Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The Jesus I Want to Know

The ideas, the universal, perhaps metaphysical ideas, images, symbols, thoughts, myths – all of the abstract phenomena that represent universal thought are patterned after something. They are an imitation, a representation of something that already exists… in our minds and ‘out there’ somewhere. And these theories of super-consciousness, un-consciousness, consciousness, while in many respects are hard to discount i.e. if something empirically exists one can hardly dismiss the validity of that something, I keep getting a sense that they complicate a very simple yet vital fact. A very important factor that is sometimes obscured in all of this universal thinking is the individual, or what is the personal-ness of the individual.

We are individual, personal beings and we cannot function properly, or I should say we cannot function optimally without connection to other individual, personal beings. We need to love and be loved, we need to know and be known, we need to feel joy and pain and we need to feel the joy and pain of others. Our joy and pain, all of our feelings serve nothing, come to nothing but suffering in the absence of another. And somehow the universal ‘stories’ of the hero’s journey through life, salvation, redemption, death and rebirth, all of these concepts come to nothing unless they are shared with another. To be sure it is a universal truth that no man is an island.

I have come to the conclusion that I want Jesus to be real. Lately I find myself questioning if he was, not so much whether a man named Jesus actually existed in the flesh – that part is easy to accept. It is the part that says that Jesus was God incarnate as human being, as one of us. But this much I know, I desperately want him to be who the Gospels claim he was. Because it is God as man, divine in human form that tells me that God knows us, that God understands our struggle as human beings and not-God. That he knows the pleasure and pain of humanity that is endured daily and moment by moment for so many. In Jesus is represented the God that we need, the God that must be in order that we have hope for something more. In Jesus we see kindness and gentleness, love and forgiveness, the power to heal and the promise of so much more beyond the harsh realities of our existence in this life.

This is why I want Jesus to be real and I know that there probably will not be any definitive answers provided to me as confirmation of my wanting and sometimes I don’t understand that. But I also know that in the acknowledgement of these things, in the realizing of my desire for this to be so I may also be stating the reality. I may be recognizing the pattern, the basic structure that has been there from the beginning.

I think it safe to say that Jesus is everything we human beings need him to be.

Friday, December 25, 2009

The American Dream

So I’m sitting on my deck the other day looking out over my yard - I have a comfortable (not big) home with a two car garage on an acre of land – and I’m thinking to myself what is so damn appealing about the American Dream? I have a mortgage, property taxes, when the roof needs fixing it costs thousands, when the water pump goes it costs thousands, when it rains too much for too long we’re in the basement bailing out water, the oil bill is killer, the electricity bill goes up every month and if the septic system ever lets go we’re screwed. The amount of money that one spends to own a home over the life of their tenure in that home is mind-boggling. And some day, which truthfully could be tomorrow I could be dead and then what? Who the hell is going to care about the damn septic system? Not me that’s for sure.

I want to know who in the hell thought this was a good idea. Why do we think we need this? I could rent an apartment for a couple hundred more each month than my mortgage and tax bill combined and I’d be done. No worries about roofs or septic systems or water in the basement. I wouldn’t have to shovel the driveway in the winter and when it needs to be resurfaced it’s somebody else’s problem. And when I drop dead somebody else will move in and nobody is going to know the difference.

It occurred to me several years ago when the stock market started to tank, and continued to tank monthly that I had been socking all of this money away for years for a retirement that is still many years away and in one short year every gain that I had made was wiped out. Twenty years of savings cut by at least a third just like that. And so was I to believe that now I cannot retire? Or that I’m going to end up in the streets someday? What if I get sick? What if I live to a hundred? Let’s face it, who is the average person who can afford to live to a hundred? That’s too damn long unless you have some kick-ass retirement fund that somehow managed to survive the latest purge. I might as well drive down the highway at eighty miles an hour and throw my money out the window. Same difference as investing in a retirement stock fund. All those years when I still had years until retirement all the experts told me to invest in higher-risk, higher yield funds. You’re young, you have time, don’t be so conservative. And I listened, what the hell did I know? And in practically one day so much of it was gone. It is a total crapshoot and the thing that really gets me is that all of these supposed experts, Harvard MBA economists, they’re guessing right along with everyone else. How many Harvard MBAs have we heard on CNN over the past eighteen months each telling us something different?

But the real kicker is that I could spend the next fifteen years saving my ass off for retirement, finally retire and then drop dead without ever having spent a dime of all that savings. I’m going to work like a dog, deny myself a trip to Paris, multiple trips to Paris because I MIGHT one day need to pay for a nursing home?

Seriously, let me ask this again. Whose idea was this?

Monday, December 21, 2009

How Smart Am I

So I’m watching CNN last night with my husband and they’re doing a segment on global warming. Is it or isn’t it? That is the question. Anyway the dude that’s reporting is speaking to a scientist, a geo-physicist whose name escapes me and this geo-physicist is explaining his solutions for the problem of global warming. As he’s talking away I find that I’m not listening to him at all because my husband and I start into another conversation about intelligence. Seems this geo-physicist entered college at fourteen years of age, attained his Ph. D by twenty-three and now, for the past thirty years or more has performed all of the necessary duties of becoming a pre-eminent geo-physicist. Clearly a really smart guy.

And so I get to thinking… is this person really smarter than me? Actually let’s back up a step so I can admit that I don’t even know what the hell a geo-physicist is. What is the definition of a geo-physicist? I don’t know.

Anyway, does the fact that this person entered college at fourteen mean that he’s smarter than me? His head is normal size and therefore one could reasonably assume that his brain is normal size i.e. no bigger than the average six foot tall male. Should I assume because of his academic credentials that he is actually smarter than me, that when God was handing out brains he injected this gentleman with more of the intelligence chemical while perhaps giving me more of the athletic or artistic chemical to balance things out? I don’t know. Can this geo-physicist catch a football or run a sub-minute mile or ski moguls in addition to knowing what are the relevant factors when formulating a solution to global warming? Maybe he came up with the solution while participating in the IronMan Triathalon.

Could I have, if I had found that one thing that really struck my fancy, could I have had the ability to enter college at fourteen and succeed? If I had had the requisite interest in something, along with the requisite determination and persistence and thirst for knowledge did I have the smarts kick ass academically? Again, I don’t know.

So the question comes down to this: are we all, us average human beings, are we all generally endowed with the same level of intellectual potential? Is it there, lying dormant waiting for us to tap into it, either choosing to use it or not?

I think a lot about potential these days. How much do we have? Far more than I think anyone of us might suspect but beyond that how do we tap into our potential? How do we discover what riches lie deep within us for intellectual, artistic, athletic achievement?

I do not know the answer to this question.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

The Art of Listening

Someday I will remember that when somebody talks to me, when somebody has something on their mind and chooses to come to me with it that I must listen. No… I mean really listen. Close my mouth and L.I.S.T.E.N.

Not
Start thinking about what I think
Start offering solutions
Start offering the other side of the story
Try to fix it
Try to minimize it
Make a joke
Change the subject

Just... listen. Listen to what is being said, keeping in mind that sometimes merely being allowed the space to say what is on one’s mind is worth everything.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Dear Tiger Part Deux

We, that is western society have held you to impossible standards. Because of your superior golf abilities we placed you on a level above the rest of us and in doing so we raised our expectations of you. We took the liberty of deciding that just because you could put a little ball into a little cup with a skill that most of us would-be duffers only dream about that somehow you are superior to us. And with that ascension came our elevated expectations.

And with our elevated expectations came elevated levels of pressure down on your head because we take these expectations of our world at large, and to be sure your world is larger than most, and we make them our own. It is so very hard when everyone around you is telling you how great you are to feel like you don’t have to live up to those expectations and so you spend your life striving to do so. And it is so very hard and takes always so much energy to live a life that becomes unconsciously all about meeting those expectations. It is hard when others expect things of us, things they don’t see in themselves, things they would like to see in themselves. They see them in you, they tell you how fortunate you are to possess those qualities, how envious they are of you and you have no choice but to believe them. So year after year after year you try to live up to those expectations all the while staggering under the weight of the effort it takes to do so.

I was a little hard on you in my first letter and I would like to take this opportunity to soften my stance a bit. While I stand by my assertion that you should have immediately and simply come clean, it might have lightened the press coverage just a hair, it is clear to me that a young man like you who was probably raised to be a decent person is somehow crumbling under the weight of our expectations and for this I can only apologize.

To Mrs. Tiger I would like to say please don’t listen to all the people around you who are telling you what a lying, cheating, evil, SOB your husband is. I know you are probably hurt very deeply by his actions but if you love him allow yourself the opportunity to come to an understanding of why he felt the need to do this. I guarantee you that while doing so will be immensely difficult you will also find out that he is probably not the over-sexed, uncaring louse he appears to be, or rather that we all, in our knee-jerk reactions to marital infidelity insist that he is.

Respectfully,

Me

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Sunday Thoughts

Every year my husband and I go to lunch at the diner down the street before we perform the annual rite that is the buying of the Christmas tree. Every year he wants to go buy the tree first – “let’s get it over with” says he - and then go have lunch but I insist that it must be the other way around. After having been with this man for more years than I care to acknowledge (for no other reason than not wanting to stare in the face my rapidly advancing age) I have learned at least one thing about him. I have learned that any time we embark on something that might cause him distress (sadly buying a Christmas tree holds that potential) it is always, ALWAYS better that he embark on a full stomach. Never take a man shopping for a Christmas tree on an empty stomach because let’s face it, in light of the fact that I am going to drag him all over the entire lot, up and down every aisle of trees pulling out each one, spinning it, shaking it out, and putting it back his endurance will be much higher if he’s working on a full stomach. Gives me a wider berth to take my time picking out the perfect tree… as if.


******

My grandmother died last week. She would have been 98 this coming Saturday. Four of my brothers and sisters and me drove to New Jersey for her funeral. It was just the five of us, the rabbi and the funeral director. All of her friends are long dead, my grandfather died six years ago, also a mere two weeks shy of his 98th birthday. The guys who dug her grave threw all of the dirt onto my grandfather’s grave so we couldn’t even see his headstone. Don’t you think it might occur to them that the family members who will be attending the service might want to oh I don’t know at least pretend that it matters that their grandfather is lying under all that dirt. Apparently not.

Something interesting about a Jewish burial ceremony, they place the casket over the grave and gently lower it down into the hole while everyone is standing there. I had to turn away when they did this. For some reason I could not watch that. All I could think about was that it was bad enough that my grandmother was being lowered into the mud, I could not imagine how I might feel if it was my child. I think I probably would have had to throw up. I was left with an oddly unsatisfied feeling walking away from that cemetery.

******

I went to church this morning and for some reason I felt very agitated. I attend the local Catholic parish here in town, not with any regularity but when the mood strikes me. I like to go during the Christmas season because the choir is terrific and the church is decorated beautifully and I just like the whole ambiance. You can say what you want about Catholicism but they know how to do mystery and they know how to do solemn and they know how to do quiet reflection like no other. A Catholic church is a great place to go when you need some solitude. It is one of the few places you can be alone without actually being alone and it’s ok.

I cannot quite put my finger on it but there are times when I feel drawn to this church. I have no explanation for it. I am not particularly possessed of the Catholic doctrine in fact I frequently disagree with their interpretation of scripture – quite frankly I’m not all that sure about the validity of scripture anymore as ‘the’ word of God - but there is something about the Catholic faith or perhaps it is nothing more than being in a Catholic church that speaks to me. I think the smell of the incense, the sound of the choir, the whole visual effect probably ignites all sorts of unconscious stirrings of childhood. That would be the psychological explanation. Whatever. I go because I like to go and because the sound of the choir moves me. Today it annoyed me. The priest annoyed me, the people in the pew annoyed me, the choir was mediocre and the service lasted too damn long.

******

I seem to be losing my religion, not that I really ever had any to begin with. Baptized Catholic, attended church every Sunday, every holy day, confession, communion, confirmation, the whole shebang. Not my choice of course but coercion. Parents are good at that. I would have remained happily, blissfully and ignorantly pagan. I was Catholic but I had no idea what that really meant and no inclination for many years to try to figure out what it meant. It was, I would say, an uninterested acceptance… Jesus, Mary, sin, our father… whatever.

Funny thing is that at this moment in my life I am more sure of the existence of God than I have ever been before, which to be sure I never was at all. It is all the rest of it that has been completely blown out of the water for me. And on the one hand my confusion has (oddly enough) taken some of the ‘good’ mystery out of attending church while at the same time causing me to be completely and utterly mystified by the whole thing.

******
I read in a prologue to St. John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul the following:

“The constant and simultaneous succession and recurrence of certain distinct yet similar phenomena, taking place in all centuries and in all races, might lead us to the conclusion (in the lack of other positive knowledge) that behind all Form, Dogma, Ritual and Ceremonial, there is hidden and profound and mysterious meaning which constitutes the Root Religion, whence as from a spring or fountain head all others had their rise; and this Root Religion cannot have been other than the close and intimate communication of man with the Universal Soul-the Body Soul-the Suchness, the Becoming, the Divinity, give it what name you will; so that so far from having gradually evolved into intellectual light through a scale of beings inferior to him, as the evolutionist maintains, he would rather seem to have begun as the inhabitant of a higher sphere, to boast a celestial genealogy.”

In other words the one true ideal, the root that all of our religions spring forth from is our original union with God and that we did not start out as specks of single-celled, mindless, formless ‘things’ in some puddle of mud or radioactive chemical but rather we were with God. This I actually believe to be true. Beyond that I’ve got nothing.
******
I've decided that it's true... everyone DOES need therapy. If for no other reason than it might help them to stop annoying the hell out of me. Just kidding. (not really).

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Dear Tiger Woods

So Tiger Woods says:

“I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family deserves. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect.”

We certainly don’t have to be told that Tiger is far short of perfect since we are ALL far short of perfect. I get that and so with that in mind and for just one freaking time here is what I’d like to hear one of these celebrities-caught-in-multi-year-indiscretion say:

I knew the entire time that I was involved with these women/men/call girls/call boys/dogs/cats/horses/etc. that I was letting my family down and I chose to do it anyway. Clearly in light of that glaring truth my behavior was exactly in line and congruent with my true values which are much lower than the general public would like to believe. The only reason that I regret those transgressions with all my heart is that I got caught and now the paparazzi are camped out on my front lawn and I can’t even leave the house and I have endangered all of my multi-million dollar endorsement contracts and my wife keeps hitting me in the face with my nine iron. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect and because of that I’m not going to hand any of my adoring fans any bullshit about having high standards for myself when clearly I chose to violate those mythical standards repeatedly. “



Dear Tiger,

We’d respect you a lot more and forgive you a lot quicker (assuming you give a rat’s ass about the public’s forgiveness which I doubt) if you’d ix-nay on the bullshit-ay. We’ve all screwed up a time or two or twenty. Nobody gives a damn if you’re sorry… nobody believes you anyway so why bother?

Lay low, tell the truth (or shut it) and I'm sure this will all blow over and we'll all still be cheering for you at next year's Masters.

Warm Regards,

Me

Saturday, November 28, 2009

If God Only Gives Us What We Can Handle

Than why do so many people commit suicide?

The Girl With All The Answers

Apparently I always think I’m right. This at least is what I have recently been told by two people close to me. I always think I’m right. Of course this observation from them is just dripping with pejorative undertones and overtones and around-all-the-sides-tones. This is apparently a deep flaw in my personality.

I always think I’m right. How dare I.

So… I got to thinking, what exactly is wrong with thinking I’m right? Thinking I am right means simply that I have come to a conclusion about some particular topic which we happen to be discussing. I have done the requisite research where applicable, I have made the requisite observations, I have investigated my feelings about the matter and I have formed an opinion that suits me. By extension it would be fair and safe to say that I believe my opinion on the matter to be correct. That doesn’t mean it is not subject to change based on new evidence, it doesn’t mean that I’m not willing to hear another side to the matter nor does it indicate that I am not willing to change my opinion. It means that at this moment in time at the start of this conversation between you and me this is the hypothesis that I bring to the table regarding this matter and yes, at this moment I think I am right. It also does not mean that after hearing your new evidence, your opinions, your arguments that I won’t continue to think I am right.

I suspect that this observation of theirs about me is pretty accurate and I suspect that it is because by the time I am ready to offer an opinion on a topic I have made thoughtful consideration and I am ready to adopt my point of view and sometimes I am ready to share that point of view. If we are talking about the mating habits of sloths then I’m generally apt to keep my mouth shut because I don’t know the first thing about the mating habits of sloths.

If thinking I'm right is wrong than I don't want to be right.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Dear People With All The Ideas About What's Wrong:

I appreciate your ideas, I really do, and I want to hear them I really do because how else will I know what needs to be changed, how else will I know what needs to be improved upon unless I hear from the people that are out there in the trenches actually getting their hands dirty?
However, all you people with big ideas about everything that is wrong and everything that needs changing, I cannot implement your ideas by just the sweat of my own brow. I cannot do it alone.

So when you come to me with your ideas about how to improve the process or make it work better or make yourself feel better please be prepared to offer up your own elbow grease in the interests of making your great ideas reality. It is all well and good that you have opinions and ideas but along with those opinions and ideas what I really need, what I really, REALLY need is people to EXECUTE those ideas, to put in the hard work that is required to bring those ideas to fruition. So if you’re not willing to put your money and your sweat and blood where your mouth is than your ideas become less of a priority to me.


Dear People To Whom the People with Ideas About What’s Wrong Come To:

If you don’t listen to the people with ideas, if you don’t provide them a chance to be a part of making things better or worse yet if you completely ignore them when they come to you, if you never, ever act upon their suggestions when they are laid at your table then they will stop coming to you and they will not be there to help you when you really need them.

Love,

Me

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

There But for the Grace of God

For some crazy reason it hit me today that this statement is absurd. So let’s say I’m walking down the street and I see a homeless person and I think to myself “there but for the grace of God go I” as so many of us do, and I feel sufficiently humbled that some people have to live in the streets and I feel a little bad that I make a good salary and I’m going to home to a warm house and a home-cooked meal and I have people around me, people who care, I’ve got my health and I have a few bucks in my pocket to blow on coffee at Starbucks (which I might add I would never do because Starbucks has the worst coffee on the face of the earth). I have a good job, a nice home in a nice town and I get to take nice vacations at the seashore every year. And this guy is homeless. Got nothing but what he can carry with him and he sleeps on a subway grate at night covered by a box.

There but for the grace of God.

Which means that for some reason God has seen fit to offer me His grace but not this poor gentleman who is homeless, penniless and blanket-less?

This phrase does not work.

It is right up there with the exclamation that tragedies are somehow “God’s will”. I actually heard somebody say that several years ago when numerous children were gunned down at a schoolhouse in an Amish community in Pennsylvania. One of the parents of the dead children used this very phrase, acquiescing her dead child to God’s will. Are you kidding me? This is God’s will? With gods like that who needs ruthless, blood-thirsty dictators?

Seriously are there truly people out there that could think that God offers his grace to me but not you? Or that crazy, out of control gunmen running rampant in schools is part of God’s plan? What the hell kind of plan is that?

It boggles the mind, seriously.

Friday, November 6, 2009

The Selfishness of Suicide

The following is a direct quote from an anonymous blogger out there in Bloggerland, USA

“suicide is THE most selfish act you could possibly do. In that moment you are thinking only of yourself with no consideration for what anybody else may be feeling”.

That would be the holier-than-thou viewpoint from the proverbial Ivory Tower.

When I am contemplating suicide and I have a husband and children who love me, I have co-workers that respect and care for me, I have parents and brothers and sisters and long-time friends who have been true-blue and trustworthy let me just state unequivocally that I know that there are people who care for me. I know that. I think about it all the time. I agonize over it, I force myself to make it matter, I berate myself for even thinking of leaving these people.

I have endured what at times has been unendurable pain for months or even years in the knowledge that I have people who love me and want to help me. And I endure all of this because I am trying so hard not to be selfish, I am trying so hard to do the human thing and put the needs of others ahead of my own.

So here’s my question:
At what point do I get to put my needs ahead of the needs of others? At what point do I get to put my need to get relief from my pain ahead of your need not to feel sadness? At what point do I get to think about me? At what point do I come first or is it always supposed to be you? Do I ever get to do that? Does it ever get to be me instead of you?

Disclaimer: Ok so that was more like seven questions but they all pretty much point to the same question and for the record I am not suicidal. Some things you just know and others, well others as we can see by the anonymous blogger referenced above, other things you don't have the first clue about and so you should just keep your mouth shut.

Caring for the Therapist and the Art of Being Therapeutic

So if every now and then a client feels the need to take care of their therapist, e.g. if the therapist is sick, the client detects this and just for that hour takes the initiative to go easy on the therapist, isn’t that a normal human need? Isn’t that the client, let’s call us human beings because last time I looked that’s what we are, isn’t that the expression of the need of one human being to care for another human being? Isn’t the desire of the client to care for the therapist a display of a basic human need that says I can see you need something and I can give it to you right now so let me express my basic human need to care for you just for this one time in this controlled place in this very small way.

And isn’t it inherently ‘therapeutic’ to let that human being express that need in the form of sympathy and gentleness and caring concern even if it is the client giving that to the therapist?
Sometimes I think that the whole therapy process can get so tied up in acknowledging and concentrating on what ‘we’ need, for example I am the client, I need love, I need affection, I need care and empathy and concern, I need, I need, I need, I NEED to get my needs met that it forgets that one of our greatest needs is to EXPRESS our love to another, EXPRESS our care and concern and empathy, to EXPRESS our need to address the needs of others. Part of therapy is all about learning to identify and express your feelings. Well you know what? I NEED to express my feelings of love and concern and care for others and sometimes those ‘others’ include the person of my therapist sitting across from me for that hour each week.

I know, I know, it is not in the interest of the client that this should become the pattern of the therapy, I understand that. But every now and then if you therapists could give us the opportunity to express our care and concern for you and to allow us to see that you can be comfortable with receiving that small level of care from us I do think that you would be exhibiting your skills as a therapist in an exceptional way.

We as human beings NEED to give as much as we get and THAT…. Is therapeutic.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

We Live

from a place of fear. This is undeniable. I should probably qualify that it is true of most people but I cannot say unequivocally that it is true of all people. So I speak here today to those of you (me included) that live from a place of fear. Let me capitalize Fear. I capitalize it because it dominates our lives, it is for some of us THE motivating force behind everything we do, everything we think, it defines our existence. I defy anyone to sit down, make a list of those events in your life that you remember, that you might even refer to as 'defining' moments of your life, and deny that the possible decisions that either you were considering or actually made were not the result of Fear. Go ahead... I dare ya.

Right, I thought so.

The opposite of Fear is Love. Not just courage but Love. I would say that courage is merely a symptom, an aspect of Love. I do believe that the definition of Divine Love encompasses many attributes, for example courage, and creativity, a sense of connection with others, a need for others. There is more no doubt but I'll stop there and let y'all use your own imaginations.

I believe that every decision we make, every decision that effects our life (and don't they all?) is made from either a place of Love or Fear. If we choose Fear then we stay in a place of pain, of regret, of stagnation. We stay in one place, never moving ahead. If we choose Love then we move to a place of courage, of creativity, of self-realization. We move one step closer to that which we are, or rather that which we CHOOSE to be. We move one step closer to realizing a potential that has no boundaries.

And isn't it courage and creativity and self-realization, are not these at least some of the things that define us as the image of God?

Now let me just end by saying this: I do not for one minute believe that it is merely the recognition of this that enables me to step right out of that Fear-mongering mode into the eternally joyful Love-mongering mode. Oh no, it's going to take work, a lot of work. I do not for one minute discount the many ways that we were influenced as we grew into adult-hood and undoing these shall we say less than healthy modes of living takes time and effort and a willingness to push through the difficulty. And it takes the help of some kind of professional counselor, whether it be psychotherapist, minister, choose your poison. But it absolutely must be somebody who is going to give you all the space you need to re-discover yourself. I do not believe that psychotherapy is a perfect means to get to that place that we want to be but the truth is that a good therapist will give you that space of re-discovery. There will be pitfalls, bumps in the road but really, what doesn't present us with pitfalls and bumps in the road? In the end a good therapist will foster an atmosphere of acceptance and exploration and a good therapist will also allow themselves the space to learn from you. Therapy is a great place to take our first tentative steps out of that place of Fear into that place of Love because it is a safe place to do so. It can be, with the right therapist the perfect place to start or should I say re-start.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Go Inside

What is it that defines us? By that I mean what does it mean to say ‘be yourself’? What does it mean when I say that I am searching for the ‘real me’?

I think I have the answer.

There are two realities, there is objective reality, that is the external world around us. It is real, it is there, we can see it, it impacts us moment by moment, it presents facts, scientific, philosophical, metaphysical if you will. It is there, we can see it, touch it, hear it, all of which is to say that we can experience it through our physical faculties, our physical bodies and the attributes inherent to our physical being.

The second reality is subjective reality. Subjective reality is our own personal reaction, our own personal experience that is specific to us, the individual. It encompasses our own thoughts, our own feelings, those internal sensations that are inherent to our own personal emotional and intellectual makeup. These are the attributes of our psychic construct and our psychic construct has been formed, I’d say is dependent on our objective reality. Our psychic reality has been assembled, molded, twisted (some would say, me for example) this way and that, frequently forced to fit into spaces either too small or too big or too round or too square for our own personal capacities. The proof of this fact is that two people can see the same thing at the same time and yet each one would feel something completely different from the other.

So many of us, and admittedly I fall into this category, so many of us have had the experience of being forced into spaces too small, or spaces too large, or too round or too square for our own personal capacities. Our own attributes, e.g. talents, wishes,, likes, dislikes, hopes and fears have been dismissed as invalid and replaced with somebody else’s idea (usually our parents) of what is right. Of course we accept, at least for awhile, the other’s interpretation of reality because hey, assuming it is our parents version of reality we are referring to here, they know right? They are the parent, you are the child, they don’t need you, you need them. They must know, they’re big, you’re little.

Oh brother.

Here is what defines the ‘real me’. My subjective experience. For the record my subjective experience is valid. Oh I’m going to say that again. My subjective experience is valid. Let’s write it on the blackboard five hundred times. My subjective experience is valid, my subjective experience is valid, my subjective…

I am allowed to like what I like. I am allowed to think what I think. I am allowed to know what I know in the way I know it. I am allowed to do all these things because these things are exactly that which makes me me, which shows to the world the real me. And to find the ‘real me’ I must go inside. I must look to myself, I must recognize and accept as my subjective reality my own experience, my thoughts, my feelings. Because this is what the definition of the real me is.

Disclaimer:
The Surgeon General has warned that while the definition of the ‘real you’ is simple and easy to find, the actual act of showing the real you to the world may be hazardous to your health and requires large quantities of courage, determination and a willingness to make yourself vulnerable beyond your wildest imagination.

St. Paul said “when I am weak, then I am strong” and Jesus said “the truth will set you free”.

No truer words have ever been spoken and it is just about the saddest thing ever that most of us have absolutely no idea what those two statements mean.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The Best Piece of Advice I Ever Got

I’m not a big fan of self-help books and magazines. Except of course for my ‘Quest for Positivity’ reading frenzy, and to be fair most of the reading I did was related to the business/professional end of the spectrum, i.e. motivating and managing people, I have read next to absolutely zero self-help books. I suppose that is at least partially a reflection of the cynic in me. Whatever.

But and but and another big but, the Best Piece of Advice I Ever Got came from a self-help book entitled ‘Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live’ by Martha Beck. Ms. Beck is some big, self-help, life-coach guru person and I have absolutely no idea how I came across this book but I did. I think that I was attracted to the pretty blue cover with the star on it.

Of course the book is all about finding your well, North Star and well, leading the life you were meant to live. But the best piece of advice I ever got came out of chapter 7 of this book which is called Soul Shrapnel: Repairing Your Emotional Compass. The title of the chapter probably gives a hint and in it Ms. Beck makes it perfectly clear that we’re never going to realize our potential until we heal the emotional gun-shot wounds we’ve suffered in life. She doesn’t get all touchy-feely and mushy, she just states it plainly and simply.

So thank you Martha Beck for the best piece of advice I have ever received, and probably will ever receive in my entire life. I never did finish the book, maybe someday when I’m done with therapy who knows. But I do know this, all the self-help books, all the life-coaching sessions, all the positive little mantras, all that stuff would have been a complete waste of time without the therapy. So for all of you consumers of life-coaching services and readers of self-help books do yourself a favor, if you haven’t already - spend your hard-earned money on a good therapist and then use what’s left over for the life-coach if you still need her/him.

For the record Ms. Beck is a pretty funny gal and a good writer so if y’all like that in your self-help books perhaps you should look her up. Oh and Martha when you read this, don’t bother sending me a check for the free plug I just gave you, I owed you one.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

True Story

One day I decided that I wanted to be a more positive person. I have always tended towards the top of the cynical, bitingly humorous, impatient and harsh curve and it seemed that this is not what is helpful to the world at large and to the people in my immediate vicinity. This is not the way to win friends and influence people. I would now say that this wasn’t altogether healthy for me either but at the time that idea was lagging towards the back of the line.

I decided that I was going to make a willful, concerted effort to be the swan of positivity floating in the sea of negative ugly ducklings. I was going to be a leader and proof of the power of positive thinking, a beacon of light on the ‘can-do’ highway of life.

And so I started about the business of readjusting my attitude. It seemed best to me, after a lifetime that if I will be absolutely truthful was most definitely top-heavy on the negative, that I should start small. Frogs only turn into princesses in the blink of an eye in fairy tales and movie theatres. This is real life and I am, if nothing else a realist (or so I thought but that’s another story altogether).

Anyhoo… I decided that it would be easy enough to smile and be nice to people in the grocery store, show a little kindness, allow others to get in line ahead of me even if I was there first. I was calm and patient waiting in line at the bank, making sure that I was pleasant and kind to the teller when my turn was up, regardless of how long I had waited to get to the head of the line. I was even pleasant to the clerk at the motor vehicle department and for anyone who has ever been there we all know what a challenge that can be. As an aside it is amazing what a little smile and humor can do to a person who has spent years toiling in the obscurity of government bureaucracy. Some of them even smiled back at me from time to time. Already some payback baby. This is going to be awesome!

I read books on the power of positive thinking, I read books on how to be a leader in the business world, how to be a leader in your personal life, how to get the most out of people, books on every conceivable positive thinking idea there is out there. I won’t lie, some of them were worth the read, occasionally I would come across something that offered a new way of seeing an old story, some little tidbit of life philosophy that I had not considered. Good stuff and I tried my best to put these things into action both at home and at work. And for awhile it was working. Most people really do respond well to positivity. Oh sure there are those that are permanently and eternally cynical and unhappy but hey, it does take all kinds yes? I would move along from them, nobody was going to rain on my positive parade.

But one day something happened. On this particular day I woke up and like a ton of bricks it hit me - this being positive thing was taking a hell of a lot of energy, I mean a hell of a lot of energy. And I pondered this. How could something that was so right, so good, so ‘freeing’, so full of everything we have come to know as true in this world be sucking up so damn much of my energy? If it’s good and right and true shouldn’t it be easier? Shouldn’t it be energizing rather energy depleting?

Umm… yes.

Thought number two for the first day of the rest of my life:

Sweetheart, get thee to a therapist.

I have saved the part that smiles and jokes with the bank teller, this IS better and it takes no energy and it is such a small thing and it truly makes a difference. Be nice to people. I still don’t (mostly) lose my temper when I get stuck in traffic. If somebody gets on my bumper I move over and let him (it is usually a ‘him’) pass. But the rest of it, the books, the forced positive attitude, the burning of the beacon of light on both ends? I’ve put that aside for awhile. I haven’t got the energy, I’m just not there yet. I have realized that it must come in its own time and in its own way and exerting my willfulness in an effort to force something does nothing but drain my resources.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

My Search for Meaning

Here’s a question: if I don’t know the meaning of life, or specifically the meaning of my life then how am I supposed to know what matters? How do I know what skills matter, either technical or intellectual, and by these things I am referring to the quantity of knowledge, of facts that we should be filling our heads with. Should I read a hundred books or ten thousand? Should I know five thousand words or a hundred thousand. How many actual words are there anyway and do I need to know this?

Does it matter if I’m smart? Does it matter if my IQ is high low or in between? Does it matter if I possess the qualities of kindness, warmth and empathy? Maybe it would be better to be cold, aloof and detached? Should I increase my athletic capabilities, my creative capabilities? Do I learn more about the human body or the human psyche? Should I know about rock formations or weather patterns. Do I choose to study Freud and Adler and Jung or do I tackle Aquinas and St. Augustine and Martin Luther? Math or physics? Spanish or French? Engineering or philosophy? Shakespeare or Erica Jong? Oprah or Dr. Phil?

Should I have many friends or few friends? Should I stick to hamburgers and ice cream or is there some benefit to acquiring a taste for (ok forcing myself to tolerate) caviar. Do I drink wine or beer or not drink alcohol at all? Do I try LSD so that I can know the experience firsthand? Do I need to know firsthand the experience of an LSD trip?

The psychologists tell me I must feel my emotions, the scientists tell me I must observe the world around me. What is it that matters, subjectivity or objectivity? Which one of those is right? There are those (the psycho-scientists?) that will tell me I must use both subjective and objective experience. Maybe that person is right. How do I know?

Do I need to take responsibility for my life or can I just do whatever the hell I want, let the chips fall where they may and everyone else be damned. Do I need to plunge the depths of my unconscious or should I merely go through life reacting to whomever and whatever happens to cross my path not worrying about searching for truth, not caring about morality, ignoring every thought and feeling that is generated from within myself?

If I don’t know the meaning of my life how do I make my choices?

Perhaps it is clear to anyone who might read this that I have been contemplating the meaning of life lately. It leads me to wonder if there really IS a meaning to life. What if this is just something that some caveperson suddenly came up with one day, thousands of years ago while writing drawings in animal blood on a cave wall. Who decided that life has to have meaning and how do I know if that person was right?

If anyone has ever read Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning they would know that he has determined by his years spent in concentration camps during the holocaust that those who managed to survive the horrors were those that assigned meaning to life. Of course it gave them something to live for, any fool can understand this. But what was their meaning? Were they able to figure that out or did they just make a leap of faith based on nothing that life has meaning? Were they hoping to find some future meaning and that's why they were able to endure or did they find meaning right in the middle of Auschwitz? Was it abstract or was it material?

We are all so hell-bent to find meaning in our lives but has anyone stopped to think that maybe life has no meaning? It is so easy to say that it does or it doesn't but which one of those is right and how do I know? Don't we have to figure out first whether is does or doesn't before we can then make our choices?

Does the existence of God dictate that there must be meaning in this life? Those of us who have belief in His existence look to Him to tell us a) that life DOES have meaning and b) what that meaning is. What if while I'm looking at Him for these answers He is looking back at me saying "Don't look at me sister, I never told anyone that life has meaning. That's something y'all came up with on your own."

Monday, October 12, 2009

Affairs and the beating men take for them

Interesting thing about being a woman (single or otherwise) involved in an affair with a married man. If this were me (as the woman) I could lay out to my friends, to my blogging buddies, the women I mean, all of the manipulative, boundary-crossing behaviors of this man with whom I am involved and it’s a pretty safe bet that all of my female blogging buddies would be making all sorts of angry comments about what a manipulative, sex-crazed, untrustworthy bastard the guy is. Certainly I, as the woman scorned in this relationship would eat this up, roll around in it, glory in the love and support that is being thrown my way by my home-girls and keep on talking/blogging about it. Who would not want that kind of love and sympathy and support? He’s hurting me! Sisters Unite! Girls rule and men suck! Why oh why are they so cruel and heartless?!

Let us look at it from another angle.

Sweetheart you are having an affair with a married man. He does not belong to you, he does not want anything permanent with you and you have no right to expect anything from him and you have no right to expect that he won’t hurt you time and time again. Pain is an inherent quality to relationships like this and there is no way around that. He does not know that he is taking advantage of all of the emotional insecurities and dysfunctions that exist in your psyche. He does not know that your father beat you, that your mother was ineffectual and that you are a substance abuser. And even if he did he hasn't got the first freaking clue what that all means to your fragile emotional state and his role in taking advantage of it. He is not willfully and wantonly taking advantage of things of which he knows nothing, unless of course he's got a Ph D. in psychology and he has spent years as a therapist, in which case there are governing boards to whom he should be reported.

Here is a new spin on an old tune. Maybe his father beat him. Maybe his mother was ineffectual. Maybe he is a substance-abuser. And maybe you don't know these things about him and even if you did you do not have the first freaking clue what impact your involvement has on his fragile emotional state and your role in taking advantage of it. Why are we always so quick to paint the man as a predator in these kinds of relationships? We see only our own tender spots and we feel only our own pain as he runs the sandpaper over them.

If you continue to respond to his emails and text messages and phone calls then you are just as guilty of being manipulative and untrustworthy as he is and it is you who is running the sandpaper over your tender spots. This will never amount to anything in your life of any significance. You can sit around with your therapist and your friends and your blogging sisters, spending hours dissecting it, figuring out the why's, the what's, the wherefore's, spending your hard-earned money to understand the emotional need that is being addressed in your life via this affair and that's fine but first know this: It will bring you only pain and more pain and might I just say unequivocally that yes, this situation is your responsibility not his. You have two choices, you can either endure the pain of cutting him loose now or you can endure the pain of hanging onto him until you've 'worked through it'. Pick one. DO NOT waste six months of therapy sessions to come to this conclusion. DUMP HIM FIRST and then use that six months of therapy processing the whole ugly thing and getting past the pain of cutting him loose.

He does not own you, you only choose to LET him own you and yes, you should cut him off and cut him off now. There is no middle ground, these are not muddy waters and there is no ambiguity to weed through.

Put the sandpaper down and back away from the married man.

The End.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

My new favorite line ever... EVER!

"What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now if I could only figure out how to find out if its true...

Saturday, October 3, 2009


Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 64


An answer perhaps to the eternal question of the need for human pain and suffering can be found, I think in the word ‘experience’. It is only in the experience of pain and suffering that we as human beings can know empathy. This is the only way in which two people can truly connect at a real and intimate level. This is the only way that one can truly know what the other knows. It is only in feeling the pain, in knowing of that experience that we truly and honestly share with another. This is where we come to that meeting place of true spiritual connection that enables us to know what is in the heart of the other. The defenses are gone and the truth of the other is known.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

I have to admit

That sometimes this whole God thing seems like utter bullshit to me. I mean mystery is cool and all, and it offers hope and it offers intrigue and all of those other really cool things. But sometimes I think to myself “what a load of crap”. What is the point? We struggle through life, we deal with the good, the bad and the ugly. We have times in our lives when things are not going well, one thing after the next and we try to keep it all at bay, try to get up and go to work each day, try to put it out of our minds and for what?

For a load of guesswork that’s what. Because in the end, despite the positive thinking, despite the ‘Just Do It’ slogans, despite all the cheap talk of God’s love, in the end when life is hitting us from every angle the bottom line is that we feel like we’re struggling through this on our own. And that’s the truth.

When I hear some guy talk about how he walked away from a car wreck because of his personal blessing of God’s protection while at the same time 500 people are killed in an earthquake it all suddenly becomes crystal clear to me that it’s all mostly just a bunch of guesswork. And perseverance and intestinal fortitude and a little bit of vodka or valium, which is a bit of a joke but it's really not all that funny. Sometimes I think it would be great to be able to just walk away.

This could be a good example of this thing that I referred to as doubt a few posts back.
Just Do It

I used to take guitar lessons. One day a bunch of years ago I saw a guy playing the violin at a wedding and I decided right then and there that I simply had to learn how to do that before I died. So a couple of months later I took my bad self down to the local music store and told the dude that I was going to start violin lessons. And you know what I did then? I let that s.o.b talk me out of it. Yes I did and I have been flogging myself ever since. He told me that it takes years to learn to play the violin well and clearly (I guess by looking at me he could tell) I didn’t have that many good years left, there simply wasn’t enough time. So he pointed me in the direction of the guitar and I said what the hell. Classical guitar is lovely and I would be thrilled to be able to play classical guitar.

Yeah, well about eight years later I’m still struggling with this freaking classical guitar and sometimes I just want to throw the damn thing through the window. There is something amazingly soothing to me about the sound of shattering glass… especially when I’m the one that shattered it.

Anyway… so here I am eight years later, still learning to play the classical guitar and I am here to tell you and I don’t care what ANYONE says, there is NO WAY ON THIS EARTH that learning to play the violin could be any harder than learning to play classical guitar. And all you violinists out there my hat’s off to you and you have my undying respect, as do all of the classical guitarists out there as well as any other player of a musical instrument. You do not know the meaning of the word ‘perseverance’ until you have taken up the task of learning a musical instrument. The good news is that the payoff is so high and that makes it all worth the effort (at least I keep telling myself this).
That a person could learn to play the classical guitar, or violin or any other stringed instrument is proof positive to me that we are capable of things we never dreamed possible if we are only willing to slog through the difficulties of life.

So here’s my point. I took lessons for something like five years and I made progress but I never could get over the feeling of being judged. I never could get over my obsession with playing each scale perfectly, with sounding each note perfectly, with not making any mistakes. In short I never could allow myself to play like the beginner I was instead I expected that I should, right out of the box be able to play this instrument like Segovia.

Ridiculous I know and I did know it in my head… but my heart was something else. I could not let go of this. I read books about how to practice. I read books about the learning process. I read books about how to freaking LET yourself make mistakes for god’s sake! (that is so pathetic). And still….

My guitar teacher used to tell me all the time how I just needed to ‘let it fly’. Just let it go and PLAY. And I couldn’t and I used to beat myself over and about the head trying to find that ‘thing’, that elusive gene, that mysterious whatchamacallit that would magically enable me to let go of the need to play it ‘right’ and instead just play it. What was wrong with me that I could not Just Do It?

And so to Nike and your ‘Just Do It’ slogan might I just say… Well I would be breaking my own little rule of no naughty words on my blog. But you all know what I’m thinking.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Is It Possible

To possess both self-confidence and humility that is rooted in the knowledge of God’s love and acceptance?

To accept the possibility of failure in our lives and on our part without being paralyzed by the fear of it?

To permit ourselves to be satisfied and pleased with our accomplishments and successes, safe in the knowledge that they are gifts from God and testaments to the talents and abilities inherent to our personal being, placed there by Him and designed to be used by us?

To live our lives in a desire for discovery of the richness that life has to offer, to live in anticipation of the mystery and challenges, understanding that those mysteries and challenges might involve pain and difficulty and yet having the courage to step out into it anyway?

Friday, September 25, 2009

Therapy Forever

Is it wrong? I have pondered this question recently. I have done a lot of reading on the whole therapy thing in the past year and from therapist to therapist you get different opinions. There are those that take the approach that certain problems ‘should’ only take two (or one or five, etc.) years to resolve and if the problem isn’t resolved in that time well then something is wrong. I read a book recently where the author had endured years of sexual abuse at the hands of her mother’s boyfriends and her therapist indicated to her that it should only take two years to resolve (or whatever word is appropriate here). Two years of therapy for ten years of sexual abuse that resulted in (among other things) dissociative identity disorder? Damn, that’s some good therapy. What if she wanted to get into other things also? What is this, we’re here to fix the DID and move on? Here’s your new toothbrush and dental floss kit, out you go now dearie.

I have to say – if I had walked into my therapist’s office, related what I thought to be my reasons for being there and she told me that it should all be resolved in two years (or one or five, etc.) then I’d feel a hell of a lot of pressure to make sure that my ‘issues’ were ‘resolved’ to somebody’s satisfaction in those two years and if they weren’t well them somebody must surely be a complete failure. I wonder who that somebody might be.

In addition none of this takes into account how open the client is willing to be among other things. Being one of those clients that is disinclined to blurt it all out in a hail of gunfire I simply don’t get this idea of time limits.
Now let me just state that I understand that there very well might be appropriate endings, time to move on, with or without a therapist but I have to say these time limits really make me uncomfortable.

I am not in love with my therapist although I am certainly quite fond of her. I don’t feel any kind of excessive dependency on her, in fact I try like hell not to be dependent on her at all which may be some therapists idea of a problem but I’m good with what we’re doing. And who knows, maybe that will change someday but right now I think she’s a good fit for me and I kind of like what we’re building here. I suspect she finds me a bit of a challenge - I cannot help that but she places absolutely no pressure on me whatsoever and it simply has to be that way for me. And it’s going to take as long as it takes and I’m ok with that. And she is too.
Given the confrontational, oftentimes harsh family environment I come from - if you had a problem boy you'd better say in fifty words or less and you'd better get over it in twenty-four hours or less because didn't nobody have time for your problems - I really like having a place to go where I can get rational, thoughtful, patient, kind and accepting responses to the things I want to discuss. And I get to be confident that I will be challenged in her gentle way when the need arises and how often do we get this in life? Rational, thoughtful, patient, kind, accepting confrontation. And no time limits! I never knew it could be this way.

And if I want it to be this way for a good, long time is there something wrong with that?

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Natural vs. Supernatural

From Thomas Merton’s “The Inner Experience”:

“Our awareness of our inner self can at least theoretically be the fruit of natural and psychological purification. Our awareness of God is a super-natural participation in the light by which he reveals himself interiorly as dwelling in our inmost self.”

This thought is interesting and perplexing to me in the way that he seems to differentiate between the ‘natural’ or (it seems to me) ‘not God’, and the ‘super-natural’ or (it seems to me) God. In other words as if the ‘natural’ things have nothing to do with God’s involvement.

And he continues with:

“Hence the Christian mystical experience is not only an awareness of the inner self, but also, by a super-natural intensification of faith, it is an experiential grasp of God as present within our inner self.”

I have a personal, intuitive understanding of this second part. God is here, I cannot necessarily explain the experience but I know it and the knowing is not with my head, or rather I should say not just with my head.

Here’s the thing. This awareness, this knowing, this experience can come, and I might even venture to say usually comes in ways that we define as completely natural. The catalyst for awareness arrives in the form of natural occurrences that we often overlook, mostly because we are conditioned by this life to overlook them as pertinent to our spiritual development.

Take for example a period of depression, or a psychotic episode, a serious physical illness, a life-threatening accident, you pick it. All what we would consider perfectly natural occurrences. Let us look at depression. That a clinical diagnosis can be made is both perfectly understandable and acceptable and completely irrelevant at the same time. The clinical diagnosis – the ‘natural’ explanation, does not cancel out the spiritual significance of the event. I read something recently about a woman who experienced, for the first time ever in her life a severe psychotic episode. She understood it as a catalyst for spiritual awareness. The doctors and psychiatric people who were treating her, as well as the author of the article seemed to scoff at that idea, treating it as nothing more than a ‘natural’, perfectly scientific, perfectly organic case of psychosis. One can only assume that they believe that God has nothing to do with psychosis, or depression or any other human condition that can be diagnosed clinically. But you see she has a completely different perspective than they do because she knows the person she is after in comparison to the person she was before. She knows what she knows now as opposed to what she didn’t know before. She is aware of the differences in her thought patterns after as being vastly different from her thought patterns before.

We have fallen into this misguided belief that if it comes from God that it must be in terms of our definition of supernatural. That it must come in the form of the parting of the Red Sea or of some crazy vision of heaven and hell or angels or a sudden flash of thunder and lightning followed by an audible voice from the heavens. In other words it must come in the form of something that we cannot explain in our known, scientific terms.

We do not understand that mostly God works within the laws of the universe. We do not understand that he mostly works within the guidelines set forth by him and that he works quietly and slowly, behind the scenes and below the surface.

Monday, August 31, 2009

Doubt

There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs when a person (not unlike myself) becomes quite convinced of the existence of God and beyond that of His intimate presence within us, and it was brought home to me last night in a most penetrating manner. I suspect that the title of this post gives away a clue as to what I'm speaking of.

Doubt. It's a real bugger and as I'm finding out it never goes away, it just changes in nature.

There has always been doubt for me when speaking of God. As I have indicated in previous posts to this point it has generally been the same kind of doubt that most people have which is to say 'is He here?'. Normal, everyday, regular and understandable doubt. The kind that reflects the notion of "I can't see Him and therefore I have my doubts that He's really here". Fair enough.

But that changes or rather evolves. You see I can no more ask that question since I am actually quite sure now that He's here. But it hit me big time last night that now it is a whole new experience of doubt.

I was watching a movie called The Pianist. For those who have never seen it, it is a movie about (drum-roll please) a pianist named Wladyslaw Szpilman (oy!) who experienced first-hand (it is autobiographical) what it was like to live in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. Funny thing about movies depicting the Holocaust, or any other form of man's inhumanity to man for that matter, you don't need to see the actual cruelty, the blood and gore, that defines these events. It is enough, and sometimes even more powerful to merely depict the everyday life, the 'normal' existence of the people caught up in it. And I think it is exactly because of that which is going unspoken. We don't need to have it play out right in front of our eyes to know the magnitude of it all and for it to make us squirm in our discomfort.

And this doubt that occurs is not a doubt that questions God's existence, it is a doubt that asks "how could you?" (let this happen). It asks "where were you?" (while this was happening), and "why did you?" (let this happen).

It is a doubt that questions the very goodness of God, the lovingkindness of God of which is so often spoken in our religious texts, the intimate, loving presence of Him in every moment of our lives.

And it makes me realize that I was far more comfortable with the other kind of doubt, you know the one which asks if He's really here because it's easier to get through the day with that kind of doubt.

And I'm left with this nagging feeling that I never had back in those good old days of regular old doubt. And the nagging feeling is that while I am asking Him those questions He is looking right back at me and asking 'how could YOU' let this happen and 'where were YOU' when this was happening and 'why did YOU' let this happen?

Saturday, August 29, 2009

I found a lovely post about trust over at:

http://theothersideofthecouch.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/trusting-yourself/.

Some people just say it so well.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Learning to Trust?

Whoever decided that we ‘learn to trust’ someone? I’d like to meet the guy who coined this phrase. It completely misses the mark. You don’t ‘learn to trust’. If I don’t trust you it is most likely because you haven’t given me any reason to trust you not because I have not ‘learned to trust’ people. Trust is something that is earned in the context of a relationship. It is something that is developed between two people, sometimes excruciatingly and frustratingly slowly and conversely (and most unfortunately) it can be smashed to smithereens in an instant.

It is not something that you study in school, take a test and then you know it for life like multiplication tables. That’s just not how it works.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Foolishness

Psalm 53 (and 14) begin as follows:

‘The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.’

I read once not long ago that this is an inaccurate translation and should read rather as:

‘The fool has said in his heart, No to God.’

I believe that the difference and beyond that, the implications between the two are profound. To my way of thinking the first one suggests ignorance on the part of the fool. Clearly we can all cop to ignorance in our lives. There is nobody who cannot at one time or another in his or her life claim that they are not ignorant about something. We simply cannot know everything and we know that. And perhaps that makes us a fool about that particular topic of which we are ignorant. I suspect we become fools when we arrogantly think we know when we haven’t a clue. And sometimes our ignorance has a profound impact on our lives and at some later date we find ourselves berating ourselves for that ignorance as in “If I had only known”… hindsight and all that. But sometimes we cannot know and that is a fact of life. Sometimes we cannot know and we simply have to endure the consequences of our ignorance.

But the second translation, whereby the fool says ‘No’ to God, THAT suggests (very strongly I might add) willfulness. That implies choice. That implies knowledge and then a willful turning away, a willful, defiant dismissal, a thanks but no thanks to God.

I cannot help but carry around this feeling that God has set things up just right, with such exacting precision that somehow He has left it entirely up to us to either willfully choose Him or deny Him. In other words when I look around me at all that is here, the created universe, and the more I get to know of human nature, the more I learn of the ways that human beings interact with one another, the more I learn of our need for each other and our reliance on the created world, the more it becomes glaringly apparent to me that everything is connected, the more I realize just how much evidence has been given to us by Him. And yet there are so many who continue to say that there is no evidence for God and they continue to deny His existence. This I believe defines that willful turning away, that saying ‘No’ to God. And I cannot help but think that the second translation is exactly what the psalmist had in mind and probably wrote originally.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Physician Heal Thyself

In the past year I have read a lot of material on the subject of psychotherapy and psychology and all things pertaining to said topic. And I've done this because well I started seeing a therapist for the first time ever in my forty something years of living just last summer and is usually the case with me I have to get my hands on as much information as I can so I can know what the hell is going on and blah, blah, blah. Some people would accuse me of having 'control issues' and to that I would say that if wanting (ok needing) to educate myself about something as personally relevant as being in therapy means having control issues well then a control freak I am. If needing control is wrong then I don't want to be right.

Anyway, enough about me. Here's the thing. In my travels through the psychotherapy/psychology literature which includes blogs and discussion groups and books, etc. I have come to realize that a lot and by a lot I mean A LOT of people become therapists because they have been in therapy and (presumably) had a good experience. I'm cool with that. But what I'm also noticing is that many of these same people who become therapists after being in therapy (and frequently still are in therapy) have and continue to have significant psychological problems, issues, maladies, choose your word. And I read this stuff and while I think it wonderful that people are brave enough to acknowledge their need for help and do their best to get that help via the therapy process I then think to myself "hmm, would I want this person to be my therapist? Would I want someone who is so clearly still working through their own 'stuff' treating me?". And the short answer is "nope".

Now let me just make one thing very clear, in no way do I discount the validity of someone who has had in the past significant psychological and/or emotional (I think they sort of go together no?) issues becoming a therapist. Quite the contrary actually. I am a firm believer in personal experience being exceptionally relevant in the helping professions. For example I honestly think that somebody who has never experienced depression can never understand the difficulty involved in dealing with depression and one thing I have come to appreciate is that there are many areas in which the understanding expressed by my therapist is paramount to me. Sometimes just plain acceptance is enough but at other times it is clear that she understands what I am saying and I can tell that it is not just at an intellectual level. I'm not necessarily suggesting that it is experiential on her part – I do not know. But it is obvious by her responses that she gets it. And that matters.

But here's the thing: at times I need her to be stronger than me – and I would interject here that I do not think that there are a whole lot of people out there who are in fact stronger than me - or at least I need to know that she can take me, that she can withstand the sometimes intense emotions that I am feeling without being repelled or afraid or just plain nervous. And I honestly doubt that if she is in the throes of her own deep depression or substance abuse issues or whatever that she will be able to handle my stuff. I think it is safe to say that if I found out that she was in the throes of her own deep stuff that I would have to leave her. I would hate it because frankly I have become rather fond of her but I know that I would have to leave her.

I guess this falls under the heading of "Physician Heal Thyself" and I would add "Before Thy Attempts to Heal Others".

And I wonder, am I wrong?

Monday, August 17, 2009

Caught Beyond Two Worlds

It is being caught, trapped or perhaps imprisoned in between the two worlds. The reality is not religious or secular, the reality is somewhere in between but not really in between but rather beyond. It is beyond the divide between what we have come to know as 'religious' and 'secular'. It is beyond, where there is knowledge that religious and secular do not exist but in the minds of human beings.

So one demands that God be here, that He is necessary and the other excludes God completely and yet they both point to the same thing.

I have a nagging feeling these days that this delineation that we place on 'this' life and the 'next' life, religious vs. secular, here on earth vs. heaven are misguided. Which is to say that I am not at all convinced anymore that we actually completely leave one and cross through some doorway at death that puts us in that completely different place we call heaven. And while there is something within that tells me that the differences may very well be profound (one can only hope) I am not so sure that there is some specific dividing line between the two places. I do not think it valid that we completely leave all of this behind and I feel that it is a much more gradual and gentle exit and entry from one to the other that maybe allows us to retain what has come before. And I think we will be given the opportunity to see all of this, this life we live here on earth here and now with much different eyes. With a newness and a clarity that we never knew existed and yet somehow we will still be able to see what we now know, what is now familiar.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

It's Personal

I do believe that it is this idea of impersonal with which I am uncomfortable. Philosophers, scientists and even some theologians that present an idea of something more, something beyond, something higher, a supernatural power existing in the world, they accept the concept of a higher power and yet do not seem to necessarily yield to the notion that this higher power can be personal but is rather completely impersonal. It is referred to as a 'higher power' or Intelligent Design or some other euphemism for God that connotes a totally impersonal 'thing'. Like God is some sort of mass or energy or force that is behind the whole of creation - including personal human beings – that is unseeing, unhearing, unthinking and unfeeling. And I cannot wrap my mind around this. How can the personal (and human beings are undeniably personal) come into being from the impersonal? Our own personal-ness requires that we must interact with other personal beings in order that we survive, it is the way we are made and even a cursory investigation bears this out.

And I often wonder why so many people are so blind to this. I've heard it said that it is a choice, that we actively choose to deny God. Maybe that's true I don't know but I'm not so sure I accept that as the complete answer. I think perhaps ignorance or even laziness would be a better explanation. Ignorance in that nobody ever taught us properly and laziness in that we never really bothered to think about it much. I can look back on my own life, consider my own (what I would now call) blindness and realize that I never gave it all much thought but I can say this: I never, for one minute dismissed the notion of God. I never discounted completely the possibility of the existence of God. I knew that I simply did not know enough to discount the possibility but if truth be told I also didn't have the first idea of how to go about finding out whether or not God truly does exist.

However I can remember many times throughout my life those brief moments of consideration when I allowed myself to ponder the question of whether or not He was there. And I recall that there was always, every time a sort of pain associated with it, an longing present – intense, and I needed to put the thought out of my head in order to dispense with that pain and longing. As if it just hurt too much to think about it because I didn't know and it is clear to me now that the need for Him to be there was so intense that I could not bear the thought that He wasn't. It was easier to simply not think about it.

It is almost comical in a sad and tragic way that all of our science, all of our philosophy, our theology and our psychology – all these schools of thought that are supposed to provide us the answers to the basic questions of existence have frequently done nothing more than obscure the simple answers to these basic questions.

We don't know, we don't recognize the need to look to ourselves, within ourselves for the answers, to look within our own hearts, to trust our own intuition and this is so sad because it is this willingness to see only the external that enables us to deny Him, to look right past Him, to completely miss the truth and the reality of God in all of his personal-ness.

Friday, July 24, 2009

In Search of Self

This is what it's all about. This is why we are here, this is what we should be doing, this is at least one of our goals in this lifetime. This is one of the features that is implanted in each and every one of us, it is an intrinsic part of what makes us human - the need to know who we really are, and hopefully to find some semblance of that person. Is it possible to find the real me in there? I don't know. But I sure need to try. And the truth is I haven't the first clue what the 'real' me even looks like – one of the casualties of living amongst humanity for all these years. We lose ourselves, or disown ourselves, or kill ourselves or have ourselves killed by somebody else. However it happens to play out.

What do I mean by this? We live our lives to please others. We learn to live, we learn to function in this lifetime in such a way that fits in with what others want, with the way others think it should be, with that which suits the lifestyle of those around us. And the person that doesn't let this happen is a rarity indeed.

Who do I mean by 'others'? Well first of all our parents because let's face it, we're at their mercy. They are our everything when we're born and through the first years of our lives and for some even longer than that. We are, as children, completely dependent on them, physically, emotionally, financially, intellectually. And so in our desperate attempt to maintain connection with them, and because they are adults and we're not we place ourselves at their mercy, knowing no other way. This is normal human development and no secrets here. For the record a second intrinsic part of being human is the need for connection with other human beings and by connection I don't mean casual interaction but rather deep and intimate knowing but that's another topic for another time. I'll get there.

But… and this is a big but, in the process of trying to maintain that all-important connection with others we lose ourselves. We learn what we need to do, how we need to function, what we need to be in the service of maintaining that connection with those individuals and in the process we suppress, deny, relinquish our own needs, our own likes, dislikes, skills, creativity. We become what those around us instruct us to become.

Until one day in whatever form it comes upon us we start breaking down. One thing I have learned, we cannot deny all aspects of ourselves and not suffer some consequences. Whether it comes in the form of depression, addiction, chronic physical or emotional pain, anger, sadness, whatever, we will suffer the consequences. When we are not true to ourselves, to what we are truly meant to be we cannot expect to function in such a way that is optimum for us.

And so begins the search. A long, arduous, confusing search for what is meant to be.


Wednesday, July 22, 2009

How Do We Love?

How do you love someone in this lifetime? I mean that most sincerely. How do we, as fallible human beings in a fallible world yet still possessing those qualities that define us as made in the image of God, learn how to love someone the way we were meant to love someone. In other words how do we love another in such a way that reflects the image of God?

God loves perfectly which tells me that somehow, someday we too will be able to love perfectly and sometimes I think that maybe, just maybe we have the ability in this lifetime to exhibit perfect love, if maybe only just for fleeting moments.

How do I, as an imperfect human being yet still made in the image of God manage to offer myself up to someone else in love and manage to accept that other's love for myself so that we can both be in this relationship built on the very definition of perfect love? I don't know how to do it without it going wrong.

How do we relinquish our own fears of the pain involved in loving someone? And love always, always involves pain. How do we get past the fear of the pain in order to open ourselves to giving love and being loved instead of letting that fear of pain close us off to the experience and possibilities of that love?

Or how do we do this without it turning into selfishness and possessiveness? I think an aspect of perfect love is allowing freedom to both people involved in the relationship. It involves loving this person in such a way that you're willing to be without them – if only for a time, and trusting that they will come back to you instead of holding on so tightly thereby controlling and restricting that freedom.

It would be easy to just say to all of this "we can't", not in this lifetime and maybe that's true. But the problem is we are all wired from our very core, from our very soul, to need this and so this response of "we can't" only frustrates us. Knowing (or thinking) that we can't doesn't stop the need and so what do we do about that?

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Joy

Is it true that joy cannot come without pain? I think it may be. I had wondered lately what is joy? I can honestly say that I did not know. Maybe that's kind of sad – I suppose because not knowing equates to never having had the experience of joy but it's the truth and I would be willing to bet that it's the truth for most people. I think in general we expect that joy is some state of intense happiness but this I believe is false.

God speaks to me. I know this and yet I struggle to find the words to explain. And He speaks to me a lot. I know this because I now know things that have originated from deep within myself and therefore cannot possibly have come from anywhere else but from Him. We have established a connection He and I and through this connection I am coming to learn the true meaning of intimacy and I am quite by accident coming to learn the true meaning of joy. It is not happiness or rather while there may be moments of good feelings in the emerging recognition of joy it is not by any means pure happiness as we define happy. Far from it, I would hesitantly say that joy involves more pain and frustration and desire... most certainly desire.

Longfellow writes of it in his poem My Lost Youth describing his experience as he revisits his boyhood home. We all know this, it's a longing, a desire for what once was, for something deep within ourselves that we cannot grasp:

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain
My heart goes back to wander there,
And among the dreams of the days that were,
I find my lost youth again.
And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."


And there is mystery involved in joy, how could it be otherwise when speaking of the Divine? A frustrating sort of mystery to be sure but also a welcome mystery. In my search for God, in my continual questioning of Him I have come to realize that I am loath to give up the mystery that would result by finding all the answers to all my questions. A real catch-22. I have questions, I want answers but I don't want to lose the mystery that is inherent to life, not that I really think there's any chance of that. Because one of the basic mysteries of life is that there is more to know than can ever possibly be known by any human being due to the finite state of our humanity.

My question today is whether or not joy can come without pain and I think not, a paradox of life that the two are woven together and cannot be separate when joy is the leading aspect. And I think that joy is deep desire and discovery shrouded in mystery and darkness and that it comes only in relation to, in response from, only through contact with God. It comes in the recognition of our connectedness to God. Fleeting moments of connection with Him in the deepest part of our soul. The Joy is experienced in the small, fragile glimpses of recognition of Him and the pain comes with our inability to grasp Him fully.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Infused Contemplation (or God 101)

I am just a regular girl. I'm in my forties like a million other regular girls out there (alright so maybe I don't actually qualify as a 'girl' anymore). I have a house in a regular town, I go to the regular grocery store, I go to the recycling center on Saturdays, I pay the regular bills, I drive a regular car, I make a regular salary at a regular software development job. As I said, regular. I was baptized and raised in the Catholic Church but as soon as I was old enough to have worn my parents out with my disinterest in the whole thing I stopped going to church which happened around the age of 15. And I didn't go back for years, like for 30 years. I have a husband and a child and none of us was getting up early on Sunday to get ready for church. We had better things to do like cut the grass, ride the bikes, wash the cars, watch football. Like all the regular Sunday things that all of the other regular people out there do on a Sunday.

The following is a description of 'Infused Contemplation' as defined by Thomas Merton in his book 'The Inner Experience':

"Contemplation is a supernatural love and knowledge of God, simple and obscure, infused by Him into the summit of the soul, giving it a direct and experimental contact with Him… It is a gift of God that absolutely transcends all the natural capacities of the soul and which no man can acquire by an effort of his own… in other words God is manifesting Himself…"

That is a composite of several paragraphs from The Inner Experience but it essentially gets the point across.

Here's the thing, I know what this means… from a personal point of view. Which is to say I know what it means from experience, because I am currently (clearly it's not a one time and then over thing) in the process of experiencing it for lack of a better way to say it. I know it sounds 'out there' and every day I think to myself at some point "I must be nuts, this cannot be real, this doesn't happen to regular people - monks, nuns, priests, shamans, buddhas maybe but not regular people who have to clean their own toilets and eat hamburgers and drink beer." Although to be fair I suppose monks probably clean their own toilets.

And I can see now that it's been going on for a number of years, in the form of a rather slow, arduous and painful spiritual awakening. I cannot think of another way to say it. I see things now, I know things now that I never knew before and that did not come from some external source e.g. a book, another person but this knowledge, these things which I know now to be true, I can sense that they are true, they come from somewhere within me, a place that I cannot pinpoint it's just there. Again, I know this sounds out there but it's been too long and has happened too frequently and its come to the point where I'd be a fool to deny it. I would also go out on a limb whereby I could even say that God and I speak to each other. Daily. I speak to Him and He speaks back to me. There are a hundred ways in which this happens so I'll not go into details but I know, I know that it's Him and I know that this happens. And I'm just a regular girl who likes to ride my bike and play softball and sit on the beach in the summer.

And here's one of the hardest parts - there is nobody for me to talk to about this. I am ensconced in the 'regular' world, some might call it the 'secular' world. I put these things in quotation marks because I also now know that there is no dividing line between the spiritual and secular world. We have done that ourselves, placed this imaginary line between the two but God doesn't just play in what we would call the 'spiritual' world. I'm here to tell you that He shows up in the secular world also.

And this is just about the loneliest thing that can happen to a regular person. I mean let's face it there's not a lot of God talk happening during a town recreational league softball game. Oh sure there are a lot of great books out there written by the great spiritual masters, St. John of the Cross comes to mind, and I've read some of them but they all seem to have one thing in common: they all seem to be written from the perspective of the previously 'religious' person. So does a 'Dark Night of the Soul' only happen to Trappist monks and Carmelite nuns? Must I be a Ph. D in Christian (insert any religion here) philosophy and mysticism before God will sweep in and do His thing, work His wonders on me? You might be tempted to think so after reading some of these texts. At least that's my impression. Perhaps in my ignorance I have completely missed something and if so believe me I'd love to know.

And the fact is that if I ever tried to bring this up with any of my friends they'd look at me like I had lost my mind, an unfortunate by-product of living a regular life in the regular world. Seriously, they'd think I'd gone over the edge.

Anyway over the past couple of years I've been keeping a journal which has evolved really into my daily prayer, my daily discussions with God, my struggle to understand what's going on and just a place to put all of these new thoughts down on paper and I'll tell you it's been a huge help. So during today's entry I realized something. I think maybe it's harder for us regular people because we have nobody to turn to. We're not steeped in theology, we're not surrounded by people who have either been through this before or at least have read about it and can perhaps provide some cursory guidance. And as a result of this I think we flounder around in even more obscurity because there is nobody to explain to us what's going on and what we might do about it (which essentially amounts to not much but that's not what this post is about).

And so I thought to myself well maybe I could write that text. Maybe I could be that regular person who turns into the one Supreme Spiritual 'Master' out there sitting on the mountaintop in my robe and shaved head who when asked all of the deep and dark questions about the meaning of life by some poor regular girl or guy who is going through this and is groping around in the dark for he or she knows not what, perhaps I can be the one to say "I don't have the first idea what it's all about and I know exactly how you feel and I haven't got any answers for you except to say I know how hard it is and I know how lonely it is and I'm stumbling around in the dark just like the rest of you poor, dumb bastards".

Because that would be the truth.

But maybe that's the help that comes. Maybe the help comes in the form of knowing that there are others like me out there who truly understand because they've been through it also, and they have survived or at least are surviving. Maybe for awhile (or for the rest of this life) that's all some of us ever get, I don't know. But it is an incredibly lonely place and I wish there were people out there close to me who were talking about it.

God asks a lot of us. This I now also know to be true.