“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.” Carl Jung
(an excerpt from my book, Activating Your Loveseed: Revealing the Blueprint For a Better World.”)
There is no shortage of unconscious behavior on the planet every day. What is this moral effort Jung is speaking about? I believe that it is the missing piece of the puzzle in our world today. It is intimately connected to your loveseed, which is the source of the evolutionary impulse, which that even Darwin himself spoke about. His more widely known first opus, The Origin of the Species focuses on genetic mutation and selection based on the survival of the fittest, and seems to be a modern-day bible for the corporate and political world where indeed, survival has to do with the biggest and the best and most.
This version is becoming extinct, as his second and more mature work, The Descent of Man, shows how the foundational aspects of selectivity and survival are maintained, while a higher and more complex form of life evolves. This higher evolutionary cycle is fueled by the “higher agencies” of love and altruism, and the key is nurturance, an instinct which gives rise to and fosters love and altruism. In other words, love is what we need.
Darwin’s own observations indicated that Natural Selection promotes sympathy, social feeling, unselfishness,and even self-sacrifice. It recognizes no differences based on color, race, or any of the other differences humans express. He even argues that sympathy and social feeling most likely developed among less imposing and therefore “weaker” beings where affiliation was an advantage. This sympathy was actually what we refer to as empathy.
This moral sense is part of an evolutionary development that will keep us all safe and thriving, and yet it less and less valued and practiced in our digitally-based world. The suicide rate for teen girls is the highest in 40 years, and studies have found that the more social media, the lonlier you feel.
In recent research on the rising mental health issues of millenials, perfectionism has been cited as a major source. This article refers to a steep rise in multidimensional perfectionism which is driven by unrealistically high expectations coming from the self, society and other sources. This is leading to record-setting cases of mental illness in the age group, including anxiety, depression and eating disorders.
Nurturing is needed by human beings and the earth at this time, and is being replaced by counterfeits of the original. We are connected wirelessly, and yet not connected at the deep level of our biology. This creates a fierce downward pull in humanity, a sense of something important being missing, with its attendant feelings of insufficiency that lead to competition and greed, and it requires a fierce evolutionary impulse to change that course.
That evolutionary is impulse is within each one of us, in our loveseeds. It can be watered and nurtured to grow as we act from our higher nature over and over, and acknowledge when we have disconnected and are acting from the more primitive impulse to win or be right. It means dropping your end of the rope so that both hands are free to cook, caress or carry a baby. We need to teach it to our children by modeling it. It is the missing piece of the puzzle, and available to us all the time.
Gather without devices and sing, play games, arm wrestle. Be fully present with friends and family and wherever you are—fully present in your body, and not just your mind in some other place miles from your body. Feel your juicy innate bond with other human beings. We breathe the same air, and we all feel pain….and love and fear. Anger. Hope. Despair. We are sisters and brothers on this sacred planet.
A prayer to inspire you: May I be free from the tyranny of needing to be the best, and embrace the gift of being an essential part of the whole.
