Faith of Our Fathers...and Mothers...and Others

I want to offer this as a very brief follow-up to my previous blog.

It's kind of personal, but something tells me it may "strike home" with some of you, maybe even many of you.

I've been a bit of a gypsy in my life. Prone to shifting my circumstances pretty readily. I joined the carnival when I was 23, ended up in Montana for seven years, lived in Kauai for a while, England, Colorado, then joined the Navy for eight years finishing my tour of duty on the east coast with a follow-up of about four years working for the Federal Government in some capacity or another.

And then I decided to ride my bicycle across the country! Now I'm enjoying Santa Barbara, CA and getting ready to re-start my trip this spring.

During all of these years, my father has told he "loves me" but he "worries about me". At the same time, he's never been one to initiate much contact with me. I'm sorry to say he has not been inclined to "make the effort" to do that. It's always been me calling him.

My mother, well, ever since I started disagreeing with her point of view of my father and "everything else" she's thought (at various times) there was something "wrong with my mind", and she has been concerned that I stopped "following Jesus". In other words, she "worries" about me, too.

I mean no disrespect to either of my parents. They are who they are and I know they've been doing the best they can knowing what they know. And it is not like I came into this world knowing what I know now, or even what I have come to better understand in the last few weeks even.

Nevertheless, neither of my parents have ever taken much time to really get to know me as I am. When I've been at my father's house, along with my step-mother and step-relatives, and my two sisters I've usually spent most of my time listening to the stories of their lives. Nobody has ever really asked me much about mine. I kind of wonder if any of them are reading these blogs.

In contrast, there is a couple in Tennessee, my German professor from Tennessee Tech and his wife, who became like "adoptive" parents to me in my early 20's. Whenever I visit them, it is an almost endless barrage of questions! I have frequently visited them on my way to or from Kentucky where my father and step-mother live, and several years ago I really noticed the striking difference.

Now, it may be that due to the other dynamics of my family and our history together, that there are other reasons why my relatives don't really want to know what's going on in my life. They may feel any "problems" might have something to do with them, i.e. how they have or have not related to me over the years, but I've never really felt that way. It would have been nice to be able to share all of my "successes" in spite of the challenging history, but that has really not been much of an option, either. And, maybe their perception of what is "success" is different from mine.

What I have realized most recently though is what I have really wanted from my family was a little "rational faith" in me, a little "faith" in my ability to take care of myself, based on the evidence of my life. Again, though, maybe their view of "success" is too different from mine, so they don't see the evidence of my adaptability and my courage to take on new challenges, to freely uproot myself and try something new. They don't see those things as positive qualities in me.

As I have thought about this more, I have begun to think that when it comes to parents relating with their children, faith plays a pivotal role. As a parent, can you trust that your child is being guided by their own inner core and Life Purpose, or do you feel you have to make a lot of decisions about all of that for them?

By all means, young children need "care" - they need the effort of love that provides for their basic biological and psychological needs - food, clothing, shelter, protection. Parents need to know what to expect from their children at various stages of development, so they will also know their child's potentials and limits, and challenge the child accordingly in terms of reaching their highest potential at any given stage. This is where close and objective observation (free of parental "projections") is so important. The best parents will make the effort to pay attention to their child, to ask them questions, to help them come to a better understanding of themselves, their likes and dislikes, what is important to them. The parent must provide appropriate "boundaries" and recognize when the child can handle a greater level of responsibility for themselves at each stage of their development.

It is in this way, the parent develops a Rational Basis of Faith in their child, and their child's increasing ability to take care of themselves, to make more and more decisions for themselves, to take on more and more of the responsibilities of daily life.

If that faith is lacking, then it is much more likely that the child will struggle, even long into their adulthood, with having Faith in Themselves, and, therefore, the will to accept the ever increasing challenges, that require effort as part of being a human being in this world.

I have come to the conclusion that, where I have in the past considered the need of each of us as children for "unconditional love", I now think Rational Faith might be even more important, and that is what we also have to offer to one another, based on our actual knowledge of each other as that develops in the course of our relating.

Yes, it is also possible to come to a place of having Rational Faith in oneself without ever receiving it from others. But then again, sometimes, it can make all the difference. Imagine a young man in a classroom whose teacher told him, "You're a good writer" when he wasn't so sure about that himself. That man may go on to write books that could very well help change the world.

I am grateful to all of the people in my life who have expressed their confidence, their "faith" in me as well. It has helped me to be willing to persevere, even during the rough times, and now with this Clearer Understanding at least from my current point of view, I'm looking forward to "Spreading the Faith" to others!

The Role of Faith in Life and Love

I'm feeling excited today, the day after Valentine's Day. I took the day "off" yesterday, resting my legs as I've been on my bicycle for most days over the last month, and I needed the rest...but my mind and heart were still "busy".

During the course of my consideration of "Love as Effort", I shared the basic ideas with my friend, Ben Ralston. With regards to being willing to make the effort involved with "self-love", to be willing to do the "work" of self-understanding, etc., he responded as follows:

"I think there's a conundrum/paradox there, too. In order to make the effort towards working through our 'stuff' (so that we can be love and experience the peace you mention) there must be a certain amount of self-love, right? So what comes first, chicken or egg?"

Yesterday, I think I got the best "answer" I've had so far, and, again it is going to challenge some widely held beliefs.

First of all, even I have been tuned-in to and aware of the idea that "Love is the opposite of fear." Ben's video a while back about "How to Be Love" really spoke to that in me, as that is how I have been oriented in my own life for a long time now. However, other personal experiences at the time were beginning to challenge this idea, and those challenges eventually brought me to the conclusion that "Love" actually feels like Effort (the subject of the blog linked above). Nevertheless, I had to take seriously his question, "Which comes first?"

As I have continued to feel into and think about this, I have come to the following intuition/feeling/theory: Faith is what is necessary before we are willing to expend the Effort of Love. Faith may be naive or it may be rational, with the latter being the more mature and conscious of the two. Rational Faith takes Evidence into consideration, objective data, which is not always easy to obtain, especially where "projections" (of shadow, anima, and/or animus) are concerned.

Recall from this blog for instance:

"The anima not only interferes with a man's emotional reactions, she can interfere with his thinking as well.  For instance, when a man is anima-possessed he may begin to give forth opinions instead of genuine thinking.  It is as though the anima begins to talk right through him, and she expresses herself as though she had an animus, which means she expresses opinions without regard to facts, relationship, or logic.  When a man is in this state of mind he begins to argue in a peevish way, and his masculine objectivity is quite lost in a sea of emotionally toned and irrational opinions that prove resistant to reasonable discussion...

In summary, Sanford offers: "...[T]he anima can poison a man's consciousness and rob him of himself should he fall for her insinuations...a man can prevent the negative anima from having this destructive influence on him...by making her conscious." (Invisible Partners...Pp. 35-43).

However, once one becomes more "self-aware" by integrating shadow, anima and/or animus, one can also be more Objective in one's observations, and therefore more capable of Rational Faith - which can be an amazingly strong foundation for the Will to Love, the Desire to Expend energy on behalf of oneself, others, and the benefit of the World.

As Erich Fromm writes in The Art of Loving:

"The ability to love depends on one's capacity to emerge from narcissism, and from the incestuous fixation to mother and clan; it depends on our capacity to grow, to develop a productive orientation in our relationship toward the world and ourselves. This process of emergence, of birth, of waking up, requires one quality as a necessary condition: faith. The practice of the art of loving requires the practice of faith.

"What is faith? Is faith necessarily a matter of belief in God, or in religious doctrine? Is faith by necessity in contrast to, or divorced from, reason and rational thinking? Even to begin to understand the problem of faith one must differentiate between rational and irrational faith. By irrational faith I understand the belief (in a person or an idea) which is based on one's submission to irrational authority. In contrast, rational faith is conviction which is rooted in one's own experience of thought or feeling. Rational faith is not primarily belief in something, but the quality of certainty and firmness which our convictions have. Faith is a character trait pervading the whole personality, rather than a specific belief.

"Rational faith is rooted in productive intellectual and emotional activity. In rational thinking, in which faith is supposed to have no place, rational faith is an important component. How does the scientist, for instance, arrive at a new discovery? Does he start with making experiment after experiment, gathering fact after fact, without having a vision of what he expects to find?....

"....At every step from the conception of a rational vision to the formulation of a theory, faith is necessary: faith in the vision as a rationally valid aim to pursue, faith in the hypothesis as a likely and plausible proposition, and faith in the final theory, at least until a general consensus about its validity has been reached. This faith is rooted in one's own experience, in the confidence in one's power of thought, observation, and judgment. While irrational faith is the acceptance of something as true only because an authority [and don't forget parents in this category] or the majority say so, rational faith is rooted in an independent conviction based upon one's own productive observing and thinking, in spite of the majority's opinion.

"Thought and judgment are not the only realm of experience in which rational faith is manifested. In the sphere of human relations, faith is an indispensable quality of any significant friendship or love. 'Having faith' in another person means to be certain of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes, of the core of his personality, of his love. By this I do not mean that a person may not change his opinions, but that his basic motivations remain the same; that, for instance, his respect for life and human dignity is part of himself, not subject to change.

"In the same sense we have faith in ourselves. We are aware of the existence of a self, of a core in our personality which is unchangeable and which persists throughout our life in spite of varying circumstances, and regardless of certain changes in opinions and feelings. It is this core which is the reality behind the word 'I', and on which our conviction of our own identity is based. Unless we have faith in the persistence of our self, our feeling of identity is threatened and we become dependent on other people whose approval then becomes the basis for our feeling of identity. Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others, because only he can be sure that he will be the same at a future time as he is today, and therefore, that he will feel and act as he now expects to. Faith in oneself is a condition of our ability to promise, and since, as Nietzsche said, man can be defined by his capacity to promise, faith is one of the conditions of human existence. What matters in relation to love is the faith in one's own love; in its ability to produce love in others, and in its reliability." (Pp.112-114)

As, I have pointed out in the last blog, where "Love = Effort", one must have faith in one's capacity to exert effort in relationship to what one intends, what one "promises", and one must be pretty self-aware to know one's capacities and limitations, so as not to promise something one cannot give. At the same time, becoming self-aware often involves pushing oneself beyond one's limits in order to have a better sense of what those limits actually are. As an example, I know my plans for my bike trip have taken many twists and turns in the details, but I was able to stick to the "major objective" and reaching that objective (by completing my bike trip this summer) is still my "intention" and therefore, my "promise" to myself and others. I still have "faith" in myself and "faith" in the support of others as they have been supporting me from the beginning, and therefore, I am continuing to "make the effort" to reach that final goal.

I would also offer, however, that faith does play a major role in our willingness to persist in a relationship. Everyone comes into their relationships with a certain "vision" of how that relationship might evolve, what is potential in that relationship, and our expectations may be more or less appropriate. As I have pointed out in several previous blogs here, especially those concerning our expectations surrounding "romantic love" (here and here), so many of our expectations are in-appropriate, and un-reasonable. When our partners are unable to live up to those unreasonable expectations, when we become disappointed, then we "lose faith". We may "lose faith" in that particular partner, that particular relationship, and move on with "faith" in some future possibility, without ever re-evaluating our expectations. Or, we may, eventually "lose faith" altogether, and give up on ever finding satisfaction in an intimate relationship.

However, if we are wise, if we continue to have faith in ourselves and others, we may "make the effort" with each life experience to come to a better understanding of ourselves and of others. I am hoping with my writing here to help with that understanding because with better understanding Faith Can Be Renewed and with Renewed Faith we can be more motivated to Love - to continue to Make the Effort to learn and to grow in our relationships with ourselves and with others.

And that leads to another "equation" of sorts: Understanding --> (leads to) Rational Faith which --> The Will to Love (and Learn) which --> More Understanding which --> More Rational Faith which --> An Even Greater Will to Love, etc., etc.

For instance, I heard a broadcast of an interview with Alison Armstrong on Lisa Garr's "Aware Radio Show" the other day. I am still "processing", but I think I came away from that with just a little more understanding of men and women.

I am going to keep working on this consideration of the differences between men and women, as well as what is necessary to understand and to practice in order to have healthy, functional, satisfying interpersonal relationships. I guess you could say this has been a "core" focus of my life! Furthermore, because I have developed some Rational Faith in my ability to understand, and even to add, from my own "core", insights that have helped me and may also help others develop greater self- and other understanding, I am going to continue to make the effort to further my understanding, to put into practice what I learn, and to communicate to others.

And you can count on that!

So...What Does Love FEEL Like...For Real? - Update

In light of recent considerations, I would like to state that I no longer believe "oxytocin" is the "Love Hormone". Instead, I have come to identify it as the "Faith Hormone". We are willing to "commit" to relationships, either naively or rationally, based on our "faith" in those relationships. For instance, a mother and father will make the effort to care for their child, a very challenging and energy demanding endeavor, because they have faith that their efforts will be worthwhile, that their child will grow up to be healthy, happy, "successful", etc. (whatever the parents' ideas of "success" might be). The child will submit to be cared for, will respond positively (with smiles, etc.), in part based on the "faith" it develops in its parents as its basic needs are being met consistently. Erik Erikson suggests that the crisis of "Basic Trust vs. Basic Mistrust" is the very first crisis of human psychosocial development. It also happens to be that when a child is nursing, both the child and the mother experience elevated levels of oxytocin (see link below). (There is quite a bit of research out there on what happens when oxytocin does Not work properly. Here is one such study on its possible role in Autism and Asperger's.)

Am I just "mincing words" here? I don't think so. Towards the goal of becoming more fully "Self-Aware" as human beings, and given everything I have already written about here, especially with regards to the pitfalls of "Romantic Love" (see links below), and even as a burgeoning understanding and "awakening" in my own life, I know very directly how this is positively affecting me and my relationships, and I can only hope (or "have faith") that this "clarification" could have a positive effect on others as well, and that is why I am "making the effort" to write (and re-write) about it here.

For now though, I will leave the blog below intact. This forum is a "process" place for me and I have already realized how my perspectives and/or paradigms have shifted over the course of my posts here. But, I'm okay with others observing the process as well as the "conclusions" and "clarifications" along the way.

Now back to the original post...


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In previous blogs, especially Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love - Part II, and more recently, Reflections on Projections - Part 3, I have tried to present and support the idea that much of what we interpret as "feelings of love" are actually related more to spontaneously generated emotional/biochemical patterns. For instance, oxytocin is sometimes referred to as the "love hormone", as it plays a major part in "bonding" not only between mother and child, but later between adults who are looking to "mate". It so happens that dogs and other mammals also produce oxytocin, and that humans and animals bond with one another in part because of the mutual stimulation of oxytocin during their interactions. The bottom line is this: Oxytocin "feels good", and we tend to continue interacting with people who stimulate oxytocin production in us, making us "feel good" when we are around them. Of course, over time this "stimulating effect" may dissipate...significantly...and thus we "fall out of love" and move on to the next person who "stimulates" us.

Before I continue, I want to share from recent reading of A Guide for the Perplexed by E.F. Schumacher. In this book, Schumacher presents a consideration of "Four Great Levels of Being" as follows:

Level 1 = inanimate matter (i.e. elements) = no response ability, merely acted upon by external forces

Level 2 = plants = elements + life = limited response ability, interaction with sunlight and immediate environment

Level 3 = animals = elements + life + consciousness = greater response ability and some capacity for instinctually patterned manipulation of environment

Level 4 = humans = elements + life + consciousness + self-awareness (in varying degrees) = significantly expanded response ability and capacity for self-direction and manipulation of the environment*

What I would like to offer here is that when we are experiencing the "spontaneously generated emotional/biochemical patterns" that I refer to above, this is a biologically based experience; i.e. a "Level 3" experience. In most cases, it has nothing to do with Self-Aware Conscious Choice, i.e. Level 4 functioning. With regards to the production of oxytocin, we will bond with animals and they with us in much the same way we may bond with other human beings. In both cases, there is really no conscious effort involved.

And yet, to fulfill the possibility of our human nature, especially our capacity for Self-Awareness, and Self-Direction, we have to be capable of more than just a biologically-based, stimulus-response relationship to our environment and to each other. And that, my friends, takes Effort.

From my current point of view, that is actually what "Love" Feels Like; i.e. it feels like Effort. Furthermore, Life and Love "work" in much the same way.

Consider the following Basic Theory: Life = Love = Conscious Effort = Labor = Work = The "Counter Effort" to "Resistance" and/or "tendency" and/or "inertia" (biological and psychic patterns that tend to persist or play out in certain ways without conscious choice).

There are tendencies in the elements to be "flying apart" and yet there are forces that also counter those tendencies to help "hold them together". It takes a lot of "holding together" to make a molecule, even more, to make a cell, even more "holding together" to make a colony, etc., etc. This is the Integrative Quality of Life and I would also offer that it is the integrative quality of Real Love as well.

When Life manifests in a plant, it moves the plant to push up against the dirt that covers it as well as to sink its roots down into the ground. Life gives the animal the will to live, the will to seek out food and shelter, to expend its energy, to work, to survive, for as long as it can.

It is only in humans that the "Will of Life" (and Love) can be frustrated. It is only in humans that we encounter internal resistance to work, effort, and emotional/psychological growth. And even though biological growth will operate in many ways on its own, through poor diet, lifestyle, or environmental conditions we can thwart that as well.

As I have already suggested, part of the problem is that we have the capacity for "memory", self-reflective memory, that (apparently) is significantly different from that of other animals. We "remember" the experiences of "no effort" (in the womb), and "omnipotence"" (just outside of the womb). It is our brain's capacity for such "memory" and self-awareness that is part of our "problem". Other animals do not retain such "memories" as best we know. They do not imagine "going back to" those former states of "having all of their needs met with no effort of their own" or, in lieu of that, "being totally in control". They do not perceive "past" and they do not project into the "future". They live more moment to moment. Their consciousness, or conscious awareness is localized to the present moment.

With human birth comes biological shock and disequilibrium. As we grow and become more identified with (apparently) "separate self" we also come to the realization that we are Not Omnipotent (and neither are our parents); we are not "in control" as we "perceived" ourselves to be initially (and neither are they). As a consequence, we lose our sense of security. We feel completely vulnerable and helpless and we "react" to that.

I am beginning to suspect, that it is this "sense of" a profound loss of control that is one of the hardest "facts of incarnate life" that we have to face as human beings. Although there is probably a certain amount of "contraction" in response to the "vital shock" of birth, it will be compounded by our "reaction" to Not Being In Control of what we perceive to be "outside" of us and what we seem to remember having control over in the past (although it was only an Illusion). In my observation, much of life after this becomes, not necessarily a "struggle for power", as Thucydides describes it, but a "struggle for control", as it may (supposedly) give us a sense of security, which is not exactly the same. Power may be expressed in both positive and negative ways, but, so often, it is expressed in efforts to control others. (Of course, being no different from ourselves, others will also be trying to control us.)

It is also important to understand that part of our patterning almost invariably involves repressing aspects of ourselves and especially the full play of our emotions. For instance, if the only way I can control my mother's or father's attention (because as a child I sense that my life depends on it) is to "put on a happy face", to be "pleasing" to them, then I might repress my feelings of anger, fear, and frustration. Or, on the other hand, maybe my parents only pay attention to me when I am upset, so I repress my joy, and instead control them with my anger and temper tantrums. (Keep in mind though, children up to the age of seven or eight are not really "conscious" in the same sense as adults, as they are in varying degrees of what is referred to as a "hypnogogic state"; i.e. they are functioning as if they were under hypnosis, so they are merely patterning from a more biological place of "stimulus and response", even more so than adults. These "hypnogogic states" of infancy and early childhood are described more clearly in Bruce Lipton's book, The Biology of Belief.)

If our parents are overly permissive, we may become more domineering ourselves, and repress our own capacity for submission, even though, deep down inside, as children, we actually feel more secure when we have boundaries, when we are not left to "fend for ourselves" and/or to figure everything out for ourselves. Nevertheless, in our outward bravado, we are at the same time repressing our feelings of insecurity. On the other hand, our parents may be overly domineering and authoritative, and so we become submissive and, again, with no opportunities to practice being assertive, we are left to feel insecure about our abilities. In the most functional of circumstances, we grow up with appropriate boundaries, that still give us room to develop our own will and self-direction.

These examples are very general, but across the board, to the degree we have to respond to parental and social expectations, high or low, and most often, exaggerated and inappropriate, some parts of our true selves are going to get repressed. That "activity" starts early on, during the "hypnogogic" stages of early infancy and childhood. Consequently, it takes a great deal of self-awakening and self-awareness and conscious effort to first recognize and then overcome those patterns.

Finally, as Jung suggests, when we identify with ourselves as either "male" or "female" we start to repress the qualities of the opposite sex. This identification also starts to take place in early childhood (3-1/2 to 4-1/2 years of age), which is still during the "hypnogogic" period. So, again, lots of reactive/repressive activity going on there that gets quickly shunted into the subconscious, which means it is later available for (anima/animus) "projection", which is, again, an unconscious tendency.

However, if we are able to reach a certain point in our maturing process, we may come to realize that having control over others is not nearly as important (or ultimately satisfying) as having control over ourselves. In The Art of Loving Erich Fromm refers to this shift from "seeking love" to "giving love" or becoming a "producer of love". When we are able to recognize the deep psychic and biological state or activity of "self-contraction" in response to (apparent) separateness and (apparent) loss of control, then we can also learn to Feel Beyond that "pattern-patterning" and instead of directing our effort towards controlling others, and repressing ourselves, we can direct our effort more deliberately towards loving and accepting ourselves (i.e. becoming more Self-Aware) and loving and accepting others (i.e. becoming more Other-Aware).

Love of self includes the effort of self-understanding. This includes becoming aware of and more accepting of all those elements of oneself that are "tending" to be repressed or exaggerated; i.e. letting all of the balls come to the surface of the water. It means the effort of recognizing "projections" (shadow, anima, and animus) and re-integrating them into one's self-aware consciousness. Again, the work of "integration" is the work of Love (and Life). It also means recognizing one's needs and what one finds most meaningful in life, so that proper attention can be given to all of these aspects of "self".

The love of self includes the necessary effort of seeing to the normal and very real needs of one's physical body. In this regard, and for the most part, in this culture, love of self means working in order to earn money that is then used to buy food, clothing, and shelter. So that work is an effort of self-love. Resistance to such work is reciprocally, a resistance to loving oneself. If one is responsible for children, then working to earn money to pay for food, clothing, and shelter for them is also an expression of that love. Instead of buying food from the store, one could also work to grow a garden to provide food for oneself and/or others, but again, this "effort" would be an expression of one's love for oneself (and/or others). Included in the love of self and taking care of one's body is the effort of getting regular exercise, and since we have successfully managed to reduce physical effort in so many other areas of our lives, it takes even more Deliberate Effort in this culture to meet the body's natural need for physical activity and effort.

Possibly most important of all is the effort of understanding others. It is within the closest of our interpersonal spheres that so much of what is repressed "comes up" and out and is "projected" and/or exaggerated. It can provoke our "reactivity" on the deepest levels, and yet -- Every effort made to move beyond such "reactivity" and "projection" and "tendency" is an Effort of Love.

To "fall in love" does not take effort, whether it is "falling in love" with a potential mate, or "falling in love" with one's children. In both cases, the real effort is in coming to a full understanding of the other person as they are, and supporting them in more fully realizing whatever human potential lies within them for their own sake, and not just as a means of controlling that potential as it might serve our needs.

This plays out in the interpersonal sphere, and it plays out in the greater culture as well. I think the main thing I want to make a connection to is the idea that work and effort are rooted in love, they are love expressing itself. And as Fromm also suggests, being able to "concentrate" one's effort produces the highest quality product.

If you look at what has happened with "mass production" culture it has effectively diminished one's opportunity for intensive work. Trust me, I know, it does not take that much effort to sit at a sewing machine and produce the same action over and over again. It does, however, take much more effort to sew a single garment that fits properly. The difference in Quality is very, very clear.

We have tried in so many ways to "make life easier" - but, that means we don't have to work as hard and therefore (if my theory holds), we don't have to Love as Deeply, and - surprise, surprise - we are stalled in our development, and many feel the "meaninglessness" of it all. We are frustrated in life and in love. Many people keep expecting either some "Apocalyptic End" or (spontaneous) "Metaphysical Shift". In either case, there's not supposed to be a lot of Real Effort involved in Solving the Problems of Human Existence.

At the beginning of Chapter 2 of The Art of Loving Fromm suggests, "Love [is] the Answer to the Problem of Human Existence". Substitute "Effort" for "Love" and I'd say the sentence makes just as much, if not more sense. It really is going to take A Lot of Human Effort to solve the problems currently facing all of us. For instance, how many (more) people are willing to forego the convenience of their automobiles and Make the Effort to, say, Ride a Bicycle instead? How many potential parents are willing to forego endless nights of passively watching television and Actually Read A Book on Child Development (or Several Books), before making the Conscious Decision to conceive and raise a child? How many individuals are willing to spend time and effort coming to a better understanding of themselves, of becoming more Fully Self-Aware as an ordinary human being? How many people are willing to make the effort to feel beyond their "reactivity", to recognize and re-integrate their "projections", to recognize when they have become anima or animus possessed, and to learn to have more functional relationships with their "significant others"?

When are we going to appreciate that the Efforts of Love and Life are Actually Present All Around Us? From the seedling reaching for the sun, to the rodent gathering seeds to eat. From the mother who cares for and nurtures her child, while also overcoming her tendencies to hold-on or control. From the worker who gives their full attention to the task at hand, who takes pride in doing the very best job he or she can, to the lover who gives their full attention to knowing and understanding their partner, not as a means to manipulate and control, but because they understand their partner's need to be seen and understood for who they are as an ordinary human being.

I will offer, that the potential of this "Fourth Level of Being" has not yet been fully realized, in fact, we've barely begun to scratch the surface. And yet, there is great contentment in the Feeling of Being - Fully Self-Aware, even if it does take A Lot of Effort to get there!

To You, my readers, I say: Thank you for all of your Efforts...and Thank You for taking the time, and Making the Effort, to read this blog. I hope my Efforts in writing it will help keep us all moving in the direction of fully reaching our potential as Human Beings having a Human Experience!

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*Schumacher also suggests there may be a Fifth Level of Being, that of being "perfectly self-aware", and "perfectly self-directed", etc. I will acknowledge, that such a One may actually already exist, that it is the Divine Self in which and from which all and All arises. However, I am no longer inclined to think that we should be striving to Be That One, to attain Perfect Self-Awareness ourselves, necessarily. I think to become a fully Self-Aware Ordinary Human Being is Good Enough. Furthermore, this is the "Level of Being" that has yet to be fully stabilized in the course of evolution on this planet. There are many conscious human beings here, but the degree of Self-Awareness and Self-Direction varies considerably from one person to another. In other words, there is plenty of room for improvement, without making "perfection" or "union with the Divine" our goal. In fact, to make "union" our goal denies the reality of Always Already Present Prior Unity. Consequently, I have begun to hold such "efforts" suspect in part because they could also be a "grasping" for the experience of our earlier pre-natal and post-natal emotional/biochemical states, rather than a functional acceptance and "working within" the actual limitations and actual possibilities of human "Level 4" existence. If there is "Oneness" to be "obtained", then let it be the "Oneness" of fully integrated consciousness within Each of Us as Individual Human Beings, because that is what we are really experiencing ourselves to be. So, why not intensify our efforts to figure out what That is all about?

Reflections on Projections - Part 3

In The Art of Loving author Erich Fromm has the following to say about "Love Between Parent and Child":

"The infant, at the moment of birth, would feel the fear of dying, if a gracious fate did not preserve it from an awareness of the anxiety involved in the separation from mother, and from intra-uterine existence.  Even after being born, the infant is hardly different from what it was before birth; it cannot recognize objects, it is not yet aware of itself, and of the world as being outside of itself.  It only feels the positive stimulation of warmth and food, and it does not yet differentiate warmth and food from its source: mother.  Mother is warmth, mother is food, mother is the euphoric state of satisfaction, and security. This state is one of narcissism, to use Freud's term.  The outside reality, persons, and things, have meaning only in terms of their satisfying or frustrating the inner state of the body.  Real is only what is within; what is outside is real only in terms of my needs-never in terms of its own qualities or needs." (P. 38)

From my current point of view, I do not entirely agree with what Fromm has communicated here.  Given that this book was published in the mid 1950's there was still much to be learned through medical science with regards to the  level of awareness or "perception" that an infant might actually have; for instance, that they do actually "perceive" a great deal while still in the womb, and they may feel a great deal of anxiety surrounding the "vital shock" of birth (not to mention circumcision).  In addition, I am more inclined to agree with James Fowler when he writes in Stages of Faith, speaking in the "voice" of Jean Piaget that, "If the psychoanalysts speak of this phase as characterized by feelings of narcissistic omnipotence in the child, we must say it is a narcissism without Narcissus.  As yet there is no 'self' and no 'other'." (P. 53)

That there is some perception in the child of their "needs" is indicated by the fact that when the child is feeling uncomfortable - either hungry, or tired, or overstimulated, or in need of a clean diaper - they will cry, in order to have that discomfort relieved. And, when the appropriate response comes, the child returns to a calmer state.  I see no reason why, fairly early on, the child would not start to develop some sense of its own power, and an understanding of the cause and effect relationship between crying and receiving comfort.  That there is not necessarily a clear recognition of an "other" providing that comfort doesn't really matter.  That "mystery" does not have to be solved just yet.  What matters is that the child's discomfort is alleviated, and, as Fromm states, this may hold some kind of "meaning" for the child.  However, if the appropriate response does not come consistently and in a reasonable amount of time, the child is likely to become even more anxious, or it may, eventually, learn to repress its anxiety, even though the end result is a deepening feeling of insecurity and powerlessness.

In several previous blogs here I have considered the possibility that all of our incarnated life experiences carry with them analogous emotional-biochemical patterns or "signatures", if you will. For instance, our physical bodies experience a certain pattern of emotional-biochemicals when we are in the womb where "all of our needs are being met with no effort of our own".  I have suggested that our ideas of "heaven" are projected/reflections of the latent memory of this particular "in the womb" state.  Once we are born, especially in the first six to eight months of life, we are in a state where we experience a feeling of "omnipotence" as described above.  We feel we have "power over" our experience, without recognizing the individuality or individual needs of our parents or other caregivers.  If, as Fromm suggests, there is "meaning" to be derived from the experience of "suffering/crying/feeling relieved" it may be rooted in biology as much as psychology; i.e. there are biochemical patterns associated with all of these states, and with their patterning in relationship to one another. There may also be reciprocal emotional-biochemical states generated in the parent or caregiver.

In the best case scenario, parents will recognize and respect the fact that their children are not in a position to consciously understand, let alone meet any of the parents' physical or emotional needs. As Bruce Lipton points out in The Biology of Belief, up until seven or eight years old, children are in various degrees of a "hypnogogic" state, so they are not relating to the world with the same kind of "consciousness" as adults. However, many parents are not mature, fully conscious, mentally and emotionally healthy and, consequently, they may have expectations of the infant and child that are not appropriate or realistic. However, my deeper observation/insight, as you will see, is that even under the influence of that "hypnogogic state", the child may have perceptions and expectations of the parents that are unavoidable and equally unrealistic and inappropriate.

However, before I continue I feel I must preface what follows by saying: I love and respect all of you who are reading this.  I know that everyone is doing the very best they can to express love in this world, parents to their children, children to their parents, and adults to each other. I am also doing my very best in this area.

At the same time, I am conscious of the persistent frustration that so many of us experience in all of these relationships; the frustration of True Love rather than Its Satisfaction.  What has proceeded this blog and what follows is my contribution to the ongoing dialogue concerning why we keep "missing the mark".  It is based on my own observation/realization and is not meant to carry with it any weight of "judgment" on my part towards others - towards parents, or towards ourselves as adults who were once children.

In effect, I am trying to (gently) "bring the ball to the surface" - a "ball" that we have otherwise been repressing, both individually and collectively; i.e. I think, deep down inside, most people already know something is just not quite right in the way we are "loving" one another.  In previous blogs I have focused on what I felt was "not right" about the "romantic love" between adult intimate partners, "love" that is the result of "mutual projection" of the man's anima onto a woman and the woman's animus onto a man.  In my most recent blog, I focused on the sometimes painful results of anima and animus "possession"; i.e. what happens when these "Invisible Partners" take over the consciousness of their respective man or woman and, through them, start to quarrel with each other, and "hurt" each other (and by association, their "hosts").  Now, I am going to offer my explanation for what I feel is currently not right with our understanding of love between ourselves and our parents and/or children.  Granted, I feel it is no small task to say to a doting mother or father, "Uh, that feeling you're having in relationship with your child...that's not really 'love'"...but, in effect, that is part of what I am about to do here.

I will state for the record: Although I am not a mother myself, I have been a child and a student of child development for many, many years now. Furthermore, in preparation for this posting, I took the time to discuss what I am describing below with two mothers that I do know, to allow them to confirm or challenge my ideas.  Apart from that, I have other sources that support my basic premise which is as follows: Parents "fall in love with" their children, especially in the early days after birth. In fact, it is only in rare cases, maybe due to some malfunction of oxytocin production, that this does not occur. For the nursing mother especially, it is biologically normal at this stage for her to form a very close bond with her child and I am going to suggest it is partly what keeps her motivated to endure the rather extreme demands of the early postnatal infant.

In Part 2 of this series I explained how, according to M. Scott Peck writing in The Road Less Traveled, "falling in love" is the "spontaneous and effortless collapse of ego boundaries" between two people that promotes a feeling of "oneness", that, on a biological level, encourages mating, and therefore, encourages reproduction and perpetuation of the species. As I have restated above, from the point of view of John Sanford and Carl Jung, "falling in love" is at least in part the result of "mutual projection of anima and animus in their most positive forms".

My question is this:  Is there really any significant difference between the experience of "falling in love" with one's children and "falling in love" with a potential mate, biologically OR psychologically?  In other words, if there is an effect of "mutual projection" at work in the latter case, why would there not be the same effect in the former?  If "falling in love" is "effortless"; i.e. it is a "spontaneous collapse of ego boundaries that promotes pair bonding",  and, therefore, "perpetuation and survival of the species", then how can we really view "Parental Love" as any more Truly Loving than "Romantic Love" given it also involves a relative absence of ego boundaries between the parent and the child and helps to perpetuate the species by increasing the infant's chances for survival (via the "oneness" the mother feels with her offspring)? In other words, is there any more Conscious Choice involved when a parent "falls in love with" their child than when an adult "falls in love with" another adult?

Again, I am not myself a mother, but the two mothers I spoke to did confirm this "falling in love" experience with their children. Given what I do know about "falling in love" as an adult, I can imagine the following: As soon as a child is born, and maybe even prior to birth, parents may be Full of Ideas about how that child is going to be, how their relationship with that child is going to unfold.  They may be full of Great Expectations that are, in effect, a Projection/Reflection of more (or less) conscious aspects of themselves - their hopes, their dreams, and even their own Needs for Love. But what is so important to realize here is that...these ideas have Nothing Whatsoever to do with what may actually be potential in that child as an individual.  They have nothing to do with the parents Actual Knowledge of their child As an Individual (Ordinary) Human Being. Children are born as total strangers to their parents in exactly the same way that romantic lovers are often total strangers to each other prior to that moment of "falling in love".

And, the pattern that so often unfolds between parents and their children is all too often parallel to what unfolds between adults who have "fallen in love": Everything is fine and wonderful until one or the other party FAILS to live up to the other's expectations.

Adults can only carry "projections" from and for each other for so long before, inevitably, the "projections" (positive or negative) are either spontaneously withdrawn, or are "broken through" by the true nature of the individuals themselves. Likewise, some parents can be very "loving" towards their infant children, but then they start to struggle as soon as the child begins to show signs of individuation - as soon as the child starts to try to assert Its Own Will, its own desires and preferences, that may or may not align with the parent's expectations/projections.

I encourage everyone reading this to pause for a moment and really let this sink in...

We may not all be parents, but we have all been children. And I can almost guarantee that Most of us have felt like we have Failed to Live Up to Our Parents Expectations on some level.  That we were never Really Seen for who we were and/or Really Loved for who we were.

But, guess what, It's a Two-Way Street...

Remember what I said earlier here, and in Part 2 of this series: "Falling in Love" involves Mutual Projection.  Furthermore, both sets of projections are exaggerated versions of the unconscious contents that are being projected.  What I am trying to shed light on here is that...it is not only the Parents who are doing the "projecting" - it is The Child as well.

And what does the Child "project":  First of all, as I have suggested above, it is feeling, deep down inside, that it is "Omnipotent" and "All Powerful". So it is logical to assume, and based on the child's decidedly limited experience to the contrary, that it will see its parents or caregivers as being "All Powerful" as well. For instance, the child might think/feel:  "I am being loved by an Infinite Being who is there to take care of all of my needs...on demand."  "My mother/father are an amazing Goddess/God there to shower love and blessings upon me." Furthermore, "This is their sole purpose in life; i.e. to meet my needs, because being a Goddess/God, they have no needs of their own." And, of course, "I, in turn will, through my smile, radiate my infinite love back to them, for I too am infinite and all powerful"...(...except when I am tired, or hungry, or wet and then I really need these other Beings to take care of me)"...!

Consequently, when the child does start to "individuate"; when the child starts to sense itself as "separate" from its environment and separate from its mother and father, not only does it lose a sense of its own "omnipotence",  it also starts to sense the limitations of its parents.  It starts to sense that they are not the "goddess" or "god" that they thought they were, and it is no surprise that The Child Can Become Very Disappointed By Both of these realizations - of its personal limitations and the limitations of its parents.  Not surprisingly, this disappointment will start to show in its emotional "acting out" and "resistant" behavior.

Of course, this change in behavior in the child, from relative calm and compliance to frequent bouts of crying and resistance provokes similar disappointment in the parents. And, I'm sorry to say, if the parents are unconscious of what is actually going on, which, I suspect is pretty common in our experience (and even throughout the history of human culture), then The Positive Projections are Replaced With Negative Ones, by Both Parents AND Their Children.  The parent starts to see the child in a negative (and probably exaggerated) light, and the child also starts to see the parent in a negative (and probably exaggerated) light. 

One of the sad truths about this state of affairs is that, regardless of who has disappointed whom, because of the child's very real dependency on the parents for its survival, the perceived "threat" in these now seemingly "inadequate" parents is going to be taken much more seriously by the child.  It is no wonder they may be inclined towards intense emotional outbursts, extremely resistant or extremely compliant behavior. They are going to do whatever they feel they have to do to survive, and that also means, to a very great degree, figuring out how to regain the control they thought they had to begin with.

Although Fromm suggests that our feelings of "separateness" and "aloneness" are what drive us to seek "union" with others, I do not agree with this point of view. I think what disturbs us most at this point in our lives is not a "feeling of separateness", it is our sense of Losing Control over that which we originally thought we had control.  Again, this is a Mutual Experience: Because of the child's inherently dependent state, the parent ultimately has control over the child (even "god-like" control)...until... the child develops some capacity for self-expression and autonomy.  Where, initially, the child does not make a clear distinction between itself and others and it feels as though it is a power unto itself; i.e. it feels like it is actually the one "in control"...later it begins to perceive otherwise, later it starts to recognize there are "others" over which it has only very, very little, if any, actual control.

My Guru, Adi Da Samraj, focused a great deal of his Teaching on the "Activity of Self-Contraction".  He described this as being the root of our "separative" behavior.  In other words, we are not fundamentally "separate" from anyone or anything else.  But in our reaction to this perceived separateness - and, (I am adding here) a perceived loss of control, we "pull away" from others, we "avoid" relationship with this frightening reality of our existence.  And it is in this "contracted" state of "avoidance", that we feel the most fundamental suffering.  Once this becomes a part of our patterning (and remember, this is not just going to be "psychic" or psychological, but also biochemical patterning) we then begin to seek to relieve or distract ourselves from that suffering in any number of ways available to us as children and as adults.

Again, I do not agree with Fromm's assumption that it is our Actual Separateness that is driving us to seek "union". The suffering comes from something we are doing to ourselves. It is an "activity", and we start doing that activity very early in our lives. Consequently, we will start to look for ways to relieve the "tension" of that "self-contracting activity" very early in our lives as well, and even throughout our lives if we do not come to a better understanding of what is actually going on and who is actually responsible for it.

Adi Da wrote a small booklet entitled "I Call You to Overcome the 'Oedipal' Sufferings of Childhood"; in which he basically says:  As adults, at some point in our lives, we have to get over our reaction to our sense of having not been loved (or loved adequately) by our parents as justification for our own refusal to love others. In other words, at some point in our lives we have to assume conscious responsibility for our own loving, or capacity to love, rather than continuing to merely seek love from others, and then "punishing" them with our lovelessness when they too, almost inevitably, fail to live up to our expectations.  

Furthermore, he considers the classic Freudian stance that, early in childhood development, when we are first becoming aware of ourselves sexually, we (generally) become "fixated" on the opposite sexed parent as a "love object".  Typically, little girls will imagine themselves "marrying Daddy", and little boys will imagine themselves "marrying Mommy". However, for obvious reasons, such a desire cannot be fulfilled, and, furthermore, as the child observes the emotional/sexual love communicated between the parents, they themselves end up feeling "betrayed".  

Taken in the light of understanding "mutual projection", this makes even more sense.  The projections made by the child may be more generalized to both parents at first, because they are not able to distinguish "individuality" much at all in the first six to eight months of life.  However, when they start to become aware of themselves sexually, they also start to become more aware of the differences between "Mommy" and "Daddy".  They start to identify themselves as "male" or "female", and, as discussed earlier in this blog series, once they identify with one sex or the other, the opposite becomes repressed, and once that happens it becomes available for Projection onto one or the other parent.  So little boys will "project" their anima onto their mothers and little girls will "project" their animus onto their fathers.  

One thing that I did not emphasize in my previous posts is that: Once positive "projection" occurs, then the desire for "union with the other" arises (which is actually a desire for re-union with this projected part of ourselves). However, since the process of projection is unconscious we interpret this feeling as a desire for union with the other person who has now become the carrier or container of our anima or animus respectively.

Sanford explains it this way:

"Like all archetypes, the anima and animus have positive and negative aspects.  That is, sometimes they appear to be highly desirable and attractive, and sometimes destructive and infuriating.  In this they resemble the gods and goddesses who could shower mankind with gifts, but could also turn on mankind destructively. If the positive aspect of the anima image is projected by a man onto a woman, she then becomes highly desirable to him. She fascinates him, draws him to her, and seems to him to be the source of happiness and bliss. A woman who carries this projection for a man readily becomes the object of his erotic fantasies and sexual longings, and it seems to the man that if he could only be with her and make love to her he would be fulfilled.  Such a state we call falling or being in love." (Pp. 13-14)

Although the infant son's closer bond with the mother may intensify the "Oedipal" experience for him, essentially the same pattern arises for girls in relationship with their fathers, and for women in relationship with men onto whom they have projected their animus. The fact that mothers are usually able to spend more time with their children than fathers may also prolong or intensify the son's fixation on the mother as a sexual object.

Of course, as long as the unconscious contents remain projected, the only way to accomplish and/or perpetuate "union" with the other person and, thereby, "re-union" with one's projection, is either by having control over the other person or letting them have control over you. 

And yet, no matter what children may be thinking about their parents in these early stages of development, what is going to be true in (almost) every case is that Their Desires for "union" with Mother or Father are Going to Be Frustrated...or...there is going to be some terrible emotional/psychological  price to pay.  For instance, I feel I have to qualify this statement with the word "almost" to allow for those rare cases when the parent does actually engage in a sexual relationship with the child, and the child is actually quite traumatized by the experience. (Although, in the context of what I am sharing here, I feel it may be possible to better understand why this might happen in spite of all of the cultural taboos surrounding parent/child incest, the discussion deserves much deeper consideration than I can give it at this time, in this particular blog.)

Our perpetual experience and "projection" of the "frustrated love" we have experienced as children can, again, be seen all around us in modern media.  I have not seen very many "horror" movies, but of the few that I have seen, I can easily recall how many times two young people were in the midst of sexual embrace when one or the other or both are murdered by some evil character.  In addition, "Love stories" almost always involve either intense "Happy Ever After" love or intense "Frustrated" love, neither of which speak to the possibility of rather ordinary, day to day, love between two ordinary human beings.

Keep in mind though: children are experiencing everything more intensely partly because they perceive that their very lives are depending on their ability to "unite" with their parents; i.e. with their ability to regain and/or perpetuate (seeming) control over their parents.  And to the degree they fail to do that, i.e. to the degree they fail to control their parents energy and attention (which, given their dependent stature, is likely to happen regularly), the fear, anxiety, disappointment, etc. that they feel is more than likely going to be repressed to a greater or lesser degree.  Anything that gets repressed a) becomes available for "projection", and b) is going to be exaggerated once "projection" takes place.  The movie "Fatal Attraction" comes to mind, where, "death" is the alternative to "not getting union with the object of one's 'love'".  The song, "I Can't Live, If Living Is Without You" also comes to mind, among many, many other examples of how these childhood fears and longings have been "projected" and perpetuated in modern (supposedly) "adult" media culture.

As I pointed out in Part 1 of this series, in these stories we are seeing "projections" of our "projections", exaggerations of exaggerations of our unconscious inner experiences.  And, yes, although they may reflect a great deal about our actual experiences; i.e. they may reflect something back to us of the consequences of our "repressing" and then "projecting" in the first place, they also speak only to the cases in which we persist in relating UN-consciously with ourselves and with each other.

Furthermore, if part of the greatest purpose of "being human" is also to Become Fully Conscious as individuals, to "bring all the balls to the top of the water" -  to be in conscious relationship with our "inner man" or "inner woman", all of our emotions, as well as our thoughts and judgments - then to the degree we fail to do that, it is appropriate that we will not feel completely fulfilled as individuals, and love will be frustrated in our relationships with others, especially our relationships with our intimate partners and with our parents and children.

For it is with "intimate partners" that the most profound projections are likely to take place.  It is with "intimate partners" that we are most likely to become anima or animus "possessed". It is with intimate partners that we are most likely to be both emotionally and physically/sexually vulnerable. And, consequently, it is with intimate partners that we are most likely to experience the most painful effects of our failing to relate consciously.

Unfortunately, as I am also trying to communicate here, that is not the only context in which True Love is frustrated by our unconsciousness.  It is also being frustrated in the relationships between parents and their children.  To the degree that parents and children "project" onto one another the exaggerated images and ideals that arise from their own unconscious, along with their inappropriate expectations, we are almost always perceived as failing one another. This perceived failure of love, further justifies the failure to love, which further justifies retreat into unconsciousness, which only leads to More of the Same patterning, generation after generation. 

In order to "turn the tide" it is up to us to learn to accept and respect the individual humanity, the Ordinary Humanity, of every child and every parent.  It is up to us, as adult men and women, to accept and respect the individual humanity, the Ordinary Humanity of every woman and every man.  It is up to each of us as individuals to learn to accept and respect every aspect of ourselves, as Ordinary Human beings, our capacity for deep feeling as well as our capacity for rational thinking, our love needs, and those things which are most meaningful to us.  It is up to us to take the time to get to know one another, to be slow to "judge the book by its cover", to appreciate that we are all slogging through a swamp of projections within our culture and it is nearly impossible for any of us to come through without our True Identities being a bit muddied by all of it!  Finally, it is up to us to make Conscious Choices to love one another, to recognize and meet each other's "love needs", as appropriate, for the various "levels of relationship" that are possible in all of the contexts and possibilities of Ordinary Human interactions, including those between parents and children.

As I have communicated in my previous blog, there are ways that we have begun to overcome some of these patterns, even without this framework of understanding concerning anima and animus, possession, and projection. Nevertheless, I genuinely believe that progress towards greater consciousness and expressions of True Love between Ordinary Human Beings might be significantly accelerated if more people could become aware of what I have shared here.  Even in the act of consideration and writing about this I have been profoundly affected by what I have come to realize. As some would understand it, I am experiencing a "radical paradigm shift", Really Radical, and I do not believe it is completely over yet!

(And here I thought riding my bicycle across the country was going to be an "adventure"!?!)

I don't know about you, but there is a voice in my head that has been asking: "Lori, do you really understand the implications of what you are communicating here? Do you see how you're challenging so many long-held beliefs? Do you realize there are going to be people who won't like you for saying these things? Are you sure you know what you're talking about?" (And maybe that's my potentially more judgmental animus speaking to my more intuitive feminine side?) And to that voice I would have to answer: "Yes. I am feeling the implications in my own life, in this moment, as well as the implications for others, but I cannot let myself be afraid of what others might think to such an extent that I do not communicate what I feel is mine to communicate. I am still in the process of considering all of this myself right now, so I do not know what else I have yet to discover or realize.  Furthermore, I do not know how these ideas are going to trigger insights in others as time goes by. So, in that case, I really do not know what all the implications might be for what I am communicating here...and I am okay with that."

But my feminine intuition is telling me, this is pretty big.  I'm just trying not to lose my head over all of it.  I'm trying to stay as grounded as I can, and, more than anything, I am simply trying to apply what I am understanding by Staying Conscious. I am focused on the idea that I am, like all of you, in the end, an Ordinary Human Being, composed of both feminine and masculine elements, with the capacity and need for true love, and with the capacity for rational thinking and insight, all of which I am capable of being fully conscious (even though it may be particularly challenging at times).

Furthermore, rather than struggling to Be In Control, especially to Be in Control of others, I am instead relaxing into simply Being Myself, relaxing into simply Being Love...

Nothing more...but also...nothing less.

I welcome your comments and questions.

(P.S. I really wanted to put links at several points in this post, but given the time limitations right now and the quirkiness of this platform, I am going to refrain until I have a better internet connection.)

Regarding Anima and Animus "Possession"

Before I continue with my "Reflections on Projections" series, I feel motivated to provide something of a "homework assignment" for the weekend.  What follows is mostly a verbatim transcription of significant portions of Chapter 2 of Invisible Partners by John Sanford.  If you have not been inspired by my other writing to get a copy of Invisible Partners yourself, then my providing this material will save you the trouble, for now.  However, it is not a complete transcription and I may or may not continue with a complete review of the book in this blog, so you may still want to get a copy yourself at some point, if you're interested.

Nevertheless, from my point of view, what follows is really at the Heart of the "Problems" with the anima and animus.  Not that it is All Bad.  When related to properly, the anima and animus make up a very important part of our individual character; but they are, at the same time, just a Part of who we are.  When they become exaggerated in us due to a lack of inner relationship, if we are not fully conscious of them so that they become projected, or they take over, i.e. they "possess" our consciousness and we begin to think they actually are "who we are", that's when the "problems" arise.  Without ongoing awareness and understanding, in other words, if these characters remain invisible to us, then, in effect, there is "hell to pay", and as I have been alluding to, we will miss out on other potential opportunities of more direct, conscious, and loving relationships with one another.

Granted, this is a particular "framework" for understanding certain phenomena that many, if not most, human beings have experienced, to one degree or another.  I have found it particularly useful in my own life as a way to better understand myself and others; i.e. to understand why we act the way we do and say the things we say.  Maybe, more importantly, it has helped me to understand that, for the most part, people really do not want to hurt one another. I know I do not want to hurt the people I care about.  However, when the anima and animus get "triggered", for whatever reasons, then it seems to me at this point, pain and suffering in relationship are soon to follow; sometimes even very serious pain and suffering.  However, if one of the possible "goals" of being human is to become Fully Conscious, then it seems appropriate that there would be negative consequences for when we are not being Fully Conscious.

Furthermore, I have been wondering how anima or animus "possession" might relate to more violent expressions of mental illness. I would like to think if more people understood these "Invisible Partners" and could come into better conscious relationship with these parts of themselves, in fact, with all parts of themselves, then maybe future events like the recent catastrophe at Sandy Hook might be avoided. 

So towards the goal of Peace through better Understanding, I offer the following from Chapter 2 of Invisible Partners:

First of all, what happens when a man becomes "possessed" by his anima.  Sanford writes:

"In the case of the anima, it is she who lies behind a man's moods.  When a man is possessed by the anima he is drawn into a dark mood, and tends to become sulky, overly sensitive, and withdrawn. A poisonous atmosphere surrounds him, and it is as though he is immersed in a kind of psychological fog. He ceases to be objective or related, and his masculine stance is eroded by peevishness.  If a man argues or writes in this frame of mind, this peevishness and poison will certainly emerge.  In writing,  the influence of the anima can be seen in sarcasms, innuendos, irrelevancies, and poisonous jabs that reveal a subjective, personalistic bias and detract from the objective quality of the work.  A man in the grip of the anima acts for all the world like an inferior kind of woman who is upset about something and that, in fact, is exactly what he has within himself.

"Such a mood may fall on a man in an instant.  A seemingly chance remark from someone, a slight, an almost unnoticed disappointment, and suddenly a man may be in a mood.  Astonishingly enough, men almost invariably fail to note that something from within themselves has suddenly possessed them, that a mood has fallen on them and gripped them, and that the event has been quite autonomous.  Such moods may simply make the man a bit grouchy or out of sorts for a while, or they may become dangerously dark.  If the moods are chronic they may lead a man into alcoholism or severe depression.  Under certain circumstances, an intense anima mood may plunge a man into such a feeling of hopelessness that he commits suicide....

"If you can get to the bottom of a man's mood you will find that something has gone wrong, but the man may hardly realize what it is.  It may be that his inner woman does not like what the man is doing.  For instance she may not like his work because it drains her of life and energy, or it may keep her from her fulfillment in life.  It is as though the man's inner woman and the woman's inner man, also need to be fulfilled in life, but the only way they can be fulfilled is through the kind of life their outer man or outer woman leads.  Imagine a woman who is denied her proper scope in life, who is forced to endure a way of life that leaves her no room for her emotions or her own creative powers.  Such a woman would, naturally, become dissatisfied and her displeasure would be felt in the bad atmosphere she would create.  It is exactly this way with the anima if she does not have enough share in the man's life.

"But the negative anima mood may also be a function of a relationship.  For example, a man may get thrown into this mood when his feelings have been hurt.  Someone has ignored him, given him a nasty verbal thrust, or rejected him in some way and he is hurt and angry.  When the man is hurt, if he were to express his feelings directly he would be all right--he would not go into a mood.  If it is his wife who has hurt his feelings, for instance, and if he were to say to her, 'That really made me angry when you said that,' he would be himself and would not become possessed by the anima; he would not fall into a mood about it. But if the man does not express his feelings, they fall into the unconscious, and the anima gets them.  [As I have suggested previously, this is the equivalent of "pushing the balls under the water".]  The anger that the man did not express directly is taken over by the anima, who turns it into resentment; in fact, resentment in a man is always a sign of the anima at work.  In the hands of the anima this unexpressed and unresolved anger smolders, burns, and eats away at him, and is expressed indirectly by 'passive-aggressive' moods, and behavior.  It is always ready to erupt into flames; then the man does not have his anger,  it has him.  He is possessed by rage, and his anger is in constant danger of becoming a terrible affect, for it is as though the anima stands poised to drop her flaming match into the waiting can of gasoline, and the man will erupt in an engulfing and uncontrolled emotion.

"Jung noted that the anima can be seen to be at work wherever emotions and affects are at work in a man.  He wrote, 'She intensifies, exaggerates, falsifies, and mythologizes all emotional relationships with his work and with other people of both sexes.' (Jung, CW9, 1, p. 70.) The antidote for this, as has been mentioned, is for the man to know what he is feeling and become capable of expressing this in relationship. [This would be the equivalent of "keeping all the balls on the water".]  This keeps his emotion out of the clutches of the anima, and, moreover, satisfies her that the correct thing is being done with whatever it is that has wounded or aroused him.  The anima does not necessarily want to carry the man's emotional life for him, she gets it by default.  It is as though she says, 'Why don't you say something about that irritating thing that so-and-so has just done to you! If you don't do something about it, I will.'  We can say that if something has gone wrong in an emotionally significant relationship the anima will grouse about it until the man straightens it out, or comes to terms with his emotions in some proper way. 

[And that includes emotions that may have very deep roots in childhood experiences.  Something I will be discussing further, probably in my next blog.]

"Unfortunately, many men have difficulty expressing their feelings.  Men tend to like their relationships to be smooth, easy, and comfortable.  They are reluctant to get into emotionally toned discussions or difficult issues.  They want 'peace and quiet' and want their women to maintain a pleasant atmosphere and not bring up distressing matters.  But, as we have just seen, if matters of relationship are ignored they simply get worse, and when a man consistently denies his feelings, and fails to relate them to the people in his life, he becomes a chronically moody, resentful, anima-ridden man.  Then it is as though a witch has gotten him, for he has become identical with his moods.

"If a man becomes capable of expressing his feelings, not only does he keep emotional matters out of the clutches of the anima, he also becomes a much more developed person. A man who always avoids emotionally toned encounters with other people is contained within the Mother. One way for him to get out of his Mother complex is to express himself in relationship. If he fails to do so he remains emotionally a little boy who is afraid of women, who resents them if they don't keep him happy, and who is out of touch with his own masculine strength.

"Men are often reluctant to bring up unpleasant things that have happened in a relationship with a woman because they are afraid of her anger, or their own anger, or they are afraid they will be rejected, or they are afraid of pain....

"If a man is afraid of his woman's anger it often goes back to the little boy in him.  Watch a small boy when mother becomes angry at him!  See how unpleasant it is for him, and how many little boys will be terribly hurt, and want to do whatever they can to appease mother so things will be good again, or, if they are more robust, will spew out boyish defiance so as not to be overwhelmed by their own hurt feelings. A woman's acid anger and power of rejection have enormous influence on other people, men and boys especially, and if a man is to become capable of relationship with a woman he must overcome his fear of her anger and his anxiety about being rejected.  This may mean that he will have to find and help the little boy in himself.  By recognizing his hurt-little-boy side he is much less likely to become identical with it, and can remain more the man in relationship with the woman in his life.

[This, by the way,  intersects to some degree with my understanding that, for various reasons, people get "stuck" emotionally in earlier stages of development.  I will be considering this further in my next blog as it relates to Erich Fromm's ideas of "Mother Love" and "Father Love" and how these have differing effects on individual development.] 

"[A man] will also have to deal with the angry, rejecting side of his woman.  Why does she have to be that way? he may ask himself.  But just as the anima has a negative side that must be overcome if the positive side is to be realized, so every man must be capable of enduring the dark side of the woman in his life if he is going to find her tender and life-giving side.

"A man's fear that he will be rejected if he brings up difficult matters in the relationship is usually unfounded.  A woman who cares about a man, or is at all connected to her own instincts for relatedness, has a great capacity for confrontation and working things out...

"Related anger means that the issues that are brought up are concerned with what is going on between two people.  It is an honest expression of genuine feeling.  If a man expresses anger in an unrelated way to a woman, he will do it indirectly by creating a bad atmosphere or indulging in a personalistic attitude.  If he expresses anger in a related way, he will tell her just what it is that is upsetting him.  If a woman cares about a man she will not reject him if he expresses his anger at her in this way; to the contrary, she will welcome it, for it shows that their relationship is meaningful to him.  From a woman's point of view, if a man ignores matters of relationship it is the same as ignoring her, and that means to her that she and the relationship are not important to him.

"The important thing to remember, as will be seen more clearly later on, is that the correct position of the anima is inward, not outward.  She belongs as a function of relationship between a man's consciousness and the unconscious, not as a function of relationship between a man and other people.  When she intrudes into this outer sphere, there are difficulties.  Men are quite capable of doing their own relating and having their own feelings, and do not need the anima to provide this for them.

"The anima not only interferes with a man's emotional reactions, she can interfere with his thinking as well.  For instance, when a man is anima-possessed he may begin to give forth opinions instead of genuine thinking.  It is as though the anima begins to talk right through him, and she expresses herself as though she had an animus, which means she expresses opinions without regard to facts, relationship, or logic.  When a man is in this state of mind he begins to argue in a peevish way, and his masculine objectivity is quite lost in a sea of emotionally toned and irrational opinions that prove resistant to reasonable discussion...."

In summary, Sanford offers: "...[T]he anima can poison a man's consciousness and rob him of himself should he fall for her insinuations...a man can prevent the negative anima from having this destructive influence on him...by making her conscious." (Pp. 35-43)

As for what happens when a woman becomes "animus possessed", Sanford offers the following:

"If the anima is the master of moods in a man, the animus is the master of opinions in a woman.  He typically expresses himself in judgments, generalizations, critical statements, and apodictic assertions that do not come from a woman's own process of thinking and feeling, but have been picked up from various authoritative sources, mother or father, books or articles, church or some other collective organization.  It is the animus who is behind the autonomous, critical, and opinionated thoughts that intrude into a woman's consciousness.  He thus represents inferior masculine logic, just as the anima represents inferior feminine emotionality.

"....If a woman becomes identified with such opinions within herself, which happens when the animus is not differentiated from her own ego psychology, we speak of animus possession.

"The opinions of the animus have an unpleasant and even destructive quality, and may be projected onto other people, or directed inwardly on the woman herself.  In the former case, other people cannot stand the woman because of the blunt and critical judgments she passes on them.  In the latter case, the woman cannot stand herself, for the effect of the judgments of the animus on her is to destroy her sense of her own value and worth.

"The animus is thus able to rob a woman of her creativity, even as the anima...can rob a man of his.  At the moment when a woman gets a creative idea, or her eros and tenderness begin to stir in her in a new way, the animus may intrude into her consciousness with thought that could prevent her from fulfilling herself.  He may say, 'You can't do that.' Or, 'Other people can do these things much better than you.' Or, 'You have nothing of value to offer.'  If the woman identifies with such thoughts, that is, mistakes them for her own thoughts and for the truth, the new creative possibility is taken away from her.

"The opinions of the animus have a peculiarly irritating effect on other people because, in spite of their seeming logic, they do not fit the actual situation.  Yet neither can they be reasoned with, for the animus has an absolutist attitude, and his opinions are not amenable to discussion or qualification.  Whenever the animus takes over, a woman is taken away from her own thinking and feeling, and she becomes identical with banal statements, sweeping judgments, or generalizations. Small wonder, when these judgmental opinions are directed from within against herself, that a woman tends to become depressed and is robbed of the colorfulness of life." (Pp. 43-45)

And as I referred the other day in my "In Defense" blog:

"The animus often keeps other people from reaching and experiencing the warm, feeling side of a woman because they cannot get through the animus and his opinions. Children with such a woman for a mother feel deprived of their mother's affection because they keep coming up against the animus.  She comes across to them as a hard disciplinarian, and the critical, judgmental attitudes of the animus effectively shut them out from her tenderness and affection.  (The situation is exacerbated when the father has relinquished the masculine role of disciplinarian and forced the mother to assume this role in the family.) It is not that the mother does not have warm feelings for her children; they are there, but the children do not receive them because the animus blocks them.  Such women may appear hard and steely, and other people may be leery of them, for their animus can wound; however, strangely enough, they themselves easily get their feelings hurt, and when this happens they are terribly injured and bewildered and do not understand why other people do not love them..." (Pp. 45-46)

"When the animus utters an opinion, it is said with an air of great authority. It is like a pronouncement, and pronouncements of course, are indisputable.  This air of authority, Emma Jung suggests in her monograph Anima and Animus*, is enhanced by our present culture, which tends to overvalue everything masculine and undervalue the feminine.  Masculine achievement, power, control, success, and logic are rewarded in our society by prestige, good grades in school, and generous paychecks.  The feminine principle, which tends to unite and synthesize, is undervalued culturally both in men and in women.  It is as though the animus were aware of this, and so his utterances are all the more authoritative, while, conversely, a woman is led to distrust her seemingly inferior and more vague feminine intuitions and feelings, even though it is these that have the truth of the matter.  This is a deplorable situation, for not only does our world need more of the healing influence and wisdom of the feminine, but the woman herself is all the more victimized by animus judgments that, if left unchallenged, nullify her own deepest psychological truth.

*Emma Jung, Anima and Animus (Zurich: Spring Publications, 1974).

"Since the anima and animus have these peculiarly irritating effects, it is not surprising that they are inclined to quarrel with each other. A typical anima/animus quarrel can start in many different ways.  A man may comes home in a dark mood.  He is possessed by this mood, that is, by the anima, and exudes an air of poison and gloom.  Now if the man were to tell his woman what his problem is, things could take a more positive direction, but the chances are that he will say nothing about his frame of mind, but will just inflict his mood on her.  Being in this mood, of course he is not related, and his woman senses this immediately, and cannot stand the lack of relationship.  She finds the psychological atmosphere, and the sense of isolation, increasingly intolerable, and also wonders if somehow she is being blamed for something, for a man in the grip of the anima has a way of being vaguely reproachful of others.  At this point, unless the woman is very careful, her animus may intrude.  It is as though he does not like that man's moody anima either, and so he will pick up his sword or club and take matters into his own hands.  This may be done with some kind of stinging remark, or a direct frontal assault on the man's objectionable moodiness.

"Stung by the attack, the anima of the man may retaliate.  Unless the man is quick to realize what is going on, and to make a conscious response to this situation, the anima will probably drop her match into the gasoline, and the result will be an eruption of affect.  The man will then become irrational and fight back in a sarcastic, affect-laden way, perhaps with a personalistic attack on his wife's character, that of her mother, and anything else that can be thought of to get revenge for the wound that has just been inflicted on him. The animus then comes back in kind, and the result is an angry quarrel.  It never occurs to the man, of course, that he has become possessed by a witch inside himself; to the contrary, he is quite convinced that his wife is to blame for all of this.

"Or perhaps it is the woman's animus that first delivers a stinging remark or irritating opinion.  The man is immediately affected by this, but unless he is quick to realize what is happening, it is his anima who reacts.  As Jung once wrote, "...no man can converse with an animus for five minutes without becoming the victim of his own anima...the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction.'

"At this point projections occur again, but it is not the positive animus and anima who are projected onto the human partners, creating an air of fascination and magical attraction; it is the negative images, which have the effect of driving the man and the woman apart.  The man's wife now receives the projections of his inner witch, and is, accordingly, held responsible for his bad mood, while the woman projects onto her man all the infuriating qualities that, in fact, belong to the man inside herself.

"Clearly such anima/animus fights can be destructive.  The tragedy is that while the man and woman have their unproductive quarrel, and the atmosphere becomes darker and darker, neither realizes that the scene is being dominated by the Invisible Partners.  It is not John and Mary who are quarreling, but these archetypal figures within them.  For just as the anima and animus can fall in love, so they can quarrel, and the intensity of their attraction to each other is matched only by the intensity of their dislike.

"This destructive anima/animus fight is not to be confused with a genuine encounter between the actual man and woman.  When John and Mary confront each other to express their anger and work out their differences, something positive can emerge.  Such encounters between a man and a woman can have great psychological value and must not be avoided just because a person is too squeamish to get into emotionally difficult situations. But when John and Mary are eclipsed by their anima and animus, and these two begin to quarrel, the result is most unfortunate.

"The strange thing is, as suggested earlier, that the quarrel could be avoided if the man would just say what it is that he is feeling, and the woman would just say what it is that is troubling her.  If the man directly expresses his hurt, anger, or bewilderment, it is he who is talking.  If he does not, however, the anima gets hold of it and expresses his emotional reaction for him in the devious, destructive ways described.  She  exaggerates, as Jung said.  In her grasp, a relatively minor personal injury becomes magnified and a mountain is made of a molehill.  She falsifies.  Once the personal slight or hurt is in her grasp, the facts of the situation become distorted.  In the ensuing argument, what really happened becomes obscured by the emotionality of the anima.  She intensifies, so that the original emotion that man felt now becomes a powerful affect, and the small fire a large one. And she mythologizes.  When things are left in her hands, an ordinary human woman becomes a goddess or a witch and an ordinary human situation takes on a highly dramatic character.

"Similarly, when a woman who is troubled by something in a personal relationship says what she feels, it is she who is speaking, and the matter can be worked out.  But if she hides her true feelings, it is the animus who seizes the club or sword and tries to set matters straight.  The result is disastrous as far as the relationship is concerned, and is a defeat for the woman's ego, for the ego always experiences defeat when it becomes possessed by the anima or animus.  Club in hand, the animus will let the offending man have it by some form of direct attack that may have little perceivable relationship to the actual offense.  Taking his sword of seeming logic, the animus will bring up some argument that has little or nothing to do with the real emotional issue.  Irritated at such an irrational assault, and frustrated by its seeming unfairness, a man is all too likely to fall into the clutches of his anima at this point and then dark things happen.

"A woman can avoid this by saying something like, 'You seem to be upset about something.  Are you angry at me?'  If he is angry at her, he can say so and perhaps the matter can be resolved.  If not, the woman need not feel guilty or anxious, and can afford to let her man remain with his mood and work it out himself while she goes about her business.  For it is not her job to get him out of his mood; that is a task that every man must take on himself.  Of course the man may be dishonest.  He may snarl, 'No!' when he really means yes.  It is probably best, however, for the woman to take his words at face value and let him stew in his own juice, and say to herself, 'Okay, he said I was not to blame for his bad mood so I accept no guilt or responsibility for what he is feeling.' It goes without saying, of course, that if people persist in emotional dishonesty with each other, relationship is exceedingly difficult.

"A man who is confronted by a woman's animus can help the situation by keeping his cool and responding out of his own masculine strength.  If a man's masculinity is stronger than that of the animus, he can usually free the woman from possession; at least he can keep himself from falling into the clutches of his inner woman.  It usually helps to find out what the problem really is.  'What is really bothering you?' a man might ask if he realizes he has just been attacked by a woman's animus.  He may often find that what really is bothering her has nothing to do with the subject the animus has brought up.  (It isn't that she doesn't like the suit he has put on, which she has chosen to violently criticize, but that she is hurt because he ignored her at the party the night before.)

"One word of caution: In discussing their relationship a man and a woman do well to avoid the use of the terms anima and animus, or any psychological terms for that matter.  It is best to use ordinary language, for the use of psychological language is unnatural in relationships and tends to depersonalize them.  The value of being aware of the anima and animus is that we may know what is going on, and our heightened consciousness helps us in working out the relationship, but the use of psychological language as we do so is generally destructive.  So a woman who sees her man in a mood, instead of saying, 'Looks like you are gripped by your anima,' might say, 'You look upset; is something bothering you?' And a man, suspecting his woman's animus attacking him, can say, 'I have a feeling that you are angry at me about something,' instead of saying, 'Your animus is showing again.'

"[Regarding the anima and animus] It is always best to get the bad news first; besides it is usually the negative side that we experience first.  But the anima and animus also have a positive aspect, in fact, when they are in their correct place they have a great blessing to give to us.  However, in order to realize this blessing we must be able to overcome their negative effects...." (Pp.48-55)

Okay, I hope there are some lights going off for those of you who have persevered in this reading. And I must say, looking more closely at this again, as I have been typing it, and thinking about long distant and not so distant experiences, I know I still have work to do in terms of keeping my animus "in the correct place".

I think there are several important things to understand though: We are not alone in what we have experienced in our relationships.  This explanation, though certainly not absolute, does seem to give an approach to understanding that could be useful, and I suspect many of you saw things that were familiar to you, that you had experienced yourself, especially with "significant others".

For myself, personally, I have carried this "point of view" with me for many years now, but it is amazing to me how few men I've known have been willing to read this book.  Clearly, when both people involved in the relationship are aware of what could be going on, i.e. between their respective "anima" and "animus", there is a better chance they can help each other mediate their effects .  As they say, two heads are better than one, and, clearly, when it comes to our interpersonal relationships, even if just one person can keep from overreacting, if one person can stay Fully Conscoius, it is better than if each of them, in turn, becomes "possessed" by their anima or animus, and in effect "loses consciousness".

Finally, I would like to add that there are ways that we may end up alleviating some of the effects of "anima" and "animus" without really realizing it, without needing to be aware of the framework provided here to understand what is going on inside of us.  For instance, as I have already indicated in previous blogs, allowing one's emotions to remain "as balls on top of the water" instead of repressing them does a great deal to alleviate the  effects of the anima in men.  Not being judgmental of self and others helps to alleviate the effects of the animus in women.  (Of Note: Terry Gorski's "First Rule of Functional Relating" is to a) Be aware of your feelings, b) Put a label on your feelings and c) Be able to communicate those feelings effectively to another person, and d) Reciprocally, be able to listen to another person tell you how they feel without judging or condemning them).

Having reviewed this material again, I find it interesting that "masculine" character is more often associated with being rational, but it is the exaggeration of emotion carried out by the anima that subdues a man's capacity for logic.  On the other hand, it is the distortion of logic and judgment carried out by the animus that subdues a woman's more emotional and related nature.  And yet, when a man is struggling with his emotions, that is when he needs his woman's emotional nature the most. In other words, she must become a better woman than his anima. Likewise, when a woman is struggling with judgment, that is when she needs her man's rational nature the most; i.e. he has to become a better man than her animus.

I sincerely hope this material will be useful to all of you who are reading.  It is one more effort of mine to simply try to make the world a more peaceful place at this most up-close and personal level of relationship.

In my next blog, I'm going to take another look at our relationships with our parents and the profound influence of "mutual projection" between parents and their children.  This is a very recent, and actually, somewhat painful insight for me, but I think it is something else that needs to be considered and better understood if future generations of children are going to have a better chance of "Being Who They Are as Ordinary Human Beings" from a much earlier point in their lives, even "Day One".