As I said in my last blog, I had another story to tell and it goes like this...
Almost four years ago now I was at a little get-together of friends of friends and met this young man named "Joe". He was tall and slender with kind of longish brown hair. Can't remember if his eyes were blue or brown now, but they were definitely "wide open" and curious. We happened to get to talking and the next thing you know I was telling him about masculine and feminine archetypes, anima/animus projection, etc., etc. He was really listening and engaged, so before the evening was over, I went next door to where I was living at the time, and retrieved copies of a couple of books for him to take home with him: The Invisible Partners: How the Male and Female in each of Us Affects our Relationships, by John A Sanford and About Men and Women: How Your Masculine and Feminine Archetypes Shape Your Destiny by Tad and Noreen Guzie. (I did not know it at the time, but "home" was just a five minute walk into the other condo complex across the road!)
As it turned out, he read both books pretty quickly (each of them under 200 pages), and he was very excited to talk about what he had learned the next time we met.
Now...I have to pause here...because, if there is anything that piques My interest it is someone who gets a lot out of reading books, and, in this case, it was someone who was finding something very meaningful in books I also found very meaningful. On top of that, his name was "Joe" just like the first man I ever fell deeply "in love with", and he was kind of tall and lean like that same "Joe". And, okay, the age differences were reversed, but that is a little hard for me to avoid these days given that most men my age have already married or probably are not going to.
However, Joe was involved with a young woman closer to his own age, and so we were "destined" to be just "friends", and I really wanted to respect that...mentally. Emotionally-sexually...man oh man... I was fighting that ol' "urge to merge", and I KNEW IT. You see, this was all happening after I had come to the understanding about "falling in love" that I have discussed in my previous blog.
So, I fought, and I fought, to keep everything "platonic". The next thing you know, my body starts feeling kind of strange. There was this edginess that seemed a little like the tension I associate with PMS, but...it wasn't exactly the same. If anything, it was more intense and pervasive, whole bodily more so than just mental or emotional tension. I was just feeling agitated and I couldn't put my finger on any immediate outside stressors that might have been causing it.
I remember being aware of this as I was washing dishes one evening, wondering what was really going on, and then, all of a sudden, I get that "light coming on" feeling and realized: My body was going through withdrawal symptoms. Even with all of the "buttons" that were being "pushed" while I was interacting with young Joe, I was forcing myself, forcing my body, to not go into that "falling in love" chemical patterning, and It was NOT "happy" with me...and it was letting me know it.
But...once I put two and two together, that was pretty much it. The game was up. I just relaxed as much as I could and let the rest of my "symptoms" run their course.
I've never felt that kind of "compulsion" to "fall in love" in quite the same way since. But, like any former "drug addict", put me in the right situation, and I'll be thinking about it, just like an alcoholic will think about taking another drink when there's a bottle sitting right in front of them. But, I guess you could say I've managed to "stay sober" for these past four years, and I suspect the worst of this particular addiction is over for me.
And, I'm glad for that, because I do not believe...better yet, I know for certain that is NOT what Truly Loving Someone is all about. It is NOT about "getting high"! Sure, it feels good for a little while, but just like with any other drug, the effects eventually wear off, and, worse yet, you can dip even lower than "normal" once you've been up so "high".
Oh, but the Drama - we do so love the Drama of it all - Don't we?! : P
What I've come to appreciate is that what is Real in Love is also what feels pretty ordinary. Not a lot of "highs", but then, not a lot of "lows" either. Instead of a roller-coaster, it's more like taking a casual drive through the countryside - enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, the grass, the wind in the trees, the sounds of birds singing, a sunset, a moon rise, and stars, and your best friend's hand in yours.
That's it. Whether you're washing dishes or taking out the trash or cooking a meal or laughing at a movie; folding the towels, replacing the toilette paper, making a bed, etc., etc. If you are happily sharing those responsibilities with another person, that is what Human to Human love is really all about. All of those little, ordinary, day to day things.
So, don't let the soap-operas, and the romance novels, and the "chick flicks" fool you, or distract you too far away from what might be right in front of you. Othewise, you will miss out on one of the greatest opportunities we all have to share here, one to one, person to person, day in and day out, as ordinary, and yet still really amazing, human beings.
Offering unconventional perspectives on love and relating as well as deeper considerations of where some of our most strongly held beliefs about God and spirituality may originate; i.e from our globally shared human/biological developmental processes.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love - Part II
The following blog is actually going to tie-in to two of my previous blogs: 1) The Biology of "Heaven" and 2) Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love - Part I. So if you have not read both of those yet you might want to.
I will sub-title this blog: The Biology of "Falling In Love"
For a quick review: As the movie "What the 'Bleep' Do We Know?" points out, the hypothalamus is our body's own "chemical/drug factory", and each emotion is communicated through the body via a unique chemical or chain of peptides. Joy, sorrow, embarrassment, anger, ecstasy, anxiety, fear, frustration, awe, fascination, curiosity, sexual arousal, love, etc. etc., etc. - every emotional/psychological state you can imagine has its own unique chemical formula. So what your body feels - what you experience as your emotional state is actually the effects of these chemicals traveling to all of your cells and linking up with appropriately matched receptors on those cells, causing additional biochemical reactions within those cells, etc., etc.
As it turns out, it is just as easy to become "addicted" to the chemical/drug patterning of your own body as it is to get addicted to drugs that you take in from outside of your body. And in order to satisfy the addictive demands of that patterning, each of us will seek out or be drawn to conditions that cause us to experience the same emotions, over and over again, positive or negative, for better or worse.
Upon further consideration, I realized that (apparently) in the last several years I have been consciously conditioning my body, my hypothalamus in particular, to produce "happy" drugs. And, in effect, I've become "addicted" to Being Happy, naturally. : )) (And that's why I add emoto-smileys to my writing all the time. : )) (See, I just did it again! : )) (Okay, I'm going to stop now . . . .) Granted, this does not mean I ALWAYS FEEL HAPPY, but it is definitely my Preferred State and a) I really do notice the difference when I am feeling "happy" and when I am feeling something else, and b) I generally know how to get myself back to Feeling Happy when I make a conscious choice to do so.
As I began to more closely observe my emotional states, and especially my desires to experience certain emotional states, I began to wonder: Where are these desires coming from? What are the underlying chemical patterns that my body is still "addicted" to and under what conditions did they originate?
My first real insight in answering these questions came as a consequence of a relationship I entered into with someone I met online. After some time e-mailing back and forth we eventually met, and spent some time together, and not too long after that became intimate, etc., etc. After a fairly short time being in the relationship, I found myself longing to "fall in love", to "let myself" take that "plunge".
Now, it may seem odd to some of you reading this that I was even thinking about "falling in love" as a matter of conscious choice. You may ask, "Isn't 'falling in love' something that just 'happens' to people . . . unconsciously?"
Most of the time, I would say, "Yes". However, many, many years ago I read, The Road Less Traveled , by M. Scott Peck, so I was already aware of "nature's little trick" as he described it; i.e. the tendency for our "ego-boundaries" to "collapse" spontaneously under certain circumstances, thus giving us the "feeling of oneness with each other" which might motivate us to mate and produce offspring. As a consequence, I had started observing this mechanism within myself and had learned a certain degree of control over my "urge to merge". Thus it had become more of a matter of choice for me. However, with my new understanding of biochemical patterning, and the "addictive" nature of that patterning, I began to realize that wasn't the real issue; i.e. "falling in love" consciously vs. "falling in love" unconsciously. No, the real issue was "Why?" Why did I want to "fall in love"? Why did I want to feel "merged" with my partner? Maybe even more importantly: Did I need to feel "merged" with my partner to JUSTIFY loving him? In other words, did I have to feel "in love" in order "to love"?
Once I got to that question, I already new the answer, which was, "No, absolutely not." I knew I knew how to love without having to "fall in love". Nevertheless, those other "Why" questions remained unanswered. Why was there this deep longing to feel "merged" with the other person and why was it so closely associated in my mind (and body) with "loving" that other person? Where had I felt that kind of "oneness" before and why was it so compelling? Then the puzzle pieces fell into place...
In the process of writing a research paper on "Childhood Depression", I came across a study of specific family relationship patterns that predisposed children to depression later in life. The one pattern that caught my attention in particular was called "enmeshment"; i.e. when the child is "enmeshed" with the primary caregiver, usually the mother. In this case there are no significant ego-boundaries between the mother and the child; in effect, the child becomes a mere extension of the mother's or primary caregiver's ego. As I have alluded to in previous posts here regarding my life story with my mother, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that my mother and I were "enmeshed" - totally - pretty much from the time I was born.
And that was my primary love relationship for the early part of my life right up through adolescence. It was the context in which I experienced what my mother called love, over and over again. But, as I think I have tried to explain before, she was not loving me for "me"; she was loving a totally dependent and willing object onto which she projected her own self-image; her own ego; in effect she was only 'loving' herself, which is one of the recognized traits of a narcissistic personality, and that is often associated with schizophrenia.
I came to the conclusion that my original psychological patterning with my mother was also reflected on a biochemical level, and that pattern was reinforced over roughly 20 years; plenty of time for it to become "addictive", but more so for it to feel "comfortable" and "normal" for me, even desirable.
I suspect the tradeoff for my true emotional and psychological autonomy was a sense of security, although all of that was constantly being contradicted by my mother's paranoid fears. The more I think of what a complicated emotional, psychological mess I was really in, the more I understand why it has been so difficult for me to sort it all out and be able to experience truly functional and loving relationships as an adult . . . but I haven't given up yet! : ))
I have learned from Avatar Adi Da that one way of expressing love is simply to Be Happy around others, whether they are strangers or intimates; to consciously and literally embody and/or manifest Divine Consciousness as Love-Bliss-Happiness in all relationships and under all conditions. And, although I'm not yet perfect at it, that's what I intentionally do on a regular basis now. By recognizing yet another potentially limiting emotional/ psychological/ biochemical pattern in my body-mind, I have also been given the opportunity to transcend it.
I know for a fact that my relationship with my mother was a fairly extreme version of "enmeshment" and resulted primarily from her having very serious mental problems. However, what I have come to understand about schizophrenia and other extreme mental disorders is that they are part of a continuum, a continuum which includes greater and lesser degrees of similar patterning.
For instance, it is a very natural and normal phenomenon for a mother to form a very strong bond with her newborn child. In addition, it is well known in psychology that it takes several months of development outside of the womb before the infant starts to experience itself as being fundamentally separate from the mother. The length of time may vary significantly with respect to when the mother is prepared to "let go of" that very close relationship with her child and give the child the emotional and psychological space they need to develop as individuals.
In other words, even without abnormal enmeshment, and in the absence of some very unusual circumstance where that bond may not develop normally between the mother or primary caregiver and the newborn, just about every human being will experience a period of time during their infancy when they feel "one" with the "other".
Furthermore, given the food taking and nurturance that is experienced in that context, the "feeling of oneness" carries with it many positive associations. Consequently, it is perfectly natural for each of us to want to repeat that experience, and that desire is reinforced by our biochemical patterning. I dare say this is one of the great foundations of the "myth of romantic love". Even Plato's description of the two halves, male and female, finally finding their "wholeness" in intimate union may stem from Plato's latent memories of "oneness" with his own mother while he, himself, was an infant.
People throughout history and up to the current day identify with this idea because, except for unusual cases where the child does not receive early nurturance, we have all had a similar experience as infants and we all carry within us that latent memory and desire as a biochemical imprint. Furthermore, research into the role of Oxytocin as a primary "bonding chemical" would suggest that there are certainly evolutionary benefits to having a chemical reinforcer for the "bonds" we make with others and the feeling we experience when we have oxytocin flowing through our systems.
Nevertheless, there is So Much More to making a long-term intimate relationship work than merely experiencing a rush of chemicals every now and then. Furthermore, getting to experience that every once in a while does not, and cannot, counteract all the negative thinking/chemical patterning a person might otherwise be perpetuating.
It kind of comes back to how responsible you are for Your Own Happiness - FIRST; as in...How You Consciously Choose to Feel in contrast to how you might wait for circumstances outside yourself, or some "other person" outside yourself to stimulate a particular feeling in you.
If your naturally produced "Happy Drug" is the "cake", then sure, "oxytocin" might be the "icing on the cake." Nevertheless, it's a good idea if you have the "cake" taken care of first, because trying to get by on just "icing" will most likely make you sick! : p
So: Here's to "Love" for Real! Not the fleeting, accidental or circumstantial, unconscious "falling in love" kind.
And if you come to the conclusion that you are "addicted to falling in love" then, stay-tuned, as I have yet another story to share that might just help you with that.
Until Next Time...
Peace! : ))
I will sub-title this blog: The Biology of "Falling In Love"
For a quick review: As the movie "What the 'Bleep' Do We Know?" points out, the hypothalamus is our body's own "chemical/drug factory", and each emotion is communicated through the body via a unique chemical or chain of peptides. Joy, sorrow, embarrassment, anger, ecstasy, anxiety, fear, frustration, awe, fascination, curiosity, sexual arousal, love, etc. etc., etc. - every emotional/psychological state you can imagine has its own unique chemical formula. So what your body feels - what you experience as your emotional state is actually the effects of these chemicals traveling to all of your cells and linking up with appropriately matched receptors on those cells, causing additional biochemical reactions within those cells, etc., etc.
As it turns out, it is just as easy to become "addicted" to the chemical/drug patterning of your own body as it is to get addicted to drugs that you take in from outside of your body. And in order to satisfy the addictive demands of that patterning, each of us will seek out or be drawn to conditions that cause us to experience the same emotions, over and over again, positive or negative, for better or worse.
Upon further consideration, I realized that (apparently) in the last several years I have been consciously conditioning my body, my hypothalamus in particular, to produce "happy" drugs. And, in effect, I've become "addicted" to Being Happy, naturally. : )) (And that's why I add emoto-smileys to my writing all the time. : )) (See, I just did it again! : )) (Okay, I'm going to stop now . . . .) Granted, this does not mean I ALWAYS FEEL HAPPY, but it is definitely my Preferred State and a) I really do notice the difference when I am feeling "happy" and when I am feeling something else, and b) I generally know how to get myself back to Feeling Happy when I make a conscious choice to do so.
As I began to more closely observe my emotional states, and especially my desires to experience certain emotional states, I began to wonder: Where are these desires coming from? What are the underlying chemical patterns that my body is still "addicted" to and under what conditions did they originate?
My first real insight in answering these questions came as a consequence of a relationship I entered into with someone I met online. After some time e-mailing back and forth we eventually met, and spent some time together, and not too long after that became intimate, etc., etc. After a fairly short time being in the relationship, I found myself longing to "fall in love", to "let myself" take that "plunge".
Now, it may seem odd to some of you reading this that I was even thinking about "falling in love" as a matter of conscious choice. You may ask, "Isn't 'falling in love' something that just 'happens' to people . . . unconsciously?"
Most of the time, I would say, "Yes". However, many, many years ago I read, The Road Less Traveled , by M. Scott Peck, so I was already aware of "nature's little trick" as he described it; i.e. the tendency for our "ego-boundaries" to "collapse" spontaneously under certain circumstances, thus giving us the "feeling of oneness with each other" which might motivate us to mate and produce offspring. As a consequence, I had started observing this mechanism within myself and had learned a certain degree of control over my "urge to merge". Thus it had become more of a matter of choice for me. However, with my new understanding of biochemical patterning, and the "addictive" nature of that patterning, I began to realize that wasn't the real issue; i.e. "falling in love" consciously vs. "falling in love" unconsciously. No, the real issue was "Why?" Why did I want to "fall in love"? Why did I want to feel "merged" with my partner? Maybe even more importantly: Did I need to feel "merged" with my partner to JUSTIFY loving him? In other words, did I have to feel "in love" in order "to love"?
Once I got to that question, I already new the answer, which was, "No, absolutely not." I knew I knew how to love without having to "fall in love". Nevertheless, those other "Why" questions remained unanswered. Why was there this deep longing to feel "merged" with the other person and why was it so closely associated in my mind (and body) with "loving" that other person? Where had I felt that kind of "oneness" before and why was it so compelling? Then the puzzle pieces fell into place...
In the process of writing a research paper on "Childhood Depression", I came across a study of specific family relationship patterns that predisposed children to depression later in life. The one pattern that caught my attention in particular was called "enmeshment"; i.e. when the child is "enmeshed" with the primary caregiver, usually the mother. In this case there are no significant ego-boundaries between the mother and the child; in effect, the child becomes a mere extension of the mother's or primary caregiver's ego. As I have alluded to in previous posts here regarding my life story with my mother, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that my mother and I were "enmeshed" - totally - pretty much from the time I was born.
And that was my primary love relationship for the early part of my life right up through adolescence. It was the context in which I experienced what my mother called love, over and over again. But, as I think I have tried to explain before, she was not loving me for "me"; she was loving a totally dependent and willing object onto which she projected her own self-image; her own ego; in effect she was only 'loving' herself, which is one of the recognized traits of a narcissistic personality, and that is often associated with schizophrenia.
I came to the conclusion that my original psychological patterning with my mother was also reflected on a biochemical level, and that pattern was reinforced over roughly 20 years; plenty of time for it to become "addictive", but more so for it to feel "comfortable" and "normal" for me, even desirable.
I suspect the tradeoff for my true emotional and psychological autonomy was a sense of security, although all of that was constantly being contradicted by my mother's paranoid fears. The more I think of what a complicated emotional, psychological mess I was really in, the more I understand why it has been so difficult for me to sort it all out and be able to experience truly functional and loving relationships as an adult . . . but I haven't given up yet! : ))
I have learned from Avatar Adi Da that one way of expressing love is simply to Be Happy around others, whether they are strangers or intimates; to consciously and literally embody and/or manifest Divine Consciousness as Love-Bliss-Happiness in all relationships and under all conditions. And, although I'm not yet perfect at it, that's what I intentionally do on a regular basis now. By recognizing yet another potentially limiting emotional/ psychological/ biochemical pattern in my body-mind, I have also been given the opportunity to transcend it.
I know for a fact that my relationship with my mother was a fairly extreme version of "enmeshment" and resulted primarily from her having very serious mental problems. However, what I have come to understand about schizophrenia and other extreme mental disorders is that they are part of a continuum, a continuum which includes greater and lesser degrees of similar patterning.
For instance, it is a very natural and normal phenomenon for a mother to form a very strong bond with her newborn child. In addition, it is well known in psychology that it takes several months of development outside of the womb before the infant starts to experience itself as being fundamentally separate from the mother. The length of time may vary significantly with respect to when the mother is prepared to "let go of" that very close relationship with her child and give the child the emotional and psychological space they need to develop as individuals.
In other words, even without abnormal enmeshment, and in the absence of some very unusual circumstance where that bond may not develop normally between the mother or primary caregiver and the newborn, just about every human being will experience a period of time during their infancy when they feel "one" with the "other".
Furthermore, given the food taking and nurturance that is experienced in that context, the "feeling of oneness" carries with it many positive associations. Consequently, it is perfectly natural for each of us to want to repeat that experience, and that desire is reinforced by our biochemical patterning. I dare say this is one of the great foundations of the "myth of romantic love". Even Plato's description of the two halves, male and female, finally finding their "wholeness" in intimate union may stem from Plato's latent memories of "oneness" with his own mother while he, himself, was an infant.
People throughout history and up to the current day identify with this idea because, except for unusual cases where the child does not receive early nurturance, we have all had a similar experience as infants and we all carry within us that latent memory and desire as a biochemical imprint. Furthermore, research into the role of Oxytocin as a primary "bonding chemical" would suggest that there are certainly evolutionary benefits to having a chemical reinforcer for the "bonds" we make with others and the feeling we experience when we have oxytocin flowing through our systems.
Nevertheless, there is So Much More to making a long-term intimate relationship work than merely experiencing a rush of chemicals every now and then. Furthermore, getting to experience that every once in a while does not, and cannot, counteract all the negative thinking/chemical patterning a person might otherwise be perpetuating.
It kind of comes back to how responsible you are for Your Own Happiness - FIRST; as in...How You Consciously Choose to Feel in contrast to how you might wait for circumstances outside yourself, or some "other person" outside yourself to stimulate a particular feeling in you.
If your naturally produced "Happy Drug" is the "cake", then sure, "oxytocin" might be the "icing on the cake." Nevertheless, it's a good idea if you have the "cake" taken care of first, because trying to get by on just "icing" will most likely make you sick! : p
So: Here's to "Love" for Real! Not the fleeting, accidental or circumstantial, unconscious "falling in love" kind.
And if you come to the conclusion that you are "addicted to falling in love" then, stay-tuned, as I have yet another story to share that might just help you with that.
Until Next Time...
Peace! : ))
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
On "Loving Yourself"...
This subject came up on Facebook today and I really wanted to give a thorough response as follows. I have decided to quote it here rather than making a Really Long (un-formatted) "comment" on FB.
From: "The New Guide to Rational Living" by Albert Ellis, Ph. D., and Robert A. Harper, Ph. D., Chapter 10 - Tackling Dire Needs for Approval. (There are newer versions but this happens to be from the 1979 Edition, Pp. 94-101 - I wish I could quote the whole chapter, but I'm going to start about half way in.)
...Your accepting yourself and devoting yourself to outside activities may constitute reciprocal goals. For if you really follow your own basic bents and do not overly concern yourself about what others think of you, you will have so little time to spend in self-centered worrying that you will feel virtually forced to find absorbing interests on the outside. By the same token, if you throw your energies into outside activities and actively devote yourself to other people and things, you normally will tend to feel less concerned about what others think of you and, hence, to respect your own values.
Put somewhat differently, if you devote yourself enthusiastically to long-range hedonism--to activities that you consider desirable and enjoyable from a long-term perspective--you will clearly accept yourself because you do what you really want to do and do not falsely follow what someone else thinks you should do. Our clients and associates frequently ask: "I can see that accepting myself rather than desperately needing the love of others constitutes a more realistic orientation. But how will this help me love other people? As I less and less concern myself about whether others approve of me, won't I find it more and more troublesome and unnecessary to give a damn about them--to relate lovingly to them?"
No, for several reasons. First of all, if you direly need love, you will feel so preoccupied with obtaining it that you have as much chance to honor your own choices or to love others as a dope addict has to relate freely and self-confidently to the person who supplies him with drugs.
Secondly, if you surrender your dire need for love, you will still retain, in most instances, a strong desire for acceptance by others. People often wrongly assume that your not direly needing love means the same thing as your feeling love has no value. Not at all. You can easily enjoy well-written stories and plays even though you have no need to do so. Why can you not, then, enjoy and seek intimate relationships without believing that your life depends on them?
Thirdly, when you free yourself from your demands that you receive love, you can better love. You can see more clearly the lovable traits of others; stop hating them when they do not immediately respond to you; learn what you really enjoy in relationship; risk committing yourself to loving, even when you know that a given affair may not work out well; and feel unanxiously free to experience and experiment with loving because you realize that although you may lose your beloved you can never lose yourself.
Another frequently asked question: "Granted that loving has more rewards than desperately needing love, should I therefore give up all my desires for approval and recognition?"
Answer: Certainly not. Complete self-sacrifice or the total surrender of your own desires for approval can prove just as foolish as your obsession with winning esteem of others. Again for several reasons:
1. You act quite normally when you want to express your own unique conceptions of the world to others and want them to take pleasure in some of your expressions. You would hardly seem human if you did not derive some satisfaction from relating to others.
2. Wanting acceptance from others constitutes one of the main essences of desire; and men and women entirely free from desire again do not appear entirely human. According to the Hindu classic the Bhagavad-Gita, the strongest individual "has indifference to honor and insult, heat and cold, pleasure and pain. He feels free from attachment." A few select individuals find this a worthy ideal. But we doubt whether many humans could ever attain it.To lean so far over backwards to get rid of psychological pain that you also eradicate all pleasure does not seem too rational to us. By all means try, if you will, to eliminate your extreme, unrealistic, self-defeating desire; but not desire itself!
3. From a practical view, if you ardently want various things--such as material goods or more leisure--you had better win the approval or respect of certain people such as your parents, teachers, or bosses. Though you may wisely eliminate your inordinate demands that others love you, you'd better sanely retain, in any social group, some wishes for acceptance by other group members.
Granted that having an inordinate need for others' love will serve to defeat your own ends, and that having some wish for acceptance seems eminently sane, the question arises: How can you somehow manage to attain a middle-of-the-road policy in this respect?
First and foremost, by admitting that you do have a dire need for love in many instances; by making a continual effort to observe this need in operation; and by then continually challenging, questioning, and disputing it....
....If you do have a dire need for love; if you accept the fact that you have it; and if you keep challenging, questioning, and disputing it, it will ultimately, and often quite quickly, start decreasing. For remember: It remains your need; and you keep sustaining it.
Other methods you can use to combat and minimize your inordinate love needs include the following:
1. Ask yourself what you really want to do, rather than what others would like you to do. And keep asking yourself, from time to time: "Do I keep doing this or refusing to do that because I really want it that way? Or do I, once again, unthinkingly keep trying to please others?"
2. In going after what you really want, take risks, commit yourself, don't desperately avoid making mistakes. Don't act needlessly foolhardy; but convince yourself that if you fail to get something you want and people laugh at or criticize you for your failure, they may have a problem. As long as you learn by your errors, does it make that much difference what they think?
3. Focus on loving rather than on getting love. Try to realize that vital living hardly consists of passive receiving but of doing, acting, reaching out. And just as you can force yourself to play the piano, do yoga exercises, or go to work every day, you can also often forcibly commit yourself to loving other humans. In so doing, your dire needs for love will probably decrease.
[What follows is probably the most significant part to me...LB]
4. Above all, don't confuse getting love with having personal worth. If you must see yourself as having any intrinsic worth or value as a human (which we would not advise, since we think that any kind of self-rating, positive or negative, tends to bring pernicious results), you'd better claim to have it by virtue of your mere existence, your aliveness, your essence -- and not because of anything you do to "earn" it. No matter how much others approve you, or how much they may value you for their own benefit, they thereby can only give you, as Robert S. Hartman explains, extrinsic value, or worth to them. They cannot, by loving you, give you intrinsic value--or the worth you have to yourself. If intrinsic value exists at all (which we seriously doubt, since it seems a well-nigh undefinable Kantian thing-in-itself), you get it because you choose, you decide to have it. It exists purely because of your own definition. You emerge as "good" or "deserving" because you think you do and not because anyone in any way gives you this kind of intrinsic value.
If you can really believe this highly important truth--that you need not rate yourself, your essence at all (and that you can choose to call yourself intrinsically worthwhile just because you decide to do so)--you will tend to lose your desperate need for others' approval. For you need--or think you need--their acceptance not because of the practical advantages it may bring, but because you foolishly define your worth as a human in terms of receiving or not receiving it. Once you stop this kind of silly defining, the dire need for their approval generally evaporates (though the strong desire to have them like you may well remain). Similarly, if you rid yourself of your dire need for approval, you will find it relatively easy to stop rating yourself as a person, even though you continue to rate many of your traits, and to accept yourself merely because you remain alive and kicking--and for that reason alone "deserve" to continue to exist and to have a maximally enjoyable life.
To underscore this last point about human worth, consider the case of Herbert Flisch, a forty-year-old successful businessman who recognized, after eight sessions of rational-emotive therapy, that almost every single one of his actions for the past four decades had stemmed from his dire need to win the approval of his parents, wife, children, friends, and even employees. At his ninth session he asked:
"Do I understand you correctly to mean that if I stop trying to win everyone's approval and do what I think I would like to do (and what would not at the same time defeat my own ultimate ends) that I'll then love myself because I'll consider myself more worthwhile?"
"No," the therapist replied. "Those of us who have worked to develop this system of rational-emotive psychotherapy have come to realize that worthwhileness proves just as illegitimate a concept as its counterpart, worthlessness; and that, in fact, just as soon as you tend to think in terms of personal 'worth' you must almost automatically tend to think, at the same time, in terms of personal 'worthlessness.'
"Thus, if you consider yourself 'worthwhile' today because you function effectively, make wise decisions, or think bright thoughts, you'll tend to consider yourself 'worthless' tomorrow because you then function less effectively, make some unwise decisions, or think dull thoughts."
"But wouldn't I have no worth if I never functioned effectively?" asked the client.
"No, definitely not. Even if you had mental deficiency and never functioned well, you would then have no extrinsic 'worth'--meaning that others might not find you a suitable companion or employee--but you could have, intrinsically, as much 'worth' to yourself as any other more efficient individual. You would have 'worth', in other words, if you believed you had. But if you believed, as you obviously do, that inefficiency makes you 'worthless,' you would then feel exactly that."
"So I remain worthwhile if I think I do--no matter how inefficiently I may actually perform in life?"
"Yes--except that, as I said before, the very concept of 'worth' has dangers, since it implies the concept of 'worthlessness.' Just like the concept of heaven implies the concept of hell. In fact, the way we usually employ the terms, to have 'worth' really means pretty much the same thing as to behave angelically or heaven-directed; and to have 'worthlessness' means to behave demonically or hell-directed. Doesn't it?"
"In a way, I guess it does. I can see what you mean," said the client.
"Moreover, if you have concepts of 'worth' and 'worthlessness,' even if you avoid extreme self-designations in using these concepts, you will tend to remain preoccupied with varying degrees of 'worth.' Thus, you will tend to say to yourself: 'Today I have great worth; yesterday I had less; I hope and pray tomorrow I can have more'
"This kind of concept of 'worth' (and, hence, of the lack of worth or less worth) carries with it irrational and undesirable aspects of guilt, self-disrespect, self-blame, shame, anger, hostility, and other self-sabotaging emotions. The counter-concept, that you have neither 'worth' because of your effectiveness nor 'worthlessness' because of your ineffectiveness, but that you merely exist, this concept, difficult as it seems for almost all people to see and accept, safely eliminates the notion of intrinsic 'worthlessness' and self-damnation."
"I'll have to give this some more thought," said the client. "But, it does seem to have something to it. However, how does it tie in with self-acceptance?"
"It has a most important tie-in with self-acceptance. For self-acceptance means fully accepting yourself, your existence, and your right to live and to devise as happy a life as you can for yourself--no matter what traits you have or performances you do. It does not mean self-esteem, self-confidence, self-respect, or self-regard. For all these terms imply that you can accept yourself because you do something well or because other people like you. Self-acceptance, however, merely means that you accept yourself because you remain alive and have decided to accept yourself. Only a relatively limited number of talented, intelligent, competent, or well-loved people can gain self-esteem or self-confidence. But anyone, merely because he chooses to have it, can gain self-acceptance."
"Does self-acceptance mean that I consider myself worthy or deserving of living and enjoying no matter what I do?"
"Yes, though we don't like the words worthy or deserving, since they imply a rating--that you have to do (or refrain from doing) something in order to feel 'worthy' or 'deserving.' When you have what we call self-acceptance, you make minimal assumptions about your (and other people's) intrinsic worth or value."
"What minimal assumptions?"
"Several: One, you exist. Two, you can probably, by continuing to exist, achieve more pleasure than pain, thus making it desirable for you to keep living. Three, to a considerable degree, you can help minimize your pain and maximize your pleasure. Four, you decide--and this constitutes the essence of self-acceptance--that you will try to live and make your existence as pleasurable and as unpainful as you can make it. Or, putting it another way, you choose as the main purpose of your existence short-range (here and now) and long-range (future) enjoyment. Not achieving for the sake of achieving. Not receiving adoration from others. Not proving your greatness as a person. Not getting into heaven. Just plain damned enjoyment!"
"So instead of my continuing to ask myself, 'What worth have I?' 'How do I keep proving myself?' 'How can I outstandingly impress others?' or 'What do I have to do to ennoble myself?' I'd better, instead, ask, 'How the devil can I avoid needless pain and find out what I truly enjoy in life and do it?' Right?''
"Exactly right! You make the purpose of your existence having a present and future ball--in whatever idiosyncratic and harmless ways you experimentally discover."
"You mean that I may then enjoy myself and accept myself and my existence as more enjoyable. But that I still will not really exist as more 'worthwhile'--only more alive, happier?"
"Right. And you will not, we hope, blame yourself or punish yourself whenever--as an imperfect human--you do something wrong or unwise. You will accept yourself with your foolish thoughts, feelings, perceptions, or actions, and use the experience that you get as a result of these unwise acts to help you enjoy yourself and behave more rationally in the future. What greater acceptance of self (and through that, potential acceptance of and tolerance for other humans) could you then have?"
From: "The New Guide to Rational Living" by Albert Ellis, Ph. D., and Robert A. Harper, Ph. D., Chapter 10 - Tackling Dire Needs for Approval. (There are newer versions but this happens to be from the 1979 Edition, Pp. 94-101 - I wish I could quote the whole chapter, but I'm going to start about half way in.)
...Your accepting yourself and devoting yourself to outside activities may constitute reciprocal goals. For if you really follow your own basic bents and do not overly concern yourself about what others think of you, you will have so little time to spend in self-centered worrying that you will feel virtually forced to find absorbing interests on the outside. By the same token, if you throw your energies into outside activities and actively devote yourself to other people and things, you normally will tend to feel less concerned about what others think of you and, hence, to respect your own values.
Put somewhat differently, if you devote yourself enthusiastically to long-range hedonism--to activities that you consider desirable and enjoyable from a long-term perspective--you will clearly accept yourself because you do what you really want to do and do not falsely follow what someone else thinks you should do. Our clients and associates frequently ask: "I can see that accepting myself rather than desperately needing the love of others constitutes a more realistic orientation. But how will this help me love other people? As I less and less concern myself about whether others approve of me, won't I find it more and more troublesome and unnecessary to give a damn about them--to relate lovingly to them?"
No, for several reasons. First of all, if you direly need love, you will feel so preoccupied with obtaining it that you have as much chance to honor your own choices or to love others as a dope addict has to relate freely and self-confidently to the person who supplies him with drugs.
Secondly, if you surrender your dire need for love, you will still retain, in most instances, a strong desire for acceptance by others. People often wrongly assume that your not direly needing love means the same thing as your feeling love has no value. Not at all. You can easily enjoy well-written stories and plays even though you have no need to do so. Why can you not, then, enjoy and seek intimate relationships without believing that your life depends on them?
Thirdly, when you free yourself from your demands that you receive love, you can better love. You can see more clearly the lovable traits of others; stop hating them when they do not immediately respond to you; learn what you really enjoy in relationship; risk committing yourself to loving, even when you know that a given affair may not work out well; and feel unanxiously free to experience and experiment with loving because you realize that although you may lose your beloved you can never lose yourself.
Another frequently asked question: "Granted that loving has more rewards than desperately needing love, should I therefore give up all my desires for approval and recognition?"
Answer: Certainly not. Complete self-sacrifice or the total surrender of your own desires for approval can prove just as foolish as your obsession with winning esteem of others. Again for several reasons:
1. You act quite normally when you want to express your own unique conceptions of the world to others and want them to take pleasure in some of your expressions. You would hardly seem human if you did not derive some satisfaction from relating to others.
2. Wanting acceptance from others constitutes one of the main essences of desire; and men and women entirely free from desire again do not appear entirely human. According to the Hindu classic the Bhagavad-Gita, the strongest individual "has indifference to honor and insult, heat and cold, pleasure and pain. He feels free from attachment." A few select individuals find this a worthy ideal. But we doubt whether many humans could ever attain it.To lean so far over backwards to get rid of psychological pain that you also eradicate all pleasure does not seem too rational to us. By all means try, if you will, to eliminate your extreme, unrealistic, self-defeating desire; but not desire itself!
3. From a practical view, if you ardently want various things--such as material goods or more leisure--you had better win the approval or respect of certain people such as your parents, teachers, or bosses. Though you may wisely eliminate your inordinate demands that others love you, you'd better sanely retain, in any social group, some wishes for acceptance by other group members.
Granted that having an inordinate need for others' love will serve to defeat your own ends, and that having some wish for acceptance seems eminently sane, the question arises: How can you somehow manage to attain a middle-of-the-road policy in this respect?
First and foremost, by admitting that you do have a dire need for love in many instances; by making a continual effort to observe this need in operation; and by then continually challenging, questioning, and disputing it....
....If you do have a dire need for love; if you accept the fact that you have it; and if you keep challenging, questioning, and disputing it, it will ultimately, and often quite quickly, start decreasing. For remember: It remains your need; and you keep sustaining it.
Other methods you can use to combat and minimize your inordinate love needs include the following:
1. Ask yourself what you really want to do, rather than what others would like you to do. And keep asking yourself, from time to time: "Do I keep doing this or refusing to do that because I really want it that way? Or do I, once again, unthinkingly keep trying to please others?"
2. In going after what you really want, take risks, commit yourself, don't desperately avoid making mistakes. Don't act needlessly foolhardy; but convince yourself that if you fail to get something you want and people laugh at or criticize you for your failure, they may have a problem. As long as you learn by your errors, does it make that much difference what they think?
3. Focus on loving rather than on getting love. Try to realize that vital living hardly consists of passive receiving but of doing, acting, reaching out. And just as you can force yourself to play the piano, do yoga exercises, or go to work every day, you can also often forcibly commit yourself to loving other humans. In so doing, your dire needs for love will probably decrease.
[What follows is probably the most significant part to me...LB]
4. Above all, don't confuse getting love with having personal worth. If you must see yourself as having any intrinsic worth or value as a human (which we would not advise, since we think that any kind of self-rating, positive or negative, tends to bring pernicious results), you'd better claim to have it by virtue of your mere existence, your aliveness, your essence -- and not because of anything you do to "earn" it. No matter how much others approve you, or how much they may value you for their own benefit, they thereby can only give you, as Robert S. Hartman explains, extrinsic value, or worth to them. They cannot, by loving you, give you intrinsic value--or the worth you have to yourself. If intrinsic value exists at all (which we seriously doubt, since it seems a well-nigh undefinable Kantian thing-in-itself), you get it because you choose, you decide to have it. It exists purely because of your own definition. You emerge as "good" or "deserving" because you think you do and not because anyone in any way gives you this kind of intrinsic value.
If you can really believe this highly important truth--that you need not rate yourself, your essence at all (and that you can choose to call yourself intrinsically worthwhile just because you decide to do so)--you will tend to lose your desperate need for others' approval. For you need--or think you need--their acceptance not because of the practical advantages it may bring, but because you foolishly define your worth as a human in terms of receiving or not receiving it. Once you stop this kind of silly defining, the dire need for their approval generally evaporates (though the strong desire to have them like you may well remain). Similarly, if you rid yourself of your dire need for approval, you will find it relatively easy to stop rating yourself as a person, even though you continue to rate many of your traits, and to accept yourself merely because you remain alive and kicking--and for that reason alone "deserve" to continue to exist and to have a maximally enjoyable life.
To underscore this last point about human worth, consider the case of Herbert Flisch, a forty-year-old successful businessman who recognized, after eight sessions of rational-emotive therapy, that almost every single one of his actions for the past four decades had stemmed from his dire need to win the approval of his parents, wife, children, friends, and even employees. At his ninth session he asked:
"Do I understand you correctly to mean that if I stop trying to win everyone's approval and do what I think I would like to do (and what would not at the same time defeat my own ultimate ends) that I'll then love myself because I'll consider myself more worthwhile?"
"No," the therapist replied. "Those of us who have worked to develop this system of rational-emotive psychotherapy have come to realize that worthwhileness proves just as illegitimate a concept as its counterpart, worthlessness; and that, in fact, just as soon as you tend to think in terms of personal 'worth' you must almost automatically tend to think, at the same time, in terms of personal 'worthlessness.'
"Thus, if you consider yourself 'worthwhile' today because you function effectively, make wise decisions, or think bright thoughts, you'll tend to consider yourself 'worthless' tomorrow because you then function less effectively, make some unwise decisions, or think dull thoughts."
"But wouldn't I have no worth if I never functioned effectively?" asked the client.
"No, definitely not. Even if you had mental deficiency and never functioned well, you would then have no extrinsic 'worth'--meaning that others might not find you a suitable companion or employee--but you could have, intrinsically, as much 'worth' to yourself as any other more efficient individual. You would have 'worth', in other words, if you believed you had. But if you believed, as you obviously do, that inefficiency makes you 'worthless,' you would then feel exactly that."
"So I remain worthwhile if I think I do--no matter how inefficiently I may actually perform in life?"
"Yes--except that, as I said before, the very concept of 'worth' has dangers, since it implies the concept of 'worthlessness.' Just like the concept of heaven implies the concept of hell. In fact, the way we usually employ the terms, to have 'worth' really means pretty much the same thing as to behave angelically or heaven-directed; and to have 'worthlessness' means to behave demonically or hell-directed. Doesn't it?"
"In a way, I guess it does. I can see what you mean," said the client.
"Moreover, if you have concepts of 'worth' and 'worthlessness,' even if you avoid extreme self-designations in using these concepts, you will tend to remain preoccupied with varying degrees of 'worth.' Thus, you will tend to say to yourself: 'Today I have great worth; yesterday I had less; I hope and pray tomorrow I can have more'
"This kind of concept of 'worth' (and, hence, of the lack of worth or less worth) carries with it irrational and undesirable aspects of guilt, self-disrespect, self-blame, shame, anger, hostility, and other self-sabotaging emotions. The counter-concept, that you have neither 'worth' because of your effectiveness nor 'worthlessness' because of your ineffectiveness, but that you merely exist, this concept, difficult as it seems for almost all people to see and accept, safely eliminates the notion of intrinsic 'worthlessness' and self-damnation."
"I'll have to give this some more thought," said the client. "But, it does seem to have something to it. However, how does it tie in with self-acceptance?"
"It has a most important tie-in with self-acceptance. For self-acceptance means fully accepting yourself, your existence, and your right to live and to devise as happy a life as you can for yourself--no matter what traits you have or performances you do. It does not mean self-esteem, self-confidence, self-respect, or self-regard. For all these terms imply that you can accept yourself because you do something well or because other people like you. Self-acceptance, however, merely means that you accept yourself because you remain alive and have decided to accept yourself. Only a relatively limited number of talented, intelligent, competent, or well-loved people can gain self-esteem or self-confidence. But anyone, merely because he chooses to have it, can gain self-acceptance."
"Does self-acceptance mean that I consider myself worthy or deserving of living and enjoying no matter what I do?"
"Yes, though we don't like the words worthy or deserving, since they imply a rating--that you have to do (or refrain from doing) something in order to feel 'worthy' or 'deserving.' When you have what we call self-acceptance, you make minimal assumptions about your (and other people's) intrinsic worth or value."
"What minimal assumptions?"
"Several: One, you exist. Two, you can probably, by continuing to exist, achieve more pleasure than pain, thus making it desirable for you to keep living. Three, to a considerable degree, you can help minimize your pain and maximize your pleasure. Four, you decide--and this constitutes the essence of self-acceptance--that you will try to live and make your existence as pleasurable and as unpainful as you can make it. Or, putting it another way, you choose as the main purpose of your existence short-range (here and now) and long-range (future) enjoyment. Not achieving for the sake of achieving. Not receiving adoration from others. Not proving your greatness as a person. Not getting into heaven. Just plain damned enjoyment!"
"So instead of my continuing to ask myself, 'What worth have I?' 'How do I keep proving myself?' 'How can I outstandingly impress others?' or 'What do I have to do to ennoble myself?' I'd better, instead, ask, 'How the devil can I avoid needless pain and find out what I truly enjoy in life and do it?' Right?''
"Exactly right! You make the purpose of your existence having a present and future ball--in whatever idiosyncratic and harmless ways you experimentally discover."
"You mean that I may then enjoy myself and accept myself and my existence as more enjoyable. But that I still will not really exist as more 'worthwhile'--only more alive, happier?"
"Right. And you will not, we hope, blame yourself or punish yourself whenever--as an imperfect human--you do something wrong or unwise. You will accept yourself with your foolish thoughts, feelings, perceptions, or actions, and use the experience that you get as a result of these unwise acts to help you enjoy yourself and behave more rationally in the future. What greater acceptance of self (and through that, potential acceptance of and tolerance for other humans) could you then have?"
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love - Part I
What similarities are there between "falling in love" and having a "religious experience"? Ecstasy, bliss, a feeling of "oneness with the Universe", peace, security, freedom - all are commonly described experiences of both "falling in love" and "awakening" or "self-transcendance" or "enlightenment".
What Robert Johnson points out in We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love is that, given the culture that has arisen out of the scientific revolution (and progressive materialism) started several centuries ago, our "souls" (or "psyches" or "unconscious sides" or the "collective unconscious" as a whole, or "God/dess") have persisted in wanting to be "known" and related to, honored, and loved. Where once this was available through more broadly accepted "religious practice" (soul searching, personal pondering of "That Which is Invisible", etc.), scientific materialism has virtually wiped out that possibility for "modern man". And yet, in spite of our almost exclusive focus on only what can be scientifically measured and proven (or literalized in the case of the Bible) and willfully manipulated for our personal material gain, we have nevertheless continued to cling en masse to the "Myth of Romantic Love".
As a consequence, for almost every person in modern day Western Culture, we have come to expect our intimate partners to fulfill a terribly idealized and even deified role in relationship to us. We seek passionately only for that "ecstasy" and feel There Is Something Missing from Our Intimate Relationships If We Are Not ALWAYS Experiencing That! In other words, at least in This culture, we do not feel comfortable or satisfied with the idea or the commitment to HUMAN LOVE between HUMAN BEINGS.
As a consequence, our capacity for Human Love and Divine Love are both compromised since they are not associated properly within their appropriate contexts; i.e. Divine Love is that which one experiences in a personal (individual) relationship with the Divine (or one's soul, or one's feeling nature, or one's unconscious, or one's anima/animus, however you want to acknowledge or identify the "invisible" part of yourself); while Human Love is experienced in relationship with other Human Beings, other (apparently separate) individuals outside of oneself. And if it is not already obvious, there are Very Different obligations in each form of relationship and different ways to "practice discipline" in each of those levels of association.
What this boils down to is - instead of acknowledging "God/dess" as "God/dess" we keep expecting our partners to be the "God" or "Goddess" in our lives, and as soon as they fail to live up to our expectations, they either have to suffer our disappointment through emotional, psychological, or even physical abuse, or...it's off to find another man or woman to carry that "projection" for us until they too fail under the weight of it. There are other cultures in the world that do not place such inappropriate and even irrational expectations on their human partners - and, guess what, their human relationships are much more likely to be stable and satisfying as a consequence. Surprise, surprise!
For many years now I feel I have been living at the "narrow end of the bell curve". And..to be honest, I haven't been living with "romantic love expectations" of my partners for a lot of that time, going back to the first book I read about anima/animus projections back in 1993 (i.e. Invisible Partners by John Sanford). However, I know for a fact, because I have been Unwilling to get "caught up in" that "divine love at the human level" game, I have made myself "less attractive" to the men around me who were hoping/expecting to experience that with me. Truth is, I do not expect my male companions to play the "Romantic Hero" in some overly dramatized version of an intimate relationship with me, nor am I inclined to play the "Damsel in Distress" or the Athena-like Love Goddess who vacillates between blessing and cursing her lover with no peace to be found in some middle ground of ordinary human life. Furthermore, because I have fully satisfied my need for a direct, ecstatic Love Relationship with the Divine, through my ongoing religious practice, I am simply not "driven" to seek that in my human intimate relationships.
Does that mean I do not "need" those human relationships? Of course not! I acknowledge the fact that I am as much a human being as I am a spiritual being. Obviously human beings need to relate to one another for all kinds of reasons and in all kinds of contexts and at all kinds of levels of intimacy. But in our culturally conditioned quest for that "One Love" we are failing miserably in our capacity to love in all these other relationships at all these other levels.
And that, my friends, I feel is one of the greatest tragedies in our society today and it has been the Great Tragedy of Western Culture for centuries. However, this World persists in the midst of our insanity - at least for now, and that means we still have time to "change our ways" and change our expectations and get back to relating with the Visible and the Invisible as it is apparently "normal" and appropriate for us to do as the human and spiritual beings that we are.
What Robert Johnson points out in We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love is that, given the culture that has arisen out of the scientific revolution (and progressive materialism) started several centuries ago, our "souls" (or "psyches" or "unconscious sides" or the "collective unconscious" as a whole, or "God/dess") have persisted in wanting to be "known" and related to, honored, and loved. Where once this was available through more broadly accepted "religious practice" (soul searching, personal pondering of "That Which is Invisible", etc.), scientific materialism has virtually wiped out that possibility for "modern man". And yet, in spite of our almost exclusive focus on only what can be scientifically measured and proven (or literalized in the case of the Bible) and willfully manipulated for our personal material gain, we have nevertheless continued to cling en masse to the "Myth of Romantic Love".
As a consequence, for almost every person in modern day Western Culture, we have come to expect our intimate partners to fulfill a terribly idealized and even deified role in relationship to us. We seek passionately only for that "ecstasy" and feel There Is Something Missing from Our Intimate Relationships If We Are Not ALWAYS Experiencing That! In other words, at least in This culture, we do not feel comfortable or satisfied with the idea or the commitment to HUMAN LOVE between HUMAN BEINGS.
As a consequence, our capacity for Human Love and Divine Love are both compromised since they are not associated properly within their appropriate contexts; i.e. Divine Love is that which one experiences in a personal (individual) relationship with the Divine (or one's soul, or one's feeling nature, or one's unconscious, or one's anima/animus, however you want to acknowledge or identify the "invisible" part of yourself); while Human Love is experienced in relationship with other Human Beings, other (apparently separate) individuals outside of oneself. And if it is not already obvious, there are Very Different obligations in each form of relationship and different ways to "practice discipline" in each of those levels of association.
What this boils down to is - instead of acknowledging "God/dess" as "God/dess" we keep expecting our partners to be the "God" or "Goddess" in our lives, and as soon as they fail to live up to our expectations, they either have to suffer our disappointment through emotional, psychological, or even physical abuse, or...it's off to find another man or woman to carry that "projection" for us until they too fail under the weight of it. There are other cultures in the world that do not place such inappropriate and even irrational expectations on their human partners - and, guess what, their human relationships are much more likely to be stable and satisfying as a consequence. Surprise, surprise!
For many years now I feel I have been living at the "narrow end of the bell curve". And..to be honest, I haven't been living with "romantic love expectations" of my partners for a lot of that time, going back to the first book I read about anima/animus projections back in 1993 (i.e. Invisible Partners by John Sanford). However, I know for a fact, because I have been Unwilling to get "caught up in" that "divine love at the human level" game, I have made myself "less attractive" to the men around me who were hoping/expecting to experience that with me. Truth is, I do not expect my male companions to play the "Romantic Hero" in some overly dramatized version of an intimate relationship with me, nor am I inclined to play the "Damsel in Distress" or the Athena-like Love Goddess who vacillates between blessing and cursing her lover with no peace to be found in some middle ground of ordinary human life. Furthermore, because I have fully satisfied my need for a direct, ecstatic Love Relationship with the Divine, through my ongoing religious practice, I am simply not "driven" to seek that in my human intimate relationships.
Does that mean I do not "need" those human relationships? Of course not! I acknowledge the fact that I am as much a human being as I am a spiritual being. Obviously human beings need to relate to one another for all kinds of reasons and in all kinds of contexts and at all kinds of levels of intimacy. But in our culturally conditioned quest for that "One Love" we are failing miserably in our capacity to love in all these other relationships at all these other levels.
And that, my friends, I feel is one of the greatest tragedies in our society today and it has been the Great Tragedy of Western Culture for centuries. However, this World persists in the midst of our insanity - at least for now, and that means we still have time to "change our ways" and change our expectations and get back to relating with the Visible and the Invisible as it is apparently "normal" and appropriate for us to do as the human and spiritual beings that we are.
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Biology of "Heaven"
It's been about six years now since I first watched "What the 'Bleep' Do We Know?" My housemate at the time brought a copy home with her and shared it with me. There were some ideas in the movie that were already familiar to me, but what was new, and most interesting of all, was the information about how our hypothalamus makes biochemicals that are essentially biological analogs of every type of emotion we experience. In other words there are distinct biochemicals for anxiety, or joy, or anger, or happiness, etc., etc., and whenever we are "feeling" those emotions, it is in part because those emotional-biochemicals are racing through our bodies, having all kinds of various effects on all of our cells. In addition, just as it is possible to get addicted to chemicals we take in from outside the body, it is also possible to get addicted to chemicals that have been internally generated.
Over the course of the next several months, I became much, much more sensitive to my "patterns of desire." What I had learned from the film was that such desires, or compulsions, to use a stronger word, were probably being driven by early-life experiences, early-life biochemical conditioning. There were certain emotions, and therefore, certain patterns of biochemicals that my body had experienced in the past and that it wanted to keep on experiencing now, and in the future. More than that it was longing to have those experiences. Recognizing a pattern in the present, made me wonder what the original pattern had been in the past - the pattern that left an "imprint" biochemically to which my body was now "addicted."
The first pattern I looked at more closely was my "longing to 'fall in love'", but I will save further discussion of that for another blog. Instead, as the title of this blog suggests, I'd like to look at our "longing for heaven".
As for me, I was raised in the Christian tradition. Although my mother said I was the one who told her about "reincarnation" from about the age of four or so, saying something like "You know, Mommy, we've all been born lots of times"; like other Christian believers, I had some idea that heaven would be a lot like earth only better, "perfect", in fact. There would be no pain or suffering, no bodily imperfections, etc., etc. As an adult, I have realized that one of the key elements of this fantasy of heaven is that there is no "work" in heaven, at least, not in the sense that we experience it from day to day here. And yet, even without "work", everything just gets taken care of, I guess, by "God" and/or his "Angels". In summary, this idea of heaven is a place where everything gets taken care of, all of our physiological (or spiritual) needs are met with no effort of our own.
As I considered this from a biochemical patterning point of view, I got to thinking: Where have we ever experienced that before? Where in our early human existence was there a situation where "all of our needs were being met with no effort of our own", and so there was a biochemical patterning associated with that, something we (i.e. our bodies) would want to experience again?
It didn't take too long for me to figure it out: It's while we are still in our mother's womb.
Think about it: There you are surrounded by warm fluid that stays at more or less constant temperature (i.e. around 98.6 degrees). All of your physiological needs are being met as nutrients from you mother's body are being pumped into your bloodstream through your umbilical cord. It is all happening pretty automatically. And "you" or, at least, the physiological part of "you", gets to experience that kind of "bliss" for about nine months or so.
Then, all of a sudden, things go "terribly wrong" and you are forthwith "Cast Out of the Garden of Eden" and it is your Mother's (i.e. the Woman's) "fault". From that point on, it is all about Work, Work, Work to get your needs met. You have to cry and squirm, and eventually you learn language to help communicate your needs. Maybe your parents respond appropriately, maybe they don't. Then you have to go to school and there's all kinds of "homework", and then there's college, which is even more work. Maybe you'll work while you are going to college, and then there's more work to follow that. It's just work, work, work, work, work.
And, maybe, if you are like many people in the world today, you will continue to carry that latent memory of "heaven" in the back of your mind, in the depths of your body. Through all the work and struggle, there will be a part of you that is still clinging to that memory of "heaven" which has now become a "dream of heaven" - some future place and time where you can finally "relax" again, where somehow, all of your needs will be met with no effort of your own , or, at least, a LOT LESS effort, say when you "retire". Or maybe, you'll create a whole socio-political ideology that has as its underlying theme "everyone should be taken care of by the State"!
Or maybe, when you die, you will be longing for "heaven" so much, that you will choose another physical incarnation just so you can experience it again...at least for nine months. Nine months of "heaven" in exchange for 80 years of "hell"...? Hmmm? Not so sure that's a fair trade???
So, what's the alternative?
Pretty simple really, not unlike my previous communication in the last couple of blogs: Understand where your "longing" is really coming from and Let It Go! Honestly, if you want to at least increase your chances of Not Doing This Trip Again (the "80 years of 'hell'" part), then stop longing to crawl back into the womb. Let go of your fantasies of "heaven" and accept the reality of life as an independent human being. Be prepared to work, because it does take a lot of work to get through one lifetime, and especially in modern society. Even if you manage to find more efficient ways to live, there is still going to be work involved. But, it will be so much easier when you Stop Resisting - At All! You will be amazed at how much more Life Energy becomes available to you when you let go of your Longing for "Heaven", when you let go of even the inkling of desire for someone else to "take care of you."
Evolution has not happened because the fish decided to crawl back into the water! (At least in most cases. : )) No, evolution has always moved in the direction of more and more opportunity for personal ACTION, creative ACTION, dynamic ACTION and dynamic INTER-ACTION with one's environment. You see, that is the problem with "being in the womb" - You have no opportunity for dynamic Action and Interaction with your environment. In truth, you have no Freedom. And if you look around you, the orientation of Life Itself is towards more and more complex and dynamic forms of action and interaction, with each individual Playing Their Part.
I will leave you with a story about alf-alfa sprouts. (! : )) When I was growing them, I started out just putting them in a jar, hiding them in a dark cupboard somewhere. Eventually, I'd have this big tangled mass of leaves and roots all going in different directions. However, when I started putting weight in the form of damp paper towels or cloths on top of the seeds, surprise, surprise, they started Growing Up Straight. Furthermore, as I considered this phenomenon more broadly, I realized Most Seeds need some "dirt on top" in order to grow properly. It is as if they need to have something to "push up against" in order to know where to sink their roots in and where to spread their leaves.
And really, that is all that "work" is in a human life. It is like a weight we have to lift in order to grow stronger. If there is no "work" necessary, if there is no "weight" to lift, if "all of one's needs are met with no effort of one's own", then there will be no growth of the individual, no development, no realization of anything meaningful. It will certainly not be "heaven", individually or collectively.
It is not the work itself you need to worry about. It is your own Resistance to Work that will forever hold you back. Better to Get On With It, in your current life-time, whatever form it takes for you, Embrace It! Appreciate that work simply represents an opportunity for growth, and you might be really amazed at what you will grow into, and what a difference you can make in the Real World when you simply let go of your fantasy of "heaven".
Speaking from personal experience, it may never be "heaven" here, but with a little work, (okay, sometimes a Lot of work), it can be a whole lot less like "hell". And if Everyone Gives up their "longing for heaven" - if Everyone stops expecting others to "take care of them", or "make things easier for them" (including the "poor" people AND the "rich" people), imagine how much more Life Energy will be Freed Up to "work" on making this world a better place for Everyone to live, and work, and grow, and realize their Full Potential as Dynamic Human Beings! Just Imagine... : )) ... and then Get to Work!!! : ))
Over the course of the next several months, I became much, much more sensitive to my "patterns of desire." What I had learned from the film was that such desires, or compulsions, to use a stronger word, were probably being driven by early-life experiences, early-life biochemical conditioning. There were certain emotions, and therefore, certain patterns of biochemicals that my body had experienced in the past and that it wanted to keep on experiencing now, and in the future. More than that it was longing to have those experiences. Recognizing a pattern in the present, made me wonder what the original pattern had been in the past - the pattern that left an "imprint" biochemically to which my body was now "addicted."
The first pattern I looked at more closely was my "longing to 'fall in love'", but I will save further discussion of that for another blog. Instead, as the title of this blog suggests, I'd like to look at our "longing for heaven".
As for me, I was raised in the Christian tradition. Although my mother said I was the one who told her about "reincarnation" from about the age of four or so, saying something like "You know, Mommy, we've all been born lots of times"; like other Christian believers, I had some idea that heaven would be a lot like earth only better, "perfect", in fact. There would be no pain or suffering, no bodily imperfections, etc., etc. As an adult, I have realized that one of the key elements of this fantasy of heaven is that there is no "work" in heaven, at least, not in the sense that we experience it from day to day here. And yet, even without "work", everything just gets taken care of, I guess, by "God" and/or his "Angels". In summary, this idea of heaven is a place where everything gets taken care of, all of our physiological (or spiritual) needs are met with no effort of our own.
As I considered this from a biochemical patterning point of view, I got to thinking: Where have we ever experienced that before? Where in our early human existence was there a situation where "all of our needs were being met with no effort of our own", and so there was a biochemical patterning associated with that, something we (i.e. our bodies) would want to experience again?
It didn't take too long for me to figure it out: It's while we are still in our mother's womb.
Think about it: There you are surrounded by warm fluid that stays at more or less constant temperature (i.e. around 98.6 degrees). All of your physiological needs are being met as nutrients from you mother's body are being pumped into your bloodstream through your umbilical cord. It is all happening pretty automatically. And "you" or, at least, the physiological part of "you", gets to experience that kind of "bliss" for about nine months or so.
Then, all of a sudden, things go "terribly wrong" and you are forthwith "Cast Out of the Garden of Eden" and it is your Mother's (i.e. the Woman's) "fault". From that point on, it is all about Work, Work, Work to get your needs met. You have to cry and squirm, and eventually you learn language to help communicate your needs. Maybe your parents respond appropriately, maybe they don't. Then you have to go to school and there's all kinds of "homework", and then there's college, which is even more work. Maybe you'll work while you are going to college, and then there's more work to follow that. It's just work, work, work, work, work.
And, maybe, if you are like many people in the world today, you will continue to carry that latent memory of "heaven" in the back of your mind, in the depths of your body. Through all the work and struggle, there will be a part of you that is still clinging to that memory of "heaven" which has now become a "dream of heaven" - some future place and time where you can finally "relax" again, where somehow, all of your needs will be met with no effort of your own , or, at least, a LOT LESS effort, say when you "retire". Or maybe, you'll create a whole socio-political ideology that has as its underlying theme "everyone should be taken care of by the State"!
Or maybe, when you die, you will be longing for "heaven" so much, that you will choose another physical incarnation just so you can experience it again...at least for nine months. Nine months of "heaven" in exchange for 80 years of "hell"...? Hmmm? Not so sure that's a fair trade???
So, what's the alternative?
Pretty simple really, not unlike my previous communication in the last couple of blogs: Understand where your "longing" is really coming from and Let It Go! Honestly, if you want to at least increase your chances of Not Doing This Trip Again (the "80 years of 'hell'" part), then stop longing to crawl back into the womb. Let go of your fantasies of "heaven" and accept the reality of life as an independent human being. Be prepared to work, because it does take a lot of work to get through one lifetime, and especially in modern society. Even if you manage to find more efficient ways to live, there is still going to be work involved. But, it will be so much easier when you Stop Resisting - At All! You will be amazed at how much more Life Energy becomes available to you when you let go of your Longing for "Heaven", when you let go of even the inkling of desire for someone else to "take care of you."
Evolution has not happened because the fish decided to crawl back into the water! (At least in most cases. : )) No, evolution has always moved in the direction of more and more opportunity for personal ACTION, creative ACTION, dynamic ACTION and dynamic INTER-ACTION with one's environment. You see, that is the problem with "being in the womb" - You have no opportunity for dynamic Action and Interaction with your environment. In truth, you have no Freedom. And if you look around you, the orientation of Life Itself is towards more and more complex and dynamic forms of action and interaction, with each individual Playing Their Part.
I will leave you with a story about alf-alfa sprouts. (! : )) When I was growing them, I started out just putting them in a jar, hiding them in a dark cupboard somewhere. Eventually, I'd have this big tangled mass of leaves and roots all going in different directions. However, when I started putting weight in the form of damp paper towels or cloths on top of the seeds, surprise, surprise, they started Growing Up Straight. Furthermore, as I considered this phenomenon more broadly, I realized Most Seeds need some "dirt on top" in order to grow properly. It is as if they need to have something to "push up against" in order to know where to sink their roots in and where to spread their leaves.
And really, that is all that "work" is in a human life. It is like a weight we have to lift in order to grow stronger. If there is no "work" necessary, if there is no "weight" to lift, if "all of one's needs are met with no effort of one's own", then there will be no growth of the individual, no development, no realization of anything meaningful. It will certainly not be "heaven", individually or collectively.
It is not the work itself you need to worry about. It is your own Resistance to Work that will forever hold you back. Better to Get On With It, in your current life-time, whatever form it takes for you, Embrace It! Appreciate that work simply represents an opportunity for growth, and you might be really amazed at what you will grow into, and what a difference you can make in the Real World when you simply let go of your fantasy of "heaven".
Speaking from personal experience, it may never be "heaven" here, but with a little work, (okay, sometimes a Lot of work), it can be a whole lot less like "hell". And if Everyone Gives up their "longing for heaven" - if Everyone stops expecting others to "take care of them", or "make things easier for them" (including the "poor" people AND the "rich" people), imagine how much more Life Energy will be Freed Up to "work" on making this world a better place for Everyone to live, and work, and grow, and realize their Full Potential as Dynamic Human Beings! Just Imagine... : )) ... and then Get to Work!!! : ))
Thursday, September 15, 2011
The Cornerstone - Part II
In the spring of 1988, roughly three years after my mother went into the mental hospital, the carnival came to town and set-up in one of the large parking lots on the college campus. I became friends with the young man running the "Himalaya" ride, and not long after that, I decided to "join the carnival" myself, thinking it would be fun for a summer job (the fact that this guy looked a bit like Tom Cruise had nothing to do with my decision, of course! : )). Normally, the carnival did not allow women to travel alone, but since I would be working for this young man's mother, and his father was the manager of the show, they were willing to bend that rule in my case.
In general though, deciding to join the carnival was one of the first real choices in my life that I feel I made for myself, simply because it was What I Wanted to Do. In other words, it was not about living up to any of my mother's expectations, or a boyfriend's, or a teacher's, etc. It was just me doing something for me, trusting my own "gut", if you will.
So in June of that year, I boarded a Greyhound bus for the long trip from Tennessee, across the Ohio River into Indiana where I met-up with and became an employee of Cumberland Valley Shows. I went to work for my friend's mother helping her run her "Shoot Out the Star" joint. I adapted very quickly to all the routines of setting-up and tearing down, collecting spent lead shot for recycling, and loading the good shot into the straw-like metal tubes, that were later used to load the air-powered b-b guns. I became familiar with other members of the carnival, as well as some of the people who worked in between the various carnivals around the region, delivering stuffed animal prizes and other supplies.
One of these "inter-carnival" workers was an artist whose name might have been, John, but I remember him more as the "Zen Painter". His talent was in creating these really bright colorful back-drops for the various games and rides and even the occasional truck trailer door for the "houses on wheels" that were quarters for many of the game owners and show managers.
This "Zen Painter" took an interest in me. He listened to my life story and eventually loaned me a book to read. It was The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller. It was a short book, under 200 pages, and I read it very quickly as I did not know when I would see my friend again and I wanted to be sure and be able to give it back to him when he returned from his travels to other carnivals in the region.
I remember being in my room, one of 10 or so built into an 18-wheel truck trailer, so it was pretty small. I was sitting on my bunk bed, and I was reading through the sections where Alice Miller explains how one's parents are the only two people in the world who are really obligated to Love them Unconditionally; and how, if children do not receive that from their parents, if they do not get to experience a "happy childhood", there is no way, as an adult, to go back and "redo" that. Instead, in such a case, it was appropriate to Mourn the Loss of one's "happy childhood" and then Let It Go.
It did not take much for me to understand how this applied in my own case. Right there and then, I started to cry, in the closet of my living quarters, a carny with Cumberland Valley Shows, a young woman, alone...I mourned the loss of my "happy childhood". And right there and then, I also Let Go. I stopped expecting any other person to make up for what I did not receive from my parents as a child. I stopped seeking "unconditional love" from anyone else. And at the same time, I realized that the only person left to "Love Me Unconditionally", to love my still present "inner child" unconditionally, was Me. And, in many ways, the only person left to parent (or "re-parent") me was Me.
Now you may think that this was a very sad and maybe even terrible moment in my life. But, actually, it was one of The Most Liberating. Not only was it Truly Liberating for Me, but it was to be Liberating for all of the other people I came into contact with in my life from that point on, because I did not come to them with Any Expectations for them to "Love me Unconditionally" or to try to Make Up for the Loss of My "Happy Childhood".
Furthermore, I did not continue into my life feeling that "I have already suffered so much, I just can't bear to suffer any more and all I want is for someone to love me and take care of me" the way I was not loved and taken care of (in any functional way) as a child. In other words, I did not walk around with a sense of entitlement based on my previous suffering, nor was I bound to the inevitable disappointment over and over and over again, where those expectations were not fulfilled, because they Could Not Ever Be Fulfilled. I understood that my Childhood was over, it was dead, in the past, and could never be revived. Yes, I recognized that loss, and I mourned that loss, but then, as a quickly awakening adult, I moved on with my life.
Now, more than anything else, I feel that understanding became the Cornerstone of my new life apart from my mother. I will not deny for a moment that Every Child Deserves the Unconditional Love and Functional Support of their biological or adoptive Parents. However, the sad fact is, most of us living today have not had that, and, unfortunately, most of the children living today are not getting that, although there are more today then there have been, thanks in part to wise and compassionate people like Alice Miller. My life, though not particularly extraordinary, is still a demonstration for others, that it is possible for all of us who have not grown up with truly "happy childhoods", to mourn that loss, and then Let Go, so that we can, in the here and now, accept responsibility for loving ourselves unconditionally, and for continuing on in our lives as the Adults that we are now, rather than as the children we might otherwise long to be again.
This world needs Adults - truly mature, empathetic, and rational human beings. It needs people who understand what it means to be Responsible for Oneself and ones actions, rather than people constantly clinging to the fantasy of some day being "taken care of" by an employer, by a lover, by "God", or by "The State." I will not deny that there may very well be Larger Forces at Play here, but there is also a level at which we have to Take Part ourselves, consciously and responsibly, as Adults, and not as "children" still seeking the unconditional love and support of "someone...anyone" where their actual parents have failed to provide that.
So I will say again, Do Not Hesitate to Mourn the Loss of your "Happy Childhood" if this is appropriate in your case, but then, Let It Go and be ready to Move On.
I am very glad I "joined the carnival" - that I courageously "followed my gut" because there was a very, very, important message waiting for me, that I might never have received if I had not made that "crazy" choice in the first place. And as I have suggested here, the understanding I gained from reading The Drama of the Gifted Child became the "Cornerstone" for my life of learning apart from my mother. There have been many, many more ideas that have filled in that "structure" of my life, and in some cases, liberated me from ideas that were too limiting. It is those ideas that I am sharing through this blog, so that others might be strengthened and liberated as well.
In general though, deciding to join the carnival was one of the first real choices in my life that I feel I made for myself, simply because it was What I Wanted to Do. In other words, it was not about living up to any of my mother's expectations, or a boyfriend's, or a teacher's, etc. It was just me doing something for me, trusting my own "gut", if you will.
So in June of that year, I boarded a Greyhound bus for the long trip from Tennessee, across the Ohio River into Indiana where I met-up with and became an employee of Cumberland Valley Shows. I went to work for my friend's mother helping her run her "Shoot Out the Star" joint. I adapted very quickly to all the routines of setting-up and tearing down, collecting spent lead shot for recycling, and loading the good shot into the straw-like metal tubes, that were later used to load the air-powered b-b guns. I became familiar with other members of the carnival, as well as some of the people who worked in between the various carnivals around the region, delivering stuffed animal prizes and other supplies.
One of these "inter-carnival" workers was an artist whose name might have been, John, but I remember him more as the "Zen Painter". His talent was in creating these really bright colorful back-drops for the various games and rides and even the occasional truck trailer door for the "houses on wheels" that were quarters for many of the game owners and show managers.
This "Zen Painter" took an interest in me. He listened to my life story and eventually loaned me a book to read. It was The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller. It was a short book, under 200 pages, and I read it very quickly as I did not know when I would see my friend again and I wanted to be sure and be able to give it back to him when he returned from his travels to other carnivals in the region.
I remember being in my room, one of 10 or so built into an 18-wheel truck trailer, so it was pretty small. I was sitting on my bunk bed, and I was reading through the sections where Alice Miller explains how one's parents are the only two people in the world who are really obligated to Love them Unconditionally; and how, if children do not receive that from their parents, if they do not get to experience a "happy childhood", there is no way, as an adult, to go back and "redo" that. Instead, in such a case, it was appropriate to Mourn the Loss of one's "happy childhood" and then Let It Go.
It did not take much for me to understand how this applied in my own case. Right there and then, I started to cry, in the closet of my living quarters, a carny with Cumberland Valley Shows, a young woman, alone...I mourned the loss of my "happy childhood". And right there and then, I also Let Go. I stopped expecting any other person to make up for what I did not receive from my parents as a child. I stopped seeking "unconditional love" from anyone else. And at the same time, I realized that the only person left to "Love Me Unconditionally", to love my still present "inner child" unconditionally, was Me. And, in many ways, the only person left to parent (or "re-parent") me was Me.
Now you may think that this was a very sad and maybe even terrible moment in my life. But, actually, it was one of The Most Liberating. Not only was it Truly Liberating for Me, but it was to be Liberating for all of the other people I came into contact with in my life from that point on, because I did not come to them with Any Expectations for them to "Love me Unconditionally" or to try to Make Up for the Loss of My "Happy Childhood".
Furthermore, I did not continue into my life feeling that "I have already suffered so much, I just can't bear to suffer any more and all I want is for someone to love me and take care of me" the way I was not loved and taken care of (in any functional way) as a child. In other words, I did not walk around with a sense of entitlement based on my previous suffering, nor was I bound to the inevitable disappointment over and over and over again, where those expectations were not fulfilled, because they Could Not Ever Be Fulfilled. I understood that my Childhood was over, it was dead, in the past, and could never be revived. Yes, I recognized that loss, and I mourned that loss, but then, as a quickly awakening adult, I moved on with my life.
Now, more than anything else, I feel that understanding became the Cornerstone of my new life apart from my mother. I will not deny for a moment that Every Child Deserves the Unconditional Love and Functional Support of their biological or adoptive Parents. However, the sad fact is, most of us living today have not had that, and, unfortunately, most of the children living today are not getting that, although there are more today then there have been, thanks in part to wise and compassionate people like Alice Miller. My life, though not particularly extraordinary, is still a demonstration for others, that it is possible for all of us who have not grown up with truly "happy childhoods", to mourn that loss, and then Let Go, so that we can, in the here and now, accept responsibility for loving ourselves unconditionally, and for continuing on in our lives as the Adults that we are now, rather than as the children we might otherwise long to be again.
This world needs Adults - truly mature, empathetic, and rational human beings. It needs people who understand what it means to be Responsible for Oneself and ones actions, rather than people constantly clinging to the fantasy of some day being "taken care of" by an employer, by a lover, by "God", or by "The State." I will not deny that there may very well be Larger Forces at Play here, but there is also a level at which we have to Take Part ourselves, consciously and responsibly, as Adults, and not as "children" still seeking the unconditional love and support of "someone...anyone" where their actual parents have failed to provide that.
So I will say again, Do Not Hesitate to Mourn the Loss of your "Happy Childhood" if this is appropriate in your case, but then, Let It Go and be ready to Move On.
I am very glad I "joined the carnival" - that I courageously "followed my gut" because there was a very, very, important message waiting for me, that I might never have received if I had not made that "crazy" choice in the first place. And as I have suggested here, the understanding I gained from reading The Drama of the Gifted Child became the "Cornerstone" for my life of learning apart from my mother. There have been many, many more ideas that have filled in that "structure" of my life, and in some cases, liberated me from ideas that were too limiting. It is those ideas that I am sharing through this blog, so that others might be strengthened and liberated as well.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
The Cornerstone - Part I
My mother was paranoid schizophrenic. She believed we were both "prophets sent here to save the world from drugs, prostitution, and witchcraft that had been infiltrated here by the Communists" and that "the 'Mafia' was out to kill us." As a consequence, I spent much of the first 17 years of my life behind closed doors. I did not have many opportunities to socialize normally with my peers, nor was I ever given much in the way of practical worldly instruction, say for how to handle money and credit, or how to shop for clothes that fit me properly, or how to wear makeup.
My mother did allow me to go to school. I think she was smart enough to know that not doing so would bring the authorities into our lives and then our "cover would be blown". Furthermore, she had me convinced that if I talked to anyone who was part of the Mafia, they would come find us; and if I talked to anyone who was not a part of the Mafia, then they would be endangered by knowing about us. In this way she was able to keep me emotionally and psychologically cut-off from everyone else but her, even in those rare times when I may not have been cut-off from others physically.
Going to school eventually included college, and that is where I finally began to experience something like "freedom". My mother had qualified for Social Security Disability by then, and she lived in a small duplex close to campus. She still relied on me for bringing her groceries, but otherwise managed her life and the occasional pet, more or less on her own. I initially lived in the dorms, but later lived with other students (one of whom was also my cousin) in several different houses in the area.
It was while we were living in one of those houses, late one summer evening, when the police showed up at our door. They were there to inform me that my mother was in the emergency room. The first thought that came to mind was that maybe she had experienced a heart attack, as she had always complained of heart and/or blood related illnesses, though none were ever confirmed by doctors. However, when I entered the emergency room and saw her lying on the gurney, the first thing she asked was "Who shot me?" It did not appear to me that there were any wounds to warrant her question, although there was a very large bruise on the back of her neck. She went on to explain that she had heard my voice and the voices of my sisters (twins to each other and eight years older than me), and she thought we were all dead and she just wanted to be dead, too. I assured my mother that I was not dead, and then she continued at length to explain "what had happened to her" with all types of language and symbolism that only someone like me, who had grown up with all of that, could actually make any sense of.
Later that morning, the minister of the church we had been involved with came to see us, and my mother repeated the story for him, only this time, I listened from his perspective, a "third person's" perspective, not "pre-conditioned" as mine had been. As I listened in this way, all of a sudden it hit me, "This must sound sooo bizzare!" Furthermore, as the evidence sunk in that my mother actually tried to kill herself, I reasoned "Prophets don't try to kill themselves, and so, therefore, we are probably not prophets", which meant, for all intents and purposes, the rest of my "life story" had also been "One Big Lie". And then, with a crescendo of realization, the voice growing louder in my own head: "That means I have been afraid for all of these years For No Good Reason!!!! What a WASTE!!!!"
Later that day, my mother was transported to one of the State's mental hospitals, to be committed by the authorities as they had the right to do given that she had tried to harm herself. I went there a few days later to take her some of her clothes and other belongings to have with her in the hospital. Although, I still loved my mother, I was also relieved that I no longer had to be burdened with the responsibility of taking care of her, the burden I had actually been carrying for much of my life. Instead, it was now time for others, people trained to care for people like my mother, to take over. From a metaphysical perspective, I felt I must have had some past-life karma to resolve with my mother, but that I had "done my time" and was now released from the "prison" of our relationship... and that it was okay for me to get on with my own life.
Under the circumstances, that meant pretty much "starting over from scratch." I was 20 at the time, and though of "legal age" I was still about as naive about the world, and how to relate to others, as a 12-year-old, and deep down inside I KNEW IT (as did some of the men who crossed my path). But I was also determined to do everything I possibly could to figure things out. There were mentor teachers and counselors around to help me, especially with books like The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. After reading that I was absolutely determined to See Reality for What It Was. Even though my concepts of "God" and "Jesus" had pretty much gone out the window with any of the concepts of my own life as a "prophet," I still prayed to the Universe: "I want to know the Truth, about the world, about others, and about myself. Just Bring IT ON...because I don't want to end up like my mother!"
Looking back, I actually bless my mother for many reasons: First of all, by her life example (consciously chosen or not) she demonstrated for me what happens to someone when they are not dealing with reality as it is, and how the effects of that can impact everyone around them. Second, that day in the emergency room, again, more a consequence of her mental illness rather than a conscious choice, still granted me a completely Legitimate Reason to question everything I had ever learned in my life from her up to that point. I think there are many adults in the world today who still have such emotionally charged illusions of their god-like parents, that they hesitate to ever question what they have learned from them. That "illusion" was completely shattered for me, that day, and I am actually very grateful for that.
All in all, as I approached this second major stage of my life, I had a lot more freedom than most, to do what I wanted to do and to learn from my experiences. I was also free to think whatever I wanted to think and to explore ideas from all kinds of different sources. I was way beyond being afraid, because I knew how much of my life had already been wasted doing that. So again, I recognized that it was more of a blessing than a curse, this legacy I received from my mother. Nevertheless, I also knew, I had a LOT of "catching-up" to do.
My mother did allow me to go to school. I think she was smart enough to know that not doing so would bring the authorities into our lives and then our "cover would be blown". Furthermore, she had me convinced that if I talked to anyone who was part of the Mafia, they would come find us; and if I talked to anyone who was not a part of the Mafia, then they would be endangered by knowing about us. In this way she was able to keep me emotionally and psychologically cut-off from everyone else but her, even in those rare times when I may not have been cut-off from others physically.
Going to school eventually included college, and that is where I finally began to experience something like "freedom". My mother had qualified for Social Security Disability by then, and she lived in a small duplex close to campus. She still relied on me for bringing her groceries, but otherwise managed her life and the occasional pet, more or less on her own. I initially lived in the dorms, but later lived with other students (one of whom was also my cousin) in several different houses in the area.
It was while we were living in one of those houses, late one summer evening, when the police showed up at our door. They were there to inform me that my mother was in the emergency room. The first thought that came to mind was that maybe she had experienced a heart attack, as she had always complained of heart and/or blood related illnesses, though none were ever confirmed by doctors. However, when I entered the emergency room and saw her lying on the gurney, the first thing she asked was "Who shot me?" It did not appear to me that there were any wounds to warrant her question, although there was a very large bruise on the back of her neck. She went on to explain that she had heard my voice and the voices of my sisters (twins to each other and eight years older than me), and she thought we were all dead and she just wanted to be dead, too. I assured my mother that I was not dead, and then she continued at length to explain "what had happened to her" with all types of language and symbolism that only someone like me, who had grown up with all of that, could actually make any sense of.
Later that morning, the minister of the church we had been involved with came to see us, and my mother repeated the story for him, only this time, I listened from his perspective, a "third person's" perspective, not "pre-conditioned" as mine had been. As I listened in this way, all of a sudden it hit me, "This must sound sooo bizzare!" Furthermore, as the evidence sunk in that my mother actually tried to kill herself, I reasoned "Prophets don't try to kill themselves, and so, therefore, we are probably not prophets", which meant, for all intents and purposes, the rest of my "life story" had also been "One Big Lie". And then, with a crescendo of realization, the voice growing louder in my own head: "That means I have been afraid for all of these years For No Good Reason!!!! What a WASTE!!!!"
Later that day, my mother was transported to one of the State's mental hospitals, to be committed by the authorities as they had the right to do given that she had tried to harm herself. I went there a few days later to take her some of her clothes and other belongings to have with her in the hospital. Although, I still loved my mother, I was also relieved that I no longer had to be burdened with the responsibility of taking care of her, the burden I had actually been carrying for much of my life. Instead, it was now time for others, people trained to care for people like my mother, to take over. From a metaphysical perspective, I felt I must have had some past-life karma to resolve with my mother, but that I had "done my time" and was now released from the "prison" of our relationship... and that it was okay for me to get on with my own life.
Under the circumstances, that meant pretty much "starting over from scratch." I was 20 at the time, and though of "legal age" I was still about as naive about the world, and how to relate to others, as a 12-year-old, and deep down inside I KNEW IT (as did some of the men who crossed my path). But I was also determined to do everything I possibly could to figure things out. There were mentor teachers and counselors around to help me, especially with books like The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. After reading that I was absolutely determined to See Reality for What It Was. Even though my concepts of "God" and "Jesus" had pretty much gone out the window with any of the concepts of my own life as a "prophet," I still prayed to the Universe: "I want to know the Truth, about the world, about others, and about myself. Just Bring IT ON...because I don't want to end up like my mother!"
Looking back, I actually bless my mother for many reasons: First of all, by her life example (consciously chosen or not) she demonstrated for me what happens to someone when they are not dealing with reality as it is, and how the effects of that can impact everyone around them. Second, that day in the emergency room, again, more a consequence of her mental illness rather than a conscious choice, still granted me a completely Legitimate Reason to question everything I had ever learned in my life from her up to that point. I think there are many adults in the world today who still have such emotionally charged illusions of their god-like parents, that they hesitate to ever question what they have learned from them. That "illusion" was completely shattered for me, that day, and I am actually very grateful for that.
All in all, as I approached this second major stage of my life, I had a lot more freedom than most, to do what I wanted to do and to learn from my experiences. I was also free to think whatever I wanted to think and to explore ideas from all kinds of different sources. I was way beyond being afraid, because I knew how much of my life had already been wasted doing that. So again, I recognized that it was more of a blessing than a curse, this legacy I received from my mother. Nevertheless, I also knew, I had a LOT of "catching-up" to do.
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