Dear Beautiful Painters,
Lately, do you find yourself asking, “How can people actually believe this conspiracy theory or that fake news”? I do wonder, especially when friends who I know to be sane, intelligent, and spiritual surprise me with their absolute certainty that the current epidemic is a hoax and the vaccination is a plot to hurt and control people. How do people get to believe so strongly in a doctrine or leader that they are willing to harm others and/or themselves? The more we know about the deep unexplored forces that motivate us, the safer we are to ourselves and to others.
I began my serious exploration of the “unconscious” in Child Play Therapy at the age of 5 and spent most of my life participating, studying, and offering psychoanalysis or some form of psychotherapy, (group therapy, dream analysis, Gestalt, Jungian, Art therapy and Richian to name a few) to others. .. So it was inevitable that I became a psychoanalyst (as well as a painter) for many years. Whatever beliefs and actions present themselves in my own behavior or behavior of others, I am always looking at the bigger picture, or should I say the deeper unconscious motivations, and placing individual, group behavior/world events in the context of history, culture, and forces not apparent, such as childhood conditioning, astrology, engram type, ancestors, karma.
As human animals (as with other animals), we all want to belong, be loved, be accepted by our tribe. We all want to feel relevant, have status, a larger purpose. We all feel a need to be safe and make sense of an unpredictable, scary, and often dangerous world.
With the particularly overpowering medical, social, and climate upheavals going on, people’s insecurities are being tested to the max. People’s need for “meaning”, for a father figure, for the safety of dogma is coming to the surface. Sometimes I feel angry at these people. But ultimately it helps me to understand where they are coming from and how frightened they really are of the unknowable, of being still in the questions, of being outcast from their tribe. And yes, I too am skeptical, am aware of how greed, power, and status can influence events but I am open, I apply critical thinking.
All I/we can do is be true to ourselves, keep our hearts and minds open and allow the deepest mystery to come forth through creative expression and dreams.
Love to all, Aviva
