The Elephant in the Room

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today."

They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg.

"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail.

"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.

"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.

"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.

"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said."

"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.
 (Hindu Wisdom)

Freud had astute observations about himself and his patients, yet he was one of the blind men that told us about the elephant. Freud discovered the ego and analyzed it for us. He was bold enough to talk about sex in an utterly sexually repressed society, yet he was not bold enough to talk about the Spirit. Erich Fromm once described one of Freud's dreams where Freud experienced love as a dried up - dead - rose. Yes, Freud analyzed life with an razor-sharp intellect; unfortunately sometimes life bleeds to death during this operation.

Freud made the subconscious a household name, but it was Jung who made us realize the elephant in the room. Not only did he help us understand the incredible wisdom and power that is hidden deep inside of us, but he was also willing - buried by lots of intellectual blah - to admit the presence of the Self. We have passed a century since this discussion started and have added plenty of insights from the New Age movement. Today we know of the elephant in the room. Yet everyone will have to see and feel all parts to really know all about it. That is exactly what a spiritual journey will do for you.

For many of us the path is a journey through all four quadrants: intellect, ego, subconscious, and Spirit. We tend to know the New Age "ego - True Self" debate pretty well, but unfortunately it is just that, a debate. You have to experience your ego dissolve in the presence of the Self for yourself. This is your spiritual mission. You have to feel it, breathe it, struggle for it, and come to appreciate it. Eventually the "I" transcends into "I Am". This may happen in front of the burning bush, may happen after falling in a deep depression, or might happen on a trip to the local grocery store. Until then, monitor the workings of the "I", see how your state of mind interacts with the environment you are operating in, and do whatever you can to also be in touch with your Spirit. For many this connection happens as they pray or meditate; some discover the Self in others, very much like the Chinese sage Lao-Tzu did when he described "The Way".

The Bhagavad Gita is an intellect driven spiritual journey. Lord Krishna tells Arjun on the battle field that you can cut through the distortions of the ego. The goal of the spiritual warrior is find out the demands of the Way - your personal dharma as the Hindus call it - and just do it, whether you like it or not. The Gita was written for Gods. If you go down that path make sure you listen to the voice in your head as much as you listen to the wisdom of  your subconscious. Women and children have a better access to this Voice then men do.

Imagine an iceberg with the ego and the intellect above the water line. Spirit and the subconscious would be the giant mass below it. There are angels and demons hidden there, archetypes as well as fears and monsters. Freud's optimism that we can catapult many of these forces into our conscious mind was justified. Yet he wanted to squeeze these insights through the male intellect while the true reality is so much bigger than that. Woman and man have to merge, child and adult have to walk together, intellect and subconscious have to be in harmony, within and without have to be on the same page, and the ego has to be guided by the a Self. This is a giant task but you have a life-time to work on it and you have so many friends and angels cheering you on.

We invite you to join our journey towards wholeness. Nothing is sacred while everything is sacred; we feel and understand at the same time ; we discover every external occurrence in perfect harmony with our internal state of mind, and we see every sister as a mirror image of ourself. Discover that we are God together with us. It is a Herculean task but it is a lot of fun too. There is a unifying force linking intellect, ego, Spirit and the subconscious: love. You can love the intellect that Lord Krishna gave us, you can be proud of the "I" that has already traveled so far and just needs one more step on the homecoming journey. You can love the Spirit that prevails in everything and you can love the innocence, purity and strength of the child, woman and hero within, just as you can appreciate the incredible energy reservoir of the demon. Discover the wholeness inside. It is as plain as the elephant in the room.


                                         Intellect



Ego                                     Love                          Spirit



                                      Subconscious

Mr. Know It All's Shadow

Mr. Know It All
Well ya think you know it all
But ya don't know a thing at all
Ain't it, ain't it something y'all
When somebody tells you something 'bout you
Think that they know you more than you do
So you take it down another pill to swallow

Mr. Bring Me Down
Well ya, ya like to bring me down, don't you?
But I ain't laying down, baby, I ain't goin' down
Can't nobody tell me how it's gonna be
Nobody's gonna make a fool out of me
Baby, you should know that I lead not follow

Mr. Play Your Games
Only got yourself to blame when you want me back again
But I ain't falling back again
'Cause I'm living my truth without your lies
Let's be clear baby this is goodbye
I ain't coming back tomorrow

So what you've got the world at your feet
And you know everything about everything
But you don't
You still think I'm coming back but baby you'll see yeah...

Mr. Know It All
Well ya think you know it all
But ya don't know a thing at all
Yeah baby you don't know a thing about me
You don't know a thing about me

[Chorus:]
Oh you think that you know me, know me
That's why I'm leaving you lonely, lonely
'Cause baby you don't know a thing about me
You don't know a thing about me
You ain't got the right to tell me
When and where to go, no right to tell me
Acting like you own me lately
Yeah baby you don't know a thing about me
You don't know a thing about me

Mr. Know-it All, Kelly Clarkson

Isn't Kelly's "Mr. Know It All" yet another great shadow song? Her "Dark Side" already captures the shadow theme beautifully but with a little interpretation, "Mr. Know It All" can be viewed as an exchange between the dry intellect, the desire to be on a "clean" self-improvement course with the impulsive feeling component of our being who lives in a completely different world and has a completely different agenda. Come down from your pedestal Mr. Know It All , engage with her and chances are Kelly will dance with you.

Dancing Along the Wheel

Think of a wheel and you understand where the power base is: the axle. Yet it is the rubber that meets the road, isn't it? Similarly, in the whirl wheel of life there are times when you have to let your intellect override your emotions, just as there are times when you have to listen to your emotions at the expense of the voice in your head. Similarly, life sometimes asks you to take the initiative and lead others while on other occasions the Tao encourages you to react passively to events. It takes a while to master the right and left and the to and fro, but eventually you get the hang of it. The Tao Master does everything instinctively; you are a perfect product of the divine environment that always surrounds you. Yet, despite all these movements, the center of everything is the perfect balance in the center of the wheel. No matter what, you are always resting in Her.

                            Intellect

Defense                   O            Offense

                           Emotion

Mind the Voice in Your Head

There is a voice in your head that you identify with. After all, if it isn't you then who exactly is talking? The voice in your head worries endlessly about everything that could go wrong and is scheming how to get things and also beats you up over past mistakes. Well, this voice is not you, it is just the ego in action, using your ability to reflect on the past and to anticipate the future to take you for a joy ride and a guilt trip. The good news is, there is an Ancient Voice buried deep down inside of you. You can connect with that Voice but it takes time. You must be very still and must learn how not to get distracted by what it going on in your head.

Our brain has evolved from the animal brain which mostly operates in the now. We have the ability to reflect on the past so to make sure that we don't repeat our mistakes, very much as we are able to anticipate future outcomes to be better prepared for it. Our brains allow us to abstract, use symbols, make decisions based on reasoning, calculations, etc. Symbolically, we ate from the Tree of Knowledge and when that happened, we unfortunately lost that ongoing connection with the Source in the process. The voice that always speaks first and loudly has taken over. But you can get the Ancient Voice back.

The voice in your head tells you that you are different from everyone else, that you need to worry, protect yourself, scheme to get things. This voice tells you that you need to work hard to be worthy of love. The ego makes comparisons. When you think you are better than others, you feel arrogant; if you are worse than others, you feel bad about yourself. This ongoing measuring, comparing and contrasting in your brain creates tension and angst. Do this for a few decades at an accelerated pace and you will get really depressed.

Don't get us wrong. Using your brain is of course useful. Eating from the Tree of Knowledge has brought us a long way. All we are saying is to use your brain for all the technical and useful purposes, do not let the voice in your head tell you anything about your interpersonal relations as well as your destiny. Leave all these decisions up to the Tao. All you have to do is to reconnect to life and your Ancient Voice despite the loud babbling in the background. Congratulations! If you have come to this point, it means you will soon break free from the insanity that has plagued you for so long. The voice in your head is not the real you and you can strip out of it like an old set of used and smelly clothes.

The voice in your head wants to take you for a ride. It promises you a pleasure ride, but each trip always ends up in tears. This voice wants to be in control, wants to map out everything. But then when unexpected things happen along the way the voice will create stress. People who follow the unrelenting commands of this voice will sometimes succeed, sometimes fail, but will always end up with a headache. As you age you will withdraw more and more from life as you learn that there is perfect control if you don't interact with anyone and if you don't do anything. But if you withdraw from life you die. Life is to be accepted and enjoyed. Embrace life with open arms and the Tao will present you so many impressions along the way that the load voice in your head will naturally be silenced.

The voice in your head is always expecting something, always looking forward to, always anticipating. The Course in Miracle states that an outstanding characteristic of the ego is that whenever you have reached your goal you will still not be happy. That is what the voice does, always reminding you that the carrot is still dangling in front of the donkey.

The voice is also very good at judging. I ask you, have you ever met anyone who was truly on your level? There are those who are above you in the hierarchy be it professional, social or even spiritual. How different this voice is from the claim of the Course of Miracles, namely that we are all soul siblings, no one is above, no one is below - we are all Daughters and Sons of God.

Our education system wants to make you smart, fast, intelligent and efficient. All we do is to feed that voice in our head. You will be an intellectual. You will dissect what is whole only to find after decades of labor that what you have in your hands is dead. You will get caught up in an imaginary and artificial world of the mind and you will get lost in it. But in a weird way that is good. Send all the students of the world to Harvard and MIT, for these institutions will not only make the students smarter, but will also generate so much pressure with that ever continuing rate race to climb up the intellectual and social ladder that many will lose their way. That is unfortunately exactly what the homecoming process entails. You need to get lost first before you will look for a new way. Unfortunately you need to drive into a wall first before looking for a new direction. Getting lost instils the hunger in you to listen to the Ancient Voice.You will enter our post-graduate studies and the school master - the Tao - will teach you how to become children again and how to regain your innocence and be always full of joy, laughter and serenity.

The Tao is all-knowing. The Tao operates in the past and the future via the Now. But the Tao is nevertheless the polar opposite of the intellect. The Tao only deals in the present, the Tao never judges, never compares; gives you everything that you need , but not what you want because you don't really want it anyway. The Tao is beyond duality; the Tao is non-linear, creative, imaginative, always changing and in the end nothing but pure love.

So how to detach from the voice in your head and connect with the Tao? There are some signpost that you can watch out for and you can learn to get your life back. Watch out especially for these signs: 

1. When you feel you are in big conflict and experience struggle in everything you do. If you feel this way, most of time you are geting caught up in mind games. Once you are aware of this fact you can step right out of it. Just listen how insane some of these mental connections are. It is just a voice, not you.

2. When you feel fear and anxiety. Most likely you are contemplating all kind of downside scenarios. Can you come up with an equal number of upside scenarios just to create a balance? The point is when you follow the Tao and embrace life with open arms you will have little time to think. Instead you will learn to accept whatever comes your way without thinking much about it.

3. You are telling yourself that you are bad, miserable, unloved, a loser....you feel bad about yourself and start attacking yourself. If you notice that the voice is telling you these stories, know that this is an impostor speaking. God loves you, as do your soul siblings who are waiting patiently to interact with you. Just step out of your mind games and open up your eyes to a new reality.

4. You feel resentful and guilty. Your mind goes back to the past and you lose the connection with the Now that way. Well the past is dead, wake up and join the living instead.

You don't need to silence your mind, just learn when to use it. You also need to learn how to embrace the Now - the Tao will teach you that. We will present some practices that will allow you to disconnect from the voice in your head, so please look out for those in coming weeks. Perhaps you already want to check out The Worry List (zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-worry-list.html) as a first practical step to silence your voice. Do not worry, you will get back your life and everywhere you will look there will be joy, love and laughter.

By Christian and Su-Zhen

On Wholeness

Imagine a circle that is sliced in four quadrants. To the upper right is intellect, to the upper left is wisdom. To the lower right are the emotions and to the lower left are the feelings. Wisdom and intellect are conscious dimensions whereas feelings and emotions lie in the subconscious realm. As you go to the right in the circle you are expressing yourself via thoughts and emotions, whereas as you go to the left you are going inside. Wisdom and feelings emerge from within.

You experience wholeness right  is the center of the circle. You feel and intuitively understand the environment you are operating in. What you feel overlaps with the emotions that you express. Similarly, you express intellectually what you intuitively know. Inside and outside overlap as do consciousness and subconsciousness. You are finally home and whole.

On Wholeness

Imagine a circle that is sliced in four quadrants. To the upper right is intellect, to the upper left is wisdom. To the lower right are the emotions and to the lower left are the feelings. Wisdom and intellect are conscious dimensions whereas feelings and emotions lie in the subconscious realm. As you go to the right in the circle you are expressing yourself via thoughts and emotions, whereas as you go to the left you are going inside. Wisdom and feelings emerge from within.

Wholeness is the middle of the circle as there is no longer any need to express yourself. You feel and intuitively understand the environment you are operating in. You have emotions, but they are stable and you just express what you feel. Similarly, you know and only use the intellect to express what you know. The yin and yang of absorbing and expressing, intuition and intellect comes to a rest in the center point of the circle of life.

Keeping Track of the Elephant

I enjoyed the analogy of the driver and the elephant in Switch: How to change Things when Change is hard to come by, by Chip and Dan Heath, the elephant being your emotions, feelings and desires and the driver being your intellect. Good luck driver if the elephant is moving in a different direction. In it, several studies were quoted that showed that exercising will-power wears you down over time. If you have withstood one temptation, the next one is more likely to get you.

This study resonates with me. I have long felt that the intellect should be the schemer, i.e. finding a path that works both for the elephant and your game plan as well. It is ok to exercise a little will-power to get yourself onto the journey, but sooner rather than later the elephant must find it in his self-interest to keep going. If he doesn't, well, then back to the drawing board. I am convinced that you will always find a creative outlet of your desires that is consistent with your spiritual path.