Images of Integrity - Across the Great Divide

Last updated Aug 15, 2023

• Source: Parker Palmer
• Keywords: Cards/permanent notes
  • #personaldevelopment
• Relevant Notes:
  • Cards/The Divided Life

Your third required reading will get you to reflect on why we live such divided lives. This is taken from the book called “A Hidden Wholeness” written by Dr. Parker Palmer.

• What are some characteristics of Cards/The Divided Life? ^3a4c8e
  • We refuse to invest ourselves in our work, diminishing its quality and distancing ourselves from those it is meant to serve
  • We make our living at jobs that violate our basic values, even when survival doesn’t demand it
  • We remain in settings/relationships that steadily kill of our spirits
  • We harbor secrets to achieve personal gain at the expense of other people
  • We hide our beliefs from those who agree with us to avoid conflict, challenge, and change
• What was the purpose of Palmer’s comparison between children and adults? ^a09fa4
  • It shows us that our lives weren’t always so divided; before, there was a time when we were truly in touch with our souls.
  • However, we slowly became masked and armored adults when the outer world became more demanding for us, forcing us to play a role withdrawn from our souls
• What did Palmer mean when he talked about a masked and armored life? Why do people live this kind of life? ^a7a13f
  • The masked and armored life is a life where our roles (what we act as in the “real world”) is divided from our souls (who we truly are). This is what it looks like…
    • Sensing that something is missing in our lives and searching for it, not understanding that we are the ones who are missing
    • Feeling fradulent, even invisible, because we are not in the world as who we really are
    • The light that is within us cannot illuminate the world’s darkness
    • The darkness that is within us cannot be illuminated by the world’s light
    • We project our inner darkness on others, making “enemies” of them and making the world a more dangerous place
    • Our inauthenticity and projections make real relationships impossible, leading to loneliness
    • Our contributions to the world – especially through the work we do – are tainted by duplicity and deprived of the life-giving energies of the true self
  • People live this kind of life because our culture has taught us that this is the safe and sane way to live.
• Why do people need what Palmer calls Cards/Circles of Trust? ^eb6bfb
  • Community is essential to rejoining soul and role. This is what a circle of trust is for; it makes it safe for the soul to show up and offers us its guidance. Circles of trust support (rather than supplant) the individual quest for integrity.
  • These circles are rooted in 2 basic beliefs:
    • We all have an inner teacher whose guidance is more reliable than anything we can get from an external source (e.g. doctrine, ideology, collective belief system, institution, leader)
    • We all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern the inner teacher’s voice for 3 reasons:
      • The journey toward inner truth is ==too taxing== to be made solo: lacking support, the solitary traveler soon becomes weary or fearful and is likely to quit the road.
      • The path is ==too deeply hidden== to be travelled without company: finding our way involves cues that are subtle and sometimes misleading, requiring the kind of discernment that can happen only in dialogue
      • The destination is ==too daunting== to be achieved alone: we need community to find the courage to venture into the alien lands to which the inner teacher calls us

As we become more obsessed with ==succeeding==, or at least surviving in that world, we lose touch with our souls and disappear into our roles.

The divided life is the wounded life, and the soul keeps calling us to heal the wound. Ignore that call, and we find ourselves trying to numb our pain with an anaesthetic of choice, be it substance abuse, ==overwork,== consumerism, or mindless media noise.