The Grass Is Always Greener

There are two common human behaviors that disturb many of us related to shadow projection. Americans, for example, have engaged in “converting,” “civilizing,” or “modernizing” aboriginal or native peoples. We have done this within our national boundaries and abroad. In doing this we have unwittingly done violence to their worldview.

To be contained in a healthy worldview or paradigm is essential to a healthy society. By, in effect, destroying a culture’s story, we rob them of that which sustains their very souls. Laurens Van der Post in speaking to C.G. Jung describes this tragedy. “Even the best of motives, as in the sudden imposition of our version of Christianity on primitive societies, we had been thieves and killers of some aboriginal story and so deprived them of their own particular reason for being what they were—indeed, had at one stroke deprived both their yesterdays and today of meaning and purpose. I realized there and then, I told him, that without a story of its own no culture, society, or personality could survive.”

The second behavior relating to Americans and the narratives of other cultures relates more to the individual and the quest for Self-realization. Americans, albeit in relatively small numbers, have become enamored of Eastern religious beliefs and practices. In this case instead of wanting to change other cultures, the seeker turns his back on his own culture and seeks “salvation” in the context of a “foreign” worldview.

 Ironically, a nostalgic or sentimental look backward may cause Native American practices to also be romanticized as the way to Self-realization. What is not realized by many Americans is that we are already “contained” in the unfolding of a story that is thousands of years old and indeed that we are not only contained in the paradigm but the paradigm is within us. It is naïve to think that we can go shopping for a context as we shop for shoes. We end up with a very poor fit and we will not be able to walk very far on our spiritual path. We must complete the journey that our ancestors began many millennia ago and on the same trajectory.

Jung also had something to say about this behavior which was also common among Europeans of his day. He [Jung] scorned the growing numbers in Europe who exchanged their own culture for another as an evasion of the difficult task of truly being themselves and once described such a dubious ‘traffic’ to me as obscene.  There are many ways we can avoid becoming self-reliant and accepting responsibility for our own process of awakening. Leaving the present moment to search through time and space for an easier or more exotic process of Self-realization is just another way to avoid reality and distract ourselves from dealing with life as it is, looming large and ominous in front of our very nose.

Many of us may have wondered why Native Americans fared so poorly in adapting to the culture of their “conquerors.” The not-so-subtle message that we have often received from our culture was that they were too “uncivilized” or too “ignorant” and although that may be sad—nothing could be done about it except to let their “old fashioned” culture die out naturally. Or even worse we could beat it out of the Native-American children in reservation schools.

Now we know that the mainstream culture has serious problems of its own and we have to question whether it is in fact “superior” in any way to the Native American cultures that we looked down upon. A detailed comparison of the feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values of the contrasting cultures will be informative. Which story provides the most nurturing context for human beings? We cannot go back in time but we can learn from a culture that had a narrative that placed them in a context in a sustainable way. We do not have that and we have a limited time to change the direction that our paradigm is taking us. Perhaps the wisdom of our own indigenous peoples could help us and in turn help their descendents who are perishing along with us. What an irony that would be.

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References and notes are available for this essay.
For a much more in-depth discussion on Simple Reality, read  Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival,  by Roy Charles Henry, published in 2011.