The shadow is inescapable

I see now that I cannot produce any shadowless thought, leading me to second-guess the nobility of my efforts. And on a larger scale, I question what the appropriate posture of ego-consciousness should be towards the shadow. How can I trust myself to utter anything, knowing that introspection will lead to the discovery of corruption? I live and breathe contradiction. Each apparently benevolent intention is enthusiastically projected onto other conscious beings around me. But conscious projection comes with an unconscious antithesis of similar intensity. Just because you say you have good intentions, and really do believe it, that doesn’t mean you aren’t simultaneously and unconsciously embodying the opposite.

If you weren’t blind, you would recognize that the louder you proclaim your benevolence the better your shadow becomes at evading the revelatory light of consciousness. I once thought I was honest because I only spoke what I knew to be true. But inside was a world of deception, secrecy, and willful blindness. My definition of truth was discrete and could not account for the experience that multiple contradicting realities can simultaneously be true. Not only can truth exist in contradiction, it is the only way anything can exist.

Enough with the arguments and rationalizations

During one of my psychedelic journies, I saw multiple contradictory interpretations of the geometry of the corner of my room’s 2 walls and ceiling. Multiple conflicting interpretations of reality are becoming more of a collective conundrum as we become increasingly untethered from the religious foundations in which reason and rationality were grown to operate in. We simply don’t realize that the precondition for truth is more important than a particular manifestation of truth because it’s one of many. We can become conscious that something in us is choosing interpretations of reality like fruit on a platter. Perhaps more controversial is my repeated observation that when flexibility in available modes of perception is exercised, it’s present also externally in other people.

Jordan Peterson thinks the Bible is the prerequisite for truth. I would phrase it differently, but see a truth to which that claim is pointing. I think we are blind and stupid if we think that we can personally or collectively reject religious dogma without simultaneously and blindly adopting a more primitive, immature dogma as a necessary replacement. Dogma is a collection of fundamental presuppositions that act as the foundation for the structures of meaning which naturally grow out of it. There can be no civilization without a shared set of core presuppositions from which meaning can be generated. More pressing than the collapse of civilization in the absence of such a thing is the collapse of the individual psyche, which mirrors the external world. In other words, the inner and the outer structures of meaning would collapse simultaneously. And it seems that we Westerners have found ourselves in such a situation presently.

Congratulations, you found a point of contention between our Judeo-Christian values and modern life. Oh, and you also found a solution? How wonderful. And you don’t see your solution creating secondary problems which the original issue pales in comparison to? Amazing! Let’s realize your intellectual masturbation by creating a large-scale social policy to give life to your shadow’s diverse collection of demons hiding in plain sight only from you. And even better if we can make it compulsory by presenting it as a moral obligation.

Reason should be rooted in nature

Carl Jung wrote:

“Reason has proved itself completely powerless, precisely because its arguments have an effect only on the conscious mind and not on the unconscious.” (CW 18, PAR. 1358).

A few days ago I had a beautiful philosophical conversation with two friends, one of whom brought up antinatalism. The Wikipedia TLDR is “Antinatalism or anti-natalism is the ethical view that negatively values procreation. Antinatalists argue that humans should abstain from procreation because it is morally wrong.” Antinatalism is an example of a philosophy claiming roots in compassion - the desire to alleviate the suffering of conscious beings. But what I hear are the rationalizations of an intellect disconnected from the ground of being, blind to its own demons.

As the artificial chasm between the primitive psyche and modern psyche grows, we become increasingly inhabited by unconscious elements (could say demons) that resonate with malevolent ideas. When the spiritual world was cast out of the natural world, its inhabitants took refuge in our unconscious (Jungian idea). We are unconsciously run by the devils of our own creation who hunger through us and who we unwittingly sacrifice to. Our collective ego-consciousness is too weak to face its shadow and be sufficiently repelled by it, so it settles for blindness.

Here’s a relevant quote from Jesus:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15-16 NKJV)

Or, if you’re allergic to Jesus and prefer to hear it from Jordan Peterson when apparently quoting Jung (although I can’t seem to find where Jung ever said this):

“If you can't understand why someone is doing something, look at the consequences of their actions, whatever they might be, and then infer the motivations from their consequences.”

To know someone by their fruits could be seen as the test of time, but it could also be seen as a test of “causal distance”. That is, observing the consequences within a radius of influence in the world, not just the central point.

Over the past week, I’ve been experimenting with color again, this time focusing on faces. This one was made while listening to the JRE podcast #1518 with David Choe.