It seems to me that for every Contact we make, there are Signs of another Independence Day, 2012 around the corner. Why is it that our society so often tends to appeal to our deepest fears rather than our deepest hopes and inner strength? It’s not just Hollywood, either.

One of the national platform doctors I respect, Dr. Mercola, sends me his newsletter every week and there is always a list of hot topic links to draw me in to his advice and ideas about healthy alternatives. The problem is, however, that they are almost always fear based, i.e. “If you don’t stop using Splenda, you’re dead!” That’s a bit of a turn-off for me. Alternatively, Dr. Andrew Weil sends me his newsletter with lots of love and positivity, recipes for healthier meals and recommendations about how to overcome challenging habits. Which links do you think I click on more frequently? Are you different? Are the fear-based marketing strategies working on you?

Prior to Barack Obama’s election, I received a deluge of emails and appeals from conservative Americans assuring me that his election would be the end of civilization, the end of Democracy, the beginning of a new Communist, Islamic Republic of America. A couple years later, President Obama is still doing his best to make this country better than the day he arrived in the Oval Office. And we have not made it easy with our tendency towards doom and gloom.

Yet, it is so easy to appeal to fear. I believe humans have been historically susceptible to fear as a primary tactic of manipulation. Give the church the deed to your house and we’ll make sure you get to heaven. Hell, Dante’s Inferno did slightly more for church attendance than the classic film, The Exorcist. Fear has been a tool to sustain racism, ignorance, sexism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and even the mistreatment animals experience in industrial meat producing centers across America.

I suppose we each have a choice as to which voices we will listen to throughout life and the fear based bullhorns tend to seem louder, imminent, and more seductive. Like the Karate Kid, limping into the last round of the tournament, the other kid get’s the command from his sensei to “sweep the leg.” While he knows it is an immoral approach to solving the conflict, his own moral fortitude is overruled by the fear of his egotistical teacher.

As the recent events in Egypt have shown us all, it is possible to ignore the voices of doom and gloom and manifest positive change. Yet, a week later as swarms of other protests occur across the Arab world, there are still leaders who attempt to hold on to power through fear and aggression. There will always be leaders who use their villainy and force in order to cut the voice of peace and love out from under them. Let’s just hope that we all have within us at least one little trick in our toolbox that is like a talisman of light, pouring our truth into the darkness.

Well, it’s the Chinese Year of the Rabbit this week.

Feb 3, 2011 marks Xin Mao, the new year for the lunar calendar which is designated by one of twelve animals each year. Perhaps not as exciting at first glance as the dragon or tiger, the rabbit holds a very significant place in the cycle of Chinese totems. One of the essential qualities of the rabbit ion Chinese folklore is its ability to act quickly and nimbly in the face of a challenge and avert disaster. The hare is the epitome of the escape artist.

While I’m not Chinese and really don’t observe the Chinese New Year, I like to think I am an “observer” of life. I find it very meaningful that in this age of computers, cyberspace and smart phones that almost half the planet will recognize a rabbit as part of their consciousness this week. While most of us may not live in nature the way we once did, there still exists remnants of our totemic past, fragments of our connection with nature and our animal cousins that call us back to something bigger than high speed internet service.

There are endless lessons to be learned from nature. We design products based on ergonomics, the “fit” between people, our stuff and our environments. We look to sharks for answers to cancer because they don’t get cancer. We call our operating systems Snow Leopard or Panther based on our projected beliefs as to these animals strengths and agility. We call our cars Mustangs and Pintos based on our feelings when we witness animals running wild and free. So, why not name every year something bold and exciting like the dragon?

Symbolically, rabbits are skittish creatures. As often as a rabbit eats, a rabbit listens for danger. Rabbits are gentle creatures who like to eat, sleep and have a lot of sex. It’s hard to argue with that. On the other hand, rabbits tend to be generally fear based. Afraid of tragedy, rabbits like to have fun but are always worried that their fun will be taken away. Because they fear something will happen, they create a life of anxiety, sprinkled with moments of pleasure. What an interesting notion for our planet to consider for an entire year!

Every time I allow myself to worry about the “what if’s” in life, I create an inability to live in the present moment. In so doing, I project to the world the message that I am afraid and in so doing, I create more fear in my life and for those around me. What a profound message for all of us.

So, Happy New Year, once again! Remember our beloved rabbit this week and each week hereafter as we breathe into her deep message: that which we resist, persists. Whatever we run away from, chases after us.

My dog, Chaco, turns 15 years old next week. I know there is a popular notion that dog years are actually measured in multiples of human years so that relatively speaking, 15 is akin to a Methusaleh experience. Personally, 15 is a long enough time as it is; I don’t need to multiply him by anything in order to appreciate how much I love him.

15 years ago, I was a 25 year old man with a Masters from Harvard and not a pot to piss in. No, really, I lived in a 9 ft. trailer in the middle of the New Mexican desert. I had no electricity, no heat and well, no toilet. Studying with shamans has historically never been a cake walk so I didn’t expect much regarding accommodations.

As the warmer breezes of spring rolled through the valley I drove to the local post office of the nearest town to send a letter ( remember the post office? ). There was a big red pick-up truck in the parking lot with big, fluffy, yapping, yellow puppies in the bed. The owner explained that “their bitch had been knocked up again by that damned Shepherd” and they simply couldn’t afford to feed the puppies anymore. The next step was death by drowning. Drowning?!?

It is said that we choose our relationships and our teachers choose us. The little, scrawny runt sat trembling at the back of the truck and peed a good sized puddle the second I looked at him. “I’ll take the little pisser, please.”

Chaco was not named for his chocolate dark complexion as many have assumed through the years. He was named for Chaco Canyon, the center of the turquoise trade in the Americas one thousand years ago and the namesake of the ancestors that would become today’s Navajo Nation.

He was afraid of his own shadow. He cried for weeks and screamed bloody murder every time I tried to pick his little body up and cradle him in my arms. Folks were convinced I was beating him due to the terrible noises he evoked on a regular basis. It took six months for a vet to realize he had a urinary tract infection that was beyond infected.

Chaco has now spent the better part of fifteen tremendous years with me and as an old timer with a fairly relaxed urethra, he has taken up peeing freely again. Living in a home with an incontinent canine has its challenges, especially now that we live upstairs in a brick building in one of the largest cities in the country. At the same time, there is something very familiar about the dynamic I am experiencing with my dear old dog.

The impulse to get irritated, frustrated and resentful each time the floor is wet or another rug is sent to be laundered is a mindful reminder about what it means to commit to another being. Maybe I chose the peeing runt who trembled at the back of the truck because I like challenges. Maybe, I figured he was the least likely to get adopted before being tossed into the river. Then again, maybe, just maybe, Chaco chose me because I had some things to learn and he was just the one to teach me.

Are you stressed?

It seems like stress has become a way of life for so many of us, simply a “given” in much the same way as paying for bags on an airplane or basic cable television. Has it always been this way? Have we always been anxious, throughout the ages?

I like to fantasize about what daily life was like at different periods of history in different parts of the world. We have a tendency in our moment in the human record to project our own experiences back into the past onto our predecessors. For example, there are few reconstructed images I have seen of “prehistoric, ” a fascinating concept in and of itself, man where the hairy, unshaven fella wasn’t chasing or being chased by a Woolly Mammoth or menacing dinosaur ( yes I have heard they didn’t exist at the same time ).

Talk about stressful! Have you seen Jurassic Park? I know it was all just on one little island but if those velociraptors lived on my block I guarantee I would carry pepper spray.

I think back to the days of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Zealots and Sanhedrin, Romans and Right-wingers. Roaming prophets spoke about the end of days and it must have been hard to change the channel because they were right there, screaming and shouting while you slaughtered your goat. Wait, what if my soul really doesn’t go anywhere when I die? It seems like it might have been pretty relaxing, just living out in the desert with one’s family and a little extra wine with dinner until I consider the various marauders, armies and general kooks looking for something or another.

No public assistance programs for tough times or local security forces for the kooks. I imagine the “good old days” had a possibility of becoming terribly frightening very quickly. Not exactly stress-free.

I think about the ways technology and industrialization have made certain challenges much easier and peaceful the past few hundred years. I suppose common folks just made peace with bowel elimination in cities and villages a thousand years ago…until another plague was unleashed. I have a romantic notion of the early American pioneers, setting out from the muddy streets of New York with the intention to work the land and live life under the stars. Create one’s own destiny… what a wonderful banner to soar above our log cabin in the woods. Until the real native stewards of the neighborhood got fed up with the concept of “manifest destiny….”and murdered us. How’s that for anxiety and stress?

I wonder if there has truly ever been a time in our history when there was not a relationship to anxiety or stress. So, perhaps the lugubrious suggestions we like to make about how life is more challenging today than it was for our grandparents isn’t so accurate? I hear quite often that all this technology has added so much stress to our lives that perhaps it isn’t worth it!?! Really? No one is forcing us to spend an hour a day on Facebook or keep up with the spam folder but it sure is nice to be able to Google a topical solution for psoriasis, YouTube a video on how to perform CPR or use my smart phone to call AAA when my car is stuck in a ravine.

There is no doubt in my mind that life today has its unique share of stressors and strains. At the same time, I firmly believe that each generation is faced with a relative drop-down menu of anxiety manifestors befitting the day, era and location. At least we can post an updated status to our friends when we are feeling overwhelmed.

A mood of universal destruction and renewal…has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos—the right moment—for a “metamorphosis of the gods,” of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious human within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science…. So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of the modern human. — Carl Gustav Jung

In 1925, Carl Gustav Jung, one of the most brilliant psychologists in our field’s brief history, took a trip to New Mexico. In fact, his experience in Taos with a group of Native Americans is considered to be one of the most significant contributions to the development of his unique approach to psychology and more importantly, his perception of human behavior. Jung noted that at the core of his discoveries at Taos Pueblo was the notion that humans “need a sense of their individual and cultural significance to be psychologically healthy.”

In his book Memories, Dreams and Reflections (which happens to be one of my very favorite books, ever) Jung suggested that his experience in New Mexico made him aware of his imprisonment “in the cultural consciousness of the white man.” As a man living in Chicago this week, I have to say that I feel somewhat imprisoned by some cultural consciousness as well.

For the past several days, client after client has walked into my office and somewhere during the hour uttered the words, “Bears, Packers?!?” Sometimes it comes across as a question, sometimes as a simple fact. “Did you see the game?” “Where will you watch it on Sunday?” “So, who are you for, Bears…Packers?” As a man who has historically maintained precious little interest in football, it is a fascinating experience to suddenly feel swept into a Midwestern whirlwind of rivalry and vigor, longing and lasciviousness.

Women and men alike, care about this game on Sunday. Folks who were born and raised in the streets of Chicago care. Transplants from other countries and states, care. Political conservatives and wacky liberals know it matters who wins and they have opinions. Homosexuals are weighing in and heterosexuals, too. Women who cheat and men who hide their real feelings have a lot to say about Bears/Packers…

The Taos Pueblo is separated into two tiny, mud cities by a modest river that weaves down into the valley beneath a great mountain. One of the details that Dr. Jung found particularly significant was the fact that the pueblo’s natural separation by the river had created an ever so slight variation between the two sides of the village. In fact, when it came to engaging in rituals, hunting and even sporting events, the gentle designation of the two distinct teams created a friendly rivalry and competition that served as a projection for interpersonal tensions and aggression. Jung noted that as a result of this sometimes heated team rivalry, there was considerably less aggression, hostility and strife in people’s homes and in the whole tribal community.

I don’t really care who wins the game this Sunday. I’d like to believe that the not always so friendly rivalry between Bears and Packers fans is a healthy projection of aggressive energy away from real people and real issues onto something like an NFL rivalry. At the same time, I continue to be amazed by the number of men and women who use their feelings about sporting events, wins and losses, as springboards for dealing with their own hopes and dreams, perceived successes and failures. Either way, I just might succumb to the local cultural consciousness and watch the game..