People are grieving and outraged, fearful and overwhelmed. Another American Revolution is underway, and now the enemy is us. The first revolution got rid of the monarchy; this time we need to dethrone our hidden hankering for subjugation.
There exists in our psyche a deficiency of consciousness, a passive nonbeing, that has enabled psychologically primitive people to take over our government.
The main threat to freedom appears to be coming from the Trump Administration, but this mess we’re in goes deeper than that. The pandemonium parallels what happens in our psyche where we have our own chaos, even a stealthy tyranny, that arises from inner conflict. This conflict can enslave us to self-defeating compulsions, self-centered dissatisfaction, needless self-punishment, and gloomy self-doubt. For most of us, the conflict is invisible. We don’t see how we fraternize unconsciously with weakness, misery, and folly.
Many of us (both liberals and conservatives) are neurotic, meaning susceptible to self-pity, self-doubt, and self-criticism. Even the mildest neurosis can undermine the quality of one’s citizenship. We lack power to the degree that we tolerate the tyranny of our inner conflict. This conflict is largely the mental and emotional clash in our psyche between experiences of courage versus fear, right versus wrong, strength versus weakness, pleasure versus displeasure, and rationality versus irrationality.
Inner conflict has us scrambling to justify ourselves while blaming others and the supposed harshness of fate. This conflict drags us down into apathy, moodiness, cynicism, fear, and anger. Here we doubt our worthiness. The resulting mishmash of thoughts and emotions saps energy, sabotages inner peace, and degrades citizenship.
For me, this historic time is both calamitous and favorable. We all understand the calamitous part. Everyone sees the chaos and lawlessness and feels the stress and worry. So, what’s favorable about a world that’s becoming weirdly surrealistic, dangerously divisive, and mindlessly reactive? To be patriots in this clash of rationality versus irrationality, we need to be wiser and stronger, and making this happen is the best thing we can do for ourselves. We need this strength to build a workable world.
We can acquire insight that exposes the dynamics of inner conflict. We start to see, for instance, how passively and defensively we react to our aggressive inner critic. This primitive inner critic is the master of our personality, and through inner weakness we tolerate a sense of inner oppression. Our inner life is a government of sorts, and when we’re neurotic, or distressed by fear and confusion, the government at work in our psyche operates like a mini autocracy that activates irrational fear and blocks us from accessing a deeper sense of freedom.
Still, the current crisis may portend a giant leap forward. A revolution is now happening, and the process will bring out both the worst and the best in people. If we each strive to grow stronger, we can fulfill both a personal and a national destiny. These are not hapless times but heroic times. Consider yourself blessed to be a patriot.
It’s not rifles and cannon we need for this battle, but knowledge and truth. Truth and knowledge can be found in matters both momentous and trivial. We need momentous truth, meaning insights into why we’re so often at odds (or at war) with our own self and each other. Truth starts as we uncover the rubbish that hides our better self.
Destiny is like a flowing river. In this flow, we are destined to get stronger and wiser. That’s exactly what we have been doing. Women and people of color now hold positions of power. We have food-safety inspections and a Clean Water Act. Remember that just seventy or eighty years ago most adults went around puffing on cigarettes and pipes. We were induced by advertising to suck ourselves to death. We’re smarter than that now. That’s progress—that’s how the river flows. But now we’ve hit a stretch of rapids in the river. If we want to stay afloat, we must stop sucking up fear and thrashing in ignorance. One by one, we can grow our humanity. We each get the chance to be our best.
There are many ways to achieve personal growth. The best approaches help us see ourselves more objectively as we step out from behind an unwise egocentric mentality. It’s important also to expose the part in us that is quick to engage in sullen sentiments and petty passions. If we’re going to be true patriots, we need to recognize and overcome this weakness. There’s no better time than right now to do this.
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In my books, I outline how to become emotionally stronger. Readers can start with any one of these books:
Why We Suffer The Phantom of the Psyche Freedom From Self Sabotage
The knowledge in these books reveals our unconscious loitering in the back alleys of inner conflict. This weakness in human nature is common to people of all races and nations. Knowledge of this weakness reveals the self-betrayal in the sad story that claims, “I’m not sufficient in myself to make a difference in the world.”
The knowledge in these books goes far beyond what mainstream psychology is telling you. I expose the many ways we unconsciously stumble into suffering. We haven’t broken free of our appetite for misery, dissension, violence, and war because we are trapped in inner conflict. Expose the mischief in your psyche so it doesn’t crush your spirit and the spirit of America.
