August/September 2008
We're All in This Together
Tom Atlee
Bridging the Green Divide
Interview with Van Jones by David Kupfer
A Generational Challenge to Repower America
Al Gore
The Golden Voice of the Southwest
Amy Goodman interviews Utah Phillips
The Traveling Peacemaker
Interview with Mashall Rosenverg
Ronna Kabatznic and Margaret Cullen
Non Violent Communication Basics
Gary Baran
Table for Six Billion
Interview with Judy Wicks
David Kupfer
Seasonal Detoxification for Year Round Health
Bonnie Nedrow, ND and Rod Newton, DC
Top-Down or Upside-Down
Peter Moore
Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life
Book Review by Alan Sasha Lithman
Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain
Top-Down or Upside-Down?
By Peter Moore
We’re so used to living in a hierarchical social arrangement that the inevitable consequences and illnesses resulting from this can deepen a sense of failure or depression by blaming ourselves and furthering our suffering. For instance, even though we nominally, here in the USA, live in a democracy, the moment we enter the workforce as an employee, we are beholden to authority figures. If our job comes with health insurance, many of us are faced with the reality that our physical wellbeing is at risk if we leave our jobs.
Another area which obviously under-mines political and personal power is fin-ances. It’s well known in psychotherapy circles that it’s often easier for people to talk about sex than about money. In our relentless culture of individual autonomy, a failure to make ends meet is often interpreted as a personal failure. Never mind that the economic interests on Wall Street get skittish every time the official unemployment rate drops below five percent.
Top-down hierarchical societies are always short-lived, especially when it comes to empire building. By contrast, equalitarian societies have an endurance which far outlives our own. For us, in the historical era, two thousand years seems a very long time. Try twenty thousand years, as evidenced, for example, in continuous human use of some caves in the south of France. As mentioned in “Numbing Attractions” (Sentient Times, April/May ‘08), an equalitarian culture requires those members who evidence particular gifts or skills, say in healing or hunting, to downplay their specialness, rather than trumpeting their greatness like Donald Trump.
In a society based on some having more than others, armoring of the body, meaning defensiveness expressed in muscular or energy blocks, will be the norm. Having more than someone else invites envy and the possibility of this being acted upon, through threats and violence. The dawn of the technology of agriculture provides the first evidence of an unequal distribution of wealth, since now concentrated food (grain) could be stored. (Coinciding with this is the first evidence of tooth decay, since the human gut was not designed to process cereals too well.)
Once inequality is established, hierarchy becomes important for another reason. With the advent of increased envy, greed, and power, comes the possibility of war. When there is the possibility of an enemy, we need top-down authority to establish effective chains of command to either withstand or prosecute an attack successfully. Imagine a peaceful people who decide things by consensus, trying to determine what to do to defend themselves when every second counts. Who has time for agreement or consensus then?
In my therapy practice, my purpose is to create a microcosm, no matter how small, wherein true equality and peace may reside. I’m talking about helping people out of a despotic, judging head-trip which they place on themselves all too often. This won’t immediately lead to freedom on the outside; for that, we need a very well developed sense of grounding, a strong energy field and shield, and a robust flow of life force in our bodies. If these conditions are met, we may be able to carve out a niche for ourselves or see past the injustices of the world to the true wonder of creation.
Right now, for instance, are you reading this with effort—to get to the point, to practice well, artfully to disagree? It’s not just important to achieve the goal of living peacefully within oneself; it’s important that we practice peacefulness en route to our goal. If we try to approach this task by trying to stamp out our wayward behavior, we are no better than prosecuting “a war to end all wars.” In the strangely circular reasoning reminiscent of all spiritual truths, we can say that in order to gain peace within, we must aim for this goal in a peaceful manner, but then we discover that we’ve already reached our goal. But living this out in practice is the real issue. To maintain a steady consciousness of the reality of peace takes practice.
In our bodies, when standing, obviously what’s on top is our head. When in a state of fear or siege mentality, energy is withdrawn from the periphery of the body but also up into the head. This mimics the developmental sequence in reverse: when we are born, the area of our bodies which is most organized in terms of consciousness involves our heads. It’s also the only one of our body cavities which is almost completely surrounded by hard bone. It makes sense that our energy pools in this area when under threat. You can tell how effective it is at numbing fear by the fact that when we are up in our head judging, ruminating, or perseverating, we are often unaware of feeling deep fear.
Because we’re endowed with large brains and an upright posture, it’s all too easy to misunderstand the brain’s most useful purpose. If you think about it for a moment, it’s clear that not only are the senses of smell, taste, sight, and hearing located in the head, but also, as we know from anatomy, sensory information from the rest of the body is sent to the brain. What is the catchall phrase for perception with our senses? It’s the aesthetic sense. How about if we start thinking of our heads as organs of aesthetic pleasure, appreciating the ride as we move through life? This is obviously a non-combative approach, which could restore in us a more holistic, integrated vision of ourselves and the world. What it would be poor at is battle, conflict, and war; it would be good at awe and mystery.
We would need to encourage a new language of appreciation. Instead of, “He’s a good thinker,” “He’s a good senser.” In restoring the head to its more harmonious, equalitarian position, we would need to empower some other parts of the body with active power words. In a fanciful way, we could say of someone, “She’s a quick hearter.”
When we come to the pelvis, we are at a loss for positive Anglo-Saxon words. Most of the words used to describe what’s below our chest are of a Latin or Greek origin: diaphragm, abdomen, intestine, penis, vulva, etc. Non-technical words for body parts or actions in the pelvis are routinely used negatively as swear words. This marks a long history of our inability to unite genital feelings with loving, tender heart feelings, while being able to think and perceive clearly (pelvis, heart, and head). Our very language denigrates, diminishes, or even denies the possibility of such union. In other words, we’re ----ed.
The reason top-down social structures need us to demean our pelvis is brought out by the question I sometimes ask my clients: “What’s beneath your pelvis?” Surprisingly, and not surprisingly at all, the answer is: “Legs!” If you contaminate the pelvis with all sorts of prohibitions, mixed messages, etc., you deprive that person of their own standing, their own understanding, their authority.
To continue our fantasy of restoring a more democratic structure to our bodies and therefore ourselves, I invite the reader to come up with their own word or words to describe an action in a positive way which the pelvis participates in. In a sense, this was Wilhelm Reich’s great contribution to western healing (though almost completely destroyed by government action): that when we allow the free flow of energy in our bodies, we naturally feel connected to all of creation. Jung had a similar insight in regards to what he called the shadow. Though we are very afraid of its darkness, once we pass through it, a surprising thing happens where “the soul of everything living begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.” (C.G.Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious)
Clearly for us in the West, the pelvis is not seen clearly for what it is, as the seat of light, life, and a joyful existence—the possibility of heaven here on earth. It remains in the shadow, while our brains remain untethered to its sensory foundation. As we see the power of the Internet, we can be reminded that a whole bunch of household PC’s in communication with each other far outstrips the computational capacity of one supercomputer. We might begin to wonder at animals with lesser individual brains; they have in fact opted for the more elegant and less bulky process of distributed awareness. As we become more connected to each other, as advanced consumerism begins to fail, we might again discover our dormant capacities for community. Our hearts are the quintessential organ for love, trust, and community, possessing as it does a greater energetic field than our brains, but also thereby a greater need for interdependence. May our heads take pleasure in that fact.
Peter Moore continues to be busy with his growing family, but takes time away from them for his therapy practice in Eureka, California. He can be reached at (707) 442-7228.
