ON HANDING OUR SHADOW OVER TO THE POLITICIANS

To be some kind of competent healer and have a bit of wisdom to offer, we need to begin with ourselves. Life usually drags us through some sort of painful process where we encounter our human failings and realise that it is OK to have them, and that everyone else has them, that we are one big family hobbling along from cock-up to cock-up. 

And this is profound. It means you are not just hobbling along from cock-up to cock-up, but you KNOW you are doing so. That is the difference, and it dismembers that ridiculous sense of self that likes to strut and have imaginings about itself. And with that sense of being part of the general mess comes compassion.

This post was originally about politics, and how we project our shadow - our messiness - onto the politicians and the party we don't vote for. Badness is out there, rather than with our righteous selves. In our case, that usually means the right-wing politicians who are the bad guys. We make judgements about them when we don't even know them. 

And this was prompted by a Facebook post called 'Nobody likes a Tory'. I call this liberal mob-mentality. I rail against this when I see it in people who, in my mind, could know better. Politicians of whatever persuasion are usually muddling along just like we are, no better and no worse.

Here's an exercise: give Donald Trump credit when he gets something right. This is virtually impossible for many people. He is such a good shadow hook, because he really is awful in many ways. But if you can't give him credit - or Boris Johnson for that matter - then you are acting in an unconscious way.