Deep in the Shadows: How Do I Engage Consciously with the Beautiful, Chaotic, Mythic World?

Dear community,

Last week, one of the artists in my co-working group said he didn't have enough money to buy food and he was hungry. I commissioned a work of art from him that I didn't need because I felt very sorry that he was hungry. Then, I started feeling  bad about my choice. I could've donated the money to a worthier cause- there are children suffering of hunger and cold all over the world etc etc.  Or I could have saved the money. I could have invested it in my own children's future. So many possibilities I have not considered before the impulse commissioning of art.

So I decided to dive deep into what happened (with lots of help from my sister Cristina, my friend Jennifer, my friend Diana and my friend Keve- you will all recognize little pieces of our conversations here).  There are many more layers that I have not looked at yet, but for now, I am interested in finding out what the psychic pattern is.  (With as little judgement as possible, because some of the first things that came to mind were : " I am weak, easily manipulated" " I am selfish").

Because the truth of what happened was that I didn’t just feel compassion for a hungry man, I felt existential guilt for being alive in a world where suffering exists. A kind of burden that doesn’t seem to come from generosity alone.

Do you ever feel anything like this? I find this a recurrent theme in my life and it bothers me.

It's almost like my psyche made a quiet agreement long time ago (because this has been my pattern for as long as I remember): “If I have enough, and someone else doesn’t, then I am responsible.”

That agreement feels noble on the surface, but underneath it there is something more archaic: a  belief that  my safety is temporary,  a belief that my pleasure requires justification and a  belief that care for  myself must be “earned” through sacrifice.

Seen through this lens, my act is not kindness. It's inflated, magical responsibility.

The unconscious logic sounds like: “If I don’t suffer enough, I’m complicit.”

This doesn't sound like ethics at all. It sounds like control, the control that the psyche wants to exert over a chaotic world, to feel a sense of predictability.

Why did this man's hunger feel like it was my problem?

I  didn’t ask: “What can I reasonably do?”

I  asked: “Why am I allowed to exist comfortably at all?”

It looks like hunger wasn't the real trigger, but the visibility and proximity of and the identification with the suffering may have been. This was not abstract suffering, the kind that  the psyche can tolerate. This was suffering with  a face, a voice, a story, so my  inner “rescuer” woke up and said: “If I don’t fix this, I am bad.”. This rescuer part of me is definitely inflated. And inflated parts demand impossible tasks.

There is a shadow to goodness that is rarely talked about, and something that I have noticed come up for me over and over in the past 5 years since my first psychedelic journey (when I first turned into Jesus, then the Goddess, because you know, Jesus was not inclusive enough!- wow, still integrating, 5 years later).

If I feel responsible for everyone, I get to feel morally superior to life itself- not consciously or arrogantly, but mythically.

The psyche says: “I will carry the weight of the world so I never have to feel helpless.”

And the cost of this belief:  guilt for resting, shame for spending, anxiety for choosing joy and quiet resentment towards those who "get to be careless"- wow!

Jung warned repeatedly about this kind of inflation—the ego unconsciously identifying with a godlike role.

“The individual who is not conscious of his responsibility to the whole is easily overwhelmed by it.”

— C.G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 84

In other words: if you don’t consciously limit your responsibility, the unconscious will expand it infinitely- and what  human psyche can survive that?

The reframe that actually helped me, and I am writing this here in the hope that if you are suffering from this godlike role, it will help you, too: “Suffering exists, and I am allowed to live well anyway.”

I  am not here to fix the world.

I am  here to participate consciously in it.

Sometimes that looks like giving.

Sometimes it looks like commissioning art.

Sometimes it looks like letting someone else’s hunger remain tragically—not magically—outside of my control.

I have decided: that’s not indifference. That’s adulthood.

If this long winded story speaks to you, can you please reply to this email and let me know how do YOU practice conscious, bounded compassion without numbing your heart?

 With love, (a tiny sprinkle of) rage, and reverence,

Corina