Yesterday I watched two and a half movies. I watched Iron Man 2, the Avengers, and half of a French film entitled “Sarah’s Key”. That last was a sad but somewhat redemptive movie about one of ten million tragic stories from the Holocaust. No doubt all of this affected my dreams.
When I woke up this morning, I realized that Voldemort is me, too. This is in some respects a pretty basic psychological insight, in that people that assume the brain and mind are synonymous would postulate that any psychic conflict in dreams necessarily involves split psychic “parts”.
Indeed. As I look at this, I see that no process of psychological integration can fail to involve the understanding that we all have evil in us. There is no point any free person can reach in which the capacity for resentment, self pity, bitterness, malice, anger, hatred, viciousness, spitefulness, grandiosity and all the other negative emotions drops away. Their potential, their possibility, will always be there, even in the most advanced people.
You cannot not hate. You cannot make it go away. What you can do is recognize that you are NOT a saint, will never BE a saint, and that if you think you are all sunshine and love, you are probably a superficial person, who has simply split off the venom. You see this in “Christians” who hate in the name of God. You see this in “peacenik” left wingers, who hate in the name of peace and love. What good was accomplished by losing the Vietnam War? None: horrific, stomach turning violence was the outcome.
All of us need to own our violence. We need to see it.
I have often quoted a line I love from the Tao Te Ching: “Renounce sainthood. It will be 1,000 times better for everyone.” There are many meanings which can be teased out of this, but I think this is the primary one.
I should probably end there, but hell, I have more to add, even if it affects the flow.
What people call sainthood is likely quite often simply compulsive behavior–psychological aberration–taken to an extreme in the external FORM of predetermined religiously desirable behaviors, within which of course I include the churches of political radicalism.
An obvious example is the Mahdi of the Sudan, who lived in a cave for some time, and did the sorts of things Sufi saints did (fasting, recitation, renunciation). Given troops, he turned out to be a vicious, sadistic, sexually voracious pig. But his status as a saint never disappeared, and he is idolized to this very day by some Islamists.
More generally, though, I agree with Moshe Feldenkrais that almost all forms of what is called “greatness” is to some greater or lesser extent psychological dysfunction. Who is driven to “lead”? People who are driven to lead. Again, it is for this reason that the Tao Te Ching teaches that only those who do not want to be king are fit to be king.
Few thoughts on a rainy “Sun’s Day”.