October 31, 2023

I wrote the essay below for my Substack newsletter as a continued process of what I wrote you a few weeks ago about trying to find my center.

I don’t speak to it directly in this piece, but part of what I’ve been processing—what I hope we’re all processing, really—is the dramatic rise in antisemitism and Islamaphobia here in the States and all over the world. The degree of activation and rage that people are currently feeling strikes me as akin to the viral mob mentality of the witch hunts or the war drummed up by hate radio in Rwanda that led to neighboring Hutus and Tutsis fearing and killing each other. People who had never thought to hate each other before were suddenly engaged in horrific acts against one another.

What we’re witnessing right now has the potential to spiral completely out of control.

College campuses are awash in protest and antisemitism that is fueled, not just by a compassionate desire to protect Palestinian lives against Netanyahu’s far-right, racist policies and retaliation but also by misinformation, false equivalencies, and a determination to be on the right side of history. The danger of certainty in one’s position in a history as complex as this—with untrustworthy, violent extremists in both governments—is a loss of nuance, an inability to discern the sources of slogans and opinions, and a perpetuation of violence by placing blame where it does not belong.

Just as there is the potential for this to spiral out of control, there is the potential for all of us to keep our wits about us and ground before we act or speak. Sources of information need to be checked. Grief and confusion need to be sorted. Rage and righteousness need to be processed internally.

To be clear: we can be wildly opposed to Netanyahu’s government both as regards the occupation and the catastrophic bombardment of Palestine, as so many Israelis are, without even approaching antisemitic beliefs or statements. Americans are not Trump. Israelis and Jews all over the world are not Netanyahu.

I want to propose that this can be a time of maturation and the development of discernment for all of us. Or it can be the opposite. I hope it won’t be.

You can read the full piece that I wrote for Substack here, or scroll below to begin reading. I begin to quote from Jung and The Undiscovered Self shortly after the section ends.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.

-William Butler Yeats

We’ve been here before. The details are different, but we’ve been here before.

As I’ve floundered in my grief over these last weeks and felt waves of hopelessness pass over me, I’ve found grounding in the words of writers who lived long before our time, enduring conflicts as horrific as anything we could yet imagine.

We do not have to reinvent the wheel. We do not have to fight like dogs thrown into a ring together, seeking to tear the other to shreds while crowds look on.

“Since men do not know that the conflict occurs inside themselves, they go mad, and one lays the blame on the other.”

―Carl Jung, The Red Book

I've been immersed lately in readings for a course I’m teaching called “Toward Wholeness,” which is all about the union of the opposites, from a Jungian perspective. Explicitly, the seminar is about the integration of the masculine and feminine within each of us and the damage that patriarchy has done to our ability to relate deeply. In class together, we inquire into what life beyond the script of division might look like. We read, discuss, and share stories of another way forward that might not require us to define ourselves by what we aren’t while seeking to possess or destroy the “other” outside.

Sports provide a place for us to peacefully project and battle the dualism of our nature, but life, like war, is not a team sport. The victory of one side over another only assumes a future conflict and reinforces a distinct sense of being caught in a time loop. We’ve been here before.

Perhaps, as this Pema Chödrön quote reminds us, there is an element of all of this that is core to the reality of existence:

“Things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together and fall apart again. It’s just like that.”

We’ve talked about this a lot in our class too, that coming together and the falling apart. This is the core of what we think of as healthy attachment: the ability to be held in connection and then part without fear; to be connected, and then separate again. It is also the way we build muscle: small tears and repairs, over and over. But we know too that large tears lead to injury, not strength, and that painful or violent separations make coming back together again harder and harder.

Pema Chödrön offers the solution too:

“The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

In what can seem like endless war and violence both at home and abroad, I can feel myself pleading silently that we might finally make room. That we might learn to discern the actual roots of our division and find a way forward beyond revenge and violence and even, perhaps, beyond proclamations and protest.

XO, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies