Good and evil – the duality of life.

When G K Chesterton wrote about progress in society today, he termed it Social Darwinism, a refinement of values and beliefs which changed and morphed as society itself went through its changes and development.
His belief was now we had developed physically from ape to man it was time for us to take the next logical or natural step, one of developed morality. In so doing he acknowledged it was possible for man to progress from ape to angel, but this was also just as likely as progressing from ape to devil, a reflection of the duality of development which is possible morally.
His thoughts led him to the conclusion that if man continued to ‘pay homage to the god of materialism’ we would, without doubt, be heading along the route which leads to man – devil. The way to avoid this was, in his opinion, was to follow a spiritual route.
Stainton Moses agreed with this philosophy but felt there was more to the argument than just this; one could explore spirituality and not get in contact with the positive side of it, and as George Orwell put it, get in contact with the ‘double plus god’, an unhealthy interest in everything to do with the occult.
But at the end of the day what is it that really gets us going?
What is it which sparks a real sense of curiosity and delight? That inner sense of, ‘this may be dangerous’ excites us to such an extent we follow it with exhilaration, looking for the thrill which accompanies such risks.
Think of some of the late night programmes we can watch if we are still awake enough to watch them. Programmes which begin with the warning, ‘this programme contains scenes of an explicit sexual nature and may contain gratuitous violence’ set us up for exactly that, a wander into the seedier side of our natures; that titillation which connects us to a base part of us which is normally repressed. Is this the man-devil connection Moses speaks of?
Think back to the Roman age when it was fashionable to watch the mutilation of men and women in the ring; where man and beast were pitted against one another in a re-enactment of the struggle of life and death.
Box office hits advertise clips of excitement, clips of dare-devil stunts, death defying acts, all of which are designed to wet our appetites enough to pay the money and go to watch their wears viewed on screen. Ostensibly they all have a similar plot, the struggle between good and evil, parading a darker side to haunt, taunt and tease our senses. A darker side which makes us appreciate where we are and help the endorphins flow. We walk so closely with the devil we almost smell his body odour. Our closeness to partners increase, our reliance on others too increases; the social thread of friendship groups is brought back into view, re-establishing the boundaries of acceptability.
This is not a new fascination, we only have to go back to the Celtic or Nordic myths and legends or the old Hindu tales to give us a sense of what they were designed to do, to re-establish the fight between good and evil and to make sure people realised good would in the end triumph.
But does it? Or is it we change ever so slowly and do not notice the gentle disintegration into a more tolerant and explicit age? When do we notice we are moving towards Blade Runner as our reality, or Lord of the Flies isn’t so scary anymore because we see it played out on the news every day? Is this what Stainton Moses was trying to warn us about?
There never has been a lack of glamour in the ‘darker side of life’ in fact its just the opposite, we are so caught up in the possibilities it holds, we are tempted to view with our eyes half shut and our fingers covering our eyes, peering through our fingers until its easier to bear. Remember back as a child, watching programmes on the television which were just too much. We would hide behind our fingers, the settee or a cushion and watch it with our hearts pounding and our desire to run so strong we would look to our parents for comfort. Our fear becomes our friend, sitting closely alongside us wincing at the shocks, screaming at the mutilations, holding our button of overload, ready to press it when even it has had enough. We pant, our heart races with fear filling in the gaps through our imagination nightmares only we can create. We huddle under the sheets reliving the fear and our friend obliges us with re-runs within our own imagination adding as it does the missing pieces in the puzzle which will make sleep unlikely, and when it does come, fitful. We enjoy the fear, but fear the terror, the edges blur and we lose sight of which is which until we are numbed by it.
Our parents would invariably laugh and after time we too would laugh at our younger brothers or sisters for doing the same. The fear was dispelled, held less close, but still in control of the button, and we learned to view carefully at the beginning until we gained our control over it, then sit back and inviting fear back to us, enjoy the company of it, the high blood pressure, the desire to run, be sick or just collapse as a gibbering heap with fear still holding the overload button, but now unsure as to when it should be pressed.
The clothes, the culture, the paraphernalia, the secretiveness of the occult draw us in like a child is drawn to a box of matches. We strike the match and enjoy the excitement until we burn our fingers or set fire to ourselves.
We outwardly disapprove and reproach those who go down the path towards it, those who openly display the symbols of dark magic, of gothic status and yet study them with an almost morbid fascination. Inside our heads we secretly admire them for having the confidence to be different; externally we deride them for that difference, holding fear of these aliens out in front of us as protective armour.
Our fear is now our friend and we treat it as an ally stopping us from falling into oblivion; it controls the button and we presume is knows when it is too much. Too much and we become paralysed in the headlights of the very thing which fear fears most; too little and we ride rough shod over sense and sensibility. In the right proportions fear acts as our very saviour, our true companion igniting flight or flight, strength or power, resistance or resilience and the very thing which is evil in our eyes, but holds that fascination for us; creates a surge from fear which we both surf upon and fight against as we slip into the very bowels of thrill and exhilaration.
Duality then is a path we tread which takes us between one polar extreme and the other; a dance within ourselves which creates and dictates how we will react later in life to choices we are presented with. For those who ‘look ever sunward’ their shadows fall behind them. They continue to walk only seeing one side of the pendulum swing. Jung saw the shadow as that part of us which contains all that is negative, an ill-defined region where hatred, greed, jealousy and other similar attributes are held. Although we would all say we wouldn’t want to accept these into our personality, we have to accept that without them we wouldn’t be able to recognise the opposite and strive towards them. How can there be something called ‘good’ if we don’t have an idea of evil?
Interestingly we are taught to send these ‘negative’ emotional states to another place far from us so we do not exhibit them, but isn’t there a positive side to them? Is selfishness not also that ability to care and keep oneself safe? Is greed not the part of us which makes sure we have enough to eat and drink to keep us well? If we deny their existence or nurture a state of denial that these attributes exist within us, we fail to appreciate their necessity in making us aware and able to appreciate the ‘goodness’ that is within them.
Good cannot exist without bad, devil without angel; how can we know what is happiness unless we know sadness. By the very stating we are happy we acknowledge its antithesis, each emotion requiring the duality of form to create and retain its very existence.
The shadow never fades, just moves round with the movement of the day; bouncing off buildings and walls it flashes past our faces, sometimes larger sometimes smaller, sometimes blotting out the sunshine, swallowing our sensibility, speaking through our mouths, creating moments of insanity which ripple out across the social gatherings, creating awkward silences, misread signals and broken dreams. Like the darkness of the night it is but a flick of the switch away.
So why do we fear this aspect of ourselves? Why deny its existence, holding it firmly behind. Isn’t is better to bring it forward and honour the duality within us; acknowledge our limitations, our erroneous tendencies and be thankful they are there so as to amplify that which is beautiful, radiant and appealing; that which creates friendships, binds together families and communities and formulates the very foundations of our social value system.
Having a bad day is the shadow falling across our eyes obscuring the sunshine. Do we dwell in it, do we allow the shadow to remain there and give us the chance to wallow in that self pity where we can make excuses to be bad tempered, unfriendly and unloving? Do we stay there or do we give ourselves he privilege to turn ourselves towards the sunshine having acknowledged where we almost dwelt and praised our strength at turning?
Fear courts us as that friend and holds us in that point where we are; that present state which is familiar and safe however unpleasant that contorted view of safe maybe. A woman stays with a man because she believes his shadow talk and she accepts his beating; the dog stays with the family who keep him outside and feed him rarely because he believes this is his life and all he can expect. We fall under the hypnotic spell that Fear weaves and we bow to its majesty, yes, this is all there is. Instead of hearing the words of Fear as friend we hear Fear as foe and fail to hear it pressing the button calling us to turn and face the sun.
Sometimes we do the right things for the wrong reasons and sometimes the wrong thing for the right reasons. Which is most correct? Which courts Fear as its suitor and which its ally? Our intentions carry within them their own duality, altruism and ego. Which do we function from and when? Which is to the higher good? Do we practise vetting our own intentions so as to be aware of the impact of the words and deeds? How long do we stand before we launch into whatever we say; do we think before we strike or do we lash out with the spike of shadow across our face and Fear pressing the button of cessation or commitment?
If we are to move forward in the moral maze Chesterton called Social Darwinism, we have to first accept something called Free Will and the ability to have choice; choice to stand in the sun and the shadows, to speak from both aspects of our personality, but to be aware of the effect of both, and in so doing allowing the pendulum to swing fully from one side to the other. This way we can appreciate the sunshine and all its attributes and give ourselves permission to explore and in so doing compare and contrast the side s of the swing.
Duality between good and evil, dawn and dusk, shadow and light, fear and contentment are all parts of the moral struggle created within our language, our very existence. It is through duality that we learn to appreciate sadness, joy, beauty, rage and enrich our experiences of living.

What people say and do

I was lucky enough to listen to the Woodstock tapes and was blown away by the variation of style and skills exhibited by those who took part. All had their roots on jazz or blues or rock and roll and all had the skills which went with paying their instruments from a sound back ground. As I listened to some of the heavier rock and roll of Ten Years After I suddenly realised something. The parents of those young people sitting their listening an dup on stage playing all had their roots in Doris Day, Irving Berlin, Frank Sinatra, a controlled music which was for its day, new and sensational. We had had Elvis and he had shocked the establishment with his hip movements and now we had these people pushing the boundaries of music into areas previously untapped. The ending of the war had produced a large bulge on the population of youth and they were about to sweep aside what had gone before.
Alvin Lee continued an amazing guitar solo in which you could hear vestiges of artists to come and I realised he had become the inspiration to later musicians as Muddy Waters and other blues and jazz player had been to them.
It made me smile when I thought of the onset of punk and how outraged we were at it and then at the rap and new r&b which developed, but isn’t it all progression from one norm to the next, each generation making its stamp through its fashion and music and language?
I sat there and continued to listen as Alvin went onto a long riff with the base guitarist and then the drums and then the keyboard. Here was a man out on a limb of acceptability, pushing the boundaries of what the establishment would accept and yet we are now the ones who turn round and complain at low hanging trousers, hair which is made into solid, bouncing artistic creations and music which s as foreign to us as ours was to our parents.
I thought of the phrase, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. Mm, exactly.

Just a fleeting thought

Habits are choices we have made in the past and have continued with them until we perfect them, absolutely.
Strange to think of them like that but that is the way they are programmed in the brain.
When we start something new we are conscious of doing it and concentrate on getting it right. After a while we have to think about it less and less until it becomes an habitual way of working or thinking.
Just as it is hard to make the habit it is just as difficult to undo it and requires conscious concentration to do so until a new way of working, or a new habit is created.
Take for example the way we feel about someone. The reason behind our feeling are complex and rooted in the unconscious realisation that they hold up a mirror to our own failings. So as to avoid this reality we respond in a certain way, we get angry, or call them stupid, or laugh at them. The habitual response was probably formed when we were children and this was the way we coped with difference when we were young and amongst our peer group.
The question is, do we wish to be controlled by habits created to cope in the playground and classroom as children, or has our view of the world matured and it is now time to up date the response reflecting that maturity?
I remember starting to smoke. I did it because the other students at college did so and the smell of cigarettes did disguise the awful smell of rotting dissection specimens which came out of the deep freeze each week.
It took hard work on my part to make smoking a habit which was automatic but when it did my goodness didn’t it hold me tight!
It took a conscious decision to change the habit to one of not smoking and took just as much concentration and time.
‘But that’s different,’ I hear you say,' the way I feel about things isn’t like smoking.’ The bad news; it is and the way it is coded in your mind is the same regardless of what it is.

..and the waters keep rising

I went for a walk at the height of the floods in this area. The banks of the Medway were close to the top and as I watched the waters lapping around the roots of tree I became aware of a phrase one of my clients had said to me, ‘I feel as if I am drowning’. It made me stop and think for a while; we use a lot of metaphors of weather and states of nature to express our feelings, and it makes sense to do so. We all share the world around us and as such, experience the differing seasons and states of weather the same as everyone else, so to say I feel ‘I am drowning’ can be empathised by the person we speak to.

Clever; so let’s take that and take it to the next level.

I stood and watched as the tree roots were being dug out by the water flowing over what had been the bank a couple of days previously and thought: this is the same as us being in our own world (the dryness of the bank) until something from outside of our control comes and begins eating away at the very foundations of our world. OK, so let’s take the analogy further, the waters have a choice of two outcomes, they can continue to flow over the roots and re-cut a new bank and therefore displace us completely or they can recede and we can clear up the damage and return to our way of life as it was before with the added knowledge that this occurrence could happen again and may require contingency plans in the event of it happening again.

Alternatively we could act as the tree, rooted to the spot and unable to move, we allow the outside influence to take over and engulf us finally up-rooting us from our world and hurling us down the stream, bouncing off the edges of the banks as we go.

Which do you think would be the best approach I wonder?

‘...but sometimes things like this just happen and there is nothing I can do about it!’

True, but does that mean we have to be like a tree, inert, rooted and without a voice? Was the outside influence something we could have done something about before it became over-whelming, or like the tree did we hang on to the edge of the river’s edge hoping our precarious balance would sustain our life-style and spending? A tree, once rooted cannot move, we can. We can notice the closeness of impending problems and do something about it before it consumes us, or, and here comes another metaphor, ‘we could bury our heads in the sand’ and hope for the best.

I began to think of other phrases I had heard recently and one which popped up was ‘feeling snowed in’.

So what are the connotations here? Let’s first of all look at the actual concept of being snowed in. we experience the sensation of being cut off, being unable to go anywhere, stuck where we are, surviving on what we have around us at that moment in time. There is an added worry as to whether there are enough supplies to ‘get us through’ and the need to ‘dig our way out’ of the predicament.

Around here, there was a mobilisation of people helping an supporting each other as we struggled to keep paths and driveways free of ice, and people knocked on each others doors to see if they wanted anything at the shops. People spoke to one another and the  ‘good deeds’ done for each other was far greater than it usually went.

Now lets compare that to the feeling of being snowed under. There are many similarities; yes, we do feel trapped in the situation we

are in and we do wonder whether we have the resources to  ‘make it through’ and we do feel those sensations of being cut off from everything we deem ‘normal’ but do we take the next step and begin the process of ‘digging our way out’? Do we make sure, by talking to each other, find out if anyone under pressure needs anything and if we are under pressure do we feel we can say we do?

There is one aspect to snow which I attempt to remember when I am under pressure. However bad and deep the snow may be, eventually it thaws and after that really nasty, slushy stage, it vanishes as fast as it arrives and the world moves on. Isn’t it up to us how long that snow lays in our world and when we meet a worse state, to realise this is the slush and everything will move on as long as we don’t lose our nerve?

I walked further along the Medway and watched as trees were losing their grip on the bank and the number of men out with long chains staking them to the bank so they couldn’t charge down the fast flowing river and crate damage as they went and thought, yes, there are people out there who will help do damage control in our lives, but do they chain us down with another problem?

There are so many of these phrases I will leave you to think which ones you use and what they mean if looked at in the context of the natural world. Think about how the natural experience can be used to support you in dealing with the situations you are thinking about and which aspects could support you in getting through that much quicker. Be curious and listen to others. What do they say reflects their state of health and then compare it with the natural state; how close is it to what hey are talking about? The more you do this the more you will learn about your own responses to things and therefore the more you will being control of how and why you react.

One phrase I do find very contradictory is ‘under par’. We associate that with being unwell and yet if you think about it, its reference is a game of golf and being under par indicates a successful result for the hole! So shouldn’t it indicate doing well?

Anyone know of a different meaning of ‘par’?