Integration

A person with a soft self feels at home in the world. She knows how to live with the wily ego, and all its delusions. She turns fear into insight, pointing directly to the human condition, and creates works of enduring beauty. At the highest level of integration, there is no longer a border between mind and world.

Death has no hold over her. She knows all duality to be mere convention, not reality. She embraces her fate and loves it, whether it means letting go or standing her ground.

She knows, therefore she does not need to speak. She does not act, yet nothing is left undone.

Puritans

Puritanism often drives legislators into creating stupid, unenforceable laws. This in turn fosters disrespect for the law in general, and all is chaos under Heaven. Every attempt to order society to excess must ultimately fail, and then produce its opposite.

On Politeness

What is politeness, then? It is to speak the truth without being insensitive, to restrain one’s impulses where appropriate, and to observe the norms of society without being defined by them. Politeness is “power in repose”, a fine understanding of what brings us together, and an understanding of our own role in human ecology.

Modern society is an inorganic mixture of individuals, thrown together more often than not by the harsh necessities of making a living. Without politeness and love of humanity, daily living becomes a mire of frustrations and petty revenges.

On Strategy

Do not fight. If you must fight, understand. Once you understand, defeat your opponent so thoroughly that you’ve won all future battles against him.
This applies to all levels of human conflict, from tactics to grand strategy.

A Feather Touch

When I first learned how to swing a kettlebell, Pete told me not to grasp it tightly. “Feather touch, hold it lightly” he said, “you hold the weight of the world on your shoulders”. I would repeat to myself “feather touch” every time I started anew. I reckon that this applies to more than just holding a kettlebell — Alan Watts speaks of a mind that isn’t sticky. A mind that isn’t sticky is a mind that reflects reality as it presents itself, without hankering for this or that.

One of the things that I realized when studying Daoism and Zen is that, at first blush, they appear to be anarchical. But when you inspect their practices more closely, you realize that they require some discipline to attain, and yet, they cannot be attained by those who wish to attain. The mind that wishes to attain, to grasp, to hold, o crystallize, is the ego and its strict borders, its enforced duality. That’s a mind that stubbornly refuses to mirror reality, but that wishes to impose its own grandiose projects on it. More distraction, more plans, more illusions, as Being hurtles towards Death. But if it is a process, isn’t Being actually Becoming? What is the significance of dying, and why should it matter so much, unless the ego wishes to perpetuate itself into the future?

I have to let go of certainty, but even more importantly, of the desire for certainty. Dwelling in doubt seems to me akin to dwelling in chaos, but something can certainly be fashioned out of this chaos.

And the idea that either this is ultimately a tragedy, or it is a comedy. I incline more towards the latter.

Humans are indeed frightful beings.
A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky;
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness.

Shadow

What do we see when we picture ourselves? We usually see an unified self. We stake our identities on our habitual traits and preferences, such as the musical genres that appeal to us, or whether pineapple is acceptable as a pizza topping. All this goes to pieces when we are gripped by an almost murderous rage, or we enjoy the affections of a paramour. We then plead temporary insanity, and swear to never give in again. We say that we were ‘beyond ourselves’, all in an effort to avoid identifying ourselves with our basest desires.

“No tree” writes Jung “can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell”. By this, Jung means that we must face our own capacity for malevolence, and work to bring it under conscious control. It is akin to the mythological descent into the underworld, or the quest for the dragon’s gold: one must struggle, one must fight. And for that, one must actually become dangerous. To bring wrath, sloth and lust under control is no mean task; to sublimate them into something higher is a life’s work.

The alternative is to vehemently deny the existence of the shadow, and to remain in a situation of bad faith towards oneself and the world. It is to make a permanent and insincere offer of peace that effectively says “look, I mean you no harm, so can we all get along?”. We can’t, and that’s utter rubbish. Not only will you become possessed by resentment and melancholy, you allow other people’s evil, great and small, to proceed unhindered. Begin, then, by owning your own shadow.