Growth In Love

This morning we had a meeting of our reading group in which we are reading and discussing Healing The Heart Of Democracy: The Courage To Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit, by Parker J. Palmer. He takes a very loving and spiritual approach to democracy which, as I mentioned this morning, many people are not ready for. The recent election and our now president demonstrate that people are continuing to embrace their dark or shadow sides, including judgmentalness, anger, racism, materialism and selfishness. These "urges", as John Yungblut calls them, are part of all humans and, often, part of our movement or growth to a more loving and spiritual approach to life on this planet. "It was the revelation that not only might good be wrought from the darkness of the unformed abyss, the unconscious, but that part of the very energy of the evil urge in man, if one would but wrestle with it, as had Jacob with the angel, would yield its own peculiar blessing." It is my hope that we can continue without destroying the earth we depend on. "It is not that the demonic forces within the unconscious are not capable of destruction and disintegration. It is rather that within the mystery of the conjunction of opposites their sting can be drawn, their poison drained, and their very energy harnessed to realize a more profound individuation.