CHAPTER 11
On the Effect of Jordan Peterson’s Message
“God,” said I, “be my help and
stay secure;
I’ll think of the Leech Gatherer
on the lonely moor!”
“Resolution and Independence”
—William Wordsworth
I’m not one given to despair,
though I’ve had more occasions than I care to remember to do so; but whenever
the spirit of this soul-sucking demon tries to possess me, I turn to one of my
favorite poems to chase this demon back to hell where it came from—William
Wordsworth’s devastatingly personal poem, “Resolution and Independence.”
Wordsworth was given to mood
swings— “But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might /Of joy in minds that
can no further go, /As high as we have mounted in delight /In our dejection do
we sink as low…” And it so happened that one morning when he went for a walk in
the moors, as was his habit, he began full of cheer; but then despair began to
set in, a despair so deep that it cast a devastating pall over his creative
spirit— “We Poets in our youth begin in gladness, /But thereof come in the end
despondency and madness.”
And here the poem takes a turn
that speaks to the mystery of the merciful law of divine synchronicity (why the world refuses to see the miraculous
choreography of the omniscient guiding principle of life continues to beggar my
mind!), the poet comes upon a stranger, “The oldest man he seemed that ever
wore gray hairs” whose indomitable spirit would chase Wordsworth’s cursed demon back to hell where
it came from, a lonely Leech Gatherer who seemed to the poet “Like one whom I
had met with in a dream; /Or like a man from some far region sent, /To give me
human strength, by apt admonishment…”
One has to read the complete poem
to appreciate he healing grace that Wordsworth experienced from his synchronous
experience with that decrepit old man “with so firm a mind” conning for leeches
in the lonely moor just as his black demon possessed him but which could not
withstand the might and dignity of that decrepit old man’s noble spirit and had
to flee back to hell where it had come from, an experience that affected
William Wordsworth so deeply that he made a point to remind himself of the
Leech Gatherer on the lonely moor whenever his black demon tried to possess him
again—“God,” said I, “be my help and stay secure; /I’ll think of the Leech
Gatherer on the lonely moor!”
I intended to start this chapter
with a thought that came to me on my drive to my hairstylist’s home yesterday
morning, a thought which strangely enough was coincidentally confirmed by
something she said to me while cutting my hair; but the creative impulse has a
mind of its own, and I was compelled to introduce Wordsworth’s experience with
the Leech Gatherer instead, and as preposterous as it may seem, I think I know
why now.
On my drive to my hairstylist’s home
(I can’t call her my barber, or hairdresser; so I opted for hairstylist), the
thought came to me that the reason professor Peterson’s message—and there’s no
doubt about it now, he does have a core message that he’s rendered from all of
his maps of meaning and psychology lectures and years of clinical practice, a
message of hope to stave off and transform the disruptive forces of chaos—has
affected so many young people that have followed his lectures on YouTube and
read his book 12 Rules for Life: An
Antidote to Chaos and listened to his book tour talks and interviews, was not
unlike the message that Wordsworth revealed in his poem “Resolution and
Independence,” a message of how to deal with the influence of the dark shadow
energies of one’s personality and the dark shadow energies of these crazy
times. As a matter of fact, that’s why I suspect that the choreographer of life
arranged for Donald Trump to become president of the United States (the odds
were so against him that no one believed he would win without divine
intervention), so the people of America could get a good hard look at the dark
shadow side of the archetypal American personality that Donald Trump ensouled ad nauseum—the beam in their own eye, as
it were; because only then can one integrate one’s shadow energy into one’s ego
personality and become a whole person, because we have to see the shadow
energies of our own life before we can deal with them, which is not easy to do
because it takes moral courage to look into the dark corners of one’s own soul;
and if I were to distill professor Peterson’s message for the world, and in particular
to the wayward younger generation, it would be this: your shadow is real, and here’s how to integrate your shadow with your
ego personality; ergo, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chao. This is why I was compelled
to introduced this chapter on the effect of Jordan Peterson’s message with
Wordsworth’s poem, because it spoke the same hierophantic wisdom of Wordsworth’s
poem and the good professor’s message to always try and be resolute and
independent in one’s life. Bravo, Jordan!
But because the shadow is such an
illusive creature, it behooves me to shine more light on the dark side of our
personality with a spiritual musing that I wrote for my fourth volume of
spiritual musings whose ironic title Penny provided for me, The Armchair Guru:
The Shadow Personality
The best piece of advice that I got
in my life came from a source I would never have imagined, because that just
wasn’t my reality at the time; and although it pierced my heart with the deadly
accuracy of a skilled swordsman, I had to laugh at the blissful sweetness of
the humble monk’s advice that was revealed to me through a gifted psychic
medium who channeled St. Padre Pio for my novel Healing with Padre Pio: “He told me to tell you to resist the urge to be right,” said the psychic
medium.
In one blinding flash of insight, I saw through my tragic character flaw
that was responsible for so much aggravation in my life; and every time I got
the urge to correct someone, the Good Saint’s words popped into my mind and I
had to bite my tongue.
I went to this gifted medium for a spiritual healing, and out of this
experience came my novel Healing with
Padre Pio; and had I not personally experienced what I did with the
departed Capuchin monk who suffered the stigmata most of his adult life (fifty
years of daily anguish), I would have questioned the reality of the whole
experience. This is why I have taken Gurdjieff’s words literally that “there is
only self-initiation into the mysteries of life.” But why did I have the urge
to be right all the time? What was this compulsive need to correct people
whenever I felt they were wrong?
I did it without thought, and it always got me into trouble because it
set me apart as arrogant and insensitive; but I couldn’t help myself and did it
anyway, because I was the victim of my own shadow. And that’s the subject of
today’s spiritual musing, the shadow side of our personality…
The shadow is a Jungian concept. It is the dark, repressed side of our
personality, and it is not who we think we are. The shadow is our false self,
and it is both our damnation and salvation; but because our shadow resides in
the unconscious part of our psyche we are blind to it, and we even resist the
slightest hint of being made aware of our false shadow self because it
threatens our perfect self-image
“The shadow by nature is difficult to apprehend. It is dangerous,
disorderly, and forever in hiding, as if the light of consciousness would steal
its very life,” wrote the co-editors Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams in Meeting the Shadow, The Hidden Power of the
Dark Side of Human Nature; but not until we become aware of our shadow and
integrate it into our conscious personality will we ever be a whole person, and
happy. But where does the shadow come from, and why does it have so much power
over us?
In all honesty, I had no awareness of my compulsion to be right all the
time; but after the humble saint (no one can suffer the holy wounds of Jesus
Christ for fifty years and not be humbled) brought it to my attention, I began
to notice that I was not alone in my compulsive need to be right, and I soon
began to see that this was a defining trait of the shadow personality.
Why, for example, would that Muslim woman that made the national news risk
sabotaging her Canadian citizenship just to wear her niqab during the
oath-swearing part of the ceremony if she did not believe that she was right in
her religious conviction? What compelled her to take such a dangerous risk of
not getting her citizenship if she was not under the influence of her shadow
personality? Would her faith have collapsed had she shown her face while
swearing allegiance to her new country during the oath-taking ceremony? Why
would she do what she did if she wasn’t convinced that she was right in her
conviction?
“The shadow personality develops naturally in every young child,” said
Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams; and they explain that children identify with
ideal personality traits in their respective cultures to create a socially
acceptable persona, and they repress all those qualities that their culture
rejects into the shadow part of their personality because they don’t fit into
their evolving self-image. So, “the ego
and the shadow develop in tandem, creating each other out of the same life
experience.”
But not only do we create our own ego and shadow personality out of our
own life experiences, we also inherit our family shadow—the archetypal matrix
of unresolved family karma, the consciousness of all those experiences that
one’s family has repressed to the unconscious family psyche; and this can make
our life very difficult depending upon our family’s karmic history, which is
why it is written that the sins of the parents are visited upon the children.
But, still, the mystery remains; why the urge to be right?
The Sufis have a saying: “There are as many ways to God as there are
souls.” Which simply means that every soul is its own way to God. Would this be
the source of my compulsive need to be right? Would this be why the Muslim
woman risked her Canadian citizenship, because she believed her way was more
right than the simple decorum of showing her face for the oath-swearing
ceremony?
I suspect so, but I cannot solve this mystery on my own; and so, I’m
going to call upon my muse to help me work out the answer…
Can a person live a lie and still be authentic? Let’s, for argument’s
sake, say that we do not live one lifetime only but many lifetimes; and let’s
further say that there is no eternal damnation in hell, that this is just a
prop used by Christianity to keep people on the straight and narrow. And let’s
say that one believes in sin and eternal damnation in everlasting hellfire,
like I did in my Roman Catholic youth; wouldn’t that be my personal reality,
then? But given my argument, my personal reality wouldn’t be real; it would be
false. And by living a false reality, would I be authentic?
That’s the issue of the shadow personality: I would be authentic in my
Roman Catholic belief, but my personal reality would be false (as I literally proved
for myself with my quest for my true self); it would be my life-lie, which
characterizes the shadow personality that is real in its falseness.
This is the mystery of human nature, which is paradoxical in its
ontology because we are a complex mixture of the consciousness of the real and
false, the being and non-being aspect of our ego/shadow
personality; but some of us are more real than false, and some of us are more
false than real, and if we are more false than real then our shadow has
unconscious power over our conscious ego and can make our life difficult, like
the Muslim woman whose religious convictions compelled her to risk her Canadian
citizenship for her religious belief. No doubt she was genuine in her
conviction that she had the right to wear her niqab while swearing the oath of
allegiance to her new country, but was her personal reality real or false?
As someone wrote into the National
Post, it seems that “her religious/cultural practices are more important
than the cultural norms of her newly adopted country,” and although she was
granted the right by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to not show
her face during the public oath-taking ceremony for her citizenship, her
behavior flew in the face of our Canadian Prime Minister, and many Canadians;
myself included. But why, if not because she was a victim of her own
recalcitrant shadow personality?
“If we don’t acknowledge all of who we are, we are guaranteed to be
blind-sided by the shadow effect,” said Debbie Ford in her introduction to The Shadow Effect, co-written with
Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson. “Our shadow incites us to act out in
ways we never imagined we could and to waste our vital energy on bad habits and
repetitive behavior,” she adds, which can throw one’s life into disarray as it
did mine and the Muslim woman with our blind and foolish need to be right; but
not since I became aware of that aspect of my shadow personality and began to
integrate it into my conscious ego.
But, again, why does the shadow have this need to assert itself, which
in my case was compulsive? Why did Padre Pio tell me to resist the urge to be
right?
“How can you find a lion that has
swallowed you?” asked the psychologist Carl Jung, with playful humor; which is
why he added that it takes great moral courage to see our shadow. By lion, Jung
meant our unconscious shadow that has taken control over our ego personality,
which I explored in my memoir The Lion
that Swallowed Hemingway; and the conclusion that I came to was that the shadow has to assert itself to prove to
the world that it is authentic and real, as Ernest Hemingway did ad nauseum to the despair of everyone
who knew him, especially his third wife Martha Gellhorn who described the great
writer as an apocryphiar and pathological liar and cruelest man she knew. And the more power the shadow has over our ego,
the more real we think we are. This is why Debbie Ford wrote, “The conflict
between who we are and who we want to be is at the core of the human struggle,”
which was why my compulsive need to be right made my life miserable, and why
St. Padre Pio told me to resist the urge to be right.
“The shadow,” said Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams, “is both the awful
thing that needs redemption, and the suffering redeemer who can provide it,”
and not until we smelt the gold out of the dross of our shadow personality will
we be whole, and happy.
———
I’m not quite finished reading his
book yet, but without reading the rest of 12
Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos I can sum up Jordan Peterson’s core
message in the same two words that reveal the message of Wordsworth’s poem: RESOLUTION & INDEPENDENCE, a moral imperative
to take charge of one’s life and be resolute and independent; that’s how one can
transform and stave off the inevitable forces of chaos. Hence the first rule of Twelve Rules for Life: ‘Stand Up
Straight with Your Shoulder’s Back,” a vernacular and less poetic iteration of William
Shakespeare’s aphoristic “Assume a
virtue, if you have it not.”
I have no idea if Jordan Peterson
writes poetry (like most creative people, I’m sure he’s dabbled in the genre),
but given how he expresses himself in his lectures and talks, forever looking
upward into the heavens whenever he’s stuck for a word or thought, it strongly
suggests to me that he has the probing mind of a poet that he stretches to the
limits of cognition and into the limitless horizons of his imagination; that’s
why I see him as a hierophant.
In his brilliant essay, “A
Defense of Poetry,” which he concludes with a line that has been rendered into
a golden precept, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote: “Poets are the hierophants of an
unapprehended inspiration; the
mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the
words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle
and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of
the world.” Why did Jordan Peterson
speak up against Bill C-16, the amendment that now legislates Canadians to use
gender neutral pronouns upon the request of the LGBTQ community, if not because
he had the probity to refute that morally bankrupt amendment that was driven by
identity politics and political correctness?
Professor Peterson may not
be a poet by natural imperative, but he’s certainly a magnanimous poet in
spirit; and it’s a blessing for the world that he should be speaking against
legislation that curtails free speech. Shelley must be smiling in his grave…
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