Psychological healing through Rainring – approaches (3)
In the first of these articles on approaching Rainring, we suggested that a person might be drawn to these cards at a point where they were hurting in life because what they had lived so far could not continue. In the second article, we showed how consulting the cards could induce a state of inner calm and focus, and extend what we know about ourselves. We then explored the idea that the cards could have no objective validity if they came from the mind of a single individual. In this third and final article, we will ask what point there is in looking inside ourselves, and how we should see working with Rainring from the perspective of such an inner exploration.
The psyche of humanity at present is experiencing serious problems because of idealism. What I mean is that it is a very widely accepted attitude to say that I am not all right as I am, so I must make efforts to become a better person. The great difficulty with this attitude is that my energy is diverted away from the facts of my situation towards some idea, image, fantasy of who and how I should be. The second characteristic of this situation is that I then feel guilty because my actual behaviour does not measure up to the ideal behaviour with which I identify.
The teachings of the organised religions are heavily implicated in this situation. They enlist the authority of God, sacred texts, prophets, gurus, holy men and so on in support of the conviction that certain moral values should form the basis for our actions and their opposites should be shunned. For example, putting oneself first is generally felt to be a very bad thing, whereas sacrificing ones own desires for the benefit of others is considered praiseworthy. Or, to mention another topical example, we are led to believe that forgiveness is a massive virtue which should be practiced no matter what.
This idealism, its values and mindset may owe a good deal to religious hierarchies in the past. However, the current situation is that these values are now deeply entrenched in the collective psyche and influence profoundly the behaviour of millions who no longer regard themselves as having any allegiance to a specific religious tradition. This kind of mentality has even found its way into systems of cards: there is, for example, a well-known and much used set whose mentions are solely positive – as if in this way it were possible to push away pain and the dark side of the psyche. The approach seems to be that if you offer people nothing but sweetness and light, this will benefit them. In reality, this denial, this refusal to face the dark side of the psyche is one of the contributors to the strengthening of that shadow.
The world of Rainring certainly includes pain, hate, anger, grief, despair and the scope for reversing every positive mention in the pack. Even on the simplified web version, we have made it possible to reverse all the cards. Yet the four-sidedness of Rainring (hard copy version) is in part in order to sabotage the upright / reversed, white / black, either / or mentality induced by two-sided cards. It is intended to induce shades of grey, gradations between the absolutes of yes or no, to promote in short a less absolutist mentality in the user.
When we ask what point there is in looking inside ourselves, therefore, we have to be clear what we mean by doing so. The looking which is capable of producing the results we desire is that which aims to see what is really there, not that which cannot stand to look at what we are because it can bear only the fantasy of who we will be if we just change. ‘I am only a miserable sinner, but somehow by God’s grace I will become like Jesus and sin no more…’ Self-awareness in any meaningful sense cannot even begin until I realise that the raw material with which I must work is who I am. If I cannot stand to look at who I am, I will not be able to change it. For that is the great paradox of change: it can begin only when I become genuinely passionate about discovering who I am, what I am like. If I am unable to do this, then my commitment has to be to observing that very inability.
Why look inside ourselves? Given the extravert bias of our current society, it seems that we need to give an answer to this question, not to assume that the answer is obvious.
The heart of the answer is: because inner determines outer, not vice-versa. Idealism does not see it this way at all. Idealism in the end creates autocracy. Whether we are talking about the Russian revolution ushering in the hell of Stalinism, or the Iranian revolution leading to the reign of the mullahs, the result is the same: the recipe for the good society is for certain individuals to take control and then to impose on others – by force if necessary – codes of conduct and behaviour. In much the same way, the parents of this world impose upon their children sets of values, attitudes, behaviours and so on. One of the most deeply entrenched assumptions underpinning the behaviour of contemporary individuals is that people, both children and adults, should be persuaded, encouraged, cajoled and if necessary even ultimately forced into certain ways of doing and being.
The goal of the idealist is to affect a change in the behaviour of others. This is diametrically opposed to that of the genuine student of the inner, whose whole interest and concern is to affect a change within him- or herself. The change we are pursuing, then, is not one which will help us conform to the ideals imposed on us from outside. The exact opposite is true. The pilgrim in search of herself realises that her behaviour, personality, ways of thinking, values and all the rest are not her own. They are not the free expression of her own nature. They have been created by the actions and behaviours of her parents, whose aim was to make of her someone they could approve of, like, be proud of, identify with, feel close to and so on.
When the woman who as a young child was sent away for months by her mother has in her turn a daughter, she subjects her little girl to precisely the same treatment: she introduces that devastating pain of early abandonment into her daughter’s life, exactly as it was brought into hers, so that she can feel close to her daughter – If the daughter goes through that also, [so goes the unconscious reasoning] she will be able to empathise with her mother’s pain. And so it goes on: we revisit upon our own children the same agonies which have been visited upon us: ‘for their own good’, ostensibly; yet in reality not for their benefit but for our own.
It is a strange and infinitely saddening feature of the human psyche that as each generation grows to adulthood it ends up by internalising all the messages: the prohibitions, guilt, fantasies, longing, pain etc which have been forced upon it by the preceding one. I spend my childhood being told that I am a lazy boy and I must work harder if I am to get on in life. Then, all of a sudden, I am no longer that little boy under my father’s roof – I am an adult walking around telling myself, as I have always been told, that I am a lazy guy who must work harder if I am to get anywhere. I may die of a workaholic’s heart attack still telling myself that exact same thing. This is the immense tragedy of the psyche as it has existed for generation upon generation: the individual does not belong to him or herself.
And that same hurt child grows up not to become the saviour of future children, but the instrument for inflicting the same pain all over again upon the next lot of children. That little boy’s sons, also, will be made to feel that they must work harder if they are to amount to anything (or at least, if they are to have any hope of affection from their dad.)
If the teaching of religion, to take another example, were to die out for a generation or two, the religious establishments themselves would fade away – they are maintained ultimately by the determination of each generation of adults to brainwash its children. We should begin, at last, to see what happens when the human spirit has the freedom to find its own sense of being and meaning, values and goals. But this is the last thing the peddlers of ideology want. For them, the nature of the child is evil, and only by the civilising power of culture, society, education, religious observance and so on can that nature perhaps be made good. What I myself believe is that if it were possible to suddenly leave the world’s children to grow in freedom, we would have a transformed Earth in perhaps a couple of generations.
So, the person in pursuit of their own true nature is going to come upon all this violence which has been done to their self during their early life – including that done by ‘decent, well-meaning’ parents. Someone making this journey is going to have no stomach for spending their days trying to get others to behave in this or that manner. This person will have all their work cut out, probably for years, trying simply to rescue and revive what remains of their own nature from the garbage heap where they have found it. In fact, the last thing they will want is to dole out similar treatment to their children, neighbours, colleagues or anyone else. And, despite this, they will find themselves doing just that – because what forges those chains of behaviour which pass on from generation to generation is immensely powerful and cannot be broken merely by a little intellectual awareness and some good intentions.
Whatever my motives in beginning to try and work on myself, this is the place which I will come to at some point: feeling the imperative need to recover my lost or damaged sense of who I really am; setting the agenda for my own life, rather than pursuing one which has been foisted on me from without.
It remains, then, to ask what role Rainring may be able to play in this journey of return to myself, this search for my lost nature and person. Essentially, Rainring is a map. Its purpose is to tell me whereabouts, in this vast domain of the psyche, I find myself. And, because there is no time in the Unconscious it can, up to a point, tell me also where I will be in the future. This may seem like very little. However, once I start to work on changing myself – or perhaps we should say changing into myself, there is an imperative need to know where I am at. There are a zillion opportunities in this world to be told who you should be. Rainring, by contrast, is a method for telling you who you are. As such, it must add a dimension of the greatest possible significance not only to the efforts of the individual seeking to mend their damaged being, but also to the work of the psychotherapist or other professional whose business is to facilitate that process.
The simple truth is that humanity’s understanding of the psyche is in its infancy. We know very little about the inner workings of the human being. For this reason, we must acknowledge, for our own safety, that any professional help we are able to find in working on ourself is going to come with a health warning attached. The psychotherapist is not going to be this being of a superior order through whose intervention we shall be elevated to a higher level of humanity. The therapist will be someone who we hope has travelled a little of the road we hope to take, and who can offer us a certain amount of guidance and support as we set off and take our first steps. But absolutely nothing guarantees that the therapist can be relied upon always to know where we are at or what we need at each stage of our journey, still less to be capable of supplying it. The therapist may not even be clear where exactly it is that we need to go.
Hence, this journey is going to be made hugely less problematical if there is a third point of reference, one which comes from a neutral position. Then, in the case of a conflict, disagreement, confusion or uncertainty involving my journey, myself and my guide, either or both of us can refer to this other. The other in question is, of course, the Rainring cards.
Is Rainring qualified to perform this role? Realistically, it may take fifty years or so before we (humanity) are in a position to make this judgement. In the meantime, I am going to stick my neck out and say that, as far as I know, Rainring is for the time being the best map available. What evidence do I have to support this contention? Frankly, none whatever. I doubt if objective proof or disproof will ever be forthcoming. What I can say is that I have seen, both in my own life and in my partner Hacina’s, Rainring working as a seer, guide, counsellor , companion, agent provocateur and conscience.
I don’t always understand the cards; I don’t always find them clear. I don’t feel that I have yet fully unearthed the multiplicity of possible meanings buried within each card. But I think that Rainring has sound foundations: that it is good enough to serve as some sort of orientation device for travellers journeying in the inner world, even if there are times and circumstances in which it may not be complete, entirely accurate, or as detailed as one would wish. Let me never claim that it could not possibly be improved, or even corrected. In the end, any claims and assertions relative to Rainring are rather beside the point: it needs to be used, and to be tested against the actual circumstances of the lived life and inner journey of individuals. It is in this way, through experiential contact with Rainring, that it will eventually become possible to evaluate its merits and limitations: this is not a matter of theory, but of practice.
At the time of writing, November 2008, Rainring is still very little known. This means that anyone using it is taking the kind of risks that any pioneer takes – indeed, at this stage in its life, Rainring will attract precisely the kind of person who wants to be at the cutting edge, exploring territory which is not on the beaten track – venturing, if you like, into the unknown.[1] Even if you do not feel that you fit this description, it is surely worth bearing in mind, if you are embarked upon your journey of self-exploration and inner transformation, that there is always this strange device out there. Who knows if, at a difficult moment in your road, when your usual sources of support seem unable to deliver what you need, Rainring might just be able to come to your aid.
[1] Because of this particular characteristic of Rainring at present, Hacina and I continue to emphasise our readiness to offer whatever support we can to anyone working with the cards at this early stage. Please feel free to contact us at rainringhelp@gmail.com, and we will do our best to respond to your concerns.