breadth of Mary Douglas's profound work cannot be fully understood without reading “Natural Symbols,” “Implicit Meanings,” “Purity and Danger,” and “How Institutions Think.”
http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/DO/filmshow/douglas1_fast.htm   —Audio Interview

[jimtzu]

you might like this take on things.. from Reality Sandwich

In Bioenergetics, an intuitive science that combines both psychoanalysis and energy healing, opposites tend to attract for a potent electric alchemy.  This modality focuses on energy defense structures that we create to protect ourselves from early childhood trauma. If romantic partners with polar defense structures can find common ground and learn to love and accept their opposite “mirrors,” they will undergo an amorous fusion of chakra energies, embarking on an intimate healing journey. But if they refuse to venture beyond their everyday friction and polarizing perspectives, their relationship will become an ever-increasing pattern of negative intentions and volatile emotions.

According to my mentor, Barry Gordon of The Connecticut Healing Institute, the five Bioenergetic defenses generally gravitate in the following ways: “the rigid” goes with “the oral,” “the psychopath” goes with “the masochist,” and “the schizoid” goes with God (click here for more on these defense structures). For example, rigid types will be attracted to the more sentimental orals in an unconscious effort to connect with their emotional side, while the oral gravitates to the rigid’s more structured and organized way of life. 

After writing a Reality Sandwich article discussing the psychopathic defenses of United State's power structures, it hit me that our mass population may have a reactionary personality type to our nation’s overarching one.  If so, according to Bioenergetic therapy, millions of Americans might suffer from a masochist worldview.

I was thinking about this possibility when Katie, one of my teachers at the Connecticut Healing Institute, picked me up at the New Haven train station for one of my last weekends of energy training.  As we passed by quaint colonial houses on the way up to Meriden, Connecticut, Katie told me, “Jonathan, I was researching psychopathic defense structures online and while I was expecting to read Alexander Lowen or Barbara Ann Brennan, the first thing that came up was a guy named Jonathan Talat Phillips on a website called Reality Sandwich.  I thought that was strange until I realized it was you! Anyway, I was reading your article about America’s psychopathic structure and it got me thinking that the general public must be masochists, since those two most often interact with each other.”

“It’s funny you say that, Katie.  I’ve been thinking about writing an article on that exact topic.”

Katie went on to discuss how the domineering, psychopathic behavior of America’s corporations and government institutions enforce the workaholic nature of our fellow citizens. Many of us endure long commutes and work eight-to-twelve-hour days, even double shifts, just to get by.  People had less free time to spend with their families; they could rarely vacation anymore, but they’d suck it up, push down their despair, feeling trapped by the circumstances of their lives.  In fact, American masochism is so endemic and systemic, that we treat it as a virtue (“the Puritan work ethic”) rather than a cause for “dis-ease.”

I shared with Katie an experience I had several years ago when returning from living in Prague.  I had just spent two years luxuriating in the Czech lifestyle, where -- even as poor as they were -- they still had plenty of time for friends, family, hobbies, weekend adventures at their chalupas (cabins in the country), mid-afternoon coffees, and long evenings in the hospodas (local pubs).  They just weren’t workaholics like us; it wasn’t their nature.

My father picked me up at the Kansas City airport in his beat-up Ram Charger.  On the radio, Rush Limbaugh was railing against “welfare mothers” and how they were bankrupting the nation. “That’s the problem with America,” my father told me.  “People just don’t work hard enough anymore.  They’re lazy and everything is falling apart.”  These words came from a man who had worked long nightshifts as a taxi driver most of his life just to scrape by.  I had rarely seen him during my adolescence because he was always on the clock, thinking if he just worked a little harder, things would get better.  And now he was unable to retire in his golden years, subbing at the local school district to pay the bills each month.  Still, here he was, listening to the radio, willingly taking in the “psychopathic” (in the Bioenergetic sense) ravings of a rich man from far away.

Although my father was a quiet and gentle person, like most masochist personality types, the pent up emotions would sometimes get the best of him and he’d lash out in occasional flashes of rage.  Katie argued that this suppressed anger boiled over in our educational systems, which were corrupted by the psychopathic defense.  I still remember the first time I explained to my shocked Czech students about cliques and popularity contests.  They just didn’t understand, because those divisive structures didn’t exist in their academic system (although they had other defenses in place – mostly the “oral”).  They didn’t even compete over grades.  Katie believed that the recent slew of campus and office shootings were a direct release of masochistic rage against aggressive power structures.

Katie then mentioned a recent episode of Oprah, where the daytime TV icon visited Denmark after it was voted one of “the happiest countries on earth.”  Katie marveled at their quality of life – how they had smaller homes, cars, and refrigerators, but where happier than most Americans she knew.  The Danes had shorter work hours, longer vacations, and time and space to enjoy their friends and families.  They generally weren’t fearful of murders, rapes, and all the other awful things we see in the evening news.  As Katie said, “The Danes just don’t do those kind of things.  It’s like a national agreement.  What is it about America?” she asked.  “Why are we so psychopathic and masochist?  Why are we so violent and why do we go to these extremes?”

Katie believed that this Bioenergetic relationship might be a result of our immigrant heritage, that there was a certain mentality, and energetic defense system, that comes with that type of background.  Her theory didn’t seem like a far stretch.  After all, we were the rebellious offspring of Western Civilization, the ones who’d strayed far away from our roots.  Our psychopathic (and conversely masochist) defense structures were allowed to run amuck, creating deeper and deeper energetic grooves throughout the centuries, as we sank further into our own unconscious, addictive behaviors.  In the US, we were playing out an ancient trauma at an exponential level.

In “Treating America’s Psychopathy,” I suggest that our primary defense structure of domination and destruction likely stems from our culture’s mythological underpinnings.  Many scholars argue that “The Fall from Eden” in the Book of Genesis marks the beginnings of the agricultural revolution, since the story unfolds in the Fertile Crescent.  Falling out of God’s favor, humans move away from a tribal model of living off the abundance of nature.  Immediately after the exile from Eden, we find Cain and Abel toiling with the new agricultural technologies of their time – Abel with domesticated animals, Cain with crops. The domination over nature and each other begins with Cain engaging in the first act of psychopathic violence in Western history – the murder of his brother. Individualism, greed, and fierce competition within communities drive the new economic model.  The simple act of planting seeds eventually leads to the development of city-states, nations, empires, and finally the multinational corporations we see today, resulting in a ruling class and its masochistic employees, who hold up the dominant structures by the sweat of their backs.

My suspicions about the Eden story came up again later that night at healing school.  One of the assistant teachers was giving a Power-Point presentation on the masochist defense structure when she explained how her own Catholic upbringing had brought about masochism in her life.  The church fathers had been using the concept of original sin to control her and her congregation since she was very young.  They had convinced her that she was a bad person, a sinner at her core, who needed to work hard and submit herself to the church in order to prove herself worthy of God’s love. But this shame/blame power-move wasn’t restricted to the Catholic Church, or even the whole of Christianity.  This was the mythological root of the world’s three major religions and the resulting energetic virus had most likely infiltrated the societal Logos (or operating structure) of our Western culture.

As is the case, the psychopath and the masochist deal with different sides of the same coin.  They both feel shame and blame, but the psychopath expresses this externally, while the masochist internalizes this anger, causing self-harm, depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts. One of the most powerful ways I’ve found to release these corrupted energies is to go right into the wounding (your body knows how far is enough), connect with these destroyer vibrations, and release them.  There are very few modalities that work better for this than anger work.  In honor of our “masochist weekend” at school, my mentor Barry took our class through a harrowing journey into our own rage.  We stomped our feet, yelling “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,” as if we were kids having a temper tantrum, then we did pelvic thrusts, shouting, “IT’S MINE!  IT’S MINE! IT’S MINE!  IT’S MINE!” which is a practice that is especially helpful for those releasing sexual trauma in the second chakra. We threw back our left shoulder, then our right, hollering, “GET OFF MY BACK! GET OFF MY BACK! GET OFF MY BACK!”  Barry then had us roar out an anger anthem I used to sing back in high school.  Like Rage Against the Machine, we told the psychopathic systems of this country, “FUCK YOU, I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!”

The key to this therapy is to really get into the anger, to growl, to feel those corrupted vibrations and release them from the body.  A miracle happens when these energies are set free in a therapeutic setting -- the hooks and daggers of their frequencies transform into healing light.  Often I’ll work with my clients to transmute these energies into beautiful gold and white frequencies that we then send as healing prayers for those they were angry at.  Forgiveness plays a key role in releasing the karmic bonds.  (Given the importance of anger work, I intend to write an article specifically addressing this modality). 

Often masochists feel guilty about their anger, as they do about many things. If we want to heal our national masochism (and conversely psychopathy), we’ll need to directly address these feelings of guilt, shame, inadequacy, and pain.  One way to start is to simply love ourselves, and as we do that, to share that ability with others, so that they might do the same.  I was dumbfounded when I finally realized that most of my pain and suffering came from the fact that nobody trained me how to love myself – not family, not teachers, not clergy.

So I began to teach myself to love.  I felt like a toddler, learning this most basic step of being human.  Often, I’d look into the mirror for long periods of time, expressing gratitude for who I was, including all the lovely flaws that make me uniquely me.  At first, the criticisms would come in like artillery fire (criticism is a cutting energy that runs endemic in our society), but eventually those thoughts would calm down as loving, rose-colored energy filled my field.  I took these experiences and began to meditate on the energy of love itself, bringing it into my body and all the wounded parts that needed healing.  I did the same for my psyche, the same for the fractured little parts of my life, and as this progressed I began to uncover a core power source, almost like an internal star, that was available to me whenever I took the time to remember it.

It’s also critical for masochists to express their needs, and realize that they are deserving of having them met.  Simple improvements like eating healthy food and engaging in physical exercise can do wonders to shift their energy field and what they magnetize into their lives.  The country’s obesity epidemic, and its resulting medical costs, highlights our masochistic tendencies, as we eat Big Macs, candy bars, and frozen foods that fill us up, but don’t really nourish our bodies. Taking time for personal development, whether it be meditation, yoga, counseling, massage, or other healing modalities, helps the masochist discover their own self worth and inner power so that they can create better energetic boundaries for themselves.  Play can also serve an important role in reminding those with this defense structure about the freedom and abundance of the universe. Scheduled trips to the water park, outings into nature, vacations, and joyful adventures reinvigorate their auric field and act as training for a different way of holding oneself in the world.

These days it’s more important than ever for the masochist personality types to remember self-love and self-care.  We’re coming to a head with psychopathic energy structures that have ruled Western Civilization over the last several thousand years.  As the systems of domination seem to be tottering around us, they also dig their claws in deeper in a last gasp effort to hold onto power.  While we undergo economic uncertainty, masochists might buy into the idea that they have to work two, maybe even three jobs, just to keep up with the bills.  We may believe we can stop nourishing ourselves with healthy food, free time, joy, or play, as these soul-necessities are considered mere luxuries in our material society. Many may despair and become disempowered as multinational structures push us further into debt.  But the more we fall into that trap, the bigger the psychopath defenses get.  As we heal our own masochist wounding, and that of the larger society, we conversely begin to transmute the energies that trigger the psychopath, which helps them in their healing process.  Admittedly, this makes for a challenging dance of polarity, where by transforming our rage and suffering, we can create a broader union of contrasting energies, which empower everyone.

This is one reason why I believe we need to come together to build a worldwide network of conscious people.  The masochist is only disempowered when he or she is isolated.  When we come together, we can move mountains.  One of the reasons many European countries have more vacation time, health care, public services, and safety nets is that whenever governments or corporations threaten to cut these programs, the populace rises up with protests, strikes, and nation-wide work stoppages, showing those in power who actually has the power.  They demand to have their needs met. These countries have generally learned to channel and transform their anger for positive change in their societies (a shadow version of this would be workers “going postal,” as the America expression goes).

With a global consciousness movement, we might one day be able to step in each time a corporate entity wanted to pollute a rainforest, mine the Red Rock desert, or engage in atrocious labor practices.  We could hold energy companies accountable for spilling oil in the Gulf, while demanding governments and corporations take on a space-race type initiative to switch to alternative energy.  In the end, we wouldn’t just say “Fuck you, we won’t do what you tell me!” but rather “Here’s how we’d like it done.”

A rising transformational network could create much-needed way stations for those deprogramming from society’s predominant psychopathic/masochist energy addiction. Together, we could facilitate safe spaces and build visionary institutions that teach us how to love one another, and ourselves.  We could learn to drop the disharmony and fierce competition of contemporary society, as we joyfully share and honor our individual gifts, talents, and resources, which could keep us nourished even as resources become more scarce.  “Emergent cultures” like this create a mysterious abundance where the energetic sum of the whole is much greater than its parts. When we all come together with a shared desire for healing, compassion, pleasure, and play, the results become manifold.  Energetic resonance happens, synchronicities come to life, and miracles begin to emerge.

And ultimately, I believe we are going to need these miracles.  Most of the indicators around global warming, the international economy, pollution of the biosphere, and species extinction give little hope for our near future.  Surprisingly, the masochist may play a key role in helping us traverse this shadow territory.  On their positive side, they are known as “the endurers.”  They are masters of persistence, who keep going after others give up.  As global systems come into jeopardy, the endurers would continue through thick and thin, never giving up, until we collectively have built a better, more beautiful world.