The Challenge of the Present
I have mentioned in recent lectures that the current American political climate can be modeled as a clash between sensates and intuitives.
In my upcoming book, I define sensates and intuitives as corresponding to earth and air respectively. In the Myers Briggs and Kiersey personality type systems, it is the S and N split. In mythic terms, it is the ancient battle amongst the angels side by side with the battles between the Titans and Olympians. Sensate language is concrete and specific, while intuitive language is abstract and filled with metaphors. In esoteric terms it is the difference between the ethereal realm of Yesod versus the manifest realm of Malkuth.
Sensates peer longingly at the past and fear the future. While intuitives fear the past and look hopefully toward the future. But we each are the shadow of the other. So when sensates view the future of the intuitives, they see social chaos, family turmoil and eternal damnation. While intuitives are aghast at the past of the sensates, filled with stifling soul killing traditions, myopic disregard for minorities and women, and an ignorance born of shortsightedness.
What is a challenge to both is the present moment. Sensates and intuitives need each other because the information we both hold is needed to meet the challenges of the present. No we can not go back to the past, but there were gifts and values we cherish that need to be remembered and preserved. And although it is frightening to face a future of uncertainty, there is hope and promise that needs to be nurtured and shaped. And the sensates can help us remember, while the intuitives can give us hope … together.
Because in a global economy, none of us truly wants to return to the blindness and social injustice of our American past, nor do we want to un-tether ourselves from the societal and cultural traditions that have helped many of us to survive and thrive. And in a world facing the challenges of an environmental crisis, can we really make the changes we need without engaging the passions of all our citizens. We need to find common language, common values and work together. And we need to be specific.
What will not work is pandering to our fears. The American politic is dangerously close to a civil war. I have said it before and I will say it again. Although the American boogieman is “a black man with an erection coming over the wall”, what actually frightens us the most are angry white men. And we have seen a lot of images of angry white men and frightened white women lately.
So yes, the tone of the campaign needs to definitely calm down. But more importantly, we need to all step out of our shadows and into the present moment. Believe me, there are enough problems in the here and now without reaching into our collective unconscious.
So when we see those traumatized and frighten sensates, try to remember that they are being played ... just like the rest of us.
© 2008 Katrina Messenger
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Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".