So in my lovely little treading water in the cesspool of yuck feels today, the revelation was:
“I can’t protect myself from the hurts, but I can protect myself from the lies.”
Whoa.
That came after much vulnerability, letting the heavy sick sensation in my stomach have its way with me a bit, communicating to me stories about my feeble powerless wrongness, to which I replied “what else you got?!”
My loverman told me a story of his camping trip turned survival training with an old friend, when a thunderstorm racked their streamlined hammock tent setup and they were left unprotected from raging winds, heavy rain, and crashing lightening all around. As the story went, after battling for some time to try to secure equipment and belongings, he stood up tall and looked to the skies, shaking his fists in the air and shouting, “IS THAT ALL YOU GOT?!”
So the answer to my version of that question today was a montage of early childhood feels - deep intense dark stuff I’d rather not entertain on any given Monday.
Except, like the Rumi poem in Sunday’s Rabbit Whole, the experiment now involves welcoming these uninvited guests.
So after stating out loud a number of times “I don’t like this feeling…I DON’T LIKE THIS FEELING”, I took a deep breath, laid down on the floor, mentally referenced the post from yesterday, and imagined popping some cracker jack kernels in my mouth to let the show continue without resistance.
I had already unraveled some long-tight knots on the nature of destruction and chaos.
For example, what if the creative energy of the universe, which certainly has chaos and destruction, was distorted by repression?
I remember first reading Deepak Chopra’s version of the Kama Sutra, in which he states his opinion that sexual energy is the creative energy of the universe, and repression leads to perversion. Made sense, especially now knowing healthy sexuality in relationship as a reference to the whack stuff I experienced in the past.
Just realized that unintended potential pun….
So what if chaos as creative energy of the universe, and destruction as creative energy of the universe, have freely flowing constructive lanes, and only by diverting said energy to dead end blockades does this force get repressed and distorted?
I watched Batman: The Dark Knight (known to me as “The Joker”) last weekend. I swiped left on that one for months, anticipating the darkness and not wanting anymore psychopathy in my face.
But after last week’s travels, I was ready. Connection Doctor, Empathy Guru @PezeshkiCharles ‘s posts prepped me for the study, with curiosity and openness, to help answer the question of how to approach deeply troubled humans with a heart-centered, whole of humanity response.
Yeah, I’m the stupid poster child for bringing daisies to a gunfight.
The movie wasn’t triggering - it actually did what @PezeshkiCharles suggested: portrayed the depth of drive to chaos in humans with wounds so deep the only bandaid that fills is psychopathy - complete disconnect from feeling the feels of us all, with paradoxical master-level emotional awareness weaponized for complete control.
A bit about this thing called “psychopathy”….
From PsychopathyIs.com:
First, it is not a diagnosis. Recognized as a spectrum disorder, the hallmarks are reduced empathy and remorse, a bold and daring personality, and difficulty inhibiting behaviors. Believed to arise from genetic and environmental factors in childhood, the brain develops with impaired thinking, feeling, and behavior in relating.
These folks often develop socially charming personalities, while manipulating, lying, exploiting, cheating without remorse. These are the “risk takers”, the always active “thrill seekers”, not bothered by the mundane responsibilities of most.
Able to mirror “socially appropriate” emotions of others, psychopaths tend towards callous disregard for others’ distress. Some but not all are violent or criminal - probably why they fly under the radar since we historically view “psychopaths” as the extreme like the Joker.
“It is a different kind of abnormality from all those now recognized as seriously impairing competency… the first and most striking difference is this: the observer is confronted with a convincing mask of sanity.”
– Hervey Cleckley
At the end of the movie, I watched as Gotham burned while the Joker hung upside down, his ankle held by a wire, many floors in the air, cackling without fear of death, and appearing certain that he still held the cards.
I wondered, what is best here? For everyone?
Death for the Joker? Why not shoot him and it’s done? I mean, he ruthlessly destroyed lives, property, and faith in “the system” - gotta go, right?
Then I thought about how “the system” included corrupt public officials, mafia extortion, drug running and money laundering, and public unwillingness to stand up and make Gotham a better place - they were leaving that to a savior, Batman.
So who was the “good guy”? The “bad guy”? Not suggesting that it’s laudable to slay folks to shake up the system, and yet I am suggesting that the Joker exposed liars and cheats causing harm on the regular, which…is a “good” thing, right?
That brought me back to the energy of chaos and destruction. The balance of forces in life. If the Joker were killed, I imagine another human would ride the wave of chaos and take up his mantle, surfing through the streets like a great white.
All it takes is a few Marvel movies to know we’re never gonna run out of villains.
In the “Joker” movie, jailing the crazyman had proven ineffective, but maybe locking him up properly for life?
But attaching the “badness” to one human then eradicating that human doesn’t work - centuries of scapegoat history teach us that - and plus it just feels wrong.
What about weighing the balance of the “common good”?
As one body of humanity, should we cut off the gangrenous part to save the whole?
Who decides what tissue is past viability? What if we just need really good wound care?
These questions led me to again explore the forces of chaos and destruction.
And today, in my yuck, I wondered the above:
what if chaos, and even destruction, can be “constructive”?
Immediately appeared on my mental screen a movie reel of kids’ craft projects with glitter for miles and homemade slime forever in the carpet, my songwriting and music production with “edits”, planting gardens, building homes on a new plot of land…all require the energy of destruction for construction, chaos for order.
Is this the same type of chaos as the Joker? Is the destruction he brought different?
I think yes…and no.
At first I envisioned a difference: the Joker’s force brought division, reinforced separation - turned people against each other - brought the homicidal rage of Two Face out of the grief-stricken DA Harvey Dent.
Yes, the “chaos and destruction” of creativity is different…celebrates our unique expressions, brings unity, reveals our Oneness…that was the “right” way, right? The better use of the forces?
But reflecting on the passages in The Prophet*, I wonder if in humanity’s march to Oneness, all roads lead to Rome? All humans - good, bad, ugly, young and old - lead us to our Source, our shared humanity? Always? In all ways?
You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.
In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.
But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, “Wherefore are you slow and halting?”
For the truly good ask not the naked, “Where is your garment?” nor the houseless, “What has befallen your house?”
Zooming out, the divisive destructive chaos of the Joker did bring unity - remember the two bomb-laden ferries and the inmate throwing the detonator out the window? That guy in the jail-orange jumpsuit demonstrated an understanding of human nature, and chose to remove the opportunity for devastation from the leaders wrestling with that life-or-death decision.
Maybe it is like in The Prophet, where some roads are winding, taking a longer time to reach the same destination…and regardless of the distance all ultimately bring us to the truth of our Oneness.
Without the Joker, the City of Gotham would not have had the almost immediate uncovering of generations-old festering harm. Like a forest fire that clears the rotting dead wood, leaving nutrient-filled ash and space for new growth, the Joker’s massive chaos-driven destruction blew out the barely hidden rot. And like a forest fire taking trees “good” and “bad”, the Joker felled “innocents”.
Maybe, the punchline is that insight I had today - “I can’t protect myself from the hurts, but I can protect myself from the lies”.
Just how innocent were the folks of Gotham? How many knew of the rampant corruption and systemized harm going on on the daily? How many drove their SUV to work every day, stopping at Starbuck’s for a latte, listening to the NPR rundown of “other people’s problems”?
But there are no “other people’s problems”. There are only our problems, as the Oneness. Any part of the body of humanity that struggles with disease is a suffering for the whole - threatening our vitality.
So maybe we can’t stop the hurts - the pain that destruction brings when we leave a 20 year marriage, or the chaos our life becomes when we leave a soul-killing job to feed our hearts.
But maybe we can stop the lies.
The daily glossing over of our hurts, using whatever cognitive dissonance allows us to keep going without the feared chaos and destruction that changes would bring.
The words we don’t say, and actions we don’t take when we witness ourselves or another in a state of forgetfulness - the truth of our Oneness a sleepy memory for a moment.
I watched person after person interact with the Joker who appeared to expect him to be different - like telling themselves lies about the depth of his psychopathy. I think this comes from unwillingness to accept and admit such a deep level of wounding in one’s self.
“La la la…I don’t hear you” we say to our broken selves, insisting that we are the “ok” ones, the “right” ones, and the Ukranians are to blame for the world going to hell. Or the Russians. I can’t keep it straight.
Since this deep level of wounding in humans - “psychopathy” on a spectrum of low, medium, high - has a prevalence of 30%, why would we lie to each other and not educate ourselves and our children better?
Recognize the signs of another human demonstrating disconnect so profoundly?
Maybe because we don’t recognize signs of our own disconnect.
Ask ourselves, as individuals, how do we contribute to the global psychopathy we are living in right now? For real, own our own shit?
Have you ever experienced harm from another and not addressed it? Caused harm to another and brushed it aside…maybe they “deserved it”?
Are you sending your kids to school to learn the Title IX lessons on bullying prevention then welcoming them home with your criticism or anger? Thinking it is “tough love”? Demeaning or shaming them when they make age-appropriate mistakes, or see themselves as more than you want them to be - of course, you are “right”, because you are the parent, therefore know what’s best….?
Living with a spouse dissatisfied because…well, it’s their fault. So why are you there? Lies. Lies. Lies.
The psychopath is so catastrophically catalytic because of the lies. To stay in relationship with one - any level of relationship - requires joining the lie-parade, and adding bullshit floats every 5 minutes until you either flip out and board the crazy train, or find the superhero strength to stop the show.
That strength comes from the kryptonite for psychopaths: truth.
Accountability, ownership, authenticity. Humility, willingness to discover our culpability, and making amends.
Turning attention inward to tend our own wounds, often formed before we have story-memories. Learning to be for ourselves the parent we didn’t have, and making our lives what we always wanted them to be - free. Truly free.
Ruthlessly examining every corner of consciousness for sneaky lies. I’m not talking about Democrat versus Republican nonsense, I’m laying down the truth that WE ARE ALL ONE. All else…is lies.
As Dr. Chuck just replied to me instead of lies he prefers the phrase “obsolete mental models”. Agreed. Those lies we hang onto were born as mental models to make sense of our worldview based on separation. That was then, this is now Toto.
The truth is, we are not in Kansas anymore, and in our post-COVID speeding towards post-apocalyptic world…we need new mental models, new emotional intelligence, new frameworks for the truth we have discovered, and the truths we have yet to see.
That, my sister and brother, includes the Oneness that is YOU. Your wholeness, your heart and soul, mind and body…what is YOUR truth?
You have dreamed of a catering business specializing in weinerschnitzel since age 7, but maybe it will happen after your 401K hits the mark?
The mountains are calling but your corporate admin team would be devastated to lose you, and what about spotty wifi?!
Dig.
Deeper.
What is your truth?
All else is lies. The loosh of emotions you dump scrolling twitter distracting yourself with the “crazy world we live in”? Lies. Nice try, but somewhere in you the truth is waiting patiently for your attention…and that will require action. Maybe chaos…destruction.
Remember that hypothesis about repressing the creative energy of the universe?
So how do we '“deal with” psychopaths? I suggest we first learn wtf that means in all its variety of glorious manifestations, then mine our own psyches for the psychopathic varmints hiding in our own closets. Befriend the devil, to recognize him on the street not in a cloud of confusion, or flurry of fear, or contempt, or indifference, or any of the other million ways YouTube says to “combat the narcissist/psychopath”.
Without credentials as an academic in psychology, or even a stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, I suggest a different approach: truth.
Encountering a true psychopath is only harmful if we do not truly understand ourselves, our full human capacity for distortion, and our shared history of deep wounding. We all walk wounded towards our awakening in Oneness.
For a human who sees truly, a psychopath gets no play. Bomb diffused before it was lit.
For the rest of us, we dance awhile, playing the “he said, she said” game to hang out in separation land a little longer. I’m in that club. Also the club of mean mom, lying wife, and twitter-scroller-distracter. I stay busy.
And, I am a reformed/reforming c-PTSD/NPA survivor ;) Meaning, I read the manuals, did the exercises, bought the T-shirt, and quit when I was done making my pain about the “other”.
There is no “other”. There is only We. There is only the Oneness.
More from The Prophet:
Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.
Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self.
I think humans with wounds that create “psychopathy” do what they do to get love. They forgot they are love. They find pleasure or transient peace in overpowering others because that control demonstrates to them that they are in fact superior, which is a balm of sorts for their deep insecurity and pain.
Like us all, they are working with the tools they got.
Trying to get attention, which is a poor substitute for love.
Like a schoolkid who would rather be sent to the principal’s office for putting gum in Sally’s hair than feel the shame of sitting in the back of the classroom because he’s a poor reader.
Or the abused teen that acts out, diving into promiscuity for attention, even if that attention is the currency for which she exchanges her soul.
Until we realize we ARE love, we seek love. Usually from others. And we are all in that club. “Like a procession” we “ walk together towards” our god-self…our Oneness.
To help change psychopathy, we need to see ourselves in the psychopath. Not demand the psychopath follow our current social rules of engagement, like the normies that failed in appeals to the Joker’s “humanity”. But see the Joker as an expression of us, the distorted far-too-long-repressed creative “chaos and destruction” energy of the universe, and know our own capacity and ability to act devoid of humanity.
That police officer that got triggered by the Joker’s calculated prods about killing his partner? Reacted as the Joker expected, and became his pawn.
Had he an awareness of his own wounding, and vulnerability - had he mastery of the truth of our Oneness and the lies of separation - maybe he would have walked out and closed the door behind him.
We react to the psychopaths. With fear, outrage, disgust, contempt. Psychological distance, like pretending the pus-oozing boil on your arm belongs to the cat.
“Not me. That guy is so Not-Me.” Except now, no human is not-me. We are all We.
What if we respond instead of react? With truth? And live in our Oneness?
If the 70% of humans on the planet without this extensive psychological brokenness first healed our own trauma, then opened the clinic to provide a support and safety MASH unit for the 30%, what would happen?
After we’re done with the dance of separation, what would happen if we each lived our truth? Channeled the creative energy of our universe into the beauty and chaos and destruction and sand castle building of our imaginings? Stop repressing the longing of our hearts and truths in our souls?
If we don’t stop bottling up that energy, deferring until we are ready, or rich enough, stable enough, fearless enough…like a game of whack-a-mole that chaos will pop its destruction-head lightening-quick out of hole after hole…and trying to kill the change-agents will leave us exhausted.
And we’re going to need that energy of chaos and destruction to wipe out systems of living that are past obsolete, frameworks for human life that were built in separation survival mode.
What if the “treatment” for the “epidemic” of psychopathy is to double down on the aliveness of ourselves? Divert that energy of creation into the new world our Oneness is becoming?
If war, psychopathy, and whack-a-mole are emerging phenomena, take the pressure off? Let the Universal impulse to grow, create, expand, experience flow unrestricted?
That strategy doesn’t give an immediate answer to deal with the Joker, the trickster, the energy of chaos and destruction, except to choose in each moment - truth or lies? Unity or division? Separate parts in the win-lose game or wholeness?
Seek your truth, our truth. Speak your truth - our truth is incomplete without your voice. Find the boundaries in relationship you need for safety and your own wholeness - then accept nothing less.
Feed yourself truth - not the kind you can Google - the truth you discover by committing to seeing the lies we are all living right now, and dumping the “obsolete mental models”.
Be willing to act on your truth creatively, even if a wake of chaos and destruction ensues.
Know that your truth is real when it feels like the truth of our Oneness.
Yes, your best friend might not like you telling her that her husband has a secret second family in Missouri, but that is the truth.
Not the same as “You are a fucking asshole and I’m just speaking my truth” or “the truth is, you don’t need this money I’m taking out of your wallet now as much as I do”. Those are lies. They say “we are separate, and one of us wins so I’ll make it me”.
Worse are the “we are separate, and one of us wins, so I’ll let you be the victor, and I’ll be the victim - pretend I’m not getting anything out of this, but this self-righteousness is a powerful drug so I’m good” lies. LIES. I was so totally in that club.
The “I’m only standing up for the rights of the unborn, or the undead, or the ungay, or the gay or the born or the dead or the any entity seen as SEPARATE.
Because when we see the truth, we act accordingly. We clothe, we feed, we house, we care, we nurture, we support, we human. We LOVE.
Call the bluffs from now on.
Instead of rewarding with leadership positions, and overlooking the crafty ways in which psychopaths “get the job done”, call out folks who intentionally harm and direct them to mental health support and safety. Yes, psychopathy can be treated.
Stop enabling corrupt governments, “underground” criminal enterprises…stop celebrating corporate “success” at the cost of humanity failing.
Stop passing on the bet, holding your cards, and thinking even though the game is dirty you may still win your hand.
And for Ganesha’s sake, don’t fold. Play your true cards. Even when it hurts.