Polar Opposites
The Presidential Inauguration in January 2025 was disrupted by fire and high winds on the American West coast and snow and ice on the East. It was hard not to see this as a sign of the polarisation associated with the new Administration which has intensified during the last few weeks. As a temporary though legal resident here, I’d like to explore what this means and ask if the global turbulence and division it is causing might also contain a ray of hope. Provided we can change our perspective on what is unfolding — and if sufficient people can avoid being sucked into the violence of chaos that every polarised situation inevitably throws up — this new perspective, supported by the arts of listening and conversation, may yield some life-enhancing mysteries.
My reflection was triggered by meeting some American-Mexicans in our meditation community here in Texas, who have been citizens for decades. They contacted me simply because they felt heartbroken by seeing the plight of other less fortunate and often more recent migrants, hardworking but undocumented individuals and families whom they met here and whose situation has changed so abruptly since the Administration announced its intention to deport thirteen million illegals (4% of the US population). They told me of families who were living in fear and trembling, not sending their children to school, going to a hopsital or even leaving their homes for fear they would be separated by the ICE police. Their American dream of opportunity has shattered for them. The people I met were disturbed and uncertain what to do. They are not political activists like some students whom I spoke with on the street as they were returning from demonstrating against the policy.
Both responses complement each other. Merely to retreat from action into quiet contemplation is to mistake the nature of contemplation. Merely to shout at the enemy makes enmity worse. I will come back to this relationship as it is the point of my enquiry into this confused situation.
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Many words for it: confusion, tumult, discord or chaos. The first use of ‘pandemonium’ is in Paradise Lost, Milton’s great epic written in the turbulent 17th century, based on the myth of the civil war in Heaven led by Lucifer and his angels against God and the good angels. After their defeat they were cast out of Heaven, falling into Hell whose capital was ‘Pandemonium’, built by Mammon, the personification of the lust for false treasure and ruled by Chaos and confusion. Literally, it means the ‘place of all demons’. There was no light in Hell. ‘Darkness alone was visible.’
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
where peace and rest can never dwell, hope never comes
that comes to all…
So spake the’ apostate angel, though in pain
Vaunting aloud but racked with deep despair
(Book 1: 65ff)
The second verse of the Bible describes Chaos differently by connecting it to the state of things before creation which drew out the harmonious order of the Cosmos:
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Gen 1:2)
Lucifer’s presiding over the Pandemonium of Hell represents an illusory, inherently disorderly ‘order’, not the actual Cosmos which the Spirit ‘brooding over the ‘vast abyss’ draws and sustains from the Chaos and its ‘dark materials’. Despair is the difference. It filled Lucifer and his defeated troops. Without recovering hope, Lucifer drew on his unfathomable depth of pride and revenge to vow to ever resist and disrupt the divine. Milton describes him speaking with ‘faltering speech and a thousand mouths’. Lucifer had heard a rumour that God was about to create a new order of being called the human and wanted to direct his attention to attacking that. Behind this mythical language, there is the true meaning of the ‘demonic’: division, separation and wilful polarisation.
We may think of ourselves as having left the magical and mythical stages of consciousness and moved into the rational and scientific. But earlier stages are never merely shut down and discarded like boosters on a rocket launch. They remain open and must be integrated. If, however, they remain separated they become dysfunctional, decayed realms of illusion, autonomous, ‘demonic’ and destructive. Highly evolved minds — take Freud or Jung for example — used the symbols of mythology or alchemy to develop their theories of the human mind to profound effect. But to blindly project these symbols onto the actual situations of life, especially relationships or politics, whether negatively or positively, becomes what in ordinary language we call ‘demonising’ or ‘idealising’ others. The effect of this is to propel those we differ from and their view of reality into ever more remote corners of consciousness. Expelled by intolerance or denial through the polarising forces of division cause it to collapse into violence. This is the catastrophic failure of creative, hopeful imagination.
So, if I draw an analogy here between the mythic Pandemonium and the Chaos of the present American political disorder, which has rapidly becoming globalised, I do not mean to increase the polarised opposition of parties or personalities. I am not pointing a finger of blame. In fact, I am trying to do quite the reverse: to see how we can reconnect what has been polarised.
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To overcome the dark energies of polarisation and reduce its destructive threat to peace and order, we need to understand its ‘demonic’ nature. ‘Daimon’ comes from a root meaning to divide or lacerate. But we should also dare to ask, ‘is there anything positive to be said about it? Can good come through it? Are we in a hopeless downward spiral or are we passing through a Dark Night of the evolution of our species?’ Nights have dawns. Hell does not. These questions are the beginning of a new perspective achieved by throwing a bridge or a ramp between polar opposites. In Milton’s Fallen, despair-filled world, Pandemonium was the bridge across Chaos. But, having no roots in reality, it holds no purpose or hope. In the real world the bridge to reconnect the divided, to heal the wounded and to comfort the sorrowful is hope.
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Modern chaos theory studies phenomena like weather patterns, oceans and financial markets. It has been called the ‘science of surprises’. This is because events that seem completely random and unpredictable behaviour can reveal patterns. Let’s say, then, it is Chaos but not Pandemonium. Of course, chaos theory accepts that life will always be uncertain. But uncertainty is not hopeless. Who has not glimpsed this at some point in their life and felt the wonder of it while still wondering how to handle it. Confronted with uncertainty, we may take out insurance policies and retreat from taking any risks. Or, we may try to impose a dictatorial approach over others. Absolute coercion is the political trend of our weak, post-liberal times associated with the far right and totalitarianism. Populism or convention-smashing politics may seem to be introducing a new order but it does not reduce Pandemonium for long.
Recognising uncertainty helps us to accept that there is something positive about Chaos. Pandemonium needs to be identified and resisted because unchecked it becomes a downward spiral into despair and oppression: over-control, suppression of rights of speech and all other opinions in a polarised inferno of mutual rejection and a breakdown of trust. Chaos, however, is the abyss of the unknown that we also fear because it is uncertain, but it is that which the creative Spirit broods over in many creation myths until Cosmos (Order) creatively, beautifully emerges from the opaque soup.
Can this happen? The ‘butterfly effect’ in chaos theory recognises that very small, apparently insignificant events bring about an immense change that runs like a tsunami through a whole system. The flapping of a butterfly’s wings can lead to a tornado on the other side of the planet or a clash of galaxies.
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In Christian theological terms, this is related to the doctrine of ‘felix culpa’ (the ‘happy fault’).
Milton’s telling of the biblical myth climaxes in the Fall of Man, the sin (culpa) of disobedience by Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Paradise into an earthly realm of suffering and death. But in the biblical story they were not abandoned by God even though they continued to be plagued by Lucifer, the interfering, disruptive and pandemonic tempter. The ‘fault’ of their collapse and separation might have led to eternal punishment, an eternal polarisation from their Source and the ‘ever-present origin’ of God. But it did not. In the ensuing Chaos of the Fall there was an uncertain yet evolutionary design-pattern unfolding. They fell but they were held.
This story is recounted in sacred, darkened spaces during the Holy Saturday Vigil, lit by the single flame of the newly lit Easter candle. It explodes in the chant of the great Exultet Hymn with the acclamation ‘O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam that brought for us so great a redeemer’. The birth, teaching and death of one Palestinian Jew two millennia ago had seemed at the tragic end of his life to be no more than failure and defeat. Rejected and betrayed by followers and scapegoated by religious and civil institutions he should have merely dissolved into the soup of Pandemonium. But in a new dimension of consciousness, a quite new pattern of meaning, touched awake by a new kind of hope was revealed.
To see how all this can shed light on the present American disorder spreading globally like a pandemic we should focus on the meaning of ‘O necessary sin.’ In later Christian theology, sin became criminalised and merited merely punishment. A legalistic, literal reading of a sacred text or myth obscures its meaning. However, the true sense lost by dogmatic or moral theology, was preserved and transmitted through the wisdom of the mystical tradition. In the 14th century Dame Julian of Norwich, a solitary in Norwich, pondered the meaning of sin in the light of her experience of faith which is the new dimension of consciousness. It led her to see and say that ‘sin is behovely’: that is, necessary, and so an integral part of the pattern of the human journey through Chaos and beyond the meaninglessness of Pandemonium.
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Milton emphasises in what a noisy, confusing and distorted way Lucifer speaks from his dark, tortured vision of despair. It requires the clarity and truthfulness given only by interior peace and order to tell the real story and reveal the radiant transparency of the structure of reality.
Pandemonium feels like a tomb. Hope has died. There is no meaning. Things merely ‘fall apart’ as W.B.Yeats felt as he looked at his world a year after the end of the Pandemonium of the First World War and the death of forty million military and civilians which traumatised an entire civilisation.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. (The Second Coming)
Yet, he ends the poem with the statement that ‘surely some revelation is at hand’ even though it is unclear to him what it is. It feels, he says ‘like a rough beast’ waiting to be born.
The perception of Pandemonium can also, then, lead us to seeing a womb where before there was only a tomb blocked by a stone. How do we move from Pandemonium to Chaos? This is the question we continuously face on the hard road of both personal and collective human evolution. Pandemonium denies hope and another lease of life. Chaos, by contrast, can be discovered to hold vital potential. The invisible or miniscule building elements of a new creation are in it as in a womb.
In Milton, the world of the Fallen Angels is everywhere constrained by boundaries. Above them, the way back to Heaven is blocked by an unscalable wall. This is often how many of us see life: brief spurts of hope or flourishing, continuously cut short or blocked by negative forces. This happens; but how do we deal with the deep, painful disappointment, even despair, it can bring? Chaos theory recognises that boundaries can be crossed and new patterns revealed, bringing, in an evolutionary leap, a quite new vision of creation. A ‘science of surprises’.
John Main once said that the only way we can overcome a limitation is to first accept it. Yet, there are dire consequences if we merely ignore real boundaries. Walls and fences, checks and balances in cultures and constitutions, have a purpose. They should be changed when necessary but carefully. Both personal and social order and harmony require respect for limitations on our freedom of action. To proudly or vengefully ignore them offends the natural order of evolution and leads to a collapse of order, law and a rejection of our own and others’ humanity. History is littered by failed revolutions that employed violence to achieve impatiently sought results. They may have changed things for a period but what they tried to destroy returns.
It is not politics but the spiritual dimension of wisdom that teaches a different kind of revolution: non-violent, interior and leading to evolutionary change. It is not ‘supernatural’ forces but consciousness achieving transcendence that moves beyond boundaries. Not violence or the lust of mammon but compassion and love.
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Above I described meeting some members of our community who were not politically activist in the obvious sense. They simply felt a deep human concern and compassion for the suffering of the most vulnerable targets of the present immigration policy. Compassionate connection to the needs of others roots us more in reality than ideology. I was struck by their sincerity then by the surprise of realising that in this country built, from its origin, on the hope of a new life there were now so many, so suddenly feeling fear and hopelessness. How many millions read the words in New York Harbour as they came from pandemonium and despair to find a new life from a shattered and oppressive old world, ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’?
My fellow meditators asked what they could do. I thought that in an uncertain world all we can do is discern the next thing, then do it wholeheartedly, let it ripen (or fail) and then do the next thing in the next stage of the process it opens up. So, I suggested that they start a meditation group for these stressed and fearful families and their children.
This may not seem a very effective way of dealing with Pandemonium but remember the butterfly effect. Think of sustainable revolution as a transformation of consciousness rather than the violent destruction of boundaries. I am thinking of a contemplative revolution capable of throwing a bridge across the polarised, no-mans world of Pandemonium to transform it into the potential of Chaos, not a tomb of decay but a womb of change and new life. Naturally, it too is uncertain and unpredictable. It can fail. Not every flap of a butterfly’s wings leads to systemic change. The authenticity of the contemplative consciousness is measured, not by success as we imagine it, but by the sense of hope it awakens and the restoration of trust in the goodness of human nature.
In the end, what is the alternative?
I do not mean starting a meditation group — or many of them — is all there is to be done. It is also necessary to speak truth to power, to protest and expose, to risk yourself against stronger forces. But protest and confrontation alone risk becoming an ally of the very polarisation we need to overcome. Attacking or even trying to change the beliefs of an absolute believer will likely push them further away from you. Changing one’s mind is a process that occurs more through interiority than argument.
A negotiator of twenty years in the work of climate told me he had never seen any representative coming with their pre-written speech and views shaped by their government’s inflexible instructions, change their mind. He now suggests to colleagues that they begin meetings with meditation and when they do the common feeling is of more trust, greater personal closeness and openness and their exchanges become more fruitful.
The ‘lifeblood of democracy’, haemorrhaging rapidly in our world, is not about winning the argument at any cost but conversation. This is an art of civilisation damaged by the forms of communication, especially the digital, disembodied, dehumanised kind by which we have been seduced. Recovering the art of conversation is essential to building a path across the Pandemonium of our present no-mans land and re-engaging the polarised. Trusting to be silent, in listening mode in the presence of an opponent is a preparation for communication. How do we do it? Begin where and how you can. Do not interrupt them. As Samuel Beckett said ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better’. Silence is a powerful ally and medicine.
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And never fail to trust the essential goodness of human nature which I felt so powerfully in the American Mexicans who simply wanted to know what to do to help the suffering of others. I trusted it, too, in a conversation with another meditator, whose opinions I do not share and who strongly supports the present Administration. I asked him to help me understand why. He explained. I listened for some time. Then he paused and said he was aware of the suffering the immigration policy was causing and disturbed by it. He paused again and added in a different tone ‘I do hope that a new solution for the millions of non-criminal-illegal-immigrants presents itself as a pathway to citizenship. I think many Americans like myself would volunteer to help these people become citizens.’ I saw his good heart in the impulse to serve where before I had heard only an implacable ideology.
We may wonder how a good heart can function in the pandemonium of the present polarisation. But the American-Mexicans I first met are already starting their small meditation group to bring peace and comfort to the children and parents whose suffering had touched them.
However it happens, my conclusion is the priority of telling the truth, listening to others and spreading the influence of contemplative consciousness in this situation. Every opportunity should be taken to open this way of seeing and knowing reality. First, it arises from trusting one’s own good nature and finding the energies of peace and compassion present there. Then, it can be communicated and the great polarisation can be lessened allowing humanity and loving-kindness to be restored to the world.
The awakening of the contemplative dimension is an essential element in all human development. It is absolutely necessary to the evolution of human consciousness whose excruciating birth pains the human race is passing through. What lies on the other side, beyond Pandemonium we cannot say. But hope insists that it is a new era of humanity however uncertain and unpredictable it may seem. And so, even if our faith in human nature is not always strong enough — and human beings can tire of goodness easily — then at least a holy curiosity should press us to restore contemplation to its proper place at the heart of the human journey.
