For the next several Thursdays, we will be discussing Rob Brezsny’s Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. Click here to read all the Pronoia posts.

So, if pronoia is about willfully choosing to focus on the positive, functional, glorious aspects of life, then where does negative, dysfunctional, ugly stuff go? Brezsny addresses this in the articles we’ll discuss today: “Apocalypse vs. Apocalypse” (page 99), “Pronoia’s Villains” (page 103), and “Shadow School” (page 113).

In “Apocalypse vs. Apocalypse,” Brezsny says that he suffers from a most unusual form of chauvinism—he thinks that “those of us alive today are on the cusp of a radical turning point in the evolution of humanity. Or so I like to imagine.”

I tend to agree with him—and, like Brezsny, I wonder what that radical turning point will look like. Are the fundamentalist Christians right to wait for Jesus to ride a pony down through the sky? Will we be blasted by an asteroid? Killed by superbugs resistant to antibiotics? Vaporized in the blink of an eye by an errant nuke?

Or will our transformation be more personal, more interior, and as much about growth as destruction? As RB puts it, “Why are Things Falling Apart thought to be inherently more gripping than Things Being Reborn?”

Brezsny thinks that we are already living through the Apocalypse, but that it looks different from what we might expect. It’s happening slowly, beneath the surface, and though mindblowing and worldchanging events do happen—think September 11th, or Obama’s election—most of it we experience through the details of our personal lives:

“Again and again, you’re pushed to a brink that challenges you to either rise to the occasion or else surrender to demoralizing chaos ... Seeded inside each of these personal turning points is the crux of the evolving global apocalypse: You get to choose whether you’ll adjust by taking a path that keeps you aligned with the values of the dying world or else a path that helps you resonate with what’s being born.”

Question: How does thinking about your personal struggles in this huge context help you choose where to align yourself?

A few pages later in “Pronoia’s Villains,” Brezsny looks into the role that “seemingly bad” people play in pronoia. Was Judas a terrible traitor, or was he the indispensible catalyst for one of the most worldchanging events in human history?

This question resonates deeply with me just as it did when I first listened to “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which also looks at Judas and his motivations. According to that reading of the crucifixion story, Judas thought that Jesus was changing in harmful ways, and so colluded with the Romans in order to shut him down and prevent him from ruining all the good he’d already done. And, of course, Judas suffered for his decision, second-guessing himself and ultimately taking his own life in grief and despair.

The truth is that it is a rare villain who really seeks to wreak havoc and pain on the world. Most of them think they are doing the right thing. I don’t say this to excuse their misguided, hurtful actions, but to open up our thinking around people who many of us like to think are evil or stupid. For all the awful things that George W. Bush has done to our country, he thought he was doing what was best. And who can say what ultimately wonderful growth will come out of the position his administration has put us in?

This is admittedly a dangerous line of thinking. Yes, some good came out of September 11th—many people opened up their lives in response to the tragedy—but that’s not to say that it’s a good thing that it happened, nor that we should shrug our shoulders at terrible events. I’m just saying that when these awful things occur, we need to be able to mine them for the treasure that is inevitably there right next to the horror.

“Try this,” Brezsny writes. “Imagine the people you fear and dislike as pivotal characters in a fascinating and ultimately redemptive plot that will take years or even lifetimes for the Divine Wow to elaborate.”

When difficult things happen in my life, I sometimes apply a helpful trick I learned from Jean Houston: Instead of seeing the bad circumstance as the end of the story, look at it as the middle. See it as the spider in the cave that Frodo must ultimately get past, or the feats that Hercules must complete, or the morass of misunderstandings and rules that Elinor Dashwood must wade through in order to get what she wants. Reframing bad situations as opportunities to show what we’re made of is a powerful way to get the perspective and strength needed to get through them.

Our enemies “force us to become smarter. The riddles they thrust in front of us sharpen our wits and sculpt our souls ... Act as if your adversaries are great teachers. Thank them for how crucial they’ve been in your education.”

Question: How does this idea of appreciating what your enemies have done sit with you? Who do you disdain, and what have they taught you?

Loving all of life means embracing destruction and confusion and our own shadows, as well. From “Shadow School”: You’re a gorgeous mystery with a wild heart and a lofty purpose. But like all of us, your psyche also harbors a portion of the world’s sickness: a mess of repressed longings, enervating wounds, ignorant delusions, and unripe powers.”

I’ve come across Jung’s concept of “the shadow” before, and I have to say that as it’s commonly used, it doesn’t really resonate with me. It’s far too negative, and almost seems to foster an unwarranted mysterious fascination with itself. Oooh, I’m working with my shadow! I don’t see any particular reason to identify parts of myself that need development as dark or somehow wrong.

But if I consider the actual word “shadow,” it merely refers to the absence of light. Thought about in this way, it makes more sense to me. The parts of ourselves that are in the dark, that we are not aware of, can limit our ability to create. So then our task is to bring the light of awareness and objectivity to these hidden parts of ourselves.

“Shadow School” is made up of a series of quotes on our shadows. This one really resonated with me:

“You have to recognize the demons or else they’ll annoy you like mosquitos. But if you acknowledge their existence, if you say, ‘All right, here’s a cookie, go sit in the corner,’ then you can go about your work.”—James Broughton

I love the playfulness of this—give the devil a cookie and send him on his way!—and I also love that the shadow is put in its rightful place in the hierarchy of the self. I believe this is what Sraddhalu Ranade was talking about when he said, “The purpose of education is organizing the personality to reflect the soul.” When we are able to achieve a level of organization between the different parts of ourselves, then we can line ourselves up in service to a higher goal. But when all the voices in our heads are shouting at each other, or when we remain unaware of our competing desires and the legacies left to us by our upbringings, then a unified self is impossible.

As I get more deeply into the mission on the top of this page, this quote from Carl Jung seems truer and truer: “The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.”

Question: Do you agree with Jung? What is the relationship between learning to manage our own craziness and creating significant change in the world?