Insensitive & disrespectful / this wondrous heresy --- excavating the shadowy kink that drove my controversial Instagram posts
As a teacher of shadow integration, I’ve had to ask myself:
What shadowy, taboo, previously-unconscious desire or value possessed me to express myself in my recent posts in a disrespectful way?
Why did I use provocative language to say what I could have said in a much more gentle and harmony-inducing manner?
As a tool to answer to this question, I’ve used the Existential Kink excavation axiom:
“Having is evidence of wanting.”
I asked myself: what have I been having lately?
Well, many things - joy, revelation, deep vulnerable conversations with alchemists of color - and also:
a very intense amount of blame / guilt / disgust / fear and anxiety coming at me from both myself and from others.
So, to me, the fact that I am “having” this blame / guilt / self-disgust / fear and anxiety….
… points to the presence of a previously-unconscious, very taboo desire to have myself and others feel less-than / wrong / bad / guilty / unworthy / separate / in danger.
Now this desire has not been fully unconscious in me, since I have indeed taken note of its troublesome manifestations before and I have surmised that it must be at work in me…
… but I had not previously succeeded in totally integrating this dark taboo desire with my conscious persona, and thus ending its power to act like an autonomous being that can “take me over.”
(((Since the days of Jung, it’s been well-known in depth psychology that all unintegrated, disowned complexes (archetypes, shadows) in the psyche behave like autonomous beings that possess us and cause us to act against our own best interests until they are integrated / brought into conscious relationship with the ego persona.)))
Yet in the alchemical calcination process of all this recent intensity, I’m very glad to say I have found a way to begin to effectively integrate this taboo desire for suffering with my conscious mind.
How?
Well, for me, this process of beginning effective integration involves acknowledging not just that I have this taboo, downed desire to make myself and others feel less-than / wrong / bad / guilty / separate etc. present in my being…
… but also acknowledging that generating this suffering is actually my deepest value and my highest priority.
In fact, generating this suffering in myself and in others is such a deep value and such a high priority to me that for this moment it is far, far, far more important to me than:
-- my own well-being
-- the well-being of the people closest to me
-- the well-being of the people who benefit from and follow my work
Hey, hey, hey - wait, what now?
Did I just say that my deepest value and my highest priority is to help myself and others feel less-than / wrong / bad / guilty / unworthy / separate / in danger ?
Did I just say that perpetuating this suffering is far more important to me than the well-being of myself, my loved ones, the people I serve with my work?
Yes. Oh, absolutely yes.
Totally. Big-time.
Obviously, because I'm DOING IT!
Perpetuating and generating suffering and ignorance is far more important to me (right now, for this moment, and this can always change and evolve) than literally anything else.
That’s what I said. That’s what I mean.Also — I know from years of experience working with myself and with thousands of other people….
… that when fully acknowledged, owned and loved, honored and cherished....
.... previously-unintegrated taboo desires and values have a way of rapidly transmuting and changing into their opposites. It's part of a process of all things changing into their opposites when they reach an extreme.
Jung called this process "enantiodromia" and we can witness it throughout nature - "it's always darkest before dawn" - the heat of a fire turns into the cold of ashes, winter turns into spring, everything that lives in physical form eventually dies.
To reflect a bit more on this:
For a very long time (I can tell by looking at my personal history) …
…. perpetuating ignorance, a sense of separation from love / divinity / totality, perpetuating suffering .... has been my deepest value at an unconscious level, popping up in my life through many manifestations.
We humans tend to create experiences that match what we most deeply value and desire at an unconscious level.… and yet “generating suffering in myself and others” was a value and a priority that I could not deliberately acknowledge because it was “too much at odds” with my consciously held values, specifically with my bodhisattva vow to liberate all beings from suffering.
Oh, gods, oh, Buddhas. Sometimes this work is just too, too, toooooo funny and poignant and painful and sweet. How does acknowledging this help with transmutation and integration of the unconscious shadow?
Well, now, when I notice myself or someone else attempting to strike a chord of blame / guilt / unworthy / bad / wrong / less-than / dangerous / monstrous….
… I can go:
“Ah! Aha! Here it is, a fulfillment of my deepest value and my highest priority! A chance to suffer, a chance to generate suffering, a chance to revel in the ignorant trance of separation-from-divinity! In the illusion of lovelessness and fear! Marvelous! Just what I have been wanting! How precious!”
And just like that, what I previously contracted away from (suffering and ignorance in myself and others), what I previously repressed, denied, disowned and thus unconsciously perpetuated...
... becomes the thing I am most consciously willing to welcome, cherish, love, embrace, transmute….
… because I have been honest with myself, and I have admitted to myself that the generation and perpetuation of suffering and ignorance matters more to me than anything else.
So, to summarize, because I know all this is very strange and counter-intuitive….
What we create in our experience… is what we actually most value.
We all have conscious values, and these tend to be ideals of some sort - peace on earth, an end to racism, harmony, love, healing, connection, a bountiful world for all, etc.
But funny thing: because human beings are fractal holograms of the Whole of Existence…
…. for every conscious value that we humans have, there’s an equally strong (sometimes stronger) opposite value operating in us at an unconscious level.
This unconscious value can take us over and influence our actions from time-to-time.
And the very good news, the gospel of tantric Hermeticism... is that we can experience deeper sovereignty, power, joy, and magic in life by:
1) Noticing that what we give ourselves to experience in life (((as emotions, as judgments, as situations, as relationships))) is always in perfect alignment with what we actually most value, and that these deepest values are very often unconscious (disowned, denied, repressed) and perfectly opposite to our consciously-held values -- wrong, bad, taboo, hurtful, offensive.
2) And we can transmute (evolve, heal, transform) our lives by recognizing when our experience plays out in accordance with a previously-unconscious value that is opposite to our consciously-held value….
… and then we can give that previously-unconscious value deliberate, purposeful honor and love -- thus making it conscious, and ending the game of it playing out unconsciously.
Though I tried, though I noticed it was in me, I could not fully make this most deeply-held value of “generating suffering” conscious in the past….
… because I had way too much shame, too much judgment, too much regret around all the times I had generated suffering in myself and others, and a great fear that having this taboo desire “meant that I was evil.”
Well, no more.
Today, I’m firm in the knowledge that Love is the transcendent, immanent, cosmic and incarnate power big enough to embrace, transmute, and to give purpose to its opposite - Evil (ignorance, suffering, separation).
So today, I’m standing up to speak a wondrous heresy.
The Wondrous Heresy
Here it is:
The commitment to generate suffering (feeling less-than / wrong / bad / guilty / unworthy / separate / in danger) in myself and in others…
… is a beautiful, magnificent value worthy of deliberate honor and celebration in all its ferocity and in all its twisted manifestations.
Just as the dark devouring mother archetype - seen in Kali, Hecate, Babalon and in many other manifestations throughout the world....
... is a beautiful, magnificent value worthy of deliberate honor and celebration in all its ferocity and in all its twisted manifestations.
Why?
Because the entirety of existence, with all its tragedy and darkness and pain and wrongdoing, is worthy of this love and honoring, as many great teachers including Christ and Yeshe Tsogyel have shown.
In fact, the wish to generate and perpetuate suffering, separation, ignorance — is just as beautiful, just as lovable, just as tender, and just as grace-filled in its own strange and terrifying and dangerous and mysterious way........ as the altruistic bodhisattva wish to liberate all beings from suffering.
In fact, the bodhisattva wish to liberate all beings from suffering, literally could not exist in the manifest realm of duality without the existence and operation of this secret, corollary dark and taboo wish to keep all beings trapped in suffering and separation and ignorance.
As I acknowledge this wondrous heresy, I find it to be paradoxically…
… immensely liberating and healing, opening a portal wherein I can begin to inhabit another mode of being.
I hope, if you decide to ponder it, you might find the same to be true.
To be fully clear - this absolutely does not mean that we should deliberately try to create more evil and suffering in the world -- that would be useless, as there's PLENTY ENOUGH evil and suffering that already exists to be transmuted.
What it does mean is that we can look at what evil and suffering we've already created, look at what evil and suffering already exists........ and tap into the divine love in our hearts that's big enough to cherish it and to make it a welcome part of our wholeness (to heal it), as the tantric master Yeshe Tsogyel did when she transformed her rapists into Buddhas.
big heaps of disgusting nasty wrong dangerous unconditional love,
Carolyn Elliott