(Essay) And They Shall Be One Flesh: 12 Signs That We Are Dualists

[Cleric K]

...

Great job once again, Ashvin! Very well laid down points. They made me think of two things that I would like to mention.

The first is that this addiction is not entirely of the same kind as other addictions. The big difference is that in most other addictions we know what it is to be addicted but in most cases we also know what it is to be sober. The big difficulty today is that it's not just about abolishing dualism. The trouble is that people don't know what the sober state is, because it is something that is only now beginning to enter the general evolution. This is also why non-dualism is such a misnomer today. It's not enough to just stop thinking about duality. If I'm not particularly bright then if I keep my mouth shut I'll probably get into less trouble. But this in itself won't make me smart. This is the challenge, that it's not just about abolishing dual thinking but about working towards a higher form of consciousness.

This is connected to the second thing. We should be very careful about identifying the enemy. I'm saying this after quite some years of head banging against the wall. I'll try to illustrate it thus. If we believe that we're not thinking dualistically then we're thinking dualistically

Consider this Yin Yang fractal:



When we look at the whole image we can think to ourselves "I'm completely balanced now, I'm outside the duality." But in fact, it can be said that we're in the blind spot in the dark half, looking at the white half and seeing there the fractal of the whole, which, however, we believe is the full picture. As a matter of fact there's no point of view 'outside' the polarity. We spoke with Martin about this recently. The polarity of the mind is really the balancing of the two-petal lotus flower or the two brain hemispheres. This is achieved through concentration - all jumping around of thoughts must cease and all thinking must be focused as laser in the weightless point in the head. But this polarity is not the one from which the World proceeds. Interestingly, it was so for Hegel. For him the fractal of concepts was the World. Yet this polarity lives as an octave within higher order polarity (in the astral). There are even higher order polarities. Actually the feeling of dissociation comes not from the mind-polarity but from the astral. And this is quite obvious. It's much easier to conceptualize "It's all one" and collapse the mind. It's much more difficult to overcome the feelings of antipathy and embrace the world with Love - not only in some wishy-washy sentimental way but as real, sacrificial Love, such that we take responsibility for the sins of the world as if they are done by our very own brothers, sisters, children and most importantly - ourselves.

My point is that we should guard against projecting our blame onto duality. Think about it: the very fact that we divide things into dual and non-dual is already a duality. These are very slippery things and if we try to solve them mentally they can lead to actual breakdown. Something of this sort happened to Nietzsche. It looks a little like Gödel's theorem: if a given axiomatic system can prove its consistency then it is not consistent (since the G statement can be formulated). Similarly, if thinking concludes that it is now in non-dual mode, it most certainly isn't.

It looks hopeless. What's the solution? First, we should understand that polarities are what temporal reality is weaved of. Polarity is not to be equated with evil or separateness. These latter occur only when polarities become extremely out-of-phase.

Imagine that you throw a stone and it falls on your head. You make the connection that a stone on the head causes pain. Now imagine that you throw it so hard that it makes a full orbit around the Earth. By the time it returns from behind you've already forgotten that you threw the stone. Then it hits you and you shout "Hey, who did that?" You see some people nearby and assume it was them. You throw a stone at them but you throw it too hard again and it makes a full orbit then hits someone else. Soon everyone all over the Earth throws stones and is being hit by stones. The problem is that no one can make the connection how the stones we throw hit us or other people. Now this is out-of-phase condition.

Recently I gave similar metaphor here viewtopic.php?p=13825#p13825
The point is that we can't fight the dualities by confronting them directly. We throw a stone or adjust potentiometer but ultimately something else goes out of tune.

Generally, when we are absorbed in our work, especially if it requires a fair amount of intellectual thinking, it will seem as though we cannot help but think dualistically. That is because the very function of the intellect is to keep the 'subject' separated from the 'object' (and objects from other objects) so the latter can be analyzed more systematically and precisely. There have been times during the day when I completely forget how I had reasoned my way to certain holistic conclusions in the recent past. That happens because the mental habit of dualistic thinking has reasserted itself and my cognition is once again trapped within it's self-enclosed circular maze. Why is this dualism such an imprisoning force in our experience and what can we do about it?

Fighting against certain mode of thinking can turn out to simply perpetuate the war. We shouldn't simply label different kinds of cognition and prefer one over the other. Any kind of thinking has it's rightful place. It's not a bad thing that we formulated a thought in polar subject-object relation. The real question is how these thoughts fit in the big picture.

The solution can only be found if we have the High Ideal. In PoF this is approached with Moral Imagination, Moral Intuition. We don't know the exact solution, it's not humanly possible to solve that many equations for flying stones. But we can focus our intentions toward the potential where the problem is already solved. We need to have faith that the solution exists - it's only a matter of finding our way to it.

Let's say I'm taking a slice of bread from the toaster. Is it a problem that I'm seeing the toaster and the slice in the sensory realm and think about them as an object that I reach for? Not really. It is a nice thing to recognize the different modes of thinking but we need a different skill if we're to judge if it is really the thinking mode that causes problems. Ultimately, what's really important is the moral value of what we're doing, feeling, thinking. And this value is not measured against some predefined yardsticks. It's really about trying to relate everything to the One Unity. Of course now some will object and say that there isn't one morality but that it's all about individuals or groups which are loosely related. There's no question of moral life only for beings who have no chance to affect each other - that is, if they exist in independent realities. As long as there's even a single point of contact, there's always a more encompassing whole from which the groups can be seen. The groups can be in conflict or harmony, so we can't address these issues if we don't seek the moral whole which encompasses them.

In this sense, when I take the slice of bread, why am I doing it? To feed myself. Why do I need to feed myself? To provide nutrition for my body. Why? To be healthy? Why? To perform my daily tasks? Why? Because I have certain goals in mind? What goals? To provide for my family, to do something beneficial for society, to develop some new skills which will allow me to be even more helpful, to work in alignment with the evolutionary impulses of the time, which are part of the grand Cosmic eons, within which the One common existence of all beings flows.

So we see that everything we do, feel, think can ultimately be traced to its moral dimension. This is really what distinguishes man from the animal. The animal operates by the necessity of the instinct, man must seek the moral impulses for his actions in freedom. We can seek these impulses only if we hold the High Ideal, the vision that everything is ultimately part of the One Cosmic organism. If we don't do that we'll be moral for our self, for our family or nation, but at some point we'll encounter a group which will clash with our interests. To move beyond that point we need true understanding of the spiritual whole from which my group and the other are part. Only through that understanding I'll be able to draw the moral impulses that can harmonize the groups.

I just wanted to expand on what is, of course, already implicit in the essay - that overcoming duality is not an end in itself. We can only make sense of it when it's seen in the larger picture where everything that we do, feel and think has moral significance for the Cosmic Whole. It is now an interesting exercise to trace how each of these 12 points actually affects the moral dimension of existence. It will be seen that it's not simply that the points in themselves decide arbitrarily that this is bad, that is good, but it'll be seen that they stand on the way of freedom and morality that can reach for the One Unity.

[AshvinP]

...

Great job once again, Ashvin! Very well laid down points. They made me think of two things that I would like to mention.

Thank you, Cleric, especially for the great constructive feedback!

My point is that we should guard against projecting our blame onto duality. Think about it: the very fact that we divide things into dual and non-dual is already a duality. These are very slippery things and if we try to solve them mentally they can lead to actual breakdown. Something of this sort happened to Nietzsche. It looks a little like Gödel's theorem: if a given axiomatic system can prove its consistency then it is not consistent (since the G statement can be formulated). Similarly, if thinking concludes that it is now in non-dual mode, it most certainly isn't.

This is the crux of the matter and something intellectual thinking simply wants to ignore at all costs. It confronts that thinking with the evolve or die scenario, and mostly we choose "neither", which is not a stable option and practically equivalent to "die" in the medium term (and increasingly shorter-term). Or perhaps, by way of mystical sleep, we consciously choose "die" for our thinking.

It looks hopeless. What's the solution? First, we should understand that polarities are what temporal reality is weaved of. Polarity is not to be equated with evil or separateness. These latter occur only when polarities become extremely out-of-phase.

Imagine that you throw a stone and it falls on your head. You make the connection that a stone on the head causes pain. Now imagine that you throw it so hard that it makes a full orbit around the Earth. By the time it returns from behind you've already forgotten that you threw the stone. Then it hits you and you shout "Hey, who did that?" You see some people nearby and assume it was them. You throw a stone at them but you throw it too hard again and it makes a full orbit then hits someone else. Soon everyone all over the Earth throws stones and is being hit by stones. The problem is that no one can make the connection how the stones we throw hit us or other people. Now this is out-of-phase condition.

Recently I gave similar metaphor here viewtopic.php?p=13825#p13825
The point is that we can't fight the dualities by confronting them directly. We throw a stone or adjust potentiometer but ultimately something else goes out of tune.

Generally, when we are absorbed in our work, especially if it requires a fair amount of intellectual thinking, it will seem as though we cannot help but think dualistically. That is because the very function of the intellect is to keep the 'subject' separated from the 'object' (and objects from other objects) so the latter can be analyzed more systematically and precisely. There have been times during the day when I completely forget how I had reasoned my way to certain holistic conclusions in the recent past. That happens because the mental habit of dualistic thinking has reasserted itself and my cognition is once again trapped within it's self-enclosed circular maze. Why is this dualism such an imprisoning force in our experience and what can we do about it?

Fighting against certain mode of thinking can turn out to simply perpetuate the war. We shouldn't simply label different kinds of cognition and prefer one over the other. Any kind of thinking has it's rightful place. It's not a bad thing that we formulated a thought in polar subject-object relation. The real question is how these thoughts fit in the big picture.

The solution can only be found if we have the High Ideal. In PoF this is approached with Moral Imagination, Moral Intuition. We don't know the exact solution, it's not humanly possible to solve that many equations for flying stones. But we can focus our intentions toward the potential where the problem is already solved. We need to have faith that the solution exists - it's only a matter of finding our way to it.

Let's say I'm taking a slice of bread from the toaster. Is it a problem that I'm seeing the toaster and the slice in the sensory realm and think about them as an object that I reach for? Not really. It is a nice thing to recognize the different modes of thinking but we need a different skill if we're to judge if it is really the thinking mode that causes problems. Ultimately, what's really important is the moral value of what we're doing, feeling, thinking. And this value is not measured against some predefined yardsticks. It's really about trying to relate everything to the One Unity. Of course now some will object and say that there isn't one morality but that it's all about individuals or groups which are loosely related. There's no question of moral life only for beings who have no chance to affect each other - that is, if they exist in independent realities. As long as there's even a single point of contact, there's always a more encompassing whole from which the groups can be seen. The groups can be in conflict or harmony, so we can't address these issues if we don't seek the moral whole which encompasses them.

In this sense, when I take the slice of bread, why am I doing it? To feed myself. Why do I need to feed myself? To provide nutrition for my body. Why? To be healthy? Why? To perform my daily tasks? Why? Because I have certain goals in mind? What goals? To provide for my family, to do something beneficial for society, to develop some new skills which will allow me to be even more helpful, to work in alignment with the evolutionary impulses of the time, which are part of the grand Cosmic eons, within which the One common existence of all beings flows.

So we see that everything we do, feel, think can ultimately be traced to its moral dimension. This is really what distinguishes man from the animal. The animal operates by the necessity of the instinct, man must seek the moral impulses for his actions in freedom. We can seek these impulses only if we hold the High Ideal, the vision that everything is ultimately part of the One Cosmic organism. If we don't do that we'll be moral for our self, for our family or nation, but at some point we'll encounter a group which will clash with our interests. To move beyond that point we need true understanding of the spiritual whole from which my group and the other are part. Only through that understanding I'll be able to draw the moral impulses that can harmonize the groups.

Very good points. I think what you write above about "fighting against" the dualistic thinking is absolutely correct and something I should have highlighted more. It reminds me of something I was thinking about lately - when we start eliminating self-destructive habits in the course of our routine lives, more and more power seems to be projected into the ones remaining. Eventually, we are left with one mental habit which seems nearly omnipotent, and perhaps it is omnipotent in the face of mere intellectual thinking which cannot perceive the deep moral dimensions you speak of above. I have definitely experienced this aspect of the addiction and I still am to some extent. Your post is very helpful reminder of this! It also reminds me of this Wisdom from Rilke:

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares have been set around us, and there is nothing that should frighten or upset us. We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have, moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly be differentiated from everything around us. We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love

[Lou Gold]

The greatest love story ever told - perhaps the only One ever told - is that between the archetypal Spirit and Soul. These two partners have been estranged from each other ever since the Fall of humankind - the dawn of its self-awareness - desperately longing to rekindle the flames of their primordial romance. More technical names for their manifestations are Subject and Object, Mind and Matter, Idea and Reality, Cognition and Perception, and many other similar terms. It is so powerful a Love story that we can make sense of humanity's entire historical and cultural evolution through its aesthetic narrative. This story has taken a tense dramatic turn in every epoch we can account for. In our own epoch, we have arrived at a critical juncture - just as the civil institution of marriage is at its most frail, so is the spiritual reality underlying it. Every individual is now faced with the unique prospect of losing his or her inner partner and thereby being torn asunder. The Good News, however, is that we ourselves, as the individual mediators between Spirit and Soul, are now given the freedom to decide our romantic fate. That is the reason why Carl Jung termed the reconciliation of the opposites in his analaytic psychology as the process of "individuation".

For starters, I would tell the story quite differently saying instead: When heavenly bodies fall to earth they take on a hard materialist shell that sets up a tension between spirit and flesh which both obfuscates and propels further creativity and evolution. The task becomes not so much one of spirit defeating flesh as cracking open the shell, letting the light in and rebirthing a new relation between spirit and flesh, liberating the soul not to an elsewhere heaven or nirvana, but to good works on earth as divine instruments in the here-and-now repairing and extending the world.



I confess that your 12 points of habituation to dualism strike me as a parallel to 12-step program emphasis on "I am an addict" or a commonplace Christian plea, "Forgive me, a sinner." It's not that this is completely incorrect. It's a decent starter but it must move on (for me) -- and I suspect you will agree -- into please help me liberate me/we into an expanded heaven-and-earth, here-and-now, individual-and-collective relationship. Please help me not get stuck endlessly in being an addict/sinner so that I may more become an instrument for OUR divine will.

[Lou Gold]

I would add that the birth trauma of spirit being compressed into a more limited form sets in place a fundamental unconscious desire for a love that reconnects. This, for me, is the fundamental essential driver of the soul through the karmic continuum of multiple lives and modes of being. There will be many repairs and experiments in this ongoing process of "world without end." Boas viagens and happy trails.

[AshvinP]

The greatest love story ever told - perhaps the only One ever told - is that between the archetypal Spirit and Soul. These two partners have been estranged from each other ever since the Fall of humankind - the dawn of its self-awareness - desperately longing to rekindle the flames of their primordial romance. More technical names for their manifestations are Subject and Object, Mind and Matter, Idea and Reality, Cognition and Perception, and many other similar terms. It is so powerful a Love story that we can make sense of humanity's entire historical and cultural evolution through its aesthetic narrative. This story has taken a tense dramatic turn in every epoch we can account for. In our own epoch, we have arrived at a critical juncture - just as the civil institution of marriage is at its most frail, so is the spiritual reality underlying it. Every individual is now faced with the unique prospect of losing his or her inner partner and thereby being torn asunder. The Good News, however, is that we ourselves, as the individual mediators between Spirit and Soul, are now given the freedom to decide our romantic fate. That is the reason why Carl Jung termed the reconciliation of the opposites in his analaytic psychology as the process of "individuation".

For starters, I would tell the story quite differently saying instead: When heavenly bodies fall to earth they take on a hard materialist shell that sets up a tension between spirit and flesh which both obfuscates and propels further creativity and evolution. The task becomes not so much one of spirit defeating flesh as cracking open the shell, letting the light in and rebirthing a new relation between spirit and flesh, liberating the soul not to an elsewhere heaven or nirvana, but to good works on earth as divine instruments in the here-and-now repairing and extending the world.
...
I confess that your 12 points of habituation to dualism strike me as a parallel to 12-step program emphasis on "I am an addict" or a commonplace Christian plea, "Forgive me, a sinner." It's not that this is completely incorrect. It's a decent starter but it must move on (for me) -- and I suspect you will agree -- into please help me liberate me/we into an expanded heaven-and-earth, here-and-now, individual-and-collective relationship. Please help me not get stuck endlessly in being an addict/sinner so that I may more become an instrument for OUR divine will.

Lou,

That's a much deeper story and not the one I am trying to tell here. I don't think we can skip over the basic steps of recognizing and confessing our addiction right to the denoument of what you write in bold. This process has taken many lifetimes we no longer remember and will take many more we cannot yet conceive. So what we need to work on first is the re-membering of who we were, are, and could be. I can't say I know too much about the 12-step programs, but I imagine they work best when people follow the steps carefully and patiently.

As Cleric said, we can certainly focus on the high ideals of moral dimension to help manifest future qualities in the present. That is a good exercise with the 12 signs in the essay - read them over and try to concretely sense the moral dimension of what they signify. They clearly all relate to separation, alienation, isolation, fragmentation, etc. They also relate to a deemphasizing of everything related to our individual sense of agency, ambition, and Self-determination, i.e. our importance in co-creating the world we and our descendents will live in for ages to come. I am definitely curious if you or others can sense other moral meanings in them.

[Lou Gold]

Lou,

That's a much deeper story and not the one I am trying to tell here. I don't think we can skip over the basic steps of recognizing and confessing our addiction right to the denoument of what you write in bold. This process has taken many lifetimes we no longer remember and will take many more we cannot yet conceive. So what we need to work on first is the re-membering of who we were, are, and could be. I can't say I know too much about the 12-step programs, but I imagine they work best when people follow the steps carefully and patiently.

As Cleric said, we can certainly focus on the high ideals of moral dimension to help manifest future qualities in the present. That is a good exercise with the 12 signs in the essay - read them over and try to concretely sense the moral dimension of what they signify. They clearly all relate to separation, alienation, isolation, fragmentation, etc. They also relate to a deemphasizing of everything related to our individual sense of agency, ambition, and Self-determination, i.e. our importance in co-creating the world we and our descendents will live in for ages to come. I am definitely curious if you or others can sense other moral meanings in them.

Ashvin,

I accept that you are well describing a preschool curriculum and I agree with starting at the beginning. Yes, I am going beyond ... beyond 2000+ years of "forgive me, a sinner." I am cautioning to be aware and not to get stuck with something like an "anti-ego ego" that, though helpful toward humility, can be limiting of ability. Again, it's not either/or but finding the Way(s) of dynamic both/and balance.

I am not arguing that the ways of Cleric/Ashvin are not useful for some but they are not the only or best ways for all. I, for example, have 20+ years and 1,000s of doses of Santo Daime, that have given me an ever-incomplete but very satisfying increased ability to enhance and polish my intuitive awareness. I do not proselytize, recognizing that it is a path only for those called to it and I would never urge any one to give it a try.

[AshvinP]

Lou,

That's a much deeper story and not the one I am trying to tell here. I don't think we can skip over the basic steps of recognizing and confessing our addiction right to the denoument of what you write in bold. This process has taken many lifetimes we no longer remember and will take many more we cannot yet conceive. So what we need to work on first is the re-membering of who we were, are, and could be. I can't say I know too much about the 12-step programs, but I imagine they work best when people follow the steps carefully and patiently.

As Cleric said, we can certainly focus on the high ideals of moral dimension to help manifest future qualities in the present. That is a good exercise with the 12 signs in the essay - read them over and try to concretely sense the moral dimension of what they signify. They clearly all relate to separation, alienation, isolation, fragmentation, etc. They also relate to a deemphasizing of everything related to our individual sense of agency, ambition, and Self-determination, i.e. our importance in co-creating the world we and our descendents will live in for ages to come. I am definitely curious if you or others can sense other moral meanings in them.

Ashvin,

I accept that you are well describing a preschool curriculum and I agree with starting at the beginning. Yes, I am going beyond ... beyond 2000+ years of "forgive me, a sinner." I am cautioning to be aware and not to get stuck with something like an "anti-ego ego" that, though helpful toward humility, can be limiting of ability. Again, it's not either/or but finding the Way(s) of dynamic both/and balance.

I am not arguing that the ways of Cleric/Ashvin are not useful for some but they are not the only or best ways for all. I, for example, have 20+ years and 1,000s of doses of Santo Daime, that have given me an ever-incomplete but very satisfying increased ability to enhance and polish my intuitive awareness. I do not proselytize, recognizing that it is a path only for those called to it and I would never urge any one to give it a try.

Lou,

If you get "forgive me, a sinner" from the essay, or anything Cleric or myself write here, then all I can say is you have not understood it at all. We are asking people to stop relying on 'faith' in this or that abstract concept which gives them comfort, in redemption from some external authority, and confront the inner spiritual and soul forces working within them. It is precisely the higher Ego-"I" who gives us the courage to pursue this path through Wisdom and pass through the eye of a needle into the Kingdom of God.

You may not call it "proselytizing" (and neither do I), but you are here commenting and advocating for an approach just like we are, so that criticism is also misdirected and really worn out.

[Lou Gold]

For starters, I would tell the story quite differently saying instead: When heavenly bodies fall to earth they take on a hard materialist shell that sets up a tension between spirit and flesh which both obfuscates and propels further creativity and evolution. The task becomes not so much one of spirit defeating flesh as cracking open the shell, letting the light in and rebirthing a new relation between spirit and flesh, liberating the soul not to an elsewhere heaven or nirvana, but to good works on earth as divine instruments in the here-and-now repairing and extending the world.

I confess that your 12 points of habituation to dualism strike me as a parallel to 12-step program emphasis on "I am an addict" or a commonplace Christian plea, "Forgive me, a sinner." It's not that this is completely incorrect. It's a decent starter but it must move on (for me) -- and I suspect you will agree -- into please help me liberate me/we into an expanded heaven-and-earth, here-and-now, individual-and-collective relationship. Please help me not get stuck endlessly in being an addict/sinner so that I may more become an instrument for OUR divine will.

Note: I hope my vision will not lead to some wholesale rejection of the compression of spirit. In fact, while tension may break open to novelty, compression contributes to strength. Consider this non-religious engineering analysis of Antoni Gaudí's soon-be-completed construction marvel of the Barcelona church of the Sagrada Família. Gaudí's vision of over a century ago predating any modern modeling techniques was based on the pure faith and his intense desire to pay-back or repair/reconstruct from the past sins of humans, which he did by reconnecting with God in nature.



After watching the video, please contemplate this archetypal story that I've posted elsewhere:

Here's a legend that I truly love about what is named as the "Child Jesus of Prague." This story plays a large role in my life.

At one time Santa Teresa de Avila sent an ornate small statue of the Child Jesus to a rich patron of the Catholic Church in Prague. It was given to the church and installed in its own altar. It exhibited some healing powers and gained a following. Later, during one of the religious wars associated with the Reformation, the church was badly damaged, the altar was destroyed and the statue vanished. A priest who loved the image dug through the rubble for weeks and finally found the image, which had lost its right hand, the hand of agency and blessing, the hand of spiritual power. The priest was sad because he couldn't fix it. He thought of hiding it. Then a voice "of God" said, "No don't hide it. Place it in full view at the front of the church and pray to the Holy Mother for help", which he did. The next day a passing craftsman saw and took it, returning in a few days with it fully repaired. He and the priest then built a new altar and installed the image which soon exhibited many times more healing power and today is still venerated as a major iconic miracle-producing image.

The archetypal lesson is that societal childhood trauma must be revealed so it can be healed, become creative and release even more power. In an emerging modern psychological/medical/engineering model, it would be called by someone like Gabor Maté, "The Wisdom of Trauma."

[Lou Gold]

Lou,

You may not call it "proselytizing" (and neither do I), but you are here commenting and advocating for an approach just like we are, so that criticism is also misdirected and really worn out.

For clarification, please note that I would never advocate for the Santo Daime approach. Indeed, advocacy/proselytizing is explicitly prohibited along this path. Thank you for your comprehension.

[AshvinP]

Here's a legend that I truly love about what is named as the "Child Jesus of Prague." This story plays a large role in my life.

At one time Santa Teresa de Avila sent an ornate small statue of the Child Jesus to a rich patron of the Catholic Church in Prague. It was given to the church and installed in its own altar. It exhibited some healing powers and gained a following. Later, during one of the religious wars associated with the Reformation, the church was badly damaged, the altar was destroyed and the statue vanished. A priest who loved the image dug through the rubble for weeks and finally found the image, which had lost its right hand, the hand of agency and blessing, the hand of spiritual power. The priest was sad because he couldn't fix it. He thought of hiding it. Then a voice "of God" said, "No don't hide it. Place it in full view at the front of the church and pray to the Holy Mother for help", which he did. The next day a passing craftsman saw and took it, returning in a few days with it fully repaired. He and the priest then built a new altar and installed the image which soon exhibited many times more healing power and today is still venerated as a major iconic miracle-producing image.

Honestly, my first thought is that it is pointing to idolatry. I am not talking about someone holding to a different view than my own as "idolatry". Rather, I am saying it is placing the "healing power" and veneration in an external object which then serves to mask the reality of our own inner spiritual activity as that which heals. And that is precisely what you are pointing to below:

The archetypal lesson is that societal childhood trauma must be revealed so it can be healed, become creative and release even more power. In an emerging modern psychological/medical/engineering model, it would be called by someone like Gabor Maté, "The Wisdom of Trauma."

And from where else does revelation come in the modern age than from our own Thinking? Perhaps you will say doses of this or that psychotropic substance is the key, in which case I am no longer naive enough to think I can argue otherwise. I will just say, I disagree.