CHAPTER 27
Jordan’s Peterson’s Most Important Rule
If I
heard it once, I heard it three or four times; when asked by interviewers on
his international book tour which one of his 12 rules for life he thought was the
most important, professor Peterson always replied, with a thoughtful look on
his face that conveyed the gravity of his choice, that it would have to be Rule Eight: Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie. And I totally comply with
his choice, because telling the truth keeps our false shadow self from growing
into the monstrous beast that it can become, like it did in my high school hero
and literary mentor Ernest “Papa” Hemingway. “He’s a pathological liar and the
cruelest man I know, and I have known some very cruel men,” said his third
wife, Martha Gellhorn.
This is why I sent the good
professor my book The Lion that Swallowed
Hemingway (“lion” symbolizes his ravenous shadow), and my sequel My Writing
Lif, Reflections on my High School Hero and Literary Mentor, Ernest “Papa”
Hemingway three years later, because I wanted to share with him my own insights
into the shadow-possessed personality, which he was very familiar with given
his clinical practice and in-depth research into the Soviet system and Nazi
regime; and I also sent him The Pearl of
Great Price and The Merciful Law of
Divine Synchronicity, because they tell the story of how I integrated my shadow
self with my ego personality and became one self whole and complete.
This, of course, is next-to-impossible
to do when one’s ego personality is so thoroughly imbued with one’s false
shadow self that one cannot tell the one from the other, which is why it is
impossible to break free of the human predicament in one lifetime alone; but
how can one break free of their false shadow self when the consciousness of their
own nothingness denies the divine imperative of the transformative process of
karma and reincarnation?
It’s only because I know this
that I can tolerate the unconscious bad faith of some of Jordan Peterson’s most
cynical critics, like Channel 4 News’s Cathy Newman. But as disappointing as
Cathy Newman was, none of Peterson’s critics annoyed me more than the
fiendishly devious Philip Dodd in the podcast Jordan Peterson & Philip Dodd on Free Thinking BBC May 2018. This
man was so evil in his intent to paint Jordan Peterson a “Fascist mystic” that
I had to hold myself back from screaming; that’s how much I detest the bad
faith of the shadow-possessed personality. But was Philip Dodd aware of
himself? Was he aware of his own false nature as the good professor and I and
all good people were?
No, he wasn’t; he was being true
to himself. But sadly, it was his false self that he was being true to. And it was this perception that
inspired the following spiritual musing that will take me around the corner and
begin the process of bringing this book home:
A Very Big Thought
“The good is the purest energy of
God. Be good, do good,
and you will satisfy your longing
for God.”
—Pythagoras
I have a very big thought that’s
taken hold of me, and I fear being called to work it out in a spiritual musing.
I don’t want to go there, because if I do I’ll be pulled into the deepest end
of the pool; and that terrifies me no less than when I’m called to write a poem
that sends chills up my spine, like my poem “Soul of a Liar” that captured the true
spirit of the shadow personality—
Soul of a Liar
It’s not true, what they say about you,
it’s a lie like all the other lies that
they say
about everyone they talk about, because
nothing they say can be trusted, —
Why is that?
They
mean well, but they continue to lie
despite their good intentions, and they
never stop lying even when they
know that they are lying, —
Why is that?
They
lie best when they tell the truth,
which is the mystery of the liar’s
nature,
and not until they can no longer suffer
what they are will they stop lying, —
Why is that?
The central
concept of this poem, which my muse worked
out for me to apprehend the soul of a liar, was revealed in the paradoxical
sentence: “They lie best when they tell the truth.” My insight pinned the devil down and forced it to yield its power,
an insight that I could not quite articulate until I wrote this poem, thus confirming
Zen poet Jane Hirshfield’s contention that poetry does our thinking for us.
I’ve always known
that a shadow-possessed personality cannot be trusted, and by shadow-possessed
I mean a person like my high school hero and literary mentor Ernest “Papa”
Hemingway whose menacing shadow took over his ego and drove him into deep
depression and suicide (his third wife Martha Gellhorn called him an
apocryphiar and pathological liar, and all his friends knew he could not be
trusted), which I explored in The Lion
that Swallowed Hemingway and my sequel My
Writing Life; but I could never quite give my gnostic awareness of the
shadow-possessed personality the literary clarity it deserved (as far a poetry
can be clear, that is) until I worked it out in “Soul of a Liar,” and this is
what I’ve being called to do in this spiritual musing with my big thought on
the gnostic way of life that has taken hold of me.
My big thought
presupposes my life’s quest for my true self, and because my journey of
self-discovery was born of my own life-experiences which I creatively worked
out in more than twenty books into the quintessential gnostic truth of my life,
I fear that by giving literary clarity to my big thought I may jolt the reader
into a perspective they may not be ready to apprehend; but I am a servant of my
muse.
It seems then that
the quintessential gnostic truth of my life is what I’ve been called upon to
explore in today’s spiritual musing, despite my trepidations; but where’s my
point of entry? What gate will open to let me into the deep mystery of this
simple gnostic truth?
No sooner did I
ask this question and a quote from Albert Einstein popped into my mind, “Everything should be made as simple as
possible, but not simpler,” and I know
beyond a shadow of doubt that this is my entry point into the quintessential
gnostic truth of my life; because, after years of inspired reading, studying, and
living and writing about the secret way
of life, I’m left with the simple gnostic truth that the ultimate purpose and meaning of life is to simply be a good
person, because being a good person embodies all ways in life, both secular and
spiritual, into one’s destined purpose of wholeness and completeness.
There, I’ve said
it; now all I have to do is unpack it. And that’s where trepidation sets in,
because the simplicity of this gnostic truth can burn a hole in one’s mind like
a laser beam of pure intention that cuts through all the precious vanities of one’s
life and set soul free from the all the delusions of one’s ego/shadow personality,
and this no one wants to do for fear of self-negation (“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever
will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” said Jesus);
hence my apprehension. But why? Why must one fear being good a person? What is
it about being good that terrifies people?
No sooner did I
ask this and Saint Augustine popped into my mind with his famous supplication, “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.” But
just to make sure that I remembered the quotation correctly, I Googled St.
Augustine and learned that the original Latin translation of his famous saying
was, “Make me good, god, but not yet.” Which
is even better yet, because the original Latin translation gives synchronistic
confirmation to the theme of today’s musing, which I can render into one simple
question: why be good?
Why was St.
Augustine torn between being good and not being good? What was this dilemma
that tortured his soul? He did not want to sacrifice his concupiscence (he
loved sex too much), but to be good he had to tame his beast of lustful desire;
that’s why he was torn in two, and he suffered unbearable anguish and soul-wrenching
torment: hence his famous Confessions.
St. Augustine’s Confessions is one of the most moving
pieces of writing the world has ever seen, and to be honest I cannot bear
reading this book. His abject sycophancy to God turns my stomach. Which is why
I walked away from my Roman Catholic faith to become a seeker at such an early
age; I could not prostrate myself in abject submission to the God of
Christianity like St. Augustine, and I had to find my own way to my true self.
And after years of living the secret teachings of the way that I first discovered
in Gurdjieff’s teaching through Ouspensky’s book In Search of the Miraculous, my own eclectic individual way
eventually wrought out the gnostic way of life by simply being a good person.
But this does not
preclude any other way, either secular or spiritual, to one’s destined purpose
of wholeness and completeness, because all ways lead to one’s true self
eventually; and what my big thought is trying to tell me is this: all ways in life lead to the simple way
of being a good person, because goodness engages the transformative process of
reconciling one’s soul with one’s ego/shadow personality, which is the only way
to wholeness and completeness.
I would never have
arrived at this simple gnostic truth had I not had the experiences to support
it, but it’s to the nature of these experiences that brings my gnostic truth
into question, because my experiences were so far outside the scope of normal
human experience that no one would believe me if I revealed them; but I have
revealed them in my books Gurdjieff Was
Wrong, But His Teaching Works and The
Pearl of Great Price, and it behooves me to reveal them here to support the
premise of today’s spiritual musing.
I had four inexplicable
experiences in my life that connected the dots and solved the riddle of the
meaning and purpose of our existence: 1: I had an experience in the early stages
of my quest for my true self of going back through time where I experienced the
inception of life on Planet Earth when Soul, the I Am consciousness of God,
animated the amino acids, the first building blocks of life that were formed
when gaseous vapors from the lifeless planet rose up into the air and mixed
with gaseous vapors in the sky, thereby initiating the life process in the
world. 2: Years later, I had a past life regression to the infinite Body of God
where all souls come from. I was an atom of God with no reflective
self-consciousness, an embryonic soul waiting to be born in the world. 3: In
the same regression, I was sent into the world to process the vital life force,
the un-self-realized I Am consciousness of God, into a new “I” of God through
natural evolution, and I experienced the birth of my own reflective
self-consciousness in my first primordial human lifetime as the alpha male of a
small group of ten or twelve higher primates; and from lifetime to lifetime, I
continued to evolve in my reflective self-consciousness until I was ready to
take evolution into my own hands to complete what nature could not finish. And
finally, 4: In my current lifetime, I found the secret way of life first in the teachings of Gurdjieff and then in
the sayings and parables of Jesus, and I transformed the consciousness my
ego/shadow personality and became my
true self, thus completing what Nature could not finish.
These unbelievable
experiences informed me that we are all atoms of God, sparks of divine
consciousness as the poets say, souls encoded with God’s DNA; and we are all
destined to realise a separate and distinct identity, a new “I” of God, which
we do through natural evolution from one lifetime to the next until we are
ready to take evolution into our own hands and complete what natural evolution
through karma and reincarnation cannot finish. This is the meaning and purpose
of our existence.
Every soul will eventually
come to see that Nature cannot complete the process of self-realization, and
one must take evolution into their own hands to fulfill their destined purpose
of becoming what they are meant to be, which after years of living the secret way of life led me to see that
being a good person will complete what Nature cannot finish, because goodness is the sum of all virtues which
transforms our ego/shadow personality and makes our inner and outer self into
one self, whole and complete;
but to explain the individuation process goes beyond the scope of today’s
spiritual musing, and if I’m called to expound upon the transformative power of
goodness I will happily do so, but again with trepidation.
———
Wouldn’t
you know it, then!
This is why I was called to write One
Rule to Live By: Be Good. This book was born of my own creative imperative,
and it doesn’t really matter that it was inspired by professor Jordan
Peterson’s call to destiny with his defense of free speech that impelled him to
share his own way in 12 Rules for Life:
An Antidote to Chaos; when one is called by life, one is called by whatever
means necessary to fulfill their destined purpose. So, I’m grateful for the
good professor’s inspiration; but I would have written a book like this
regardless, because my oracle always has its way with me…
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