Clarity

12 Step Jedi Philosophy, Psychology, Uncategorized

“The dark side clouds everything”. – Yoda

What I have been lacking over the last couple of years is clarity. In many ways I have been fumbling about in the dark without direction and without purpose. This has made it very hard to focus on much, let alone training, to become a better version of myself. Life has felt like an uphill slog through fog, mud, and low hanging branches. I’m not even sure of where I am going or what I mean to do when I get there. Life has become a meaningless existence, a day-to-day grind, void of any real purpose. To clear the fog and find a clear path I need to find clarity. Clarity of purpose, intent, meaning, anything.

“If one does not know which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.” – Seneca

It seems to me that lack of clarity is a universal problem. When the pandemic started everyone seemed to be clear on the need to quickly get through it and resume normal lives. More than two years passed, and the issue never really resolved but it faded from media attention, government priority and public interest. The world then stumbled into more problems, economic and political. War in Europe and the Middle East added to the confusion and sense that the world is spinning out of control. There is no longer a clear path only noise, division and derision.

The current situation reminds me of the Republic towards the end of the Clone Wars. The Galactic Senate had become hawk like and irrational. Decisions lacked clarity and the senate was ruled by personalities and vested interests instead of a common purpose or goal. The Jedi Order had long lost its path and become a political beast leveraging its influence and interests in the senate and the military. The Clone Army also became a weapon used for personal and political gain rather than its intended purpose, to defend the Republic and its democratic institutions. There was a lot of noise and arguing in the Senate, Jedi Temple and in military briefings but no common purpose, no clarity.

“Insight enables you to know your own heart. Clarity enables you to accept without illusion.” – Deepak Chopra

Yoda was referring to the inner world when he reminded his fellow council members “the dark side clouds everything”. The Dark Side was gathering its forces against the Republic, but Yoda was concerned more about the rot that was taking place within the Senate and the Jedi Council. The real threat did not reside with separatist forces but was there among them growing like cancer and shrouding everything in a dark cloud of doubt, deceit, confusion, and uncertainty.

Palpatine undermined and defeated the Jedi not through combat but by seeding doubt and uncertainty through lies, manipulation, and subterfuge.  The Jedi lost clarity and in that fog of doubt the very sense of who they were. Darth Sidious, clear in his vision for the galaxy, only needed to enact Order 66 to finish off the Jedi and usurp the senate.

Lack of clarity, the insidious cloud of doubt and despair will derail progress and threaten recovery. Besides falling to resentment and despair, lack of clarity is one of the main things that will betray you.

“I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.” – Carl Jung

Clarity can be had by doing a few different things. Getting the right amount and right type of sleep, eating a balanced diet, and taking supplements especially vitamin B and choline.  Physical exercise, meditation, and mindfulness practice, reading and doing mental exercises also improve cognitive function. Listing what needs to be done, prioritizing, and having a clear plan of action provides direction and focus.  Striving for meaning and purpose in everything you do will lead to clarity in your mind and heart. Being grateful for what you have instead of constantly wanting what you don’t have provides clarity to the soul.

The world may be falling apart but you don’t need to. Being Jedi means being able to accept what is without judgement and keeping a clear mind. A clear mind leads to clarity and with clarity we have purpose and intent and find meaning in our lives. We know where we are going, and we know why and what we will do when we get there. Finding clarity amidst the noise, confusion and uncertainty in our external lives is impossible. You won’t find it anywhere but within yourself. Look there.

I hope that’s clear.

“Dwell not on the faults and shortcomings of others; instead, seek clarity about your own.” – Buddha

The Clockwork Man

12 Step Jedi Alcoholism, Psychology
Copyright: Lucas Films

“Anakin is gone…. I am what remains”

“You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker…I did” – Darth Vader

Have you ever had the notion that you are more than one personality and that at times your persona changes? Rarely are you conscious that it is happening. At times you are left confused or surprised at your own behavior noting that it is out of character. It is for one of your personas but not the other. If you can relate you probably wonder at times “who am I?”.

Who are we, really?

Carl Jung had two distinct personalities that he became aware of early in life. One was a young lad and the other an old man. Jung put down the manifestations of these personas as the development of facets of his psyche and the function of a deep subconscious. There were aspects of the spiritual to the manifestations of these personalities in Jung’s estimation that could not be explained by psychology. As a child Jung was sensitive and often had visions and lucid dreams that purveyed deep and profound messages that he could only decipher decades later. For most of his life Jung lived within a “myth” of himself, only becoming fully integrated later in life.

A long time ago when I resided in Israel, I struck a friendship with a hippy from Canada in the “Holy City”. Let’s make it clear that I was not there for any spiritual reasons but strictly to party. The city of Jerusalem was almost deserted of tourists because the First Gulf War was raging. There was not much to do but eat, drink and sleep. One night we ventured out and hit the bars and nightclubs in West Jerusalem and sometime in the early morning found ourselves in the completely deserted old city.

The walls and towers were mostly in shadow, the streets were empty and only dim light showed the way along the cobbled streets and avenues of the Armenian and Arab quarter. By this now I was completely drunk and dragging my friend in tow went on an adventure climbing the walls and battlements, entering dark passages and stealing into ruins all the while oblivious to the danger of being spotted by a police or military patrol and being potentially arrested or even shot. I was someone else, in a different time, having an adventure cut straight out of the Arabian Nights. After a while, the early morning call to prayer sounded from the local mosques, almost deafening, awaking me from my drunken reverie as my friend grabbed me and said we needed to go home.

Later that day I awoke in the hostel and found my friend already up. After seeing that I was back to myself he laughed and told be about the night before. There was a bar, then another bar, then a nightclub, a rebuff and then a slap from a girl, some soldiers, a spilled drink, an argument and a scuffle, the hands of a bouncer dragging me to the door. Another nightclub. Then out on the street and pretending to be crusaders marching on the old city.

My friend laughed as he recounted that as the night wore on, he saw a gradual change in me. Not just from sober to tipsy to drunk but the manifestations of different personas. He laughed “Dude, it was like I was drinking with three or four different people through the night but all of them were in you”. “You were not you, it was like seeing Dr Jekyll change a bunch of times”. He said that only now he was looking at the same person he had walked out of the hostel with the day before for “one beer”, “that person checked out as soon as he had that beer”. “One minute you were having a laugh and the next you’d go all dark and be like this completely different person, man it was freaky”.

When I think back to being drunk, I remember having experiences that were almost out of body. I was there, it was me talking, laughing, drinking, swearing, singing, dancing, fighting, falling over, vomiting being the funny guy and being the ugly drunk. But it wasn’t me. Part of me was standing in the background watching silently. Who was I, really?

Now that I’m sober, I am aware of three distinct personalities. One I will call the child, the other is the shadow, the last is the Clockwork Man. The child is the creative free persona who would prefer to be left alone to read, write, play video games, exercise, spend time in nature and basically enjoy life and its pleasures. The child does not like being told what to do, he hates authority and resents being controlled by others. Is prone to sulk and throw tantrums. Work and other responsibilities is a burden and a curse to the child. If the child could do anything it would be to abandon all of his responsibilities and embark on a grand adventure. The child lives in a sort of a fantasy world, spontaneous, reckless and impulsive.

The shadow is the dark persona that resides deep within the shadows of my psyche. It is the beast that is chained but not completely restrained. It is the darkness that wells up in the form of anger, resentment and callousness. The persona might appear during a HALT moment. It can be frightening and reminds me of my potential to do harm to self and others. The shadow was the persona that kept a grip on alcohol for all of those decades. It is the Dark Side that lurks in the cave on Dagobah. It waits for a chance to reclaim its lost hold.

The Clockwork Man is the persona that resides between the reckless abandon of the child and the self-destructive nature of the shadow beast. It is the functional being that exists within the constraints of society as a productive individual. The persona, gets up in the morning, attends to his duties, pay his taxes and meets his obligations. The man is sober, attends to his physical, mental and spiritual needs while caring for the needs of others. This is the ego-persona that other people will mostly see and interact with. The shadow looks down at the man in contempt while the child sulks. As an ego-persona, the Clockwork Man is incomplete and will remain incomplete without integrating the child and the shadow so that the “Higher Self” can emerge.

Carl Jung integrated his personalities and found the cure for many patients by finding the path for them to identify, expose and finally integrate their conflicting and divergent personas that manifested in states of psychosis. Alcohol manifests a state of psychosis. In alcoholics that state is advanced and sometimes acute. How often have we heard “one’s true nature comes out after a few drinks”? Abstinence will suppress the hidden persona while recovery deals with them by admitting and confronting our self-destructive traits and character flaws. Integrating the inner child and the shadow. Deflating the ego. Eventually, through effort and time, that part of us that resides silently in the background quietly watching and guiding emerges as the “Higher Self”.

In the final episode of “Kenobi” Obi-wan meets “Anakin”. During the ensuing lightsaber duel, Anakin is stuck in the head and part of his helmet comes off revealing a scarred and tortured face. Anakin’s eyes are unmistakable. For all the terrible flaws in “Kenobi”, this moment took my breath away. This is the crucial moment at which “Anakin” reveals himself as “Darth Vader”. The one called “Anakin” no longer exists in mind or body, he is dead and the “Demon” that is “Darth Vader” has finally revealed himself. Of course, that is not the whole story. Anakin did not die, he was not killed by Vader. Anakin continued to live in some deep recess of Vader’s psyche consumed by the Shadow.

It was only more than a decade later when forced to choose between the love for his children or slavery to the Emperor did Anakin finally fully integrate and allow his true self to emerge. The child, the man, the Jedi and the shadow converged as the light and dark sides of the Force came together. At that moment Anakin become transcendent and unified with the Force, he came to know his “Higher Self”.

Everyone finds themselves conflicted between their ego persona, their shadow and their true self. Alcoholics are no exception; we just experience the extremes of that conflict in a  war with ourselves. Perhaps when we are drunk the door is flung open, no restrains on the psyche and Mr Jekyll is given free rein.  In recovery we find the peace and serenity of a “Higher Power”. There we find our “Higher Self” and become integrated. The purpose of being is to ask, “Who am I?” and to go out and find the answer.

Who are you?

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