2022-12-23

Do cats or dogs imagine a world different from the present, and either work towards it, if they see it as better, or try to avoid it, if they see it as worse? For sure, they have internal states like hunger, and express that in various ways, wanting to be fed. We've also read about, if not seen, animals that work out how to solve puzzles or challenges. But, as far as I see, their challenges are in the present, not in their imagination.

In this way (one of only very few ways) I see humans as different in capacity. We do a lot of imagining how things could be different, and indeed that can lead to losing touch with the present. Which many spiritual traditions understandably, and reasonably, complain about, urging us to live more in the present.

When we envisage alternatives to what is present, we seem habitually to evaluate and compare. Is what we imagine better or worse than at present? I'd like to skip over the ways that people differ in their evaluations, and the ways in which evaluations are often naive or inaccurate, and just focus on the sense of better or worse.

Then I'd like to recognise, but pass over, people imagining that things could be worse, and trying to protect against that. To be sure, it's very common. And we could see that as the essence of all conservatism; of being ‘reactionary’. But even that can turn the other way. “Wouldn't it be better if these awkward/ rebellious/ revolutionary people trying to change things could just disappear?” a conservative might ask. And so that path also leads to looking at how people want to make things better.

I see this pattern everywhere in human life.

• This is the problem, the challenge, in where we are. It's not as good as it could be.
• This is where we want to be. It would be better (as I imagine it, for me at least).
• This is how to get there, or at least, this is how I see us getting there.

And it's not always deeply rooted, together with emotions and beliefs. It is a staple of the business world, among other places. ‘How to get there’ is explored in the Theory of change.

Where is ‘the problem’, you may well ask? It seems to me to apply at all levels. I can identify something less than good in me; in you; in a relationship; in a community; in the world; in life. And who is the agent of change? In the Serenity Prayer it is most often given as the individual ‘me’. Yes; and also, recognising the essential power of relating in collectivity, even more ‘us’ in place of ‘me’. ‘We’ have more ability to change things than ‘I’ have. The humorous take from Calvin and Hobbes 30 years back, linked from Wikipedia, points to the relative fallibility of the individual.

What has kept me fascinated is seeing or feeling this pattern as “healing” in some way. ‘Healing’ is a strong and resonant word. It invokes wholeness; health. It implies sickness; dis-ease. And as such it can connect with very strong emotions — in the unconscious as well as the conscious. My intuitive sense is that it is quite usual for people to have a healing narrative that pervades their lives, often unconsciously, particularly if it comes from adverse childhood experiences, associated with ‘trauma’ (in the psychological sense). And while the origin is in the individual, if it is unconscious, that individual is liable to project the need for healing onto anything that looks even slightly to blame, to save the individual from the pain of seeing it in him or herself. “It's not me that needs healing, it is you, or society, or the outside world, or whatever”.

We may agree about some of the problems out there in the world. But our sensitivity to those problems, as well as the solutions that we feel are right and proper, may arise from our own personal trauma. Let's not stop trying to heal the world, each in our own way! But if we recognise that our emotional involvement with these efforts is tied in with our own history, then we might be more open-minded about other people's healing narratives as well as our own.

It seems appropriate at this Christmastide to mention the healing narratives of religion. I intend to write more about this later in this theme. But it seems that every Christmas story is a story about healing: from the early church ones, through to the (often Hollywood) Christmas ‘movies’. These mythic narratives pervade our lives. And, of course, there are earlier stories still, which are also resonant with these Christmas stories.

Wrapping up today, to me there is one truth that now seems to be both vital and clear. There is not just one healing narrative. Many of them are good. Some of them appear to contradict, even oppose each other. So there must be a deeper level of healing, emerging when we recognise, surface, bring awareness to, this variety of healing narratives, with empathy and curiosity about where they originate. Following IFS, we might see our individual selves as containing different parts, each with different unconscious healing narratives. In whatever context, it is the divisions between the healing narratives that need to be healed.

So, can we do that meta-healing? Can we reconcile the diversity of healing narratives, within ourselves, between each other, in our society, in the world? To me, that would be the ultimate, the mega, the blockbuster, the real, the true Christmas story. Or solstice story. And to me, that wouldn't feel like just renewal or rebirth, but more like a genuinely new birth. At one level, all myths and all wisdom around the cyclical nature of existence is all about rebirth. But when you start putting different narratives together, maybe something truly new emerges? Even if, paradoxically, new birth, not just rebirth, has been a recurring narrative through the ages.

May there be love and joy in our hearts at this rebirth, this new birth.

I take up this theme from the point of view of fantasy in 2023-01-07