So often we are concerned with the evanescent, the surface. An important reason for this, in my view, is that the depths are where the dragons are. It is not only possible, but increasingly common, for people to enter physiological maturity never having had to truly face the truly important tasks of life, most notably the process of individuation, of forming some standing sense of self which is not blown about easily.
People hide in their electronics. When face with stresses they don’t know how to handle, they start playing video games, or texting, or surfing social media. They don’t build actual emotional intelligence. They don’t learn to process their own emotions, and don’t build true empathy for the emotions of others.
This is a root cause of the increasing effectiveness of propaganda in our current day. People, especially young people, do not know who they are, and have no plan or path for figuring it out. They feel existential angst and don’t know why. And this makes them excellent targets for propaganda, because what it feeds on is a need to belong, to feel a sense of moral certainty, to know what to do, and through all these to feel a sense of self and purpose, to feel like one is “living”. That one is a dupe never occurs to someone who NEEDS these emotions. How could it?
As I have said often, I have a deep sense of connection to what I would describe as the twin processes of Breathwork and Kum Nye. Both work to build a sense of connection with one’s self, to go deep.
One certainly does find dragons in the deep, but one also finds joy. You cannot learn to love life without facing the terrors of life, the horrors of life, the untold suffering on this planet. You cannot learn to love life without courage and depth.