From Midwives of the Soul
Poster based in Australia:
When we scapegoat, we project what is dark, shameful, and denied about ourselves onto others. This “shadow” side of our personality, as Carl Jung called it, represents hidden or wounded aspects of ourselves, “the thing a person has no wish to be,” and acts in a complementary and often compensatory manner to our persona or public mask, “what oneself as well as others think one is.”
...Sylvia Brinton Perera in her book, The Scapegoat Complex, writes: “We apply the term “scapegoat” to individuals and groups who are accused of causing misfortune. This serves to relieve others, the scapegoaters, of their own responsibilities, and to strengthen the scapegoaters' sense of power and righteousness. ...Scapegoating means finding the one or ones who can be identified with evil or wrong-doing, blamed for it, and cast out of the community in order to leave the remaining members with a feeling of guiltlessness.”
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...The tyrannical force of scapegoating, with its cruel thrusts of accusatory judgments, can also erupt in our own backyards. This closer-to-home variety of scapegoating is especially important to note since we may find ourselves condemning bullies and world leaders while denying our own inclination to split off and project fears and anxieties onto our intimates and neighbors. The scapegoat-victim in families is often the “black sheep,” the child who, like the ancient sacrificial goat, serves the miserable role of carrying the unconscious shadow parts of her parents. These
children may present with psychological problems and exhibit addictive or self-destructive behavior, but a deeper look into family dynamics points to a lack of awareness of the influence of parents’ unconscious feelings.
Carl Jung believed that scapegoating revealed something fundamental about our psyche. He maintained that we all have a “shadow” side to our personality. As he wrote in Archetype and the Collective Unconscious, “The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself.” Our shadow aspects cause us anguish, and much of our mental energy is enlisted in the denial of our perceived imperfections, but we cannot see our shadow aspects except through projection. In Alchemical Studies, Jung wrote, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making darkness conscious."
“It is everybody’s allotted fate to become conscious of and learn to deal with this shadow ...The world will never reach a state of order until this truth is generally recognized.” —Carl Jung.
--Dale M. Kushner (From the article, How Facing our "Shadow" can release us from Scapegoating.)
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art | Andrey Remnev
PARKER J. PALMER
I’m a big fan of what Buddhists call “beginner’s mind.” Fixed ways of looking at life lead us directly to “stagnation,” the great spirit-killer of old age, or any age. Taking a fresh look can turn us toward “generativity,” the closest thing we have to a fountain of youth.
That’s why I love this Wendell Berry poem about his old friend, the poet Hayden Carruth (1921-2008), whose life and work were as unconventional as Berry’s. Carruth was already a prize-winning poet when Berry greeted him “at the beginning of a great career.” Let us now praise everyone who tries to keep growing by making a regular practice of beginning again!
When I pretend I’ve got everything right, things go south pretty quickly. Difficult personal relationships get worse, and I get cynical about vexing political issues. Life becomes the same old same old—a tedious recycling of tattered attitudes and outworn orthodoxies—and the chances for personal and social change dwindle.
But when I can muster enough humility to say, “Maybe I have this wrong,” back off from my fixed positions, take a fresh look, and walk around the question again, I might contribute to the renewal of self and some small part of the world.
As Wendell Berry writes, “we are either beginning or we are dead.” Memo to Self: Begin again and live!
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In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions:
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When did you stop dancing?
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When did you stop singing?
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When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
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When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?
~ Gabrielle Roth
Artwork via Romany Soup
“The Full Measure of a man
is not to be found in the man himself,
but in the colors and textures
that come alive in others because of him.”
Albert Schweitzer
"What is my purpose in life?” I asked the void. “What if I told you that you fulfilled it when you took an extra hour to talk to that kid about his life?” said the voice. “Or when you paid for that young couple in that restaurant? Or when you saved that dog in traffic? Or when you tied your father’s shoes for him?”
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“Your problem is that you equate purpose with goal-based achievement. God or the Universe or morality isn’t interested in your achievements… just your heart. When you choose to act out of kindness, compassion and love, you are already aligned with your true purpose. No need to look any further.”
From Note to Self ~ Tao & Zen
