“Knowing honor, but clinging to disgrace, you become the valley of the world.”   –  Tao Te Ching, Chapter 28

Food is grown in the valley. Animals find water there and thrive. A town in a valley benefits from the lush environment of the lowlands and the protection of the mountains.

In symbolic language, scaling a mountain can mean achieving a goal, overcoming a problem, becoming someone. This is ego development.

Going downhill, and even being injured or killed, can symbolize ego diminishment.

If understood symbolically, the Taoist quote above expresses a meaning similar to the ninth Beatitude in the Christian Bible:

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” – Matthew 5:11

The interpretation of these images in dreams all depends on a person’s individual growth process. Sometimes development of the ego is the best course. Sometimes sacrifice of the ego opens doors.

The degree to which Western culture overvalues ego development creates confusion for modern people. Carl Jung wrote that ego development is most often a psychological task for the first half of life. Development of relationship with the Self is for the second half of life (Jung, 1933). There are exceptions of course.

Jung characterized the Self as the wise core of each psyche. The Self is the part that knows your greatest potential and guides toward achievement of that (Jung, 1968). When you’re young, it’s important to get a foothold in life. It helps to feel good at something, to achieve things, to be praised and recognized.

But at some point, the ego is strong and you may be able to make the common good a higher priority than ego development. This can involve a radical change in psychological orientation. For instance, if Stephanie trained as a speed skater and won nationals, she would have become very competitive. If she later ran a training school for skaters, she could collaborate more effectively by sacrificing competitiveness. A new form of success would involve cultivating supportiveness for the success of others.

This sounds simple. But sacrificing the winning aces of the past creates inner conflict. The inner champion yells in her mind, “After all we’ve done, you’re going to be a doormat now?!” The expert in her mind shouts, “Don’t listen to them – tell them what you know!” The inner survivor gets anxious, “If you act like this, your business will fall apart. People will think you’re weak.”

A different person could have started life with an idea of collaboration as success and then be called to do the opposite in later years. Development processes are highly individualized.

If we look at the ninth Beatitude as a form of psychological judo, it shows how to change dynamically. It coaches toward the radical shift in orientation: ‘Be prepared for internal resistance against change; endure the voices of resistance and don’t give in to them. This will foster good fortune.’

Works Cited

Jung, C.G. Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice (The Tavistock Lectures). Vintage Books, 1968.

Jung, C.G. Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Harcourt, 1933.

May, Herbert G. & Metzger, Bruce M. (editors). The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press, 1977.

Taoistic: Taoism Explained. “Tao Quotes on War and Violence.”https://www.taoistic.com/taoquotes/taoquotes-19-war-violence.htm. Accessed January 25, 2021.

“Man is ruled by Earth. Earth is ruled by Heaven. Heaven is ruled by the Way. The Way is ruled by itself.”   –  Tao Te Ching, Chapter 25

Like ancient Christians, Taoists conceive of heaven as the spiritual realm. Westerners see this dualistically – as an inner reality, and an outer, mundane world. Taoists conceive of the spiritual realm as permeating both inner and outer reality. Carl Jung characterized this sphere as a vast inner wilderness. Yet certain natural laws of the inner realm can be observed and mapped. This was a large part of Jung’s life’s work. The eighth Beatitude expresses a principle of inner natural law from a dualistic perspective:

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”                                                                                       —   Matthew 5:10

To consider this statement, I’d like to first attempt a translation of the Taoist quote at the top of the page:

Humans are ruled by their desires and physical needs. Their earthly life is ruled by their own psychology. This includes the reality of larger archetypal forces and laws of spirituality (similar to laws of nature). This is ruled by the Tao, which Carl Jung labeled the Self. The Self in action is ruled by the Self.

The early Christian writings often use parables and metaphor. The Kingdom of Heaven is one of these. Some of the defining statements of it are:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”  — Matthew 13:44

 “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”    — Matthew 13:31/Mark 4:30-32/Luke 13:18-19

“The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”   —  Matthew 13:33/Luke 13:20-21

“The kingdom of God is within you.”   — Luke 17:21

To summarize, it’s a state of mind/heart that brings joy, is exceedingly valuable, makes what seems impossible possible (leavening), can start tiny and grow to be a source of shelter and sustenance.

The Beatitude assumes there will be conflict in pursuing righteousness. From a Jungian standpoint, the friction takes place inside. Westerners have sometimes depicted such this as a person with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. A person has both constructive and destructive impulses. The person of integrity finds a way to act on the constructive and not the destructive.

This should be discerned individually. What’s constructive for one person may not be constructive for another. Moral law depends on the inner life of each individual and the actualization of that person’s potential. The compass is “the still small voice” inside each person.

To conclude, I’d like to share two additional Taoist sayings that express the essence of what it means to have “The Kingdom of Heaven,” from a Taoist standpoint:

“Being a model to the world, eternal virtue will never falter in you, and you return to the boundless.   –  Tao Te Ching, Chapter 28   

Ancient masters of excellence had a subtle essence, and a depth too profound to comprehend.  –  Tao Te Ching, Chapter 15  

Works Cited

May, Herbert G. & Metzger, Bruce M. (editors). The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press, 1977.

Taoistic: Taoism Explained. “Tao Quotes on War and Violence.”https://www.taoistic.com/taoquotes/taoquotes-19-war-violence.htm. Accessed January 11, 2021.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.                           – Matthew 5:9

If offspring are the same species as their parents, then peacemakers are fledgling gods. Since making peace is almost impossible, this makes sense.

Efforts to make peace often produce the opposite result. Someone who sets out to be a peacemaker brews trouble because of the shadow. To identify with anything evokes its opposite. If I say, “I’m a peacemaker,” then I’ve just disowned my primitive shadow. When the shadow is disowned, it functions unchecked in the unconscious mind. It becomes a stealth operative in a situation. The term “passive-aggressive” describes such a pattern with a modern term.

A complex aspect of this problem is that people who value peace don’t want to see themselves as combative. Yet how many peace-oriented groups are peaceful?

One way to actually make peace is to deal with inner conflict. First, assume yourself to have both peaceful and warring motivations. Look searchingly for your love of conflict. Look for hidden motives in providing “help.” Dissect conflicts to identify the feelings within the issue. Own the warrior in yourself. Appreciate the positive side of this archetype.

By doing this first, it’s possible to lay a foundation for identifying negative aggressive impulses in ourselves. This is the key for making peace. Once I’m willing to see a destructive impulse in myself, I have more capacity to make decisions about it. I can contain it, delay it, discuss it, dismiss it, and sometimes even transform it.

This concept finds a home in Taoism. The following are some relevant quotes from the Tao Te Ching (https://www.taoistic.com/taoquotes/taoquotes-19-war-violence.htm):

Those who defeat others are strong, those who defeat themselves are mighty.

[Tao Te Ching chapter 33]

When the Way governs the world, the proud stallions drag dung carriages. When the Way is lost to the world, war horses are bred outside the city.

[Tao Te Ching chapter 46]

The unyielding army will not win.

[Tao Te Ching chapter 76]

Excellent conquerors do not engage.

[Tao Te Ching chapter 68]

Warriors say: I dare not be like the host, but would rather be like the guest. I dare not advance an inch, but would rather retreat a foot.

[Tao Te Ching chapter 69]

Works Cited

May, Herbert G. & Metzger, Bruce M. (editors). The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press, 1977.

Taoistic: Taoism Explained. “Tao Quotes on War and Violence.”https://www.taoistic.com/taoquotes/taoquotes-19-war-violence.htm. Accessed December 28, 2020

“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”   Matthew 5:8

As a Jungian psychotherapist, I work with people to help them understand their dreams. In the Jungian framework, symbols of wholeness in dreams are sometimes understood as “Self” figures. The Self can appear as a mandala in stained glass in the Cathedral De Notre Dame. It can appear as a mandala in the form of a sumptuous pizza with a symmetrical design of toppings. It can appear as a fossil of a fish embedded in stone, as Moby Dick the great white whale, or as a terrifying gigantic catfish. It can appear as a piece of petrified wood. It can appear as a pair of ornately beaded shoes. The images and emotional tone vary greatly depending on the person and circumstances. But in all of these cases the Self appears to the dreamer with a message, an inspiration, or a push toward change. People from all walks of life dream of the Self, whether they believe in the sacred or not.

Jung wrote that dreams are generated by the Self, for the purpose of each person’s self-actualization. He described the Self as a presence of the divine in each human – akin to the Apostle Paul’s concept that each person carries part of the body of Christ. “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” 1 Corinthians 12:12

Jesus teachings as related by the Christian Bible encourage people to see the difference between a life lived for satisfaction of basic appetites, and a life lived for development of their soul. As related by Matthew:

“Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” 7:13-14

I feel this passage carries the spirit of the sixth Beatitude. In my experience, the Creator appears often in life and in dreams. But it’s when someone sacrifices an ego-oriented lifestyle, that greater clarity comes. In the midst of this, ecstatic and inspiring surprises support further progress. Further sacrifices lead to keener perception. This vantage point facilitates vision. The increase in sensitivity that also comes with such sacrifices generates greater capacity for both empathy and ecstasy.

The writings of the Taoist Chuang Tzu express similar sensibilities:

From Chapter 32 of his self-titled book on Taoism: “The intelligence of the mean man does not rise beyond bribes and letters of recommendation. His mind is beclouded with trivialities. Yet he would penetrate the mystery of Tao and of creation, and rise to participation in the One. The result is that he is confounded by time and space; and that trammeled by objective existences, that he fails apprehension of that age before anything was. But the perfect man, – he carries his mind back to the period before the beginning. Content to rest in the oblivion of nowhere, passing away like flowing water, he is merged in the clear depths of the infinite.”

From Chapter 26: “Only the perfect man can transcend the limits of the human and yet not withdraw from the world, live in accord with mankind and yet suffer no injury himself. Of the world’s teaching he learns nothing. He has that within which makes him independent of others. If the eye is unobstructed, the result is sight. If the ear is unobstructed, the result is hearing. If the nose is unobstructed, the result is smell. If the mouth is unobstructed, the result is taste. If the mind is unobstructed, the result is wisdom.”

Watson, Burton (translator). Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. Columbia University Press, 1996.

May, Herbert G. & Metzger, Bruce M. (editors). The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press, 1977.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.    Matthew 5:7

In a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, called “The White Snake,” a man acquires the ability to understand the speech of animals. In this, he hears about their predicaments and distress. He helps fish, ants and ravens when they’re in trouble. Then later in the story, they rescue him when he’s in various dire situations.

I remember years ago reading in Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning” (1984) an account of a doctor who had the opportunity to go with a group escaping a Nazi concentration camp, but he went back to help sick people instead. This saved his life, as the group actually went to their death.

On a personal note, I can tell a story of the result of having a lack of mercy in which I was trampled by a horse. My friend and I, as teens, were trying to put a bridle on the horse so we could go riding. This tricky mare didn’t want to participate. We’d coaxed her into the barn. My friend had the bridle. The horse faced her, and I went around the horse’s back end and stood in the doorway to block her from going back to the pasture.

What was I thinking?! This horse was more than three times my size. The horse just turned around, knocked me down, ran over me and out the door. Fortunately, I wasn’t injured more than bruising, and that seemed lucky.

I was having no mercy for the horse, and she didn’t show much for me. Hopefully I have more horse sense now.

Mercy, if considered from a Taoist orientation, can be a fierce weapon of inner warfare. It requires humility and flexibility. To deny the ego its desires for power is a way to gain victory for the soul’s deeper purposes. When the ego harmonizes with the soul’s desire, everything goes better.

Works Cited

Frankl, Victor. Man’s Search For Meaning. Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1984.

From a Taoist perspective, harmonizing with the deepest spiritual impulses leads to good fortune. This happens when a person seeks to be their truest self rather than conforming with others for ego-based reasons.

One complexity in the “how-to” is dealing with a part of the human psyche known as the destructive shadow. Carl Jung wrote extensively and passionately about the need of modern humankind to acknowledge and take responsibility for the shadow. He especially encouraged individuals to take responsibility for their individual shadow. But who wants to know about immoral and unseemly parts of their own personality? Having a hunger and thirst for righteousness doesn’t always come naturally.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Matthew 5:6

Like the frog who sits in warm water and doesn’t know the water will eventually reach a boil, being in spiritual stagnancy often doesn’t feel like a problem. When there’s unconsciousness of personal shadow, the shadow plans and executes its next move. The elegant Dr. Jekyll thought he could simply suppress his shadow, but Mr. Hyde had too much energy and wherewithal to let that happen.

I take “righteousness” to mean the capacity to act morally and with integrity. To want to seek righteousness implies that one must first realize a lack of it. The fourth Beatitude points to the need for brave honesty as a way to gain momentum in spiritual practice. In Jungian dreamwork, when a dream presents a destructive shadow figure, a common reaction from the dreamer is disgust and repulsion, if not denial. The first impulse is usually not a feeling of happiness and gratitude for the information, and a desire to know more. But it’s sometimes possible to acquire hunger and thirst for righteousness through contemplation and self-reflection.

For instance, the very common dream of being chased by something hideous can mean many different things, depending on the dreamer’s situation. But one possibility is that the dreamer is being chased by a destructive shadow figure – part of one’s own psyche. Suppose Jane says her boss, Jessica, is horribly inconsiderate of people’s feelings, as well as aggressive and unconscious. Then Jane dreams of being chased by something hideous. In working with the dream, Jane says she ran, but looked back and noticed that the hideous creature’s eyes looked like Jessica’s. Compassionate but persistent exploration of the situation then shows that Jane herself has a lack of consideration and an aggressive impulse to blame Jessica while remaining unconscious of these qualities in herself. In such a case, her dream is showing:

• How she’s being pursued by her own destructive shadow;
• That she projects this aspect of destructive shadow onto Jessica.

The great thing is that if Jane bravely recognizes she has a habit of callousness and blaming, then she can fight the shadow as an inner enemy. Then she can also discover she has a capacity for caring that had been covered up by her shadow. She can open to greater connection in relationships, and she can reconsider how to relate more positively to Jessica. This could lead to a sense of peace in the workplace, and possibly new career potentials.

In my experience, an important key to this type of work is the ability to be friendly enough toward oneself so that you can digest unflattering information, while also being firm enough to persist to a point of resolution. These are some suggestions to consider:

• Cultivate openness to recognizing where lack of morality abides in thoughts, feelings and actions.
• Cultivate an attitude of friendliness and encouragement about your innate positive potential.
• Examine unflattering feedback. Contemplate any resulting insights.
• Get help if needed in being firmly objective while being compassionately supportive of yourself.
• Revel in the fruits of victory.

In the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass K-T Extinction, the death of dominant land dinosaurs made-way for smaller animals to flourish. (Scoville, 2019). Duck-billed platypuses, green sea turtles, cockroaches, lobsters, sea stars, horseshoe crabs, and others. These inherited the Earth. (Blue Planet Aquarium, 2018).

This appears to me a literal example of the wisdom of the third Beatitude:

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.” Matthew 5:5

The Taoist interpretation of this Beatitude is the difference between a platypus and a platitude. Taken as a platitude the statement encourages passivity and blind submission. Taken as a description of the effectiveness of the Tao, the statement reminds us that water moves mountains and makes rivers. The person who can act as flexibly as water in the correct timing can be surprisingly fortunate.

In my experience as a psychotherapist, cockroaches appear frequently in modern people’s dreams. The meekness of a cockroach can refer to its low social status. It takes humility to become like this survivor of the fifth mass extinction: practical, unglamorous, scrappy, and plain. This may not sound meek at first glance, but for many people, the qualities of a cockroach deeply contrast with expectations for social and moral acceptability.

For example, if Alex learned as a child to always think of others first and not pursue her own desires, then the scrappiness of a cockroach would feel ugly and reprehensible. To be scrappy would bring a feeling of shame. But morality depends on a soul’s goals. If her greatest potential would be to find answers about global warming by uncovering secrets buried in Antarctica, then she’d probably need scrappiness. To get it, she’d need to go beyond childhood training. This would take the humility (meekness) to give up the pride of feeling like a pure, unselfish person. It would mean withstanding the social diminishment of not looking proper. It would also unlock an inheritance of talents and possibilities.

Life doesn’t always favor the meek. The non-meek ancient Romans conquered the world. But the Beatitude talks about inheritance – not victory — and inheritance happens after someone dies. At the end of its day in the sun, the Roman Empire died from the inside – through moral disintegration and one-sidedness. Then the meek stepped in.

If we could go back much farther in time and converse with dinosaurs — if we could go back to the time before the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass K-T Extinction, we could ask a tyrannosaurus rex if success would come from becoming tiny and fluffy. If that T-rex had piercing foresight he’d say, “Of course.” Modern paleontologists have uncovered this in their research. In a series of elegant steps that happened in the blink of an evolutionary eye, theropod dinosaurs – including the tyrannosaurus rex – changed from giants into birds (Singer, 2015). They went meek and traded teeth for beaks. Their species got small to inherit the Earth.

In his film “David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet,” (2020). Attenborough proposes that humankind replant forests, adopt a primarily plant-based diet, and cultivate a re-wilding of parts of the Earth. These steps would foster balance in the planet’s carbon-dioxide level essential for planetary health. This is a literal example of how humankind needs to act with flexibility and humility to continue a relationship with our amazing home.

Works Cited

Attenborough, David. “David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet.” Netflix, netflix.com, 2020. Accessed October, 2020.

Blue Planet Aquarium. “11 Living Creatures That Coexisted With Dinosaurs.” Blue Planet Aquarium, https://www.blueplanetaquarium.com/blog/fish-stories/11-living-creatures-that-coexisted-with-dinosaurs/, 2018. Accessed October, 2020.

Scoville, Heather. “The Cretacious-Tertiary Mass Extinction: The Event That Killed Off the Dinosaurs.” ThoughtCo, 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/the-cretaceous-tertiary-mass-extinction-3954637. Accessed October 2020.

Singer, Emily. “How Birds Evolved From Dinosaurs.” Quanta Magazine, 2015, https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-birds-evolved-from-dinosaurs-20150602. Accessed October, 2020.

The second Beatitude is a powerful feminine weapon in Taoist warfare against the bitterness that can accumulate with time.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4.

No one who’s truly alive escapes major loss. As years go by, our responses to grief determine the grace with which we age, and our psychological health. Mourning requires submission to feelings of loss in the moment. Feelings lead; the mourner follows. When I was a young child, a custom still existed in the United States where a woman in mourning would wear a black veil in public. I wish that custom would be revived and expanded. Dark modern sunglasses may give a message like, “Back off,” “Leave me alone,” or “You can’t hurt me so don’t try,” but I’ve never seen sunglasses that seemed to say, “I’m dealing with major loss. I still need to get groceries – don’t expect a smile.”

In Taoist texts water symbolizes strength through flexibility. Water breaks boulders. It vivifies the world. Water goes low unless it has to go high. Rivers run to the sea because they flow downhill. Water isn’t haughty. It quietly takes the low seat. In 2017, the parliament of New Zealand granted the Whanganui River in North Island the same legal rights as a person. If people honored water in the correct measure, it would be recognized as a world leader.

The word “Blessed” in this Beatitude suggests a time sequence. First mourn, then blessings will come. Mourning is action – recognizing loss, feeling the depth of it, admitting the pain of it, allowing time to do so. It requires willingness to be interrupted by the process of working through messy feelings.

In Jungian symbolism, salt means grief. If I suffer a big loss and don’t mourn, the salt will become bitterness in my personality. Lot’s wife in the Christian Bible seemed to have held onto fantasies of her past in Sodom, where luxury and immorality provided a lifestyle of indulgence. The story says she turned into a pillar of salt. It seems she became a rigid, bitter old woman.

On the other hand, if I mourn, then the salt transforms into wisdom. Over the course of a lifetime, I have the opportunity to gain apprehension of the deeper truth beyond rationality. This shows as beauty in the aged.

Carl Jung said this about salt: “Tears, sorrow, and disappointment are bitter, but wisdom is the comforter in all psychic suffering. Indeed, bitterness and wisdom form a pair of alternatives: where there is bitterness wisdom is lacking, and where wisdom is there can be no bitterness.” (Jung).

When it isn’t from self-pity, crying can change troubled feelings into healing, and sometimes buoyant effervescence. The sense of releasing a burden accompanies a feeling as if my windows have all just been cleaned. Like a computer re-boot removes digital junk, crying can remove mental and emotional junk. Then I’m not only wiser for having grieved, but happier.

Blessed with wisdom, clarity, buoyancy. The most painful of times can turn completely over. A leaf that falls lands on the ground, dies, feeds the earth that feeds the tree that brings bright green in time.

The next post, in two weeks, will focus on the third Beatitude.

Works Cited

Jung, Carl. Mysterium Coniunctionis. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol 14. Princeton University Press, 1977.

For Taoist instructions on spiritual warfare, look at Matthew 5:3-12 in the Christian Bible. Taken superficially, the Beatitudes look like affirmations for polite society. But Jesus didn’t seem concerned with social etiquette nor preventing hurt feelings. The teachings sound more Zen, more Sufi, and certainly Taoist.

The Taoist mindset involves minimizing violence and striving to avoid it altogether, in the context of a world of opposites. We ourselves brim with clashes – conflicting feelings, thoughts, behaviors and attitudes. We also project what we don’t want to see in ourselves onto others to make it seem the opposite is “out there.” Some of the worst social experiments have investigated whether eliminating people deemed “the enemy” can create utopia. Since this has been tried many times, the idea has certainly by now been empirically proven false. The Beatitudes are what to do instead.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”   — Matthew 5:3

“Blessed” implies that I didn’t make the world. I don’t know how to make a tree. I can plant a pepper seed, but I didn’t design the way that seed makes a plant and produces stunning fruit. I want to live well and abundantly, so I try to understand how to live in accord with the extravagance of creation. But what’s my part to do?

“Poor in spirit” means that I need to do shadow work. When I encounter an unflattering truth about myself, I feel crestfallen. I might feel ashamed, guilty, regretful, or helpless. While I strive to take responsibility for the unflattering news, I’m poor in spirit. If it doesn’t diminish egocentrism, then I’m doing nothing transformative.

If I hear unflattering news and identify where I make the error, and then say, “Oh I get it. Now I see it and I won’t do it again,” then I’ve just pulled the wool over my own eyes. I then forget the issue, thinking I’ve done my work, but have done almost zero to transform myself. It’s only if I’m emotionally impacted by the news – and this means beyond both insight and anger – that change of personality structure happens.

“Heaven” is what Carl Jung called the Objective Psyche. Earlier he called it the Collective Unconscious. I sometimes call it “the inner world.” For practical purposes, consider “heaven” the psychological realm. I relate to it as a place, whether it is or not. I imagine it as vast, complex, and mysterious. It includes the archetypes, the psychological interior of humans and other creatures.

“Kingdom” implies order overseen by a wise and benevolent leader. In the morass of instincts, thoughts, feelings, complexes, archetypes, desires, good and evil, a “kingdom of heaven” creates a sense of well-being. An inner environment that resolves conflicts between opposites by doing work on my own shadow gives me peace. It promotes goodwill. When I don’t project problems onto others, my relationships have much greater potential.

In the next post, I’ll talk about the next Beatitude: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”