Carol S. Pearson's Posts (46)

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Awakening Spring Within

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“The calendar can’t tell you when the first day of spring is—your heart does,” says Alexandra Stoddard.[1] Of course, externally, spring is a natural event starting at the Vernal Equinox and ending at the Summer Solstice. As a season, it is marked by warmer weather, a period that from very ancient times was, and is today, celebrated with symbols of flowers and bunnies for natural fecundity, sweets for the sweetness of life, and eggs, for breaking out of confinement to liberation, like a chick.[2] (As I write this, however, it is 30° Fahrenheit outside, so spring seems more like a promise than a felt reality, sort of like it is when we set an intention.)

Spring is also an archetypal event, paralleling the cycle of renewal in human as well as natural life. We can see the fertility cycle that leads to a fertilized egg and a chick emerging from it in experiences and symbols of spring in ancient times and now. Especially in northern climes, ancient peoples lived in caves or cave-like dwellings that would get pretty grimy and smelly by the end of winter, so when they were finally able to leave, doing so would feel like not just renewal, but liberation as well. Happily, that is not the case for us today, but we can still get that amazing feeling of walking outdoors without a coat and seeing flowers beginning to sprout and trees regaining their leaves, from which arises a sense of joy and possibility. It is no accident that the Passover Seder is celebrated in spring, signifying the escape from slavery to freedom, or that it is when Persephone returns from the Underworld, with flowers springing up at her feet,[3] or when Jesus, having died and being placed in a cave-like tomb, is resurrected. And all of these spiritual stories have long inspired people with the hope of life after death, as well as for renewal as part of the ongoing cycle of life on earth.

 

Ancient peoples painted eggs beautiful colors and picked flowers, as do we today—reminders that we have the potential within us to experience sudden moments of renewal, conversion, enlightenment, or transformation. In Buddhism, the blossoming of the lotus flower in spring is a major symbol of enlightenment. This flower emerges from murky, muddy waters, signifying lower levels of consciousness; the growth of the plant represents the process of psycho-spiritual development, and the blossoming, the achievement of higher consciousness.

 

I do not share the archetypal meanings of religious events to take away from their specific theological meanings within Judaism, Christianity, or Buddhism. Spiritual truths always have layers of meaning, as do natural ones. Thus, even today, spring is not just a natural, religious, or archetypal event; it also is a psychological one, associated with success and fulfillment in the modern world. Through observing transformations in the lives of leaders, Pamela D. McLean and Frederic M. Hudson, in LifeLaunch: A Passionate Guide to the Rest of Your Life, outline a cycle of renewal that furthers feelings of aliveness and energy throughout life. This recurring pattern begins when an external or internal event occurs that makes living the way you have been either impossible or undesirable (for example, because you become ill, lose your job, business, spouse, etc., or suddenly start feeling bored and unhappy). This seemingly unfortunate situation launches the Doldrums, where you feel miserable and do not know what to do, followed by Cocooning (inner reflection about what to do and be next), and then Getting Ready (learning what is necessary to live successfully into your chosen new story). When all these steps are completed, you are ready to Go for It, embodying the new narrative.

 

If you connect this pattern with the archetypal one I’ve just described, you can see why John Steinbeck would title his novel about collective doldrums The Winter of Our Discontent, and why T.S Elliot would pen the line “April is the cruelest month” to express the pain that occurs when spring is alive in the natural world, but not in you.[4] The seasons provide natural symbols to help you remember that whatever you are experiencing inwardly can be followed by the release that is associated with spring, if you recognize that the feelings you are having are natural to the human seasons of renewal:

  • your inner fall and winter mirror your experience of moving from Doldrum dissatisfaction (where you are learning to let go of attitudes and behaviors that no longer fit for you, like when trees shed their leaves in fall) to Cocooning (going inward to germinate a new vision, just like seeds underground preparing for new growth);
  • your inner spring is your time of Getting Ready, (trying out new possibilities, as with vulnerable sprouts and buds in nature); and finally,
  • your inner summer is the time of Going For It by living the new story that makes you feel vital and alive once again (as when the fruit appears on the plant and ripens, so its sweetness is evident).

 

Our culture’s dominant spiritual traditions, in their theologies and related earth-based practices, also provide us with metaphors that can keep hope alive for us as we face difficult transformations. For example, when you feel miserable, you can imagine yourself moving from

  • winter to spring;
  • slavery to freedom; or
  • crucifixion to resurrection.

 

If you are feeling dull or stuck in your own ways, you can imagine yourself as

  • a seed germinating, sprouting, and bearing fruit;
  • a flower bursting into bloom;
  • generating possibilities like a rabbit birthing bunnies; or
  • bursting out of your shell like a chick emerging from its egg.

 

Once you discover the metaphor that works for you, you can find or create a symbol of your emergence to put where you will see it often, reinforcing your faith that spring will occur not only around but also in you.

 

Questions for reflection and perhaps sharing:

 

(1)  When have you experienced a cycle of renewal, such as McLean and Hudson describe?

(2)  What does an inner state of “spring” feel like to you?

(3)  As you observe the emergence of spring around you, what season are you experiencing inside?

(4)  If you are stuck in the doldrums, what spiritual or natural imagery or metaphor might help you keep the faith that you will emerge from your ordeal renewed and better off?

If your nation or other group is in the doldrums right now, what season do you see it as being in, and what metaphors and ways of thinking might help this collective experience the renewal of sp



[1] Quotation from her book Living a Beautiful Life.

[2]Even the name of Easter as a holiday comes from the ancient European holiday of Eostre, in honor of a great northern fertility goddess of this same name, whose symbol was a rabbit or hare.

[3] See my book Persephone Rising: Awakening the Heroine Within for more information about the Eleusinian Mysteries, which offered an initiation through the archetypes of the seasons into the experience of spring as a state of consciousness.

[4] In his well-known poem The Waste Land.

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I’ve been reading the gospels and thinking about Jesus’s teaching to “judge not that you be not judged” in the context of depth psychological teachings about withdrawing the projections that make us see others in the light of our own stories, rather than as they are. Many have warned of the Warrior archetype tendency to view those who think differently from us as enemies. Right now, our country seems locked in a Warrior story, which results in politicians, even of the same political party, having to attack each other to get media coverage, because it is attacks that are regarded as “the story.” Moreover, the Republican and Democratic parties more and more are treating the other as if it is the enemy and using words as weapons. And, when words are weapons, those wielding them see arguments about policies as a way to prevail and stop questioning whether what they are advocating is actually good for the country or the world. Citizens who love to follow the drama of attack after attack can fall into the trap of forgetting that what candidates are advocating have real consequences, so they also fail to take the time to make educated decisions before they cast their votes.

Living in a culture caught in a Warrior complex reinforces this story in all of us. That confronts us with the difficult task of knowing how to differentiate ourselves and our views from others without demonizing and attacking them. For example, how does a young person differentiate from his or her parents without having to make them wrong? How do we have no-fault divorces in marriages, in the workplace, and in friendship when the temptation is so strong to cast the other party as villainous and ourselves as victimized and when our stories and related values are so different that we reach an impasse?

So, here are a few strategies for healthy differentiation I’ve learned from others over the years:

1)    It has been said that if a tiger is charging you, you do not have to demonize the tiger to get out of the way. The tiger is just being the tiger. So too with people. Some of them will attack you because that is just what they do. It is not necessary to demonize them to get out of their way, but it is necessary to have the discernment to recognize that a tiger is a tiger.

2)    I realized early on through observing a more experienced leader that it was possible to remain civil with someone with whom you have significant values disagreements. I watched him defuse serious conflict with others just by saying calmly, “This is how we differ.” He then quite respectfully and objectively used active listening to show that he had heard his antagonist, after which he stated his view of the situation. To me, this is the “holy grail” of effective leadership. I never forgot it.

3)    It often is said that when we point a finger at someone else, the rest of our fingers are pointing back at us. Those other fingers are warning us to recognize urges in ourselves similar to what we judge in others. This awareness has helped me recognize when I was not being as true to my own values as I thought I was being, calling me back to integrity. In practice, this means that I pay attention to the small ways that I am like the person who I inwardly criticize for doing similar things in much larger ways.

4)    Neuroscience tells us that people are more likely to project blame onto others when they are frightened and the fight, flight, freeze response kicks in—in this case with an emphasis on fight. If we just take time to turn our attention to our breath, we can calm down, engage the cerebral cortex, and understand the views of others as information, not as an attack, even when their affect is hostile.

There also are ways that seeing a larger story can be helpful. For example, the conflict between the police and African Americans tends to be covered in the light of the Warrior story that emphasizes mutual antagonism. However, if we moved out of a Warrior story, we could see that both sides are frightened and grieving for the violent deaths of those they love. If they were to recognize how much they have in common, they could join forces to work to make currently crime-ridden neighborhoods safer. So, too, in our personal lives, we can try to get out of ourselves enough to see bigger patterns.

Zachary Greene, a colleague of mine, has written about the Women in Black as an example of moving from my story and your story to discovering the story we are in together.[1] The Women in Black are Jewish and Moslem women who grieve together for those they have lost in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and then work together for peace. I find their example to be inspiring, helping me to escape the little wars that are so easy to get into with people who just see the world differently than I do.

For example, when my husband and I argue, I remember that it is natural when living a love story to have serious disagreements. Love stories in romantic comedies always include misunderstandings that seem as if they might lead to a breakup. The happy ending comes when the couple makes up and love triumphs. If you are in a primary relationship, arguments with your partner help you reassert your individuality, so you are not swallowed up in being a couple. At the same time, knowing that you are living in a love story can help you refrain from questioning the relationship itself when you think or want one thing and your partner another. This recognition allows each of you to listen to the other. Then you can dialogue about how each of you can think what you think, and get as much of what you want as possible, without leaving the relationship. The same applies to conflict in your organization with your boss or co-workers, or your direct reports.

Remembering the values, mission, and vision of your enterprise can help you discover what larger narrative you are in together. Conflict can be defused by revealing how each of your perspectives can contribute to a “happy ending” in the situation you find yourself in, and how that situation is simply one episode in your larger shared story. There also are times, as I believe we are experiencing as a nation, when the larger shared story no longer fits current needs. In such cases, it always is good to revisit the most positive impulse in the origin of the relationship, the organization, the community, the nation, etc. In our nation’s case, that was the belief in everyone’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If you agree with me that this was our founding impulse, you can then become curious about what each political party, each citizen, and each sector can contribute to realizing this dream.

Thought questions:

  • Who and what are you tempted to be judgmental about? Is there something in what they are doing that frightens you? How might you stand your ground and stay true to yourself without making them wrong?
  • Is there anywhere in your life that you feel attacked by others or that you are being pulled into a “let’s fight” mode when you would rather just get along? How might you find a shared origin story, or larger story, that helps you move out of that mode of relating?
  • What larger stories can you notice that you are playing a part in—in your personal relationships, at work, or as a citizen? What narratives inspire and light you up, giving you hope and the energy to be a positive force in the world?

I would love to hear whatever responses you would like to share.



[1] See Carol S. Pearson, The Transforming Leader

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To thrive in today’s world, it is critical to be able to track emerging cultural stories that empower rather than limit you. One change I’ve noticed is the shift in the environmental and evolutionary sciences from a focus on “survival of the fittest” stories to narratives about ecological systems—a change that has influenced the thinking of economists, political scientists, and psychologists. A related movement in educational psychology argues that many of us experience a sense of powerlessness because we do not think complexly enough to grasp the big picture of what is happening around us and to us.[1]

In researching my new book,Persephone Rising, I became intrigued by myths about the Greek god Zeus’s boyhood. They tell us that he lived alone in a cave with hives of bees! I knew that Zeus was exiled to Crete to escape a father who wanted him dead. But why bees?, I wondered. This question stuck with me because of the current bee crisis. Honeybees, in particular, seem to have lost their instinctual guidance system and are dying off quickly. Environmental factors like pesticides, pollution, and cell phone signals are being investigated as likely contributing factors. This is not a small problem: it is estimated that bees pollinate about 70 percent of the fruits and vegetables we eat.

Complex ecological thinking could have prevented this crisis. That is why I remained curious about the relationship between Zeus and bees. Zeus’s “daddy dearest,” Cronus, ate his children to prevent them from replacing him as chief of the gods, and Zeus eventually did replace his father, becoming the new god of social organization, for both gods and mortals. It occurred to me that observing bees could have been instructive to Zeus, helping him become a systems thinker. Yet, in the story of Demeter and Persephone, Zeus starts out as the villain because he does not understand that he has disrupted the whole of the social order by telling Hades, the god of the Underworld, that he can have Persephone as his bride, without consulting either mother or daughter. Although ancient Greek law gave fathers this right, the Eleusinian Mysteries rites, based on the story of Demeter and Persephone, challenge the resulting practice by presenting a more complex view of the situation. The social order is not just the public domain, governed by laws. It also includes the entire familial and social community, in which love, not right, reigns. Zeus was, then, lacking cognitive complexity when he neglected to check with Persephone and Demeter about their wishes for Persephone’s marriage.

Opening to View a More Complete Picture

Zeus’s single focus on laws and rights makes him ignore a world that he does not value or understand. As the story unfolds, his ignorance of the whole of what makes the human world work undermines the social order. Many people today still need to learn this lesson. For example, business executives who assume that women will give birth to the next generation of workers and raise them well in their spare time, after finishing their more important paid work, create massive social stress and anxiety because they lack any idea of what such tasks require. Similarly, politicians who give lip service to what they consider women’s issues often forget them when they are making policies for schools, local communities, and other institutions. More often than not, education, business, social, gender, and family policies each are considered in isolation, not tracking, for example, how long working hours not aligned with shorter school days create stress for women and families.

Zeus's arrogant and oblivious actions cause a famine. The distraught Demeter, missing her daughter and feeling dissed by Zeus, stops providing the life force juice for the crops to grow. Eventually, Zeus gives in, because if the crops do not grow and people starve, no one will be left to provide sacrifices for the gods.

Demeter reflects the archetype of nurturance in all its attributes—physical, emotional, and spiritual—so if she is disrespected, a famine can occur at all of these levels. We have the equivalent today: climate change is related to human ignorance about the impact of many of our activities on the ecosystem, including sea levels and weather—i.e., not seeing the whole picture—plus a failure to care for the earth, unfortunately plundering it instead.

Similarly, in economics, many still believe the cultural story that tells us that competition in the context of inequality is all that is needed to motivate people to work harder so that they rise on the social structure, the result being broad prosperity. However, economists now are discovering that if inequality becomes too great, those at the top and bottom income levels do not contribute their fair share as consumers or as workers, and prosperity declines. If we do not notice and care about the entire society and are out only for ourselves, the whole suffers, and likely we do with it.

I wrote more in Persephone Rising about how Zeus’s observation of bees eventually may have helped him connect more dots, become a more complex thinker, and in this way avert the impending catastrophe, which could have destroyed his reign.[2] What I did not know until just recently is that there is persuasive evidence that in the ancient initiation rites dedicated to Demeter and Persephone, initiates did a ritual bee dance. Based on ancient illustrative art, scholar Carol Christ put various pieces together to reveal that these bee dances were a way the initiates in the story of Persephone, and hence the Demeter and Persephone Mysteries, celebrated the natural cycle of pollination.[3]

Caring as a Force that Energizes and Focuses Action

Researching these Mysteries, it became clear to me that they helped human initiates be true to themselves while also understanding their part in natural and social cycles, but I’d missed how important bee social structure and the pollination cycle were to this entire tradition, not just to Zeus’s story. As a mother goddess, Demeter is, after all, like a Queen Bee, who births all the bees and clearly provides nurture. In hives, if the queen is removed or dies, the bees lose focus, flying every which way, and chaos ensures. Similarly, without the creation of caring environments, society breaks down. The Demeter archetype is the link between people and the natural order of things, where babies need to be born and raised, and people need to be fed, clothed, and cared for, and their bodies buried when they die. Except for digging the graves, these all used to be women’s work, and many still are. Today, care and nurturance are necessary not only for children and in the home, but also in the workplace and in governance structures that consider the good of workers, consumers, and our citizenry. Without them, people become demoralized and unhappy and, hence, unproductive.

The goddess Demeter also is credited with bringing agriculture to Greece and teaching its secrets. Understanding how important bees are to human survival helped ancient Eleusinian Mysteries initiates understand not just how to be better farmers, but also how what seems small (like little bees humming around) can be critical to their ability to thrive and maybe even survive. Initiates who came from all walks of life (including women and men, slaves and kings) could identify with those bees, as can we. We matter more than it seems like we do, and if we take time to understand the various cycles of which we are a part, we can influence ecosystems—social, political, and natural—for the better, as Demeter’s story reveals.

Following What Beckons, Pollinating as You Go

Demeter’s lessons tell us that we can demonstrate transformational caring in an uncaring world, while Zeus’s example encourages us to be willing to accept being wrong in the service of win/win outcomes. Persephone, who is a bit like a worker bee, reveals another thriving secret. She goes where she will, in the Underworld and the Upperworld, choosing where she goes through the power of attraction. Worker bees are attracted to the sweetness of nectar. They gather it, and then they fly toward what they love and return to their hive, their communities. As they go, they pollinate all sorts of plants.

Sufi teachings use bees as metaphors for wise living, because they model how the attraction to sweetness, beauty, and other things we naturally love eventually can lead us to the divine and/or our true life path. Spirit, then, is like a fragrant flower, offering the alluring nectar of mystical experience, true love, a vocational calling, or knowing your mission in life. So, in the story of Persephone, she is acting like a bee when she picks the irresistible flower, and the earth opens and up comes Hades. Considered in this context, Hades’s abducting her is similar to any epiphany so important that it changes your life. Having died to what you were (Hades is the god of the Underworld), with your life renewed you may, without even knowing it, pollinate others by your example.

Persephone‘s ultimate role is to initiate the living and the dead into the mysteries of love, sex, birth, life, death, and happiness. She moves annually, and some think freely, between her mother’s Upperworld and her husband’s, Hades’s, Underworld. Like a bee, she absorbs emergent wisdom from both places, and then pollinates humans and gods alike with it. We can replicate what she does in our own spheres, allowing ourselves to be drawn toward sweetness and beauty, always learning and sharing with others, throughout our lives.

And, there is no limit to how far the wind may blow our influence. You might think here of how Rumi, the 13th century Sufi poet, is now the best selling poet in America, pollinating our culture with ideas from the Islamic mysticism of his era. Similarly, the Eleusinian Mysteries, which had been largely forgotten for centuries, now are recognized as providing psycho-spiritual wisdom just right for our time.

The Eleusinian Mysteries themselves were a form of social change by pollination. Their leaders did not stage a coup and overthrow their government in order to integrate feminine wisdom into an overly masculine age. Instead, they loosened the hold of dominant (Zeus-like) social stories by engaging a wide range of people in learning and experiencing narratives complementary to his. Today we have a similar situation wherein the Zeus archetype’s focus on achievement and money eclipses all else. Bringing back Demeter/Persephone values is essential for restoring balance—and certainly is a better path than that advocated by those who seem to want to tear everything down.

The Art of Mattering While Joining the Dance

Just as bees dance to communicate with one another where the honey resides, dancing in the Eleusinian Mysteries rites likely was an enjoyable means of delivering on their promise of happiness, prosperity, and freedom from fear. Learning about pollination cycles and then dancing them helped initiates to influence and trust very complex ecosystems and what others contributed to them. The more they understood such cycles, the more prosperous they could be, and the more able they were to see what was outside the range of what they habitually noticed.

In much the same way, the more we, today, recognize all the contributions being made not only by other people, but also by the natural processes that support us, the happier we can be, and the less fear we need to feel. We can allow the sweetness of life to call us to our real life, love, and work, while viewing the complexity of life around us as a dance that can be enjoyed, instead of something fearful to trigger our paranoia.[4]

Thought questions that may generate sharing:

(1)   What psychological, social, and natural cycles/processes are you tracking? What ancient wisdom stories or major religious narratives draw you? What do they tell you about larger patterns important to your and our thriving?

(2)   When have you felt beckoned to a life that is sweet, beautiful, and good? How did you respond, and what happened as a result?

(3)   What can you learn by considering how others see a situation that all of you are experiencing and asking yourself, “What overarching story or event are we in together”? This can be a great way to see past your own perspective in order to defuse conflict and get a handle on the bigger picture or story.



[1] See Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads: the Mental Challenges of Modern Life. Kegan argues that most of us do not have the cognitive complexity required to be successful personally or professionally in today’s world—that we need to be able to put disparate things together to track a bigger picture, including understanding the attitudes and feelings of others who are different from us.

[4] For more about bees and happiness, check out Sue Monk Kid’s novel The Secret Life of Bees. To understand the relevance of other natural cycles to human endeavor and the new movement to mirror nature in what humans create, see Janine M. Benyus, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.

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Ever feel lost, despairing, angry, and searching for answers? I have and found some answers through learning how to trigger my body's joy hormones.

  • Dopamine rewards accomplishment: Having goals, a purpose, and actively achieving desired outcomes.
  • Oxytocin rewards caring and belonging: Feeling connected to and supported by others; giving and receiving love in intimate relationships, friendship, or service to others.
  • Serotonin reinforces status and feeling that you matter: Feeling valued by others and by yourself and feeling safe and secure in the group.

 A lack of any one of these creates a feeling that something is missing in one’s life.[1] Not only that, these chemicals fade out of the body quickly, so we are motivated to keep doing things that help us feel good about ourselves.

You can look at this and see the logic in most of us wanting to “have it all,” and the frustration we feel when we cannot:

(1) A job that is our calling, where we have clear purpose, missions, and a sense that we are accomplishing something worthwhile that provides status and enough money to live well;

(2) Finding true love, with intimacy with family and friends, giving and receiving help from others at work and in community and religious organization, or caring volunteer work;

(3)  Meeting society’s and your subgroup’s standards for behavior and appearance, so that you are respected and even admired by your peers.

Sounds easy enough—but is it? So many experts today tell us that happiness is just a choice, and suggest this or that easy answer for how we can decide to thrive. Yet our happiness continuum is almost inevitably influenced by the society in which we live, by real circumstances in our lives as well as the cultural narratives we do not question.

Entire societies and subgroups can experience predictable feelings of emptiness or dissatisfaction as a result of their cultural values and stories, and of the attitudes and roles they engender. Our society is one of the better ones; as our founding document tells us, we have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet, traditional gender roles, for instance, have deprived men of oxytocin (since the world of love and care has been considered a feminine domain) and women of dopamine and serotonin (from being locked out of more public masculine roles which focused on power, status, and visible achievement)—a limiting story that was powerful in American culture as well as in other societies for much of our history. This is one reason the women’s movement occurred and why many contemporary women and men are happier than were those in previous generations, having gained access to activities that help produce a more complete path to being truly happy.

Actually, as dopamine is produced by any project we undertake that we believe in and work hard at, and oxytocin can be produced by doing nice things for others, we can choose to engage in these behaviors even if we have not found the perfect (or any) job or true love.  The bigger issue in our quite competitive and hierarchical society comes with serotonin, as so many of us feel that who we are, what we look like, or what we do does not measure up to our society’s standards. Our inner critic decreases even our accomplishment and relational chemical rewards, because we believe what we do is always lacking something.

Several current cultural stories actively work against our happiness in this way.  One such story is that achievement in traditionally masculine spheres is still more important and has higher status than belonging, intimacy, and love or accomplishment in the domestic or other domains still thought of as feminine. This constantly encourages men and women to prioritize such higher status activities in the public and workplace arenas. Yet, in the modern economy, good jobs are harder to find and qualify for than they once were, and if we get them, they expect longer hours from us than has been the case since the adoption of the 40-hour week. Moreover, many of us get high on dopamine; it becomes our drug of choice, so our inner chemistry also keeps us working almost all the time.

 Another such societal story is the equivalent of “he or she who dies with the most toys wins,” or variations on this theme, which leads many of us to believe that those with the most money are better than those with less or little. Hierarchical societies deprive everyone that is further down the status ladder of serotonin. The current epidemic of antidepressant use (of the Prozac type) may well be a sign that our super competitive society is depriving a whole lot of us of natural spurts of serotonin. A recent report on the rise in deaths of white Americans from drug overdoses illustrates this: the increase is largely from the growing numbers of individuals stuck on the margins of the work world who also lack social support.
 These are the people some politicians call “losers”— the story they often tell themselves as well. Conversely, the frequency of overdoses is decreasing in the Black community at a time when the “Black Lives Matter” movement has emerged.

Women are more apt than males to take drugs treating serotonin deficiency, which I suspect may be related to special status issues faced more by women than by men.

  • To be valued as a person, a woman experiences more pressure than do men to be slim, youthful looking, and as beautiful and well put together as possible, a sexy playmate, and great, caring mothers and treating everyone nicely. Such pressure lowers serotonin levels, since these standards are very hard to live up to.  If we try, we often end up exhausted.  
  • At the same time, attitudes and activities associated with masculinity continue to be valued more highly than feminine ones, and women in the workplace often are evaluated by standards developed by traditional men, whose eyes may glaze over when women speak out of the wisdom that comes from the female experience and perspective.  This does not have to be because these men actually believe that women are less able.  Most of the time they have lived in such a masculine world, they just don’t understand that women might have bring something to contribute that would be both valuable and somewhat different.
  • Moreover, the image of a liberated woman in society also is based on a masculine model that is not all that healthy for either men or women: being totally self-sufficient, preferring hooking up to genuine sexual intimacy, acting as self-contained and tough as some image of the mythical cowboy that never was, saving the day and riding off into the sunset.

The result is a devaluation of activities that once were a feminine domain, creating stress not only for individual women, but also for families, schools, and communities. Fewer women are now at home or working as volunteers, helping out schools and other necessary community endeavors, leaving a vacuum, a societal care deficit to be filled.  

As women have entered government and the workforce, caring values have begun to enter as well, and many political scientists and economists are finding that these actually lead to a healthier and happier society. It is no accident that many of the countries that rate highest in the World Happiness Report are Scandinavian ones with caregiver cultures, where government policies naturally include caring for their citizens. Such policies often include government supported preschools, good schools across the board, and workplace policies that allow workers to have time with their families and care for their own health.

It is interesting that the early stages of the current presidential campaign seems to be a referendum on such caring values entering government and business, with conservatives voting “no,” or “no, caring is to be done by individuals, churches and other religious groups and nonprofit organizations (often by women),” while liberals more often say “yes.” Since women still are associated with caring and men with strength and dominance, it is noteworthy that the two current front-runners are Hillary Clinton, campaigning very much as a woman who stresses her caring for others, and Donald Trump, with a hyper-masculine, macho style, and running less on policies than on being the alpha male in the race. 

It is clear that the debate over whether our society will be just a Warrior/Ruler one with a masculine style or a Caregiver/Ruler one with a more androgynous style is not going to be resolved in the near future. Whatever our preference between these, it is natural to wish our society to be perfect and provide for us a perfect life, and equally natural that some of us feel nostalgia for a supposedly ideal time in the past (which actually never was), while others imagine a future paradise that, like utopian visions of the past, will turn out to have its own problems. This, plus our founding belief that we have a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” can make us feel angry and cheated when we believe that our liberty is being curtailed and our path to happiness blocked. Right now, we are unlikely to immediately change what is not working in our society or what narratives that undermine our happiness prevail in the media.

So rather than lash out, we can have compassion for ourselves and others locked in situations that make us angry, as well as for those who are angry at people like us.  Beyond this, we can notice what cultural stories have become inner prisons that limit us.  We do have the key to unlock our inner chains and start thinking, telling, and acting on more empowering narratives. We can also chose to avoid getting too caught up in the current epidemic of frenzied charges and counter charges in the current culture wars.        

I recently attended a luncheon with several other women where the topic of conversation was how little good was resulting from outrage and blaming in the media or ourselves.  Every woman there had an answer of what else could be done.  Each began describing what she had decided she could do to make a positive difference in the area of her calling, and each was committed to contributing to civil political discourse by engaging in genuine cultural dialogue in search of a cultural consensus. Of course, each would then show up and vote.  I could all see that this healthy conversation was promoting happiness–likely spurting dopamine to reward us for our individual projects, oxytocin for our caring motivations and how supportive we were with one another, and serotonin, from the support we got from one another that we mattered, that what we wanted to do was worthwhile, and that each of us had a safe and secure place in our friendship network.

While personal happiness in many ways begins with a choice, we then need to learn the attitudes, skills, and behaviors that result in a feeling of thriving. One of these skills begins with recognizing how much of our feeling trapped and unhappy derives from the stories coming at us that we have unconsciously adopted. Weeding unhealthy ones out of our psyches is a first step, followed by replacing these with others that help us discover (1) what we can accomplish and contribute, (2) how we can help others, and (3) where we might find a community that values us just as we are.

Questions for Reflection or Sharing:

 

(1) Where and how are you working to fulfill the need to achieve and contribute; care for yourself and others; and value yourself and others, as you and they are now?

(2) Where are you on the task of developing the ability to critique not just cultural stories, but also those in your own head, substituting more empowering ones for ones that limit you?



[1] See Loretta Graziano Breuning, Meet Your Happy Chemicals, for information about these endorphins.

NOTE: Join Carol Pearson for a free live webinar/ depth dialogue on "Persephone Rising" on Tuesday, Feb. 2. Details and registration here

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The situation is bleak. The dark side has taken over again, the proof of which is how regimented and violent its soldiers are, and the light is being held only by a rebel band, guarded by a republic. The two great masculine heroes—Luke Skywalker and Han Solo—have lost faith in their power to create change, so Han has gone back to trading and Luke is hiding out.

But Princess Leia has not lost faith. She is a general for the Resistance to the Nazi-like First Order, having traded her royal status for the actual authority of leadership. And then, a new Jedi is being called, this time a young woman—Rey, whose very name (pronounced “ray”) links her to the light. The Force is awakening, and through women.

Star Wars Episode VII is a movie for its time, just as the first installment (Episode IV) was almost 40 years ago. We are in another era when it appears that the dark forces have triumphed. My sense of this was reinforced recently when I saw two other excellent movies: The Big Short, about the systemic corruption on Wall Street that caused the 2008 global recession, and Spotlight, about the systemic corruption in the Catholic Church that allowed abuse of adolescents by pedophile priests to persist with a huge cover-up. Yet, little seems to have changed on Wall Street, and I wonder whether even Pope Francis can end the culture of secrecy in the church during his time in the papacy. Lack of faith in government is widespread, caused to a great extent by the pernicious influence of money on elections and public policy, the cynical manipulation of public opinion by politicians who run against government itself, and the successful efforts of some of the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations to avoid taxes and federal oversight. The belief that government is an oppressor is now so common that I run into all sorts of folks who regard very entertaining but hardly realistic TV shows like House of Cards and Scandal as reflecting sad truths. And, more and more, people begin to distrust the heroic spirit as naïve, justifying following our lower impulses as what everyone now does.

Han Solo tells us explicitly that there is a power that balances the dark and the light expression of The Force, which I see as the dark being the urge for power and the balancing light being love and compassion. Together, these fuel a heroic spirit. In truth, any value, by itself, that is out of balance with its complement gradually leans toward the dark side. Today, the triumph of masculine over feminine values is so extreme that:

  • The Warrior/Ruler archetypal idea that nature is to be conquered has resulted in climate change and its threat to our way of life, and the notion that people must demonstrate their worth through being tough and competitive had led to a disinclination to assist those truly in need, who some now regard as “losers”;
  • The performance of women who enter historically male roles in the workplace or politics typically is judged by standards set by older males, and the wisdom that comes from the female experience too often is devalued or simply ignored;
  • The caring work women historically have done raising children, being in charge of homes, supporting extended family and friends, and helping those in need (which requires the Lover and Caregiver archetypes in us) is assumed to be so inconsequential and easy that anyone should be able to accomplish it in whatever spare time they have after the workday is finished;
  • As women and the men who partner with us struggle to fit in family and home care activities while working longer and longer hours at our jobs, we become over-worked and stressed.

All these developments positively reinforce masculine endeavors, attitudes, and behaviors, while depriving women, as well as tasks and qualities regarded as female, of being seen, valued, and rewarded. This, in turn, encourages both men and women to lean toward the masculine, to the detriment of the feminine—at work and at home. The result is that society is biased toward competition and achievement over caring and compassion.

Yet, today The Force is, indeed, awakening, and Persephone (that is, the powerful feminine)[1] isrising. The earth is rebelling, fighting back against our renegade species, and it is a sign of hope that world leaders finally have agreed to listen. Women have been gaining social power since the 1970s women’s movement, which gave us increasing access to what had been strictly male domains. During this interim period, we have developed our masculine sides in order to succeed in these new roles, thus inadvertently contributing to society’s imbalance. Now, more and more women want to bring our feminine strengths and values to what we do, along with our more androgynous masculine capacities. Many are choosing to leave even high-level positions in the workplace and high-status marriages that do not match their values, or where their female voices are not heard and listened to. Persephone’s rise is further evidenced in the gender gap in voting behavior, where women give higher priority to issues related to children, families, education, healthcare, care for the poor, and inclusion of diverse citizens.

Recent cinematic prototypes of courageous, compassionate female characters—such as Neytiri in Avatar and Hushpuppy in Beasts of the Southern Wild—have touched and awakened something in many of us, male and female alike. However, the big film event just over a year ago was Disney’s Frozen, which is adored by boys as well as girls (and adults, too!). Its broad popularity suggests that almost everyone can relate to its theme, in that all of us are repressing some devalued aspect of our power and want express it—like Elsa, the main character, who sings “Let it go!” And just like her, we then need to learn to harness that energy so that we gain mastery in its use. In the culminating scene of the movie, Elsa achieves this, so the threat of eternal winter is averted and she can take her rightful place as queen. However, this occurs only when she is embraced by her sister, Anna, and is healed by the unconditional love that Anna demonstrates. Real heroines and heroes allow love and compassion to utilize whatever their unique power is in the service not only of themselves but also of the greater good.

Similarly, in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, after claiming her power and beginning to develop mastery over it, Rey returns to General Leia, and the two women immediately put their arms around each other to console one another. The explicit reason is that Han Solo has been killed by his and Leia’s unrepentant son, Kylo Ren, for which both are grieving. The metaphorical import of that embrace is the affirmation of a feminine bond and of feminine caring values. Confidence in love and caring help them avoid descending into despair in response to Han’s death and Kylo Ren’s continued treachery. Both women combine traditional masculine strength with the more feminine virtues, and reaffirm love as courageous and as mattering. Without such affirmation, heroines who buy into a masculine ideal always feel less than they are, and are more likely to give up in the face of defeats and losses. After this hug, Rey appears to be more confident and focused in what she then must do and, at the same time, softer and more caring than she has before.

It is only through trusting their feminine sides that Leia and Rey fully awaken their heroic trust in life and the awareness that Han and Luke need to reclaim their heroic spirits. Han Solo had begun to regain hope for change when he saw that The Force was manifesting itself through Rey in a feminine form. Although he dies at the end, his heeding Leia’s urging to not give up on his son and acting on it signals to the viewer that his faith in change has been restored, and his and Leia’s embrace symbolizes the union of the masculine and feminine in both. In this way, we can imagine that he dies whole and healed—though terribly disappointed. Rey’s last act in the film is to find Luke and offer to return his light saber to him. Although we do not know his response, we do see how confident she is in her action and the hope that he will grab hold of the saber and return to the battle for liberty and human rights.

I’ve become terribly concerned about the growing cynicism I see around me. Many people seem to have given up on the democratic process, rather than reclaiming the power they potentially can exercise when they are willing to engage in it. Too many also have let go of their personal dreams and ideals, concluding that it is naïve even to have them. In The Force Awakens, the growing heroism of the character Finn, who refuses to fight for the First Order and initially just wants to flee, provides a call to the quest for those of us who feel we are ordinary. Strengthened by love, he becomes a real hero. We, too, can leave stories, structures, and situations that we know to be wrong, or wrong for us, and take a stand for what we know to be right. This even can take the form of fighting to preserve our democracy and make it work, rather than opting out.

So, the questions for us today are: Can we feel The Force awakening within us, even if only in anger and outrage? Is Persephone rising in and around us? The archetypal energies that make up “The Force” are available to us. It is up to us whether we wallow in disillusionment, or, as heroes always do, bring new life to a dying culture. So, whether you are male or female, you might want to hug a courageous and caring woman or find a way for your inner feminine side to comfort you and affirm your feminine qualities. Then you might want to return the power the light saber symbolizes to any part of you that has given up and/or to someone else who has. In that way, you can awaken, reawaken, or reinforce the hero or heroine within you and in those around you, balancing masculine and feminine qualities while also promoting healthy gender partnerships.

I’d love to see your reply to this blog, especially concerning the following questions:

  • What archetypal and mythic patterns do you notice in the latest Star Wars movie, and which seem relevant to the world around us today?
  • What other films have you seen that offer signs of the feminine rising for the good of men as well as women? And, what signs do you see in our culture of the feminine rising in a new way, or of healthy and happy gender partnerships?
  • What signs do you see of your having new energy for bringing your gifts to the world? What stands in the way of your doing so—in your situation or in the story you tell yourself about that situation? What would be your equivalent of the healing hug and the returned light saber? And, what would you do if you felt certain that The Force was with you?

[1] See Persephone Rising: Awakening the Heroine Within.

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By Carol S. Pearson

Most people have no idea that the stories inside our heads determine much of what we notice in the world or how we string our observations together to make meanings of them. This suggests that stories that are invisible to us define a good deal of what we experience, so we continue to live these stories as if they were reality when they are not, even when they make us miserable. Understanding this can help us listen to others who see situations differently than we do. We can recognize that their inner filter is making meaning of different facts, and constructing different narratives than ours is, so we can hold open the possibility that their narratives might be complementary to ours, not necessarily wrong.

If this were not enough, some of the stories we live are archetypal, and thus could provide us with a greater sense of meaning, mattering, and purpose if we were aware of them. Failing that, they can essentially run us, so that we engage in actions that are counterproductive for ourselves and others.

 

Archetypes are psychological patterns that are so basic to human cognition and behavior that they can be observed in all times and places. All the ways they have been expressed in the past or are being expressed now create a kind of energetic field that we connect with, consciously or not, when the archetype is active in us. C.G. Jung saw archetypes as existing in the collective unconscious, but their origin might also be in our DNA, offering the seeds of our human potential. If you are a Star Wars fan, you can think of them as elements of “the Force” in its light (conscious) and dark (unconscious) sides, since archetypes, lived consciously or unconsciously, infuse us with energy for action.

 

Many archetypes actually may arise from instincts inherited from our animal ancestors. For example, the Caregiver archetype is characteristic of mammals who nurse their young and who, when sick or old, will sacrifice themselves by moving to the perimeter of the herd, where they are picked off easily by predators. The Warrior archetype is derived from carnivores, which kill for food, or, more widely, from animals that become violent when they need to protect their territory, and The Ruler from alpha males and females who preside over hierarchical herds.

 

The archetypal stories I work with are ones that help us mature as human beings through consciously living their narratives. For example, the Caregiver archetype motivates us to care for our young and for others we love. As we evolve into ever more conscious beings, we are encouraged to become generous and compassionate toward others beyond our family or subgroup. Our individual and collective challenge today is to expand our concern to include all of humanity, for unless we do so, we will be unable to realize the dreams that inspire us—for example, to achieve peace on earth, environmental sustainability, and social justice.

 

We can see the unconscious primal undertow of the Caregiver in the impulse to martyr oneself for others, which is evidenced in suicide bombers or in less extreme form in so many women and men who give and give without caring for themselves, so they end up unnecessarily depleted and embittered. Christianity and many other religions teach us to love one another as we love ourselves, but this teaching often is perverted to mean “instead of ourselves.” The mythic story of the Greek goddess Demeter, which was the basis of the most honored rite in classical Greece, illustrates how even a goddess has to work that balance out so that she does not sacrifice what is most important to her as she shows love and concern for others.

 

Similarly, the Warrior, expressed in a healthy way, helps us develop boundaries and protect ourselves and those we care about. Its primal undertow is ruthless, coldblooded killing, which can even devolve into sadism. At the same time, the evolved Warrior helps us as individuals and as a society to have the courage and capacity to keep our own violent impulses in check. This requires fighting for the protection of the human spirit by withdrawing projection onto others and taking responsibility for becoming peaceful, loving, competent, and courageous. The dark form of the Ruler is found in the demagogue, who manipulates people, appealing to their darker impulses to gain control, while its more evolved form can be seen in the transformational leader, who brings out the best in all concerned to realize an inspiring and needed vision.

 

Narrative intelligence can help us become aware of the archetypal stories we are living, as well as their temptations and potential gifts. Choosing to live the archetype’s more positive narratives also assists in the awakening of our inner hero and heroine. Joseph Campbell defined the heroic task as bringing new life into a dying culture, defeating Holdfast the Dragon. Holdfast keeps us locked into anachronistic forms of the archetypes and related ways of living their stories.[1] Heroes and heroines release the archetype’s more positive potential.

 

Psychoanalyst James Hillman suggested that many of our symptoms and, potentially, mental illnesses come from positive archetypes trying to get our attention. He thus advocated a kind of homeopathic psychotherapy by which the right dose of the archetype provides us with its wisdom and gifts, while not taking us over.

 

The very act of noticing the archetypes within us reinforces a separate sense of identity, so that we do not confuse who we are with an archetype. Even when one archetype is essential to our vocational calling or to what most fulfills us in life more generally, a series of archetypes can arise in us over time that enable us to gain human wholeness and to handle the many diverse challenges of adult life.[2] This inner balance further serves as a deterrent to archetypal possession. My blogs this year will promote the development of the narrative intelligence that can help you become conscious of archetypal stories in and around you and be empowered by their strengths, while remaining true to who you are as you grow into the person you want to be.

 

I would love to hear back from you, especially with answers to these questions:

  • Have you ever discovered that the story you told yourself about a situation was not how others saw it? What was that like for you? How might you, or did you, use that information to gain a more objective perspective about it?

 

  • Have you ever felt as if some impulse took you over and you did something so unlike yourself that, in retrospect, it seemed that it was not really you, or at least not like the you that you know? In retrospect, what might that “other you” have to teach you in its evolved form?

 

  • Is there an archetype that particularly empowers you in your vocation and/or in what otherwise most fulfills you? Are there other archetypes you live that are essential allies, without which you would not have the balance you need to succeed? If so, you might draw an image of your inner psychological wheel with your most core archetype at the center and supportive ones as the spokes (naming or picturing each, in any way that feels natural to you).


[1] Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

[2] James Hillman’s Revisioning Psychology and my books The Hero Within and Awakening the Heroes Within.

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