An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me" he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. "One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. "The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person too." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?". The old Cherokee simply replies, "The one you feed". [Native American, source unknown]

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Weapons of Mass-Reconstruction

Reducing our personal crimes against humanity

An extracted chapter from the book Healing the Hurts of Nations by Palden Jenkins

One of the biggest recent crimes at work in the world has been complacency and indifference. It allows questionable outrages to take place unnoticed and unrestrained. Tracks can be covered, false claims made, facts massaged, victims forgotten, vast sums of money can be shifted illicitly and situations and their causes can be concealed. Many of us are aware of what's happening and do feel concern, yet our busily self-preoccupied lives and our remoteness from events and decision-makers create a culture of indifference and marginalisation of anything inconvenient. Society has become individualised, atomised and alienated. Sections of our own psyches are compartmentalised and unintegrated so that we manifest different aspects of ourselves on Monday mornings, Friday nights and Sunday afternoons.

When you're suffering hardship it is easy to believe you're forgotten or ill-judged as a dependent 'basket case'. Self-interest and 'the national interest' are taken as the basis on which everything is judged. The old lady down the road or the victims of atrocities in East Timor, Tibet or Congo, for most of us, live in another world. Perhaps it's their problem, not my responsibility. Such callous complacency, whether by practised by omission or commission, reached almost cult proportions in the 1980s, but now new connections are being made and, awkwardly, we're realising that our own and others' problems are connected. This has led us into an uncomfortable zone where the responsibilities of being human are clarifying. When you drive your car, it affects someone else, and when others drive their cars, the affected person is you.

The collective psyche of humanity is one being. We are its eyes, hands and legs. The Tibetans have a deity, the thousand-armed Chenrezig (Avalokitesvara), who holds up all sentient beings. He represents the heart of the world or the compassionate aspect of the collective psyche, and the symbolism of the thousand arms represent the way our thoughts, feelings and experiences funnel into one big, global experiential pot. The collective psyche functions like an integrated circuit. Most people ignore it, except in those instances when the phone rings and it's someone they have just been thinking about - but even then, it is often rationalised as 'chance' or 'how strange', in conformity with the cult of individualism. But it isn't chance, and it's perfectly natural: a slip of the mind lets it past the self-editing process, allowing a short perception of the integral connectivity of the collective psyche.

We live our lives on each other's behalf. Each of us is a facet of the same diamond, and we may choose to see either facets, or the whole diamond, or each as integral to the other. Famine refugees live out their experience to assist people suffering plenty - this is the diamond at work, seeking to balance itself. Excesses such as famine and over-feeding do not have to exist - they represent opposite sides of the same coin called 'hunger and want', a manifestation of the poverty of the human soul. Affluence, hedonism and shopaholism are as much symptoms of malnourishment as starvation is. Disproportions and excesses will subside only when the whole 'hunger and want' issue is collectively reduced to more workable, fair and moderate proportions, when poor, rich and average people interact and identify more directly with each other. Wrongs such as hunger occur because we are culturally conditioned to visualise ourselves as separate and unconnected, which means that hungry people don't matter as long as we are well fed. Thus we render ourselves incapable of acting together, consciously, in solidarity and synergy. Though individualised, we're nevertheless quite good at behaving as herds, because unconsciousness is involved - herd-mentality and togetherness are not the same thing. Togetherness is the natural condition of humanity: we are tribal by nature, and the biggest tribe is humankind.

Contact and responsivity between parts of the collective psyche need to be strengthened so that they consciously act as the parts of the same wholeness that they are. If this doesn't happen intentionally, our psyche tries to make it happen unconsciously. This is how Americans unconsciously created 9-11: the polarisation of cultural extremes between USA and Afghanistan became so large that a short-circuiting override took place, sparking across the gap and taking the form of 9-11. Commendably, many Americans noted the deeper lesson, that de-polarisation, befriending and interaction must take place. Perhaps it is they who are the true US patriots - if, that is, patriotism has a role in the 21st Century.

Crises such as 9-11 help bring the inherent unity of humanity up to and over the threshold of public awareness. The collective psyche, seeking reintegration, can do this in two main ways: by raising collective awareness to give humans opportunity to reintegrate themselves, or by force and trickery to bring about similar results. 9-11 was a case of the second option trying to jump-start the first option. It widened a rift between the collective head (vested interests, government and institutions) and heart (public feeling). This rift will play itself out until fundamentally resolved. 9-11 was an indicator that the world psyche has embarked on a course of self-healing, though progress depends greatly on what humans - not just Americans - decide.

The wonders of a full stomach are optimised if we know what an empty stomach feels like. The glories of chocolate are best enjoyed when it is an uncommon treat. The privilege of affluence is best appreciated if its benefits are shared and spread around. Underprivileged people are generally far more efficient and productive energy-consumers than better-off people: they create greater benefit from smaller inputs. By rights this should be a global balancing factor, since energy follows the easiest path, but self-interest and unequal terms of trade intervene to co-opt poorer people as cheap labour and as servants to fulfil richer people's needs. Poorer nations are lent vast sums to help them integrate into the rich-people's system, for rich people's profit and on their terms, and then they are expected to pay back the loans too, to multiply that profit. This is a recipe for disaster. This is why the World Trade Center was hit: it was a warning that a global correction is in process.

Public awareness helps us knit our world into a more integral whole. One characteristic of modern crises is that many of them take place in corners of the world we hardly know - Albania, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Kalimantan, Tibet, Somalia and Rwanda now have a place on the world's mental map. This has a psychically balancing effect, creating threads of attention and linkage between global extremes, encouraging energy-interchange between people who suffer the half-deaths of acute need and chronic plenty. Poor people receive material sustenance while rich people receive emotional sustenance. This unconscious trade acts as a basis for building a fairer, more conscious exchange which, eventually, will balance world conditions.

In early 2003 the isolated Solomon island of Tikopia was ravaged by a cyclone: the islanders survived using basic, well-honed survival skills which rudely mirrored back to urban TV-watchers their own survival-weakness and dependency on civilisation's appurtenances. Boats were anxiously sent with disaster relief, but who, at that time, was in a greater disaster? The islanders, with their simple ways, or the TV-watchers who were embroiled in a declaration of war to keep the oil flowing, to power their lifestyles? These very lifestyles indirectly caused that cyclone to hit Tikopia - swirled into a frenzy by weather conditions caused by global warming.

Wherever we live, it's a matter of lending more awareness to the wider world, of binding ourselves into the warp and weft of humanity's deeper experience. We need to step beyond the scope of our personal lives and neighbourhoods. In a psychic sense, geographical distance does not exist: the criticals that separate us are cultural and experiential distance. Compassion means feeling with others, putting ourselves in their boots and feeling what it's like to be them. Pity and sympathy are not required. Insulation from the mainstream of world events is disaster-inducing - it reinforces humanity's unconnectedness and complacency. Semi-conscious compassion has steadily been growing in recent decades, yet many people feel emotionally strained after a moving crisis, and 'compassion fatigue' sets in. This is a growth-pang, not unwillingness, and awareness-inducing activities change this. These can be pitched to fit into a busy schedule and to build a sense of active global participation.

Be careful to avoid getting caught up in the noise, dramas and jangle of the daily news, which is so often corrupted by the passing judgements of commentators and public figures. Subscribe to a weekly news-magazine or listen to or watch documentaries offering overviews and contextual analysis, to focus on the main issues and wider significance of current events. Stand back and sift the valuable information from the attendant noise that is common in the mass media - they have column-inches and broadcast-minutes to fill. Watch for the small page-five comments that reveal important trends and less sensational yet symptomatically suggestive events.

What should we do? It is inadvisable for this book to prescribe formulae. The challenge is to use the material of our life-experience to find our own special contributions and ways forward. The greatest ingredient in world-healing is attention - attention given to the forgotten, concealed, ignored and covered-up aspects of reality. Even if you devote just one hour per week to such activities, consistently every week, it adds up to 500 hours over ten years. Commitment and regularity works wonders. Find your own level, keep reviewing it, continue in the work and stay on the case. Here are some useful suggestions.

Get on with your life's work

Of all the things we can do, this is crucial. The world is in a parlous state because we omit to pursue our callings - the tasks each of us came here to carry out. No one is here by accident - reflect on this. We customarily set aside our life's work or delay it until conditions are right - and 'not yet' becomes never. Or we fall into the trap of believing we have no purpose, or no right to have one: this can be a parental or cultural conditioning pattern - 'little me' syndrome.

If we omit to develop our life's work, a conflict grows between our soul and personality. Part of us wishes to be somewhere else, to become or to do something else. This weakening of presence, energy and attention, even if unconscious, is deeply compromising, a fight with fear or guilt. Today this fight is a major cause of disease, as the soul tries to prompt us to wake up and get on with it. Cancer, a conversion of under-fulfilled soul-growth into unwanted physical cell-growth, lays it on the line, forcing us to commit to being alive and fully present. Contracting an ailment such as cancer is a message that a soul is ready to move forward. Hence that cancer approaches epidemic proportions in our day. A softer version is depression, a global epidemic in which hope subsides to a point where we must either re-frame the terms of our life, make an emotional breakthrough and let go of past patterns, or go under - our soul is trying to force us to decide to bring light into our hearts.

By withholding our gifts and commitment we deprive the world of opportunities, solutions and person-power. Imagine the staggering effect of millions of people withholding their life purpose. Imagine the unwritten music, uninvented innovations, unborn projects, unhelped people and unpainted pictures created by this. During the 20th Century, denial of life purpose was standard practise, even though, supposedly, we possess free will. This withholding has been a crime against humanity, against ourselves, against nature. This is a tough statement, but there's truth in it. The ultimate act of free will is to serve the larger whole.

So what is my life's work? God doesn't announce it out loud, and schools, parents and teachers rarely help. Even when you have a clear sense of it, it is difficult to sum up in words. Life's work goes through a succession of phases. It is personal and specific: when you are on purpose, you feel you're in the right place at the right time doing the right thing, engaged and alive. When you're off purpose you feel stuck up an alleyway of meaninglessness, sidelined, possibly forever. This isn't true, but it feels like that. Meaningless phases of life and the 'dark night of the soul' represent transitional periods where we are obliged to examine, revise and update our life-purpose.

Here are a few clues to help clarify life-purpose.

• When you were 7-11 years old, what did you dream of becoming when you grew up? Examine this for symbolic clues. If you dreamt of becoming a brain-surgeon, your purpose might actually be to help people change their way of thinking. Or perhaps you need to be crucially relied on to perform delicate, crucial actions. I dreamt of being an airline pilot and, while that's not my career, I do take people on long experiential journeys and, as with pilots, the toughest part of the job is successfully landing them on the ground again!
• Think back to those instances when you felt deeply happy, engaged, alive and making a contribution, even if it was in a 'spare time' activity. Note the details of the situation and what felt special about it. What conclusions can you draw from this, and what will you do about it?
• Choose several people you admire: what do you respect them for, and what qualities of theirs would you wish to emulate? Weave these into your life.
• Look at what you most fear. Our life's work is scary because it involves rising to our full stature and standing up for our commitment. Review instances in your life where you felt really scared. What were you scared of, and what did you do then? Look for further fears hiding beneath that. Note it all down and, next time, use your fear to move forward. Many people who have changed history started out afraid and in despair - this is a clue.
• What do you know you must do? If you were given the money and opportunity to fulfil your dreams, what would you do? Since you probably don't have that money and opportunity, what are you going to do about it anyway, now? What contribution would it make to others?
• Here's a tricky one. What did your parents succeed or fail in achieving with their own lives, that was significant to them? Even if you choose to live life differently from them, there will still be common threads and similarities between their and your life-purposes. Check out your ancestors too: the 'life-purpose gene' can hop a generation or two. In my ancestry there was a Welsh healer who was a stroppy old git and difficult to live with, but he was very successful where doctors failed, a healer of last resort. A bit like me (the stroppy bit too!).
• What world issues most stir you up? Identify specific instances. These might manifest far away in Ethiopia or Mexico yet, if they stir us up, they invariably connect with dilemmas or pain we too face or have faced, or with situations where we have felt helpless, wronged or victimised. Our life purpose has something to do with righting wrongs we have experienced, and with assisting others in learning what we have learned or still are learning.
• Visualise yourself (say) twenty years from now (choose the time intuitively). Follow your imagination: visualise what life will be like, in factual terms. See yourself and feel out the details of your life-activities at that time. How do you feel about what's happening? What are you doing and what contribution are you making? What is fulfilling and what is challenging? How are others responding? What to you love and what do you fear about it? Explore it fully. When you feel complete, close it down and write down the scenario, immediately. Then, re-examine it: if there are aspects you don't like, what do you need to change to make them different, and if there are aspects you like, what must you do to get to that point? Make a timetable of dates and goals along the path to that time. This is a good envisioning tool.
• When we near our death, if we have not made progress with certain important things, we regret it as a lost opportunity. Visualise yourself at the end of your life and feel the feeling of it. What do you most regret having omitted to do - or to be? Choose 3-5 things. What wider effects did this have on the world around you? Explore the details of your feelings. Then come out of the visualisation, back to the present, and write down any thoughts arising from the experience. This can help you clarify what to do with the rest of your life.

Fulfilling our life's work - at least as much as life permits - is pretty much the most rewarding aspect of life available to us. When we leave life we take nothing with us, except for what we have become by being alive. This is life's big payoff, and nothing really works as a substitute. It's not what you get for what you do, it's what you become by doing it.

Make changes in your habits and overstep personal boundaries

If you are walled inside a comfort-zone of regularised life-habits, the winds of change cannot easily reach you except by forceful disruption: in your actions and behaviour you have asserted that you want to be shielded from life's tidal powers. So it is necessary to 'tread the edge' a bit more. Take the risk of stirring up elements of your life and stepping out. Go on, live more dangerously. Take steps to change your consumption patterns: cut your car-driving or give people lifts, change your energy consumption and diet, and check the sourcing of products you buy. Security and life-purpose tend to conflict: you don't have to be insecure, but you do need to be clear that fear of insecurity should not stop you from moving forward. Security is relevant, but it should not be an obstacle. If in doubt, throw it all up in the air and see what comes back to you. Be willing to take risks and to actually 'do the business'. To build a wonderful garden or to help single mothers, there's hard work involved - skills-development, trial-and-error, uptimes and downtimes, experience-gathering and dealing with circumstances. People might discourage or criticise you: how much does this matter? Fear of failure or of insecurity might challenge you and there might be hurdles to cross, but these exist to hone your focus and commitment. When you surmount them, you unlock doors, set miracles in motion and gain headwind or assistance.

Make use of events and changes in your life

There is meaning to the events that befall us - our inner and outer lives do connect up. When fortunes or misfortunes come your way, do what you can to make the best use of them. Give thanks each evening for everything in your life. A failure well-handled is a success. Misfortunes made good are in some respects better than good fortune. All events have an underlying meaning and challenge attached. The key mechanism is the use we make of events. In real-life situations, patterns can be changed and life's deeper principles and threads are worked out. Our life-purpose presents itself through the events of our lives now. These constitute the nexus of progress.

You might be doing it, but not recognising it - and there might be more

Look again at your life. In what areas do you bring benefit to others or to wider situations? How do you contribute to the resolution of issues and problems - right now? In what areas are you a catalyst of healing - where's your special gift here? Take note of these and accentuate them. You might not fully realise the significance of what you're already doing. You might be a parent, feeling in a side-alley, but you don't know what your kids will be doing in the 2030s as a result of your inputs. Life-purpose is not necessarily big and dramatic - even if you become president, it can be really tedious. If you do something small and local, it can have immense wider consequences. It's better to do small things well than big things badly.

Support something or someone good

Amplify your life-purpose by assisting others in theirs, or by backing chosen good causes. Whatever your life-conditions, there is energy left to support good projects or people, somehow. People carrying out good deeds often run on a shoestring, lack support, skills, contacts, office equipment or someone to talk to. Offer to sort out their mailing list, or give them a ream of paper, a tank of gas or a clap on the back. Even if you are bedridden, poor or disabled, you still have time and attention available. Even if you have no time, you might have contacts, ideas, money or stuff in your attic. Support those who support others.

Get involved with things that matter for the future

Get engaged with issues that stir you up or affect you, or your family, neighbours or peers. Even if you focus on just one arena of attention, work at it, follow things through and do something that makes a difference. This might involve local community issues, specific wider causes, letter-writing to officials or the press, standing up at a meeting, or contacting the Afghan embassy to make connections in Afghanistan. Work on nature reserves, help grannies, be a child's adopted uncle or aunt, start or join a campaign - whatever it is, get engaged, even if you keep its duration or scope moderate. Set time and attention aside, do the homework, get your hands dirty, make a difference.

Talk to your children, parents, neighbours and associates

Come out with it and speak your truth. Bring out your magic. It is unnecessary to convert others to your way of thinking, and zeal doesn't help: just share your perceptions, beliefs and convictions, for the record and for the sake of truth and integrity. If you disagree with someone, you don't have to argue: "I understand where you're coming from, and I have a different way of seeing it", and then leave them to ask what it is. When you don't feel right about a situation, say so - and, if appropriate, suggest improvements. If you're outnumbered or in 'alien territory', hold to your standpoint, offer tantalisers, or let your light shine through - neither push your case nor hold back. The main thing is to speak and demonstrate your truth rather than withhold. If people don't take it up, that's okay - you said what you needed to say. Sometimes truth takes time to work through, so be patient, and stay with the process. This is a remedy for complicity and complacency.

Withdraw and add support on crucial issues

If you believe in or feel for something, give it your active support. If you feel something is not right, withdraw or qualify your support. Don't get compromised, corralled into things you don't like, or driven over. Don't assume that someone knows you support them - indicate your support. If you have a complaint, say or do something to encourage people first. At times this makes a big difference. Compromise, silence and reluctant passivity are major negative forces, creating enormous outcomes worldwide.

Live in community and work in groups

Individualism and nuclear family life are energy-inefficient, narrowing our spectrum of possibilities. Being good-neighbourly, living in communities and working in groups has its unromantic and trying side, yet group and community action allow possibilities that are unavailable to isolated individuals. They widen our relationship-spectrum and fulfil our innate tribal needs. Many believe that communities reduce and constrain individual freedom, but the opposite is true: living a relatively isolated life, each individual must deal with tasks and chores that, in communities, can be covered in a multiplicity of ways. This doesn't mean private space is given up: there are levels of engagement. The essence of group and community work is cooperation, and the power of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is a tremendous feeling when a group starts humming and synergising.

Exercise your instincts and intuitions

These perceptual and decision-making devices are often trained out of us. They know things the brains do not. They speak through our feelings and guts, or womb, in simple statements. Instincts are an animal intelligence causing animals to know what to do. Instincts simply say "get out of here", "something's not right", "sit down and relax", "avoid that food" or "that person is correct". Intuitions are more sophisticated: they might take the form of a strong bundle of ideas we wake up with in the morning, or a sudden unexplainable urge to turn left rather than follow our usual route. We are trained to disregard or downplay these messages, when actually they are the stuff of solutions and miracles.

To study your instinctual or intuitive patterns, do this: when you get a 'funny feeling', note the feeling and the options it offers; your feeling might say "don't go shopping, you've got enough" while your busy mind might say "but I ought to get some cheese for so-and-so's sandwiches tomorrow"; note the option you choose to follow, carry it out wholeheartedly and, later, review the situation - were your feeling or your rationales correct, in retrospect? Do this for a year - keep notes. Examine the costs and benefits of following and not following your feelings. The rule is: the more you use your instincts and intuitions, the more they work and the more accurate and reliable they become. They make our lives easier and reveal opportunities. But, be warned, they don't give reasons or explanations. All they say is "read this book", "go to Morocco" or "don't marry that person!". At times they take the form of events - a book falls off the shelf into your hands. Or you might cut your finger - what is this saying?

Forgiveness and self-forgiveness

Forgiving others does not mean forgetting or ignoring things. It involves holding others accountable without lasting blame, resentment or ill feeling. They did it, that's all. It's okay to change your relationship with a person in the light of what happened, but release the emotional charge. See things from their angle, whether or not you agree with it. Forgiveness means "I see your dilemma - I don't agree, and it hurt, but it's okay, and we'll go on from here". Self-forgiveness is important too: feeling bad about who we are or what we have done helps nothing. Just make a resolution to do things differently next time. Self-forgiveness involves owning up, being straight with ourselves, using it as a self-truth exercise. So what, if you're a useless, low-down, rotten, abject failure? It's okay, and you're not alone. Go speak to affected people. There is no right or wrong, there are only outcomes - so choose the consequences you seek to create, and if you screw up, keep working at it. By relieving your guilt you move into a stronger position to take full responsibility. This is deep.

Soul-pressure

The eruption of vision and possibility in the 1960s represented the beginning of a process of social transformation and planetary awakening. It was not necessary for most people to drop acid, go macrobiotic and change their lives, only to look at the new ideas, genuinely try them out and further develop them. Much was incorrect or naïve, but this does not detract from the overall sense of what came forward: all we still need is love, and world transformation is still totally relevant. During the 1970s this nascent body of understanding was suppressed and marginalised in official culture. This represented an enormous historic choice, emanating partially from the innate conservatism within society, and partially from the world's controlling interests. Both felt threatened. This was understandable because the evolutionary leap involved was big and scary - it represented a paradigm shift, a far-reaching change in the rules of the game. This vision came through young people, whose despair outweighed their fear - for older people, fear often outweighs despair. During the 1970s and 1980s things changed, but they didn't really change. We danced disco but didn't take the next step in the abolition of slavery - our own slavery. The big question, the paradigm shift, didn't go away - instead it worked on us from behind and from underneath.

As time went on, many people felt this soul-pressure, or events in their lives brought it home to them. Social transformation being suppressed, those who chose inner growth focused on personal growth - therapy, meditation, healing and broadening the scope of their lives. Great progress was made in developing techniques, knowledge and experience in many things. It was often said that world transformation cannot take place without personal change, and that the results of personal change radiate out to wider society. This is true. But during the 1980s, the movement hit a problem. Serious forces were seeking to control and divert public attention into increased materialism and narrow interest. Personal growth became internalised, marginalised in 'alternative' and 'complementary' sectors or adapted into performance trainings aimed to help individuals handle the existing system rather than transform it. Progress was made, but the prospect of wider transformation faded.

Thus there remained a big, outstanding issue: how could the personal growth movement convert into a wider social phenomenon, to shift civilisation's mindset and bring wider planetary changes? This required a collective choice and breakthrough that seemed not to be happening. The transformation went underground, not to sit there, but to emerge surreptitiously through the power of events. People were being obliged to think holistically by facing thoroughly unholistic situations. This is the name of the game at this time, in the first and second decades of the 2000s. The answer lies in shifts of public response to unfolding events, seeing things differently.

The momentum of change has not gone critical or overcome the braking forces in world society. Such a shift in critical mass awaits the conjoining of three predominant influences: world events, with their door-opening effect, a buildup of soul-pressure and an escalation of dilemmas between them. The chemical fusion of these three main forces creates change. The stakes are high.

In a sense the world is in a worse state now than ever. The task is greater now than before. It is easy to give in to a lurking feeling of depression and hopelessness. Yet humanity's collective psyche is primed for change more now than ever before. The darkest hour is just before dawn, and the apparent impossibility of world change is actually a symptom of standing on the edge of breakthrough. The world has to be sure it wants change and that it is committed. The collective unconscious is sifting through its doubts, fears and reservations before it repents, owning up to the possibility that we're all seriously lost and in danger. The escape-routes, avoidance strategies, illusions and falsities must be eliminated.

We are not helpless, even if the change process seems to take a long time. There is tremendous power in the action of contributing to bringing about change: it's a matter of ceasing to be part of the problem and adding to the solution. There are things we can do to raise the change-stakes globally. Complementary diplomacy: re-weaving the collective energy-matrix. Not only to solve specific world problems, but also to shift the energy-field of humanity and planet Earth.

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© Palden Jenkins, 2003. This material may be quoted with proper attribution and printed out in single copies for personal use and study, without permission. For publication on websites, in print publication or reproduction in larger amounts or for commercial gain , clearly specifying what you're referring to. Thanks.