For thousands of years, the primary group of philosophies and ideas driving the collective’s psychological attitude has been that of religious thought — primarily the Judeo-Christian ethic.
This ethic holds the belief that certain human behaviours and traits are desirable and others are not. It believes that human beings come into the world with parts of themselves that are inherently evil and must be atoned for through a life of partial guilt and punishment.
These ideas are intergenerationally engrained in individual psyches. Most people are fractioned as a result. They seek to cut out the undesirable parts and over identify with the ‘desirable.’ The desirable, purely meaning whatever the collective upholds as the good and moral attributes of the time.
For example, the collective may consider it moral to be overly altruistic, to love thy neighbour as oneself, to think of others first, while it may consider claiming strong ownership over one’s property, setting firm boundaries, and feeling pride in one’s achievements and earnings as immoral and ‘selfish’ behaviour. It may consider feelings of lust and sexual promiscuity to be immoral traits and rigid, dogmatic views of love and duty to be the only behaviours that are desirable.
As a result of this collective moral code, which most people refuse to question, they enter into a state of contradiction within their own being. They engage in self-masochism whenever thoughts and feelings that are considered undesirable by the collective arise. They project onto and harshly judge others who portray the undesirable characteristics. They go through a process of creating an external scapegoat out of the ‘evil’ they refuse to acknowledge within. They disown parts of their own being and psychic structure. They bypass the shadow.
Unfortunately, the unavoidable psychological reality is that whatever is consciously banished within will unconsciously appear externally as a fate. Consider the hundreds of years of war, death, and tyranny that have resulted from groups trying to destroy the ‘evil out there’ while refusing to acknowledge it within. Think of the countless dutiful, highly religious individuals who go through the unexplainable “midlife” crisis. Adultery, lying, cheating, and abuse are commonplace within the homes of those who present the perfect external ideals of virtue, honour, and worship.
Whatever is repressed will eventually stink. Like a house built upon a sewer, regardless of how strong the foundation is laid, sooner or later the stench will enter one’s daily life.
The old way of being idealises perfection; the new way of being idealises wholeness.
Perfection requires disowning parts of ourselves. Wholeness requires integrating them.
Perfection asks that you squash, tuck away, and run from your pain. Wholeness asks that you inquire into its source.
‘First and foremost, do not become an enemy unto oneself.’ That would be the first commandment from the Bible of Wholeness.
You are here in the flesh, not just as a thinking being, but as a feeling being. What is sacred is the human experience, what is worth worshipping is the human experience; and what the holy grail is…is the human experience. An experience is meant to…wait for it…be experienced! No part of the experience should be relinquished to the realm of unworthiness. You are having it for a reason. The goal in life is to become more conscious, not more repressed. Only by choosing to engage with the natural flow of the evolution of consciousness yearning to sprout from within the core of you can you actually access more control and freedom over your behaviors and choices.
Repression leads to the unconscious toxic lashing out of the undesirable traits. Wholeness leads to spaciousness between stimulus and response, granting us the freedom to have conscious choice over our decisions.
The psyche of the individual who lives by the ethic of wholeness is secure in its foundations and much more resilient simply because it has consciously assimilated elements of its nature that would easily throw others out of balance.
This kind of psyche is tall and deep; it is equipped to experience true enjoyment, fulfilment, and satisfaction because it has become acquainted with fear, panic, and terror.
Consider this an invitation to soften, to turn the gaze of consciousness within, to be a gentle friend to all the parts of you. To take a deep breath in and exhale. To extend a hand of curiosity to the aspects of your psyche that you’ve rendered to the realm of the ‘undesirable.’
The quality and strength of your life force is tied up where you have consciously or unconsciously created blockages within your own psychic system.
Please keep in mind that the work is never done, that wholeness is a work in progress for everyone, and that where you are right now is the perfect place to start—it couldn’t be any other way.
Joel Rafidi
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One Response
Great succinct article, that provides much to think about,
I thought about the quote, "It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
It made me think of the people that are trying to "engineer society" for the better they may have good intentions, but if they are trying to do it to create some Utopia that is all good it will not be whole it will be fractured, it is only an idea of what is good, not reality.
We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.