The Beast Within

It is best to discover the roots from which dysfunction sprouts and bears diseased fruit. The rampant abuse, the past hidden sickness—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, morally and ethically, the tragic earth shattering for many, and still an unknown number, human beings with the largest abused and belittled being female, has its roots in an ancient indigenous teaching of the Beast Within:

Jesus said: “Blessed is the lion which the man eats and the lion will become man; and cursed is the man whom the lion eats and the lion will become man.” Gospel of Thomas

Metaphorically, our lion (power and fierceness), now tamed, has not eaten the lamb but has lain down with the lamb (compassion and gentleness). The lion and lamb are “one.” With the focus of our lion power now on compassionately creating and not furiously destroying, we are able to journey into the unknown with gentle power and face our fears with compassion. (Do You Like Jesus–Not the Church?)

“The beast within, ignored or turned negative, is the root cause of the seemingly ever-present abuse issues found within all levels and stratums of society… The untamed beast is literally ignorance running rampant… Ignorance is solely a materialistic dualistic view of life… This ignorance results in arrogance and arrogant behavior. This arrogance, in turn, feeds the untamed beast. This is the very same arrogance that turns a blind eye to all forms of abuse, such as sexual abuse…” Do You Like Jesus—Not the Church? By JC

And there you have it – why people in Alabama, such as the female Governor, will still vote for Roy Moore just because he is a Republican.

This is an ancient cross-cultural concept referred to as “the beast within.” The beast is most commonly portrayed as either a lion, a wolf, or a jaguar. It symbolizes the untamed nature of our primitive or hindbrain, where instincts such as survival, dominance, and mating are located. Metaphorically then, our beast is an inner quality that is intimately connected with our issues of safety, security, survival, and sex. All humans have a fierceness and ferociousness within them—the beast within. Consciously, many people ignore this quality of self; many fear it, while others deny it totally. But our inner beast is neutral. It is not, by its nature, solely a positive (constructive) or a negative (destructive) quality. One way to think of our beast is as the sum total of our strength, willpower, and sexual potency. These are important qualities that we need in our lives in order to be fully human, fully healthy, and fully energetic.

However, these qualities and others may be turned negative or destructive through such things and emotions as denial, madness, anger, extreme anger or rage, substance abuse, revenge, envy, hate, jealousy, and fear.[i]  Add to this list the issues of power, greed, and control over others, and it’s easy to see the potential of unleashing the dysfunctional and destructive dark qualities of our beast.

Too often we forget that without the dark, there would be no light. Our lives are usually organized into a separation between the symbolic light and symbolic dark, with the light held up as our ultimate goal in spiritual and religious life. The true secret that most never realize is that light and dark are equal components that interpenetrate as one reality. True spiritual and religious teachings are based on the acknowledgment of the interpenetrative aspect of dark and light within us and then the growth of our light or the divine aspect of our soul from the creative darkness of our humanity.

This is not the Jungian concept of the “shadow” but the actual and physical reality of dualistic concepts, such as light and dark, spirit and matter, that interpenetrate. The dualistic light and dark is the illusion, as our individual sense of reality (of separateness or duality) is an extension of the illusion of our basic core sense perceptions. Our eyes perceive separation between us and all things viewed. This constant reinforcement tricks us into thinking and believing that we are separate and an island unto ourselves.

The reality is that we are not separate at all but deeply interconnected.

Similarly, our symbolic light and dark are not separate but interpenetrate to define our wholeness as individuals. Additionally, the two sides of our inner darkness also interpenetrate. There is no separate shadow, just a darkness that is both creative and destructive at the same time.

The “shadow” is considered an archetype by Jungians[ii] and connected with the unconscious, but Jung advanced no connection to physiological reality. With the concept of the dark, there is a connection to the body—testosterone. This hormone is our bodily source of physical strength, willpower, and sexual potency. Testosterone is the source of our beast within.

This important hormone is made in large amounts by the testicles. But testosterone is not limited solely to men. Women produce testosterone in their ovaries, even though it is only about one-tenth of what a male produces, just as a male produces a small amount of the female hormone estrogen. Additionally, both men and women produce a small amount of testosterone in their adrenal glands, which are the source of our fight-or-flight mechanism—the power of our beast. But “the modern, technological world gives us few positive outlets for this energy, and yet the pressures of our lives are constantly causing our bodies to send us hormonal messages to fight or flee.”

The beast within, ignored or turned negative, is the root cause of the seemingly ever-present abuse issues found within all levels and stratums of society. Abuse is not solely limited to physical actions. The untamed beast is literally ignorance running rampant. Ignorance, not to be equated to educational level or intelligence, is solely a materialistic dualistic view of life, which results in a spiritually unawakened consciousness. This ignorance then inflates and protects the unhealthy ego’s sense of self-survival, resulting in arrogance and arrogant behavior. This arrogance, in turn, feeds the untamed beast. This is the very same arrogance that turns a blind eye to all forms of abuse, such as sexual abuse, especially if reporting or stopping the abuse would threaten the person’s external power or position in the world.

The expanded teaching is to be found within my latest book: Do You Like Jesus–Not the Church?

[i] Abuse, physical or sexual, is a behavior of the destructive side of the beast, which in some cases may have been triggered as a result of the person’s own experience of being abused as a child.

[ii] “Jung appeared to be undecided in his own mind about the question of the ontological status of the archetypes (see e.g., 1968d [1936], 58; see also Dourley, 1993); and this state of affairs has led to considerable controversy. But I believe that the ambiguity was necessitated by Jung’s inability to scientifically reconcile his conviction that the archetypes are at once embodied structures and bear the imprint of the divine; that is, the archetypes are both structures within the human body, and represent the domain of spirit. Jung’s intention was clearly a unitary one, and yet his ontology seemed often to be dualistic, as well as persistently ambiguous, and was necessarily so because the science of his day could not envision a nondualistic conception of spirit and matter.

“Jung’s dualism is apparent in his distinction between the archetypes and the instincts which required for him a polarization of the psyche into those products derived from matter and those derived from spirit. He imagined the psyche as the intersection at the apex of two cones, one of spirit and the other of matter (1969a [1946], 215)” (Charles D. Laughlin,

http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_10_3_laughlin.pdf).

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