What Can We Do To Live Without Fear? Grow Up
This is a story of the evolution of consciousness from the win-lose struggle of dualistic consciousness to the win-win accomplishment of non-dualistic, unifying consciousness. It is a story about growing up and becoming more fully human. It is a story our country desperately needs to hear today.
A woman who describes herself as a “Second Amendment Gun Owner” comes face to face with a woman who attends the same church and describes herself as a “Pacifist who has never seen or touched a gun.” After listening to each other describe their position, both women are stunned. The gun owner wants access to guns because she is afraid. The pacifist wants no guns in public because she is afraid. By finding a point of agreement, “We are both living in fear,” the women evolve from fighting over the the dualistic question, “Should guns be banned from the public — yes or no?” to a question posed by non-dualistic unifying consciousness, “What can we do to live without fear?”
It would be naive to imagine this is a once and done conversation with the two women living a happily ever after life together. They will have to muster the persistence to keep asking and asking and asking, “How can we stand in the tension of our opposite positions and insist, there is something more than a winner takes all dualistic response to our situation? What can we do to live without fear?”
A cartoon or image pops up on your TV, email or social media. Immediately you decide; “I agree, I approve, I will read it,” or “I disagree, I disapprove, I will delete it.” The level of consciousness out of which most of us operate most of the time is dualistic, which means, whenever something crosses the screen of our awareness we leap to judge and assign it to a category or group. Right/wrong, good/bad, friend/foe.
Rooted in our need for survival, dualistic consciousness is necessary but not sufficient for a fullness of mature life because it sees things in terms of predator and prey, winner and loser. If I win, someone must lose. Life is a zero sum game in which we are bound by our favored categories and groups and what matters most is that we win.
We are shocked to discover that even Jesus operates out of this low level of consciousness. Jesus’ first three reactions to a Canaanite woman who is pleading for mercy for her tormented daughter are classic dualistic reactions. (See full text below) When the non-Jewish mother shouts at Jesus, “Have mercy on me…” Jesus’ first reaction is a full on dualistic response. Ignore the situation. “(Jesus) did not answer her.” Dualistic consciousness is a master of tuning things out, burying our heads in the sand, insisting, “This cannot be happening, so ignore or send the irksome person away.” Not so fast.
The relentless mother continues shouting, prodding Jesus who reacts again holding fast to the categories of who is in and who is out. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Along with the disciples, Jesus sees the Cannanite mother and leaps to judgment, “This woman is a foreigner, not a Jew. She is not one of us. She does not deserve my mercy.” Still, the woman boldly persists, humbles herself and asks for help even though there are laws forbidding foreign women from approaching Jewish men. But Jesus is still operating from dualistic consciousness, comparing the woman, and by extraction anyone who is not a Jew, to a dog. Dualistic consciousness is running Jesus’ sorting program; who is in and who is out. Mercy is incompatible with dualistic consciousness.
Rather than succumbing to the pull of dualistic consciousness and putting up a fight to win, in a stunning moment of non-dualistic consciousness the insistent mother finds something in what Jesus says with which to agree. “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” By finding something in what Jesus says with which to agree, the woman diffuses Jesus’ resistance and invites him to a more expansive perspective. Finally Jesus responds,“Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
The determined mother refuses to live within the constraints of dualistic consciousness. She steps over the walls intended to keep her in her place. She violates the proscription preventing non-Jews and Jews from meeting because she sees in the person Jesus, who is supposed to be locked in the category “inaccessible other,” something more than his social-political-religious designations.
Seeing with the eyes of her heart, the persistent mother recognizes Jesus’ capacity for mercy and calls it out of him. Thereby Jesus’ consciousness is transformed. Compelled to look through the eyes of unifying consciousness, Jesus is able to see something more than the categories and groups in which he previously imprisoned the Canaanite mother (and himself). When Jesus finally ‘sees’ the woman’s dauntless faith, he changes his mind, opens his heart and responds with mercy. Jesus grows up.
This is a story of the evolution of consciousness from the win-lose struggle of dualistic consciousness to the win-win accomplishment of non-dualistic, unifying consciousness. It is a story about growing up and becoming more fully human. It is a story our country desperately needs to hear today.
Until we grow up and stop dualing over who is right and who is wrong, who is in and who is out, who is a winner and who is a loser, there is little chance humanity will evolve beyond low level dualistic consciousness which means, there is every chance we will end up killing one another…because mercy is incompatible with dualistic consciousness.
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Learn more about me at https://www.debraasis.org/ All words are generated by grace and the grit of a real human being. Debra Asis
Matthew 15.21–28 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
