This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Showing Care
The second principle of the Theory of Enchantment is: criticize to uplift and empower, never to tear down or to destroy. The reason for this is if someone is caught up in, let’s say, a supremacist ideology or a supremacist way of being, it’s extremely likely that what is happening in that moment is that they’re overcompensating for some deep-seated sense of insecurity that they are projecting onto another human being or onto another group of people. You can bet that the harmful behavior that they’re engaging in is not only harmful to me, it is also harmful to them.
If we respond in a way that actually reinforces that insecurity by saying to a person that they’re trash, essentially, we might be perpetuating the very conditions that we’re seeking to undermine in the first place. And this is something that Dr. Maya Angelou observed. A person cannot develop character unless they’re valued. A person will not produce healthy behavior unless they know that people care about them, unless they know that they have a sense of worthiness.
It is precisely because of the feeling of unworthiness that people act out in the first place, that people overcompensate for their insecurities by projecting them onto other people in the first place. So we don’t want to reinforce that. We want to create this idea of a beloved community, which includes caring for people, including caring for people who are acting out in harmful ways.
A brilliant pop culture reference that really illustrates the second principle is the wonderful song by Rihanna and Drake, “Take Care.” In the opening song, Rihanna asks or actually observes,
“I know you’ve been hurt by someone else.
I can tell by the way you carry yourself.
If you let me, here’s what I’ll do,
I’ll take care of you.”
That song illustrates the capacity to understand that what’s going on within a person is precisely what influences what is externalized from that person. Rihanna did not tear down the person who she’s speaking to. She doesn’t bash the person. She tells him, “I can tell you actually are experiencing a sense of deep worthlessness because of the way you carry yourself.” And it is that capacity to be able to read people that can only come from being able to read yourself, right? It can only come from developing that centeredness within your own being that can enable you to see that within the other.
Shadow Work
When we talk about the second principle, we teach a lot about this concept called shadow work. Carl Jung, the psychiatrist, talked about the shadow as being all of those elements that we are unconscious of that can come out in different ways, compulsively, impulsively, when we’re not paying close attention.
My ego might be triggered when I see someone being assertive. What is happening in that moment, and this is something that I am working on, is I have not taken responsibility for the fact that I actually desire to be assertive in certain contexts. And so I am seeing that desire play itself out within another human being, which is why I’m triggered by it.
So shadow work is the practice of modulating that, and you take a sheet of paper, you identify someone who has triggered your ego, and you identify how that behavior shows up within you, or you identify how the desire to engage in that behavior shows up within you. Consider having a weekly practice or a biweekly practice where you do some shadow work because your ego can sneak up on you if you do not habituate this practice. Now, let’s say in the moment that you’ve done all this work, you’ve done the shadow work, and boom, you’re in another interaction, and your ego’s triggered.
First of all, I just want to start by saying that that’s okay. A lot of this work is all about bringing consciousness to the things that are going on within us. So one of the things I want to do is just notice it and say it to myself, “Hmm. Hi ego, I see you. You’re okay. We’re okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” And I really want to be able to pause in that moment because if I don’t pause, I will be very likely to be reactive. So I want to get into the habit of pausing and noticing.
There’s a lot in our culture that encourages us to do, do, do, do, do. Well, there are certainly things we want to do. There are also practices that we take up for the explicit educational practice of learning how to be, to be with the feeling, to be with the emotion as it arises and simply watch it. I, oftentimes, when my ego is triggered, if I’m feeling confident enough, I will even express to the person who triggered my ego that my ego has been triggered. I will model that vulnerability because what I want to do is I want to be curious both about my personal experiences and the person I’m in conversation with. This is all about generating that beloved community. I want to approach myself and the other person with a sense of care. By modeling that vulnerability and transparency. I also help others be courageous enough to do the same.