Mystical Insights into Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO’s)
Last week, several U.S. House lawmakers received the first of a series of briefings on the matter of UFOs. With the litany of reported sightings over the course of decades, a topic long dismissed now enters the mainstream. The government will gauge these matters relative to national security. You and I would do well to look at this phenomenon from a different angle.
One of the most important lines of Genesis arguably pertains to the creation of the human: “Masculine and Feminine, He created them (Genesis, 5, 2).” Commentators interpret: at root, the human is a living paradox, possessing both masculine and feminine aspects which, when joined, motor the human enterprise. We could speak of the partnership of body and soul, left brain and right brain, nurturing instinct and aggressive instinct, introversive tendencies and extroversive tendencies and other polarities we find within.
According to Chinese Medicine, the warp and woof of human existence are these root constituent aspects which they call Yin and Yang. To the degree these polarities are elegantly inter-included one with the other — within each individual — is the degree to which a person enjoys optimal health. The degree to which the tone in society is characterized by patience, harmony and wisdom is the degree to which the individuals who form the collective each have these parts properly forged, bridging heart and mind, well on a path to what Carl Jung called Individuation. Alas, this state is only achieved by few. Subsequently, society is in a jam, to say the least.
More normatively, these days, these polarities are characterized by schism and imbalance. Chinese medicine would predict pervasive illness, rampant mental health difficulties and conflict. Sounds about right.
What’s interesting here: when the polarities are locked in a healthy embrace, the individual possesses heightened immunity. It’s not that there aren’t opportunistic beings trying to scale the walls. When balance prevails there is no crack in the armor. The rupture of Yin and Yang, though, throws the door wide open. The door closes when the dualities within align, depriving alien, virus, or, for that matter, crazy ideologies from accessing our hearts and souls. When balance prevails, health prevails, reason prevails, Lady luck prevails. Things come together almost effortlessly. When the balance is wrong, corruption gets the upper hand.
There are just so many indications that the delicate relationship of Yin and Yang — on a societal level — is torn asunder. The divide between the political right and the political left, the proliferation of radical voices in the media and in the political arena, the economic crisis wherein the flow of money dries up, all symptoms of the fissures, portals to invasion by opportunistic others (aliens, the least of our worries).
Relative to UFOs, the jury is not out whether the impacts and intents are negative, positive or neutral. I’d argue that fixating on those impacts takes us down the rabbit hole. Our gaze should be aimed at the decay of our ecology, specifically the psycho-spiritual ecology. In saying this, I’m echoing the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, z’l, who suggested that we must register cultural climate change. It’s time to mend the (w)hole! Relative to the messianic destination where lion and lamb lie together, we are far: Yin and Yang are at loggerheads.
Enter Jordan Peterson who sees the various dislocations at play in individuals, families, systems and societies. His advice: each of us — individually — should pursue corrective restructuring. The societal problem must be fixed, first by administering self-repair, prior to ‘fixing the world’. He shares rules, some of which are designed to correctly animate Yang energy (“Stand up straight with your shoulders back,” “Imagine what you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that,” “Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated,” etc.); others to architect healthy Yin (“Treat yourself like you are someone you are responsible for helping.” “Make friends with people who want the best for you,” etc.); still others to calibrate and choreograph the right relationship between Yin and Yang (“Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement,” “Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful or arrogant,” etc.).
If each person, one by one, assumes a stance of personal responsibility and fixes what is in his or her domain to fix, the societal (w)hole will be mended, the rupture repaired. Or we can focus on UFO’s, — even a pattern of animal mutilation that Ben Mezrich details in The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America’s UFO Highway — or on the aliens and what they might tell us. If you are tempted in the latter direction, I refer you to Lily Tomlin’s award winning show. Trudy the bag lady turns to her Martian friends and asks them point-blank:
“Okay, you’ve learned a lot about us, but tell me this and be honest: what do you think of people as a whole?”
They tell her the only answer we will ever hear from beings that descend from the infinite realm, so pay attention now:
“They said they thought it would be an excellent idea.”
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