A Truly Tolerant Society

"Hell is the other people," is how Jean-Paul Sartre termed it. And we complicitly agree when we point our fingers at bosses or spouses or even terrorists. But all of this finger pointing, normal as it is, indicates an enormous ignorance of a psychological principle: those problems outside, those things in others that "get" us, have much more to do with ourselves than we like to see. And if we can get a handle on the inner component of our problems, we're moving in the right direction.

Today on Healing Through Consciousness, A Truly Tolerant Society.

There's a lot of misunderstanding about tolerance in our society today. The word has come to signify a philosophy of not intruding on anyone else's choices of lifestyle - almost no matter what that implies. We don't speak out about sexual orientation or relationship choices or a myriad of other big or small things because ... well, who are we to judge? And then we pride ourselves on our laudable tolerance. We're so accepting, so modern we think.

But tolerance in Dr. Keppe's science of Analytical Trilogy is a much more profound word. It means a complex blend of seeing the problems we have with others ... in ourselves, while also helping the others in our lives to deal with their shortcomings and become better.

And if that sounds too theoretical, as I suspect it might, let me try to illustrate with an example. Dr. Keppe talks in his book, The Origin of Illness, about a session of analysis in which one of his clients was attending a concert, and a woman began to smoke next to him. He asked her to stop, and when she didn't, he tore the cigarette out of her hand and threw it to the floor.

Now many of us, indoctinated in the current medical wisdom of the dangers of second-hand smoke, might cheer on this intrepid client. Because certainly, smoking in a public place is an imposition that many of us would disagree with. Keppe's analysis would do more though. when he asked his client what he associated the woman's behavior with, he responded, "Effrontery and arrogance."

So, said Dr. Keppe, using the pollution caused by her smoking as an excuse, you got furious at the awareness she gave you of your own confrontational and petulant attitude.

Ouch! Now again, this is delicate because it's not that the other person is right and this client is wrong. But it is important fo rhim to see that he has the same attitude going on and he's not dealing with it inside him and so is ill-equipped to deal with it outside either. So in the end, he can't help the other person or himself.

Well, there are many opportunities to study this in all of Dr. Keppe's books, available on our Trilogy portal. We are also conducting an ABCs of Analytical Trilogy course online and by teleclass, and you can find out much more about all of this at my email.

Today we dive into the subject of tolerance and this process of interiorization with Dr. Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco, as we consider a long case study supplied by one of our listeners by email.

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