1. The greatest gift you can give might be the gift that you yourself were never given. Give that gift.
2.The most valuable service you have to offer your fellow humans may be the service you have always wished were performed for you.
Offer that service.
An experience that wounded you could move you to help people who’ve been similarly wounded. Heal yourself by healing others.
3. Declare amnesty for the part of you that you don’t love very well. Forgive that poor sucker. Hold its hand and take it out to dinner and a movie. Tactfully offer it a chance to make amends for the dumb things it has done.
And then do a dramatic reading of this proclamation by the playwright Theodore Rubin: “I must learn to love the fool in me — the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.”
4. No matter how holy and good, everyone in the world has a portion of the world’s sickness inside them. It’s known by many names: neurosis, shadow, demon, devil. Many people try to deny that it inhabits them. Others acknowledge its power so readily that they allow themselves to be overwhelmed and distorted by it.
At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we take a position between those two positions. We accept the fact that the evil is part of us, but treat it with compassionate amusement and flexible vigilance. Our stance is partly that of loving parents and partly that of warriors.
Once you make a commitment to explore the mysteries of pronoia, your shadow will try to play tricks on you that it has never tried before. How will you respond? We recommend an aggressive, tender, improvisational approach. Be ready for anything. Avoid both blithe excesses of tolerance and grave fundamentalism.
4. Philosopher William James proposed that if our culture ever hoped to shed the deeply ingrained habit of going to war, we’d have to create a moral equivalent. It’s not enough to preach the value of peace, he said. We have to find other ways to channel our aggressive instincts in order to accomplish what war does, like stimulate political unity and build civic virtue.
Astrology provides a complementary perspective. Each of us has the warrior energy of the planet Mars in our psychological makeup. We can’t simply repress it, but must find a positive way to express it. How might you go about this project?
5. In his book “The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World,” psychologist James Hillman writes: “The question of evil refers primarily to the anaesthetized heart, the heart that has no reaction to what it faces, thereby turning the variegated sensuous face of the world into monotony, sameness, oneness.”
What would you have to do in order to triumph over this kind of evil in yourself?
6. “The problem, if you love it, is as beautiful as the sunset,” wrote J. Krishnamurti. “The obstacle is the path,” says the Zen proverb. What frustrating puzzle do you love the best?
