Luminea Natura and the war on sense-making
Last week I watched a brilliant interview between Daniel Schmachtenberger and David Fuller of Rebel Wisdom which was all about the war on information going on in our world today. The lack of truly trustworthy information that is available to us is an important contributory factor to the sense that many people have of uncertainty and disorientation.
We are bombarded with information all the time. Is that piece of scientific research really genuine? Do we know who funded it? Do we know whose job might be on the line if the results don’t show what is convenient to any vested interests? How might they be tempted to ‘water them down’? Have they cherry-picked some of the findings to suit an agenda? You don’t know.
We scroll endlessly through social media channels, looking for interesting information. But why is a certain piece shared? What’s the motivation behind sharing something? Do people want to help others by sharing useful insights? Are they just sharing something that they’ve seen their peers sharing in order to join a perceived bandwagon? Are they just wanting to look smart and intelligent? Or fulfil a need to ‘belong’ to the crowd? You don’t know.
Even the simple task of choosing your next book to read is fraught with unseen traps. Is that uber-positive review genuine? Or did a friend write it for a friend — not for any bad intention, but just to support a mate? It’s become common practice to manipulate the review process on Amazon to gain ‘best seller’ status. Are those ‘testimonials’ you see on Amazon or on almost any website you can hit up, really genuine or have they been given for reasons that are not immediately transparent? You don’t know.
And let’s not even begin to start to pick apart broadcast and print news! Every broadcast company is owned by people with an agenda. From the not-so-independent BBC to Fox News, from the Daily Fail to Le Figaro, there’s a point of view and a world view, behind what shapes your news.
If you apply yourself, it’s pretty easy to discern where the world view of a newspaper or broadcast station is coming from. It’s much harder to pick your way through the type of insidious disinformation that comes from the natural human inclination to lie.
Ouch! Did I just say humans are liars? Yes, I did. Let me say a little more. There are many ways we lie. There are bold-faced lies. White lies. Lying by omission. Broken promises. Exaggeration. Accommodation. Proxying influence. Plagiarism. Diplomacy. Hypocrisy. Convenience. Manipulation. Spin. Massaging the facts. And we all do it, a lot of the time.
But if we are to heal our divisions in the world. If we are to move forward into an age of wisdom rather than separation. If we are come together a a species, perhaps its time to address our habit of compulsive lying.
But how? And what are the barriers?
The first barrier is shame. Most of us know when we are doing something not quite right. Unfortunately the often automatic response if someone shines a very bright light on our particular transgression what happens is that doors shut. You can hear the clang of metal and the thunk of wood as the shutters come down on someone who has been ‘exposed’ or publicly shamed.
The second is ego. Our self confidence, and sense of assurance is tied deeply into our identities, and if that identity is threatened, up come more barriers. We don’t particularly want to have to take a long, deep look at ourselves and question who we are. And so we dig in. We don’t want to be the one that’s ‘wrong’.
The third is fear. Fear of being found out. Fear of conequences. Fear that the careful edifice we have created around ourselves to get through that difficult day, our insecurities our lack of self esteem, might crumble. The fear that is driven by a hyper-competitive world where we think we have to fight for every crumb of money, attention, time, — whatever it is we fear we lack — and which bolsters our sense of never being enough.
The fourth is more complex. Let’s call is fragile masculine psychology. This is not about gender. It’s applicable equally to men as women, but it is largely more prevalent in the male gender because it’s only natrual that men actualise along a path determined by the psychology of ‘he’ whereas woman actualise along a pathway of ‘she’. Actualisation is where we have an opportunity to cross a threshold into a future where there is a coming together of these dualistic aspects of our psychology into a greater whole. Into wholeness. Back into connection, partnership and togetherness. Fragile masculine psychology is currently showing up a lot as the world tries to move away from the neo-liberal economic paradigm, the command/control patriarchical design we have been used to, because a shift away from those models towards an integration of the female psychological development journey into our societal design, challenges what we have been used to.
Lies, shame, fear and ego are, in my experience, some of the most powerful factors which hold us back from taking the giant leap across the ontological divide between dependency on sufficiency needs and releasing the potential for an regenerative future. It’s a big leap, like the chasm across which Indiana Jones has to step to reach the cave of the Holy Grail.
And what does that have to do with Luminea Natura? I can hear some of you thinking when is she going to get to the point?
There is a relationship between light and questioning. Questioning facts, asking if something is true, calling out what is not true — is a way of shining light on shadow and darkness which is what even the gentlest of white lies has the power to perpetuate. This is hard to do in a world dominated by fear, vitriol and competition for space, resources and money. It is even harder to do if you are a woman in a world designed according to the more masculine principles of hierarchy and competition, and if you have experienced the domination of men in your outer life, and also in your inner life through what Jung called animus.
And yet for a woman to actualise, to come into balance and find peace with her animus, and masculinity in the world, being called to question is a key skill and step she must experience and acquire.
The shadow urges a woman to question and gives her some wonderful and terrible tools for her purpose. There is a lamp, hidden at first, which is her ability to see what is. This is her capacity for consciousness. A woman’s natural consciousness is of a unique and beautiful kind, a lamp. It burns the oil of the earth and of the fruit, and gives a particularly warm, soft, gentle light. There is not the hard intensity of sunlight in it, but the gentle feminine warmth of nature’s light. It is often called Luminea Natura. Robert A. Johnson
In the same way that it is a tool for her to use for her own self actualisation, it is a very potent tool to be used in our current world. Some people are more called to this task than others, but we all have the potential to call out lies — or behaviour that stems from a lie — when we see it. We all have the power to stop, wait and question the factualness inside something before we share it. Not easy in this age of rapid social media meme virality, but neverthless. It’s one small thing we can all do to activate a shift away from the brittle light of competitive battle.
What does Luminea Nature look, feel and sound like when we activate it? It isn’t the harsh voice of the food critic. It’s not the smart cynicism, or passive aggression that entertains and amuses for a second, calling more attention to itself than the shadow it illuminates. It’s a light that calls to what is the best of human nature; in a person led by their male psychology — to the God within — to remind them of their worth, their innate brilliance and true nature as a human.
It’s the gentle call of a Mother to her child ‘be the best you, you can be’; it’s the firm insistence of your coach that asks ‘are you really being honest with yourself?’; it’s the light-touch rebuke of a friend who steps into the centre of a full blown row that’s degenerating into ad-hominen attacks on each other and reminds you that you’re better than that. For men who identify as male gender and in whom masculine psychology is strong, it is an important feminine acknowledgement of his worth. A woman wielding the tool of Luminea Natura can bring about a miracle of transformation. Anyone activating their feminine psychology can use the gentle light of self reflection to activate growth and wisdom.
Yet gentle does not mean without power. The flip side of the Luminea Natura is the knife; the sharp stab, the cut that opens a wound for blood to flow. It’s the voice we hear in the activist motivated by ‘stopping’ something, rather than re-imagining the future. The knife is the mob’s howl for retribution rather than the exploration of accountability and ackowledgement. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a restorative justice process is a real-life demonstration of the Luminea Natura in action.
How can we best use that light today?
I believe the Luminea Natura is a particularly important gift today to help us activate a regenerative culture and economy. We have a threshold to cross. We need to find ways to step beyond the design of command and control, of hierarchy and dominance, and one way to do that is persistently and confidently to be a mentor to others around you, shining a gentle light on those moments when we all regress into ego, fear, shame and competition.
We may only be able to do that for a small handfull of people with whom we have a respectful relationship where feedback and exploration is part of that relationship. We may try opening up a relationship to that potential by bringing the lamp to a potential fracture of our relationship to someone; by being open and exposing ourselves to vulnerability.
We can be resolutely systematic in examining our own sharing of information, making sure we are not succumbing to the instant gratification of the ‘share’, and that we are sharing scrutinised material.
We can employ radical generosity in shining the light on moments of colleagues where they are really shining themselves to further awareness of the positive human actions that are being taken.
We can take a moment when most triggered by something and remember to lift the lamp instead of the knife.
