Listening To The Rhino Book

Small, but important: Dallett has written us a sleeper [pun intended] in stating that the primal force which arises from the dream world, from the subconscious, and from the nether regions NEEDS to be reckoned with for health, balance, and meaningful existence rather than shunned and repressed. The Rhino represents the pre-historic, powerful, male/female, shadow energy that each one of us possesses. The difficulty lies in connecting with it, giving it a name, a shape, or a force in which it can communicate and actually give direction when we need it.

Dallett writes that much of our culture has repressed the Rhino's power in politically- correct behavior, manners, pacification, medication, and order. Such repressions submerge a power that can give insight, even healing, if allowed. She certainly does not advocate surrendering control to the inner Rhino, but she states that as a Beast, its violence must be reckoned with for overall health.

I particularly liked Dallett's calling out how philanthropists, especially religious ones, can, with a surfeit of virtue, actually overrule any good and bring about more ruin than intended (a message for all Liberals and Progressive to heed!). She identifies a three-part circular cycle of a) Victim, b) Rescuer, and c) Persecutor. Such cycles exist in the Old and New Testaments where God suffers silently for virtue and justice, then sends the savior, but then the children backslide and need the vengeance and persecution from the Rescuer. A similar cycle appears in the New Testament with Jesus--slain, ascended, and coming to judge the Quick and the Dead. Today, how many crimes are committed by extreme fundamentalist who once needed help, found solace in organized religion, sought to rescue others, but when those infidels showed their fallen state by ignoring the Call, sought to persecute them back into virtue (via a bomb, a gun, or a simple slap of domestic violence)?