"The Most Important Word in the World"

Our shadow is coming into the light

Photo by Romario Roges on Unsplash

“I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody’s story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I’m feeling my way now — don’t jump on me if I’m not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt — and there is the story of mankind.”

- Lee, East of Eden by John Steinbeck

At the time of writing, the number one show on Netflix is Adolescence. It’s a devastating story where each episode is filmed in one continuous take. The lack of cuts keeps you completely engrossed and away from the tractor beam of the second screen. Without spoiling too much, Adolescence is about the violence that can follow rejection. It’s been a theme that’s really alive in my own life and I think explains a lot about the world around us right now. Whether it’s Squid Game or Dune, the stories that capture global attention can tell us a lot of what’s happening underneath the surface.

I’ve been doing Internal Family Systems therapy recently. It has emerged from The Leading Edge’s own explorations as one of the most effective healing modalities. So I figured I had to try it myself. As I finally feel in full integrity in my work, my focus has been how become a better father and husband. I believe if you earnestly ask for opportunities to improve, you’ll be presented with them. My three year old daughter rejects me constantly in favour of her mother. I try to pretend I’m O.K. with it, but I’m really not. And worse, I worry it’s because of my own weaknesses. I see her flinch at my occasional exasperated snaps. One afternoon my wife also did something that made me feel rejected. I responded with irrational anger. I tried to hurt her with my sharpest weapon: my intellect. I wanted her to feel what I felt. I stayed angry at her for more than two days. It was a gaslighting, manipulative sulk aimed at making her feel guilty for how much I was hurt. With all my attempts to become a better person, I was deeply disappointed in myself that I remained triggered for so long. But going into my next IFS session I realised that part of me was coming out of the shadows to give me a really good look at it.

Like Steinbeck, I believe the anger that follows rejection can be a fundamental human trait. Especially for men. The very next story in the bible after the Fall of Adam and Eve is Cain and Abel. It’s the subject of Steinbeck’s masterpiece East of Eden. Cain’s sacrifices to God are rejected, Abel’s are accepted. Cain’s anger and jealousy at this rejection drives him to murder Abel. I believe this is also an allegory for the rebellion of our brain’s abstracted left hemisphere over the holistic and connected right. Maybe it explains why we’ve been so violent against Mother Nature herself.

I’ve spent the last few months exploring skeptical responses to The Telepathy Tapes. Whether or not the critics prove to be correct, the tone of some of their reactions is almost more interesting than the content. It’s just so angry. This reminds me of the fact that anger is the most lateralized of our emotions: in the overly rational but disconnected left hemisphere. The more intellectual these people are, the more worked up they seem to get. It has made me wonder if there’s an unconscious anger towards these non-speaking autistic children. Why should they get access to this transcendent love that I can’t even feel? If God exists, why is he speaking to them and not to me? Why would God accept Abel’s sacrifices and not mine?

“Hurt people hurt people” is one of the most consistently reliable insights I’ve encountered in my life. Hitler was rejected twice from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Stalin grew up in poverty, was bullied as a child for his smallpox scars and was rejected from seminary. Pol Pot failed multiple times in school and was rejected from a prestigious technical program in France. If you dig into the childhoods of many serial killers like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Kemper you’ll find deep wounding and humiliation.

Throughout the years of my dark night of the soul, I fell from being a Managing Director at an investment bank to being rejected for $20,000 a year graduate jobs. One low of many was being simultaneously interviewed in the same room for the same entry-level marketing job as an equally confused and ashamed twenty-one year old girl. I didn’t even make it past that first round. These repeated rejections eventually made me almost catatonically depressed. One morning after leaving yet another obviously unsuitable job, I started crying uncontrollably in front of the cashier at the pharmacy. I ran home with my hands over my eyes so I could bawl privately in our bathroom. But my wife and our cleaner were both home, and our apartment is small enough that both could obviously hear me sobbing. It was then that I understood another reason why seemingly normal men are led to violence towards their loved ones. I couldn’t bear for those I loved so much to see me reduced to such a pitiful, dead-eyed husk. I was supposed to carry the family and I couldn’t even get myself out of bed. One of the most reliable shame triggers for men is being perceived as weak. The gesture most associated with shame is covering our face: we cannot bear to be seen in that weakness.

At the very bottom of my private abyss the only thing I could feel was shame. But an incoherent, primal shame tied to the sense that I’d done something wrong. That I was damned and it was fundamentally my fault.

But this shame isn’t your fault. In fact the more you’re suffering, the more you may be learning.

In our recent interview with Law of One scribe Jim McCarty, he tells the story of how each Sun (Logos) sets the rules for their solar system.¹ One of these is a “veil of forgetting” that conceals our divine nature. In other solar systems there was a time when there was no veil and everyone knew they were a Creator. No friction meant no growth, so spiritual evolution took aeons. Allegedly the veil is especially thick on our planet. This makes it a hard place to live, but a fast place to learn. Our purpose here is to learn how to consciously make loving choices. Metaphorical or not, I’ve found this a helpful reframing of our suffering. We have been separated from God, from love, to learn.

I had to learn to let go and follow my bliss. The design behind the seeming vindictiveness of the universe was only clear long afterwards. If I’d gotten those jobs I chased as a social worker, therapist or hospice worker I’d never have been truly happy. My crisis reconnected me to a love that has melted away some of my shame. But my heart had to be broken open with a crowbar first. I had to learn the ability to feel love in order to choose love.

The legendary psychiatrist Stanislav Grof pioneered the therapeutic usage of LSD. He later developed holotropic breathwork after LSD was made illegal. It was a common occurrence that participants suffered a death and rebirth related to the trauma of being born. One of the most remarkable results was that every single person who experienced this rebirth adopted a spiritual worldview afterwards. Perhaps with the “original sin” of their birth separation transcended, they realised we are actually truly connected and it’s not our fault.

But this return to unity also requires a recognition that this shadow is in all of us. It’s the shame and humilation hidden in the private browsers and drunken-search-histories of our minds. I recently remarked to a wiser friend about how terrified I’d be if telepathy was real and someone could read my darker thoughts. And he simply replied “… and what if you were immediately forgiven for them?”

I’m not a tattoo guy, but I’ve long pondered getting the Hebrew word timshel tattooed on my right wrist. It’s also from the story of Cain and Abel. Steinbeck’s Lee explains why it matters:

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?”

“Yes, I see. I do see. But you do not believe this is divine law. Why do you feel its importance?”

“Ah!” said Lee. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared. Any writing which has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is important. Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”

Lee’s voice was a chant of triumph.

1. This may sound ludicrous, but I’d recommend reading Rupert Sheldrake’s essay “Is the Sun Conscious”