SPIRIT

ATM DEFENDER APP INTRO

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One of the things that struck me as I grew into middle age was that no one ever told me it was up to me to create order. Seems obvious maybe.

I had to run into the order versus chaos dichotomy from sheer ignorance borne from curiousity.

Meaning, it’s a damn good thing I like to read.

I suppose it’s also because I’d learned to be a manager in that purest of sales endeavours, the door-to-door crew business.

I’d hustled jobs and extra money as soon as I hit double digits in age and benefitted from my buddy and neighbour Graydon’s work ethic, but working doors over the years taught me plenty more.

When it comes to setting goals and making steady progress, what I see is that most guys have good intentions, often better than mine, but often fail to systematize their efforts to win.

Or they are blocked somehow.

Though women are usually exceptional organizers, order is key if we are to keep the forces of decay from overwhelming us. That’s very much a male responsibility.

I fling dumbbells around to keep grip strength and have done wall sits while brushing my teeth for decades to protect my knees. I used Day Timer’s system to organize my priorities in college (and still do to some extent).

From this attitude the quadrant system was born.


DAILY QUAD TRACKING
I like to add day of week (M,T,W, etc.) and put something in daily under each quadrant. Here I was with a pulled abdominal muscle but checked off 100 Jumping Jacks and 75 Pushups daily just the same. Tracking did that.

The quadrant system exists to organize daily actions across physiology, piety, people, and production, so that effort can be observed over time. It’s the daily actions, you see.

Like the way I’ve made my bed each morning for decades to “put order into my world.”

Like how I say psalm 118:24 to myself first thing when I pull the window curtain open in my room.

Even as a comfortable agnostic, these set my intentions for the day. It’s the rituals then.

These lessen anxiety, build resilience, form character, and often help with belonging.

For example ma went to church her whole life. Dad didn’t.

I asked him about it in his eighties, and he said he’d wished he’d attended.

Felt he’d missed out on the community.

 

Some psychologists liken us to herd animals, and tell of how the emotional system is governed by belonging.
The beautiful part of belonging is shared causes, and how as men stand shoulder to shoulder with each other they can accomplish just about anything.

And so, retired engineer and Defender Board member Gary took our stuff and built the Defender App for the benefit of all men. Gary is an amazing guy…

The Defender App supports the quadrant system by providing a stable place to record daily activity and revisit that record later.

Writing actions down creates a reference point that persists beyond mood, fatigue, or temporary self-assessment.

It’s also an app like none other.

WEEKLY CHECK IN 
It contains daily quadrant tracking and a weekly quadrant summarizing page.

It has place for a daily “to do” list and leaves room for a “one thing” to get done as this week’s priority.

Taking 15 minutes to review daily activity at the end of the week is really helpful, failing which I would need to assess how committed I am to progress in managing my life.

I like to review my daily activity and summarize them in a weekly “after action review” exercise every Sunday.

GOAL SETTING
Goal setting starts with a no-BS present time self assessment in each quadrant then it asks that you create goals in each for the next month, season, and year.

Firstly, it invites you to claim your identity by creating a Destiny Vision for each quadrant. Combined these make up a kind of deliberate masculine destiny path to follow.

This is critical for men.


We left room in seasonal and yearly goals to enter various levels of goals in each quadrant.

For example you can input a manageable goal, a slightly more challenging goal, a top end goal and a downright impossible or dream goal.

Having this stare you in the face each day helps you to decide what kind of man you want to be.

Ask: why be average when you can be amazing?

PRIVACY
In developing the app we thought about building an interface so you could also access your data on a desktop or laptop. I’ll tell you why we didn’t. We want your stuff to be fully private.

Besides, all of the goals and journaling entries can be saved to the journal section on the app itself or shared by email as a text file to keep in a file off the phone app itself.

Even though no one has time to look at your stuff, we didn’t even want the ability under any circumstance.

GETTING UNSTUCK 
A big reason for this is not just quadrant tracking and goal setting, but also the journaling functions which contain some of my best proprietary journaling techniques.

I refer to these as the “T Journals” as each can be described with a word beginning with T.

For example:

Option one is the open “free flow” journaling where you can enter whatever is on your mind. This is an important exercise where you can dump thoughts and feelings to find clarity.

Hence, “Talk Journaling”

Gratitude journaling encourages you to write at different intervals about whatever it is you have to be thankful for, a practice with profound effects on mental health in the way it reduces stress and depression, builds resilience, improves sleep, and enhances life satisfaction.

Hence, “Thanks! Journaling”

The blessings exercise follows that same idea and invites you to find three things that went well today, why those are important, and how to get more. I even get my kids to do this one.

Hence, “Tally! Journaling”

Caging the wolf will be familiar to those who have read Sipping Fear Pissing Confidence and has to do with refuting the “feed, fuck, kill, run, hide” lower order nervous system at play in addictions and general fear seeking. Instead, build your better character while claiming an identity you can be proud of.
A man must defend his confidence at all costs, I say.

Hence, “Temptation Journaling”

The 10R process is found in The Taming Shame course and has to do with identifying negative feelings but which may not fit the circumstances directly. These often signal an emotional trailhead of sorts. 10R provides a map so you can update your internal operating system.

Hence, “Trigger Journaling”

Lastly, the self care writing exercise is included so a man has a way of dealing with old wounds that might still be affecting his approach to life. This is the exact process I used to get past being beaten as a child, You may or may not make use of this deeper work, but it is there if needed.

Hence, “Trauma Journaling”

All of these can be saved into your personal journal library. The information stays on your phone where no one else can see. You can also send files to yourself.

I find that option particularly helpful when reviewing entries about temptation, being triggered, or about old traumatic events.

So, there you have it.
Daily tracking, weekly progress, goal setting based in facts and not in fiction and that build character and identity, as well as the most comprehensive journaling options possible.

The beauty of the system is if reluctance or inactivity interferes with intention it usually means there is work to do emotionally to resolve whatever is blocking a man’s progress. Combined, the various journaling options is like having an Advisor to Men™ in your pocket. Say what??

THE DEFENDER BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Ideally, you want a squad of men to whom you can turn to for feedback, like what we’ve created in The Defender Boards. The Defender App makes the whole process more efficient, and it’s gamification makes it fun too.


You have no doubt heard that what gets measured gets managed.

Life simplifies immensely with daily tracking because of its measurable progress.

The alternative might mean ten years go by only for a man to realize he did not, in fact, live a decade (or two), rather he lived a version of one year ten times.

Don’t be that man.

Set some goals, track your progress, defend your life.

Be an amazing guy…

Take the quad course, get the app, join the boards

Stay powerful, true and free…
cw

Don’t wait, get started today…

 Join us in building a Defender Destiny by taking this free course.
https://10mm.org/quad-courseVideo version of above: Defender App Intro video Dec,2025
https://youtu.be/4MhnQQWbuoo
🛡️ The Defender Board of Directors meets weekly in squads, daily in chat…
👉 Join here https://10mm.org/membership 
*Note Defender Board members get the Pro version of the app included.
Ask me for my special link to get in the board at less than the usual monthly app rate so you get both for less…

INNER WOMAN: INDIVIDUATION & THE ANIMA

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The Four Faces of Her… Within You
Individuation, the Anima, and the Way Forward

Most men I work with are stuck. They are not broken. They are not weak. But they are stuck. Not because they lack willpower. Not because they do not want to grow. But because something inside is unfinished. In Jungian psychology, that unfinished business is often the anima.

My first psychology teacher, a Gestaltist, introduced me to this idea of leftover stuff, with its best practitioner Fritz Perls calling it a “gunnysack of anger” carried over the shoulder wherever you go.

Holy fuck did I carry a load! Maybe you do too… I felt the burden and I realized then and there I had plenty of work to do. I learned to let go of that weight over time.

Through my studies in Behavioural Science, in short order I was introduced to the archetypal psychology of Carl Jung.

Jung’s analytical psych mentions Individuation as the psychological process of integrating the conscious and unconscious parts of the self to become a whole, unique individual. This is integration at its simplest. It involves confronting and balancing inner archetypes, like the anima, to achieve personal growth and self-realization.

The work we do in the Taming Shame course using the Younger Self 10R process is all about understanding the unconscious motivations that drive us. Constructed emotion and the predictive brain alongside my behavioural training mesh well with this approach.

Look, I could go on and on about this stuff but I’ll stop here. THE WORK is about updating your operating system. I call it “using a Commodore 64 operating system in a Windows 11 world.” You may be old enough to get that reference.

Jung describes the anima as the unconscious feminine side of a man’s psyche, representing emotions, intuition, and relational qualities. It influences how he perceives and connects with women and his inner self, evolving through stages from Eve to Sophia as he matures (explained forthwith).

So the anima is the inner image of the feminine that every man carries. She is not a fantasy. She is not a wish. She is the psychic counterpart to your masculine soul.

If she is not integrated, she will distort your relationships. She will lure you into chaos or make you retreat into passivity.

If she is integrated, she becomes your guide to wisdom, purpose, and love.

Individuation means reconciling the parts of your psyche that have been split apart. It is not a goal you check off a list. It is a lifelong process of becoming whole.

One major part of that process is how your inner woman matures. Jung described four stages of anima development: Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia.

You will recognize yourself in one or more of these…


Eve is the mother. At this stage, a man seeks care, unconditional acceptance, and emotional security. Many men who were abandoned or smothered by their mothers are stuck here. They do not desire a partner. They desire to be soothed. Often, this leads to addiction, dependency, or an inability to lead.


Helen is the lover. Here, a man is captivated by beauty, youth, and sensual energy. He becomes driven by attraction. He judges women based on looks. He chases validation from women instead of leading them. He fears aging because his anima is still adolescent. This man can be charming but is often insecure.


Mary is the virtuous woman. This phase is marked by a desire for devotion and meaning. The man begins to look for a woman of character. He may idealize goodness. He starts to ask questions like, “What is a good life?” and “What kind of man should I be?” His anima is maturing, and his heart begins
to serve something beyond pleasure.


Sophia is wisdom. She is not beautiful in the youthful sense. She is radiant in the eternal sense. A man at this stage no longer projects fantasy onto women. He sees them as they are. He respects them, but he is no longer ruled by them. His inner feminine now guides him toward truth, meaning, and deep alignment with life.

Most men I see are stuck in Eve or Helen.
They are either looking for a woman to mother them or a woman to turn them on.

And get this: They rarely recognize that what they are seeking is already inside them.

That is the purpose of individuation. Not to find the perfect woman. But to become the integrated man.

You cannot skip these stages. But you can stop getting stuck or bouncing around from one to the other.
Your anima will grow with you if you let her.

It is only with the anima that a man blesses others with his King energy. That’s how it works.

Start by asking yourself honestly: Who am I really drawn to, and why? What do I want from women? What do I fear they might see in me? What kind of woman do I want beside me when I am dying?

Let her grow. And you will grow too. Reverse the flow…

If this stirred something in you, share it. Join the Defender Boards. Learn what it means to walk shoulder to shoulder with men committed to becoming whole.

Stay powerful, true and free…
cw

GOD WITHIN

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There was a time I was puzzled by the bible and the idea of heaven and hell. I found it difficult to reconcile the external teachings of the church… and having a faith with the internal journey of discovering how to live a moral life and contribute as a human being in a way that was good for me, others, and humankind. I’ll give you the broad strokes and start at the beginning of my experience with faith, almost sixty years ago. Maybe something you read here will help your own spiritual quest.

I once went to Catholic mass with my father as a very young boy to sing with him in the choir. I’m not sure how it was that I ended up at the St Thomas D’Aquin church on Kilborn Avenue in Ottawa singing in Latin or French with my dad, but I was up there once or twice overlooking the congregation from the choir balcony at the back of the church.

It is a rare and good early memory of my pops. He was still kind and gentle back then, and when I’d lose my place in the hymnal, I’d look up at him and he’d lean over while singing and patiently place an index finger on the right spot of the page for me. I was so impressed he could keep up, even more so at his tolerance.

This is a picture I inherited from my father, it may have been given to me while he was still alive, or maybe not. In any case, I have it and I’m glad I do. It was around somewhere on a wall of his home as far back as I can remember. I treasure it because it came from his life with my religiously devoted mother, and so, when I see it, well, I think a little bit of them both. We exist in each other.

This picture is often called the Sallman Head or The Head of Christ. It was done first as a charcoal sketch in the 1920s entitled “Son of Man” and later painted in oil in 1940 as you see it. It has since been reproduced an astounding half-billion times worldwide… and is also associated with miracles.

According to David Morgan in The Art of Warner Sallman (1966), a white businessman was released by vicious head-hunters in a remote jungle when they came upon a picture of the Sallman Head in the man’s wallet. Apologizing, they vanished “into the jungle without inflicting further harm.”

Another is a story of a thief who changes his mind when spying the Head of Christ on a living room wall. There is even a tale about a purported conversion of a Jewish woman shown Sallman’s picture on her deathbed by a chaplain. Another miracle tells of a child’s remission from Leukemia after seeing the picture.

Sallman himself said the idea for the sketch and eventual painting came from a “miraculous vision” one night at 2 am while despairing over what he might present to a class the following day.

This tiny version I have is yellowed with age and framed in such a way that it has brown paper covering the backside of it the way old pictures from a different era once did. While my father may have attended mass with me the odd time when I was a kid, I don’t remember him going after our choir visit, even though my brothers and I all became altar boys at that very church where I first sang with dad.

I had occasion to ask him about church attendance later when he was in his 80s. After all ma, his wife of more than six decades, had faithfully attended Holy Cross Catholic church at Riverside and Walkley since the church was built. She counted coins for them and had close friends there.

Dad said he had made Alcoholic’s Anonymous his church but that if he had to do it all over again he would have attended with his wife. He said it was because he realized too late that he was likely missing out on community. He said it not wistfully but matter-of-factly, wide-eyed and leaning in a bit while punctuating his words with finality. He did that when he admitted things during our private conversations, as if an interminable impatience with himself lingered beneath the surface of his speech.

My journey around faith took a different route. After my altar boy years (unmolested), I was out of the house early once my father burned out and broke down and unsurprisingly, I turned away from the church to eventually live a thug’s life in the streets. Beaten children often become deviant, no surprises there. In my mid-thirties I was welcomed into the Anglican faith, its inclusion of female priests more suited to my emergent feminism. I realized later I valued justice after all.

The Anglicans caught me off-guard during the conversion ceremony when, during the rites, the bishop appeared to lightly slap the Catholic out of me in while I knelt in front of the congregation. I remember looking him in the eye quickly and thinking, OK I’ll let that slide this once, as if my internal incongruities were being tested.

Around that period of accelerated renewal in my life, I reasoned that since I’d confirmed I could make hell on earth, I suspected the idea of heaven was to try to make heaven right here in this world around us each day.

I shared this “heaven on earth” minor epiphany with my Anglican sponsor, the Reverend Doctor Pellegrin, who was kind enough to confirm my suspicions with muted encouragement. It’s funny how the world conspires to put just the right person in a man’s life if he allows it. To become a psychologist, Bruce Pellegrin had done his doctoral dissertation on how the priesthood was for many a search for a father. He helped me bridge the gap between faith and logic.

Later, I moved away, leaving organized religion (and feminism) behind while taking up a more deterministic view of humankind under the influence of my behavioural science training and eventually the likes of Spinoza’s pantheism. This is how I refer to myself now and I don’t see nor feel conflicted about it. God as a metaphor for the universe seems grand enough. Nevertheless, the idea of God stands to me as a reasonable quest in people’s lives so atheism would never do in my case.

I credit my father for blessing me with one of the best practicalities about religiosity and the idea of God The occasion was when my young son (ten or so at the time) was on a cub scout weekend. He was invited to take a pledge, “I promise to do my best, to love and serve God, to do my duty to the Queen, to keep the law of the Wolf Pack, and to do a good turn for somebody every day.”

The boy refused, stating he didn’t believe in God.

What should have been a slam-dunk formality became a back-room haranguing from the cub leaders who told him point-blank, no pledge, no cub scouts. When he got home, I heard all about it. I had the local cub leader over to point out psychological development of abstract concepts were a little early for most ten-year-old kids. I received an apology; he’d waive the pledge.

My son rejected this entreaty. I had attended cubs, then scouts, and later was privileged to be allowed in as a pioneer in the movement and I wanted this for my son. I consulted my father. He suggested we use G.O.D. as in Good Orderly Direction. BINGO, I thought to myself, what a perfect compromise.

The boy was having none of it. He saw this as a ruse to get him to believe in God and wasn’t about to let the adults who ganged up on him during the cubbing weekend off the hook. He quit, refusing every attempt at compromise, never attending cubs again. I had to respect the kid’s guts while saddened for him too..

Perhaps I had inadvertently… but I don’t remember ever trying to convince him there was no God, so his mother and I were surprised at the whole of it. I’m guessing it was probably the same year he found out there was no Santa Claus. Poor kid, I imagine he had his model of the world shifted and there was no going back.

I can’t say that I have struggled with faith, that would be too strong. I have considered it, though I know having a faith seemingly and miraculously comforts many others, probably as many as half of us. I conclude humans are undoubtedly hardwired for faith.

I think there is something inoculative about believing and people often drift in and out of faith with the ebb and flow of life. I myself have hung onto the simplicity of G.O.D. since learning of it and have shared dad’s tip with countless others. It seems enough as is… but there is more.

My father read a book or more per week most of his life and when he was slowly dying of dementia and moved to a care-home, I inherited his books. There I found Freud, Jung, the Greeks, many philosophers, all books he’d read decades ago, many yellowed but with brittle pages intact. I imagined him again and saw how these must have contributed to his religious reluctance just a bit. And Nietzsche, that “God is dead and we have killed him” fucking Nietzsche.

One of the great finds among dad’s remnant collection was a copy of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell, someone I’ve followed for years. It’s a 1970 thirteenth printing by Meridian Books of the original 1949 version and the copy my father had cost $2.75 Canadian.

In The Power of Myth, a book written based on interviews with Bill Moyers almost forty years after his Hero book, Campbell answers Moyer’s question about metaphor:

MOYERS: What is the metaphor?

CAMPBELL: A metaphor is an image that suggests something else. For instance, if I say to a person, “You are a nut,” I’m not suggesting that I think the person is literally a nut. “Nut” is a metaphor. The reference of the metaphor in religious traditions is to something transcendent that is not literally any thing. If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the menu.

For example, Jesus ascended to heaven. The denotation would seem to be that somebody ascended to the sky. That’s literally what is being said. But if that were really the meaning of the message, then we have to throw it away, because there would have been no such place for Jesus literally to go. We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would still be in the galaxy. Astronomy and physics have simply eliminated that as a literal, physical possibility.

But if you read “Jesus ascended to heaven” in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward—not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward.

The point is that we should ascend with him by going inward. It is a metaphor of returning to the source, alpha and omega, of leaving the fixation on the body behind and going to the body’s dynamic source.
(The Power of Myth (pp. 67-68). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group)

Mythology helped me understand God. Once I did, I never had a problem with it again.

The real fun is in mystery, in miracles even. Everyone loves redemption, sublimation, and we can’t help but root for an underdog.

When my mother was a few days away from death, I visited her. We spoke of faith, especially mystery and miracles. At one point she looked up at me in pain and with unwavering conviction obvious in her eyes, voice, and expression, patted my hand and said, “You’ve got to have a bit of faith, Christopher.” It was her final advice.

Though I would have said anything if it meant she would not die, I remember promising that I would indeed, leave room in my life for mystery, for miracles, for a bit of faith. My perfectly imperfect mother died that Friday after a two-day vigil at home, surrounded by her nine adult children and husband of sixty-two years, all wishing her well while sending her off.

The family dog keened mournfully at the exact moment of her passing.

Desire is always accompanied by fear, even if we don’t recognize it. In a similar way the wonder and excitement of awe is coupled with the threat of chaos. It is this which makes us a little afraid and drives the creativity needed to consider things outside our normal perceptions.

You can imagine that “someone like me” has lived at times what may have seemed like an exalted life if only for the many times I have eluded the Grim Reaper’s scrolls. I have also visited dungeons of despairing, mostly of my own creation, while carrying hopelessness and shame for a half century.

I suspect most of us have at least a version of some of this (if not a lot).

When I first read the following quote, I thought it could have been written for me. Of course, Carl Jung is writing it for himself on behalf of us all. It’s my favourite of anything I’ve read by him and another reason why the Sallman Head occupies a place on the wall of my house. In his Collected Works 11, p, 550, Jung wrote:

“That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ—all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself—that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved—what then?”

I have come to believe a faith in God is about fostering a faith in yourself. Its representation can be both internal and/or external, of seeing the interconnectivity of all things, the known and the unknown, the sacred and the profane, the miracles and the mysteries, the compassion and the belonging. Mike Spencer Brown (The World’s Most Traveled Man) reminds us of some of this when he writes, “At the end of the day, we are all of us staring at the same heavens.”

It doesn’t make sense to decry another man’s search for meaning as he arrives at his understanding of God.

It could be faith is about accepting one’s divinity and the divinity of others with each of us finding a way home to the God within.

Power & Love,
True and Free,
cw

©CHRIS WALLACE, 2022, all rights reserved, advisortomen.com

SOUL AND SPIRIT

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SOUL AND SPIRIT
I think most people have an inkling of their two selves: a rational thought and logic-based self for day-to-day utility using primarily language as its means of communication within consciousness; and a deeper, emotionally intuitive self where their passions, wishes, dreams and aspirations reside communicated through the body’s dreams and somatic experience.

Whereas the thinking part of self is always located in our heads, the intuitive and emotional part is more physiological. People will often point to their heart or mid-chest towards the sternum as the location of this part of self.

We are advised to listen to our gut when appraising circumstances and deciding things, as if this gut and heart experience represents a truer form of our internal identity and might bring a closer understanding of our needs and a better path to our end goals. We could call this the body mind, appreciating how it bypasses the strictly rational self (and comes before it seeking self-preservation) and often seems to speak from a wiser or higher form of self.

We seem to instinctively know the gut is less encumbered by the rules and expectations we’ve picked up conforming to the wishes of  adults who raise us. We can bypass the intrusiveness and often endless complications of our thinking by going directly to the gut. We realize our trust in thought alone is faulty because we know our thoughts are informed just as much by other’s wishes for us (or for themselves in our regard) as they are our own.

I read that we often have tens of thousands of thoughts in a day. How many feelings will I have in that period? Because of the power of focus, I’ll only become aware of a tiny portion of either of these. Feelings paint my experience with much broader strokes than do my thoughts, which are often errant and imprecise themselves.

We realize our very survival depends upon having a well-honed intuition for danger. That “sixth sense” we sometimes detect when confronting a puzzling or uncertain circumstance can make the difference between life or death. There is more than a little truth to the maxim, “if you’re in your head, you’re dead.”

Often enough, thinking gets in the way, and feeling and acting saves the day.

A hundred years ago, Carl Jung’s model of the human psyche described how we have a “true self,” something we are born with. It’s our essential nature, what we arrive with, perhaps in terms of raw material encoded in our DNA. It is also what becomes obscured by ego formation, the process of learning to conform with the adults upon whom we depend for sustenance and protection. Later, the psyche is further divided as the ego adopt various masks to wear in public or in private performing differing societal roles.

You may be one way at home, another at work, and adopt differing personalities as a father or mother, lover, friend, community member, churchgoer, etc. Jung called these personae and we can see how this ego buries true self even more.

The true self idea is interesting because it suggests we arrive in this world with a blueprint, a “truth,” which is later forged into a self concept which takes into account those around us. Our idea of who we are, then, becomes how we see ourselves contrasted against how we believe others see us.

This inner self would contain our “potentials and possibilities,” something the mythologist Joseph Campbell mentions in his books, “the Power of Myth” and “Pathways to Bliss.” We could even call it something like a soul. Jung himself authored a book called “Modern Man in Search of a Soul” in 1933.

They say Immanuel Kant gave us back our concept of “soul” in the late 1700’s, wresting the idea from the rationalists, saying, “I, as a thinking being, am the absolute subject of all my possible judgments and this representation of myself cannot be employed as a determination of any other thing. Therefore, I, as thinking being (soul), am substance.”

Kant seems to say because everything we see, think and feel, can only be through our personal lens. It is this internal system which allows us to project a systematizing force upon our environment. It precedes reality.

Our DNA blueprint is ours, and how it is manifested upon the world around us is filtered by ego and experience but still entirely personal.

And what would this “soul” be made up of? Is there proof of its existence beyond a sense that is there? Can we point to some tangible proof from the sciences and the metaphysical arts? Something which would tell us it is more than a simple heuristic? Let’s take a shot at it:

First, we know influences on ancestral DNA are passed down through the methyl groups. This is field of “behavioural epigenetics” holds a lot of promise. I have often thought it might even explain why alcoholism runs in families. Grandchildren of holocaust survivors are affected by their ancestral experiences.

Furthermore, we’ve identified inborn temperaments such as labile vs non-reactive; dysthymic vs optimistic; anxious vs calm; obsessive vs distracted; passive vs aggressive; irritable vs cheerful; shy vs sociable and mood suggesting methyl group influences. We are not born as a blank slate but come programmed in advance.

Wouldn’t that be part of the soul?

What about Carl Jung’s idea of collective unconscious, humanity’s shared memory? Pointing to the mythological record, we see variations of myths have been repeated throughout history, often continents apart and in different era, in cultures which had no contact. This gives us an idea of our connection to each other.

Similarities occur from Egyptians and ancient Greece, China and India and even North and South American Indian myths and rituals, to the three Abrahamic religions, and we see the same stories in variation. The two books by Campbell mentioned above are a good start if you are interested in learning more.

Jung suggested we all possess this common background. We are all born afraid of the dark and of heights. If you showed a snake to grade school kids in Siberia in the 1950’s where there are no snakes, half of them would recoil in fear. Why? Jung would say that’s the collective unconscious. It is our instincts, the ones we have in common with others.

We know from the baby gaze studies at Yale that we are born with at least a rudimentary sense of justice. We can tell good from evil almost right away. Far from arriving into this world as a blank slate, we each come pre-programmed with some of our direct ancestry’s influence and archetypes—qualities of memory which govern all men (and women).

Couldn’t we say that’s part of your soul?

With what we know about how emotions are made in the last ten years I’d add at least one more thing: we know the brain is “predictive,” not reactive.

In any given situation, beneath your awareness the brain receives messages from the body (called interoception) through the tenth cranial nerve wired to the brain stem. It uses this information to put you in the best-guess state to meet circumstances relying on your databank of prior experience since birth. Then, your brain corrects after the fact according to the social reality before you. All this happens mostly beneath awareness.

Arrive home later for supper and snap at your significant other over something trivial. Later, while eating you realize you had not had any food since late morning and were famished. The body responded and you lashed out without even realizing what was driving your impatience.

The whole brain works predictively this way, subconsciously running things beneath the surface. You only get the results. Thoughts reflect what is happening in the body. Then, we use those thoughts to make sense of our world, applying an ample internal bias to the process.

So, we possess an inborn temperament and we share a collective unconscious… so wouldn’t a databank of prior experience become part of your soul?

This would suggest the idea of a soul made up of your personal ancestry, a species-wide shared memory, and a personal lived history, forces informing the present with what is brought forward from the past.

We could add another influence to account for gender.

In his book, The Psychology of Transference, Jung wrote: “The “soul” which accrues to ego-consciousness during the opus has a feminine character in the man and a masculine character in a woman. His anima wants to reconcile and unite; her animus tries to discern and discriminate.”

Since males have XY chromosomes and females XX chromosomes, it would mean Jung’s masculine and feminine “energies,” as such, would be less derived from DNA per se, simply because women with two X chromosomes would not experience influences from the “male” Y chromosome.

Rather, it is the varying levels of the male and female sex hormones testosterone and estrogen, which occur because of the XX and XY differences. Both sexes have some, though men far higher levels of testosterone and women far higher levels of estrogen.

As men age, their level of testosterone wanes. Is this why aging men often find they can access the anima (feminine sourced energy), becoming more compassionate and finding the inter-connectedness between all things? That’s fine with me and as good a guess as any. But let’s leave that aside for now.

Combined, this gets us to the present, but how does the soul manifest itself?

What about spirit? We see it in admiration of types in the animal kingdom, appreciating a spirited horse, for example. We may find ourselves stirred with the animal spirit when we consider the great migrations of African Wildebeest or Canadian Caribou. Or the majesty of a Bald Eagle, an Asian Tiger or African Elephant. It’s clear we have a sense of spirit if only in the way we might admire those whom we find “spirited.” My adopted “animal totem” is the rooster, standing for loyalty, flamboyance and protection, among other qualities. It was the first animal heard in the morn after a battle and the Celts said it was communicating with the dead. Mysterious.

And who can see a sunrise or sunset and not feel a connection to spirit? Go into a desert or Canada’s arboreal forest at night far away from the lights of the city and gaze up and the sky and the Milky Way. If you have never seen the Northern Lights, I say go see them and tell me about your spirit.

Great art, cathedrals, music, nature and people all lift spirit. And why is it we cannot help but be attracted to the underdog in any story? Why is it the quintessential human experience is to root for the downtrodden? From Rocky Balboa to Luke Skywalker to Florence Nightingale and Joan of Arc, we appreciate heroes for their spirited commitment to a cause.

Because it always involves the spirit acting to overcome a challenge. It is always about being lost but somehow, our hero finds themselves again. It’s the great Hail Mary Pass of life, the long shot, the one in a million chance. It’s irresistible.

And that’s because so are you. It’s the Hero’s Journey, something the mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote about in his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” In this collection he shows how the Hero’s Journey is the story of human beings. It is the stuff of our legends as told around fires for thousands of years.

We live these stages repeatedly in our lifetime, roughly following these steps:
The hero is confronted
The hero rejects the challenge
The hero accepts the challenge
The hero undergoes a road of trials
The hero gathers allies, gaining power
The hero confronts evil—and is defeated
The hero undergoes a dark night of the soul
The hero takes a leap of faith
The hero confronts evil—and is victorious
The hero becomes a teacher

This is our shared destiny and your soul and spirit are compelled to contribute. You see, the universe doesn’t make mistakes.

Though you began as a glint in your parent’s eyes, something like 40 million to 1.2 billion possibilities competed to bring you to life. You could have been born a girl, a boy, with missing limbs or whatever. But, no, you were born you.

You were the underdog and you vanquished all others and won the race. This is a staggering feat: the universe in its infinite wisdom, the same force which put a billion stars in the Andromeda Galaxy, chose you. Your prize was a life.

I suggest your soul represents your true self, the gifts you bring to this existence. The spirit is its voice. One is the present and past combining into your potentials while the other is the present and future suggesting your possibilities.

Consider that your self concept is made up of how you see yourself contrasted against how you believe others see you, maturation involves strengthening your inside game, relying less on what can become the tyranny of external influence. Soul and spirit are your keys to a more powerful you. It’s how you gain awareness of what was previously only in your subconscious. This is what brings about the possibility of change. It is where your free will begins: personal power equals agency.

Kant said, “two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral laws within me.” It is your duty to share your contribution with the world. “Be afraid to die,” said Horace Mann, “until you have won a victory for mankind.” Give us something, anything, it says, if only the goodness you spread among your fellow man.

The soul and spirit are the forces behind your Hero’s Journey. Not because it’s what you can do. Not because it is necessarily because it’s what you want. No. It’s because it’s what you owe. The miracle of your life demands it.

Take time to honour your soul and listen to your spirit.

Stay powerful, never give up
cw

©2020 Christopher K Wallace
all rights reserved

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Further reading:

Methyl groups and epigenetics
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/grandmas-experiences-leave-a-mark-on-your-genes

Joseph Campbell:
The Power of Myth, 1988, Anchor Books
Pathways to Bliss, 2004, Joseph Campbell Foundation
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1949, Meridian Books

Carl Jung:
Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 1933, Harvest Books,
The Psychology of Transference, 1983 Routledge Books

Lisa Feldman-Barrett:
How Emotions are Made: the secret life of the brain, 2017, Pan Macmillan

Hero’s Journey interpretation
Steven Barnes, Lifewriting

Katharina T. Kraus, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2017
Kant’s Critique of Metaphysics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2004
The Soul as the Guiding Idea of psychology: Kant on scientific psychology, systematicity, and the idea of the soul

SLEEP HORROR

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SLEEP HORROR
Sleep in this morning? Needed it maybe? Not worried? Maybe you will “catch up” later? Good.

Perhaps you are on modern society’s treadmill, a pawn of the bankers and their capitalist soldiers using interest to create scarcity and competition. Like a junkie’s tolerance, their heroin is ever-increasing growth at any cost, never enough, more and more. That’s life, right? Can you keep this up?

Indeed, chances are for you there will be a  “personal reckoning” of some kind. You suspect this already. Sleep was your God-given right. It was your blessing from the universe: your dreams a therapist’s couch and an art school within the confines of your head.

That you are not alone in this struggle offers little comfort. “We die together,” might be our valiant stance. How honourable. For what cause was this again?

Best get on it. Why? Think you can scoff at your body like that and get away with it? Modernity is relatively new; Mother Nature is old. “Don’t be obtuse,” said the warden to the prisoner…

“Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer. Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether or not you will develop Alzheimer’s disease. Inadequate sleep—even moderate reductions for just one week—disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic. Short sleeping increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle, setting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure. Fitting Charlotte Brontë’s prophetic wisdom that “a ruffled mind makes a restless pillow,” sleep disruption further contributes to all major psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety, and suicidality. (Walker, Matthew. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (p. 3). Scribner)

Fuck me. Walker takes all the fun out of insomnia. Speaking of which, I suffered this way from about single digits until my 30s. Unluckily, once out my parent’s home at 15 years of age, I gained access to intoxicants to knock me out each night, from hashish to booze to heroin. I say knock me out because although I was unconscious, apparently sleep still evaded me. What did I know?

In my thirties, I temporarily gave up all that shit. Oh my, and insomnia returned. It was like meeting an old bully you thought was left behind years ago and then after transferring into a new school, you find them there, well-established and hanging with those you intend to make your friends.

I learned self-hypnosis and defeated insomnia. Defeated it. Although, I eventually allowed substance use to creep back into my life, I was a more of an intermittent user. Functional, until those last few years that is. Both these things were gifts. I solved that addiction riddle too. Defeated it.

It’s the dreams you see, you can’t escape them. And, for better or worse, we need them. I can sleep in a gas station parking lot with cars going by now. I almost slept through the birth of my second son sitting in a chair ten feet from the missus. “Wally, you’re going to miss it!” was her cry. I awoke to find her and her sister and the nurse giving me the look women give men for being men. Oh, I know that look so well.

“They went painlessly in their sleep,” should be everyone’s hope. To go out that way is to gift wrap the inevitable. Link up years of sleep deficits with how sleep tunes the brain up each night and your chances of facing significant mental decline increase exponentially. It could be the difference between dying horribly and dying healthfully in your sleep, your DNA clock simply having wound down to zero.

Rob yourself of sleep and you may face dark dementia days ahead. With dementia, your brain slowly breaks down, and the horror is you are aware of its every step into madness. The horror, yes. You see and feel yourself slowly getting stupider and there is nothing you can do about it. Stupider, yes.

Your frustration falls on sympathetic but capably deaf ears, speaking of which the voices of those you love become garbled. Garbled, yes. And this might make you mad, so angry you fight back, swinging wildly in self-defence and at other times in righteousness. Whereas most of your life you were occasionally wrong and corrected yourself with humility and an apology, now you are always wrong.

You might take a walk down the hallway of your locked ward, this institution where you now live. You see others and take a seat among them to rest. You put your hand on your cane to steady yourself as you sit. Someone gets up to leave and wants your cane. You refuse to give it up, a struggle ensues. You get the worst of it. You are 89 and both your eyes are blackened. The horror… it was their cane after all.

You just don’t understand…. Anything.

Your speech goes from full sentences down to phrases. You nod a lot at those who visit… if you have visitors at all. For a while, at times you read better than you hear so some take to writing notes for you, you know, so information can enter what’s left of your mind using a different pathway. Soon the letters on the pages might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Eventually, your confidence is so shot you are afraid to even venture a word and instead, stare silently doing your best to convey your mood with your eyes and facial expressions. A smile, a shrug, the odd eye-contact is what you are left with. You may feel like the family dog now, and so you sleep. You can still eat if it’s put in front of you, a lifetime of putting food to mouth not gone yet.

Until you are left staring straight ahead, in the stink from pissing and shitting yourself, great blistering red rashes burning your balls and ass. You scream in pain and lash out at your well-intentioned tormentors, your only salve the drugs you are given to knock you into unconsciousness once more. That’s when you shit yourself again and your torturous cycle of shame and humiliation begins anew.

The pain of your care awakens in you glimpses of injustice. These are triggered deep inside you as if you are being molested while mentally in a coma yet physically capable but weakening more by the day. It’s like you are immobile while being operated on without anesthetic, and your screams go unheard. Powerless, you are outnumbered, and alone.

You realize this is an awful way to go: and you never thought in a million years it would come to this. How can this be?  You are awake and it’s as if brain worms are slowly consuming your reason, but you can’t stop them. They are locked inside your head, slithering among your neurons, multiplying in your Glial spaces, swimming in your cerebrospinal fluid, laying eggs, building a hungry army of young consuming your brain whilst you are alive and listening. Oh, the horror.

Get your sleep. How will you make it a priority? How?

Stay powerful, never give up
cw

©CKWallace 2019 all rights reserved
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Lieutenant Commander H.C.Wallace (ret)
1929-2019
You’re life counted dad,
cw

THE CRAZY 8

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THE BOUNCE The emotional crazy 8 involves bouncing from one negative extreme to another. Following the graphic , you see it goes from versions of sadness over to versions of anger and back to versions of sadness and back and forth again and again. You observe it in folks all the time, and you’ll notice […]