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Inner Conflicts and Integration: Musing on a Judgmental way of Life


     Picture Courtesy: Reddit

Carl Gustav Jung, one of the great psychologists, once wrote about the ethics of a doctor. He said that a doctor, as a healer, required to be non-judgmental to heal a patient. Because, judgment or condemnation has a repressive potential, which is antithesis to healing possibility. Healing requires compassionate attitude whereas a doctor becomes one with the patient and witnesses divine will in the patient. Only an "unprejudiced objectivity" unlike abstract intellectual contemplation, diagnose the patient without any value judgment and heals his malaise. In “judgmental attitude” there is a danger of projection or introjection of Ego’s shadow over the object who/which is judged. Our judgments reflect our own image over others, in the sense that a judge judges or condemns his own being before its shadow is projected over the object, which is known as others. Due to this attitude, a judge suffers in his own self when his own conflicts appears everywhere, from socio-political relations to ethical, perceptual, or aesthetic judgement. Outer conflicts are just a shadow reality. As per Jung, the shadow is instinctive and irrational, which is always prone to psychological projection, in which a perceived personal inferiority is recognized or protected as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else rather than oneself (Jung, 1951).

Beyond Dichotomy of Values: Nietzschean Strategy

Mind is already enmeshed in evaluating good and evil, just and unjust, or beautiful and ugliness, etc. There is no perfect dichotomy exits in our world. The terrain is shifting, transforming, making and unmaking of all the values. Genealogical excavation in Foucauldian sense demonstrates the politics of transcendental or teleological categorization of ideas, the "incredulity towards metanarratives" to borrow a phrase of Lyotard, exposes the micro-strategy involved in the production of values or “epistemes” (Foucault, 1966). Conflicts thrive at the cost of ignoring our own evil tendencies. And it happens within before it goes beyond. Bible rightly says, "Judge not, that ye be not judged". This sentence sums up the history of conflicts in few words.  Every conflict, either within or beyond, tells more about the parties in conflict rather than conflict itself. The end of conflict is not possible through cosmetic or imposed process of resolution. It requires integration of conflicts within Ego, a meeting point of Id and Superego, to borrow Freudian terms or integration of Ego with its shadow mind to refer Jungian framework. In words of Carl Jung, “Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is” (Jung, 1938).   This integration is possible only in a non-judgmental attitude, whereas a subject witnesses and feels the suffering of object within and integrates with himself. 

Deepawali is not about Victory but Integration

Deepawali is not just about victory of good over evil or light over darkness. There can't be a good always shining bright. There can't be an evil, a forever symbol of darkness. Light and darkness integrates each-other and that ensemble or harmony makes the life possible what we know and witness in everyday reality.

Deepawali is not about zero-sum game. It doesn't teach us to be a winner at any cost. There is no winner in the world who has never lost. There is no loser in this world who has never won. Winning and losing are equally perceptual. Deepawali makes us believe that every Ratnakar has immense potentials to be Valmiki, every Ashoka has potentials to feel and empathize with the suffering of humanity, every kind king may be cruel or dispassionate over the period of time due to blind pursuance of greed or lust of power. The terrain has never been a static one. It may be dialectical or transformative. 

Let the Rawan in us gets transformed into its Ram, let the jealousy, pride, blind egotism, cruelty, lethargy, and greed gets transformed into wisdom, courage, love, compassion, and harmony. Wishing you a Wonderful Deepawali my Friends!😊


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