Shadow - The Final Frontier

I have become dedicated to the ancient edict, "Know thyself". If I am truly the creation of the divine, then getting to know myself is the most immediate way of getting to know the divine. And getting to know myself means getting to know the part of me in shadow as well as in light.

The Shadow is a Jungian term used to describe the parts of ourselves we are not aware of, that tend to act independent of our conscious desire and will. The shadow is simply a part of ourselves that the light of consciousness does not reach. It is not evil; it is simply unknown. Many of us hide our goodness as well as our faults within our shadow.

These days, I find myself digging into my shadow more and more. It is the part of me not yet known, not yet accepted or integrated into who I am. It is the final frontier - the part of me that has eluded my awareness the longest. In it, I believe, lies the secret to who I really am - a divine being on this earth in order to experience being human.

There is ugliness in the shadow, just as a wound can be ugly. But hiding the ugliness prevents help from ariving and healing from taking place. We often shrink from ugliness, especially our own, because we think it makes us bad. Thus we avoid the healing light of consciousness where we need it most.

In order to have the confidence to look into our shadow with curiosity instead of dread, we must know without a doubt that we are good, and what we find has nothing to do with our inherent worth. Otherwise, digging up dirt is just another way of confirming our suspicion that we do not deserve love.

Comment posted by Gene
at 7/9/2006 5:49:00 PM
Yes, all of me is good, including my shadow. The shadow is not something of evil - it is merely something I have hidden from myself. If I do not know I am divine, that means my divinity lies in shadow, and I need the light of consciousness to shine on it so I can know I am divine. Much of us lies in shadow, otherwise we would not act with the ignorance we do.

I hear you, Lee - I still like the word "ugliness" for a reason. Much of what people do, including myself, is ugly. War is ugly. Suicide bombers do ugly things. Politicians who server their own interests instead of the interests of their constituancy are ugly.

Ugly in my mind does not mean bad. A gaping wound in my foot can be ugly, if it is swollen, bleeding, and full of dirt. But the proper response to ugliness is to shine a light on what is ugly, give it careful attention, clean it up, care for it, and bring it back to a healthy place.

For me, this is a kind and loving way of looking at the things I do that I am ashamed of - I am not bad, but sometimes I look at how I act or think, and I cringe - I cringe because I see it is contrary to my divine nature. The person who does not cringe is no longer aware when he is far from his true nature.

Comment posted by Lee
at 6/29/2006 8:43:00 PM
Gene, you said: "In it [shadow], I believe, lies the secret to who I really am - a divine being on this earth in order to experience being human."
I believe the great discovery for you is that you are already a divine being.........you don't need to understand any more of yourself to reach that conclusion.............don't keep looking to find the divine...........feel the divine that is right there within you and look for the divine you haven't discovered!

Gene, you said " There is ugliness in the shadow, just as a wound can be ugly. But hiding the ugliness prevents help from ariving and healing from taking place. We often shrink from ugliness, especially our own, because we think it makes us bad. Thus we avoid the healing light of consciousness where we need it most."

Gene, I'd like to rewrite this..........There is love in the shadow, just as a wound can be love. But hiding the love prevents help from arriving and healing form taking place. We often shrink from love, especially our own, because we are afraid to recogniaze our greatness. Thus we avoid the healing light of consciousness where we need it most......right at home within ourselves.

Often shadow is associated with dark and dark is associated with negative..............there is great love in the shadow. There is not ugliness in my shadow............ugliness is in the eye of the beholder and I'm not ugly nor do I have any ugliness.

I believe that all of me is good, including my shadow; I'm a work in progress. I'm all good and there are good parts of me that I'm trying to make better.

I've spent way too much time on the negative side......I strive to be on the positive side and stay there and improve myself from the positive perspective.

Gene, thanks for giving me a venue to reaffirm my lovliness!

Comment posted by Heidi
at 6/29/2006 5:30:00 PM
I've been thinking about what both of you commented on about philosophies of the hidden self and getting to know the shadow.
It sounds like you are both intrigued more with the fearful elements (although you do mention the more desireable ones that may also be hidden.)

In my experience, I have been so deeply exposed to the "thou shalt nots" the forbidden rules of society, culture and peer groups the sense of shame and guilt that I've lost much of my child-like self confidence and desire for self-love.

I hope you are right that in my journey, I can re-discover how to love myself as much as I strive to love others!

I've been on a journey lately that speaks to the beauty within and I'm struggling with recognizing that inner peace. I think I am far too familiar with the fearful side (probably not my shadow at all anymore) I am quite a stranger to loving my own inner person as fully as I would like.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 6/29/2006 11:54:00 AM
I agree with what you say, Gene. I am not so familiar with Jungian psychology and the "shadow", but I know that Freudian psychology recognizes the id as well as the ego and the superego, and both Jung and Freud recognized the subconscious, I believe, and that it influences us without us fully realizing it. Eastern religion recognizes the chakras, energy centers in our body, which include the lowest chakra related to sex, reproduction, and self preservation, and that we need a balancing of the chakras, that each is a natural part of us. Religion tries to fill in gaps in scientific knowledge with faith and myths that sometimes turn out to be wrong in light of scientific discoveries. Modern science recognizes biological evolution leading to the development of humans, who rise above nature in our sense of morality, and our society, folkways, intelligence and technology, and exploring the universe, yet we are still a part of nature, still having physical needs and limitations including mortality regardless of what we may believe about an afterlife. I believe in living one life at a time. Christianity talks about "original sin" and our selfish nature, but I also believe in "original goodness", our natural feeling of love and caring for each other based on empathy aside from any religion-based belief in divine rewards and punishments or in a spiritual command to "love ye one another" or "love thy neighbor as thyself", which assumes that we do love ourselves, a healthy self-esteem and wanting to enjoy life. I agree with the saying "know thyself", including what is in our "shadow" or subconscious or selfish side of each of us as a basic part of ourselves. There is a saying, by some Jewish thinker, I believe, that being strong (morally) includes controlling our passions. Recently I went to a discussion of "Have we learned anything from religion?" I have found that I have some things to unlearn from my protestant Christian religious upbringing. During the 1960's, that wonderful golden age of love, flower power, and breaking free, there was the saying, "If it feels good do it, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody". I agree with what one Jewish thinker said, that "the good life" includes enjoyment as well as morality. Here's to the good life! Andy

The Would-Be Guru

It has been a real blow to my ego to discover, after I'd been writing this blog for several weeks, that the world has apparently not been desperately waiting to learn every profound thought and experience of my life. Even friends don't seem to have caught on to the vast amounts of wisdom they could be gaining if only they would read my blog. My guru image is being severely threatened.

It has challenged me to question why I am doing this. I know that I have a strong desire to be seen and heard, and the idea of putting myself out on the world wide web for all to see was very appealing. And, as far as I can tell, I have very few readers, or at least commenters. But I continue to write, even though the fantasy of becoming one of the most widely read blogs on the web has quickly faded.

So why do I continue? I discover it does something to me to write, and to be potentially exposed, even if no one ever reads what I write. I know they could, and that makes a difference to me. I am challenged to ask who I am, how I want to present myself to the world, what do I choose to hide and what do I choose to show, and why.

How much my fantasy of greatness continues to fuel my posts, I don't know.

Comment posted by Gene
at 7/9/2006 5:39:00 PM
Hi, Lee. You ask good questions. "Do you think you are wise and great, and if so, do you need others to validate that or convince you?" Yes, a part of me indulges in the fantasy that everything I do is wonderful. Another part indulges in the thought that nothing I do has any worth at all. I know that reality is neither, but that does not always stop me from acting out from these extremes."

"Why does it make a difference [if people could read your blog]?" Because when I harbor fantasies about myself, there is no challenge, other than my own vigilence, to the fantasy. When I consider putting it out on the web, I suddenly am faced with the spectacle of hundreds of people reading my claims, and it sobers me. I have to stop and consider what I *really* believe about myself, and not just what I fantasize. So the exposure forces me to be more honest with myself. (After all, what would people think of me if they caught me lying??? :) )

Thanks for your input.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 6/28/2006 5:41:00 PM
I try my best to keep as low a profile on my ego as I possibly can and I'm not always successful. To be doing something so that others will feed the hungry ego is a process to be examined. It's looking outside one's self for self validation instead of writing the blog purely from energy within to feed the energy within.

"I know that I have a strong desire to be seen and heard" Why do you have that desire. Do you want people to look up to you (in the physical sense, they already do!); do you want to be seen as wise or great? If so, where does this need come from? Do you think you are wise and great and if so, do you need others to validate that or convince you?

"I discover it does something to me to write, and to be potentially exposed, even if no one ever reads what I write."
This is writing more from within........for you! You put yourself out there for YOU and what others do with it is their choice. You are not responsibe for them; your blog cannot rescue them, they must do that themselves.

"I know they could [read the blog] and that makes a difference to me"
Again, I ask, why, why does it make a difference? Apparently Andy has been reading your blog but you didn't realize that. Do you feel differently now, why? You really don't know what he thinks of your blog, but you know he's reading it............so what now?

I'm not saying we should all be islands and what others say and think about us doesn't have some meaning and purpose. I believe humans to be social creatures. But I am concerned when actions are generated for the purpose of feeding an ego rather than for the action itself and letting the Universe decide the fate of the action.

I hope some of this makes some sense............Lee

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 6/28/2006 12:08:00 AM
I read everything you put on the internet, Gene, even though I don't always reply. By the way, I was out of town at the Old Songs Festival, a great folk festival, near Albany, NY, and returned late Monday, otherwise I would have replied sooner. Andy

Baby Birds and the Future of the Human Race

Zipping along in a hurry to get to work, I saw a bird in the right lane that I assumed would fly away when I got near enough. It did not. It make a few unsure hops towards the curb, and stopped as I swerved around it.

I realized it was a baby bird, not yet able to fly. Normally it would have been obvious to me to get to work on time rather than mess with the trivial issue of a baby bird on the road - but reason did not prevail. I found a place to turn around and drove back, hoping I would reach it before someone's tire did.

Eventually I was driving slowly past the spot where it was, and I saw it on the grass by the curb. I stopped my car in the right driving lane and hoped I would not cause an accident. Visions of President Lincoln stopping on the way to a meeting to help a pig out of a mud pit flashed through my mind. I got out and easily picked it up in my hands. It gave a squalk, then tried to eat my finger, while I looked around for a safe place to put it.

Next to the side walk was an immense stone wall, with no break within sight. Overhead, two robins were chirping frantically in the trees. There was no nest to be seen. Full of misgivings, I set the baby bird down under the parents, as close to the wall as possible, hoping that the parents could figure out some way of keeping it out of the road. It seemed pretty hopeless.

Why go to all that trouble and care for a baby bird, when next to me several dozen acres had just been cleared for a new building, with untold destruction to hundreds of creatures which had found a home there? As someone said, it mattered to the bird.

And why go to all the trouble of saving the earth from global warming? We are, after all, only one planet of theoretically billions, which may have life far more intelligent than ours. Why bother? Because it matters to us.

It is not logic that drives us to preserves life, nor to get out of bed in the morning. There is some passion deep within us that we do not control. It is because meaning is found deep inside, and not from some religious edict or logical conclusion of what we should do.

I find myself today more distracted by the thought of tires and feathers than melting icebergs. Today, that is closer to home. Tomorrow may be another story.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 6/27/2006 11:54:00 PM
Gene, your comments bring some things to mind. I remember seeing a peeping bird that couldn't or wouldn't fly, standing up to a barking dog that had the bird backed up against a curb, so I scared the dog away.
I heard the story about Lincoln and the pig, that he helped it get unstuck from a fence, so in school I drew a picture of that, and I didn't understand why my teacher didn't like it, until years later when I realized she must have thought it looked like Abe was having sex with the pig.
I, too, have thought about the idea that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, but we only know of it on our own living planet. But suppose that somehow there is a universal life force that focuses itself all in one place, which happens to be our planet? But any way you figure it, life on Earth (Gaia) is precious and we must save it! Andy

Comment posted by Gene
at 6/26/2006 7:12:00 PM
I got the journal fixed - my host switched servers, and I was pointing to the wrong one. Thanks for noticing.

Comment posted by Heidi
at 6/26/2006 7:11:00 PM
I love the story -- I have been there when you rescued birds before, too.

BTW - your journal only goes up to June 12 -- that last couple of posts seem to be missing.

A Hard Morning

I woke up this morning with the most beautiful hard-on I have had in a long time. Full, and bursting with life, I felt like if I turned over, you could spin me like a top.

Finally, an experience I can claim women can't understand. It has been a while since I woke up this hard. It is not a particularly sexual feeling - there is no need for any kind of satisfaction or release. It is satisfying just to feel the energy buzzing in my body and pushing outward - as if the thickness yearned to expand and fill the universe. I feel the pleasure of it pushing against the sheets, strong, bold, incapable of hiding.

Why does it feel so risky to write about my sexuality on the world wide web? I'm not revealing anything someone couldn't have guessed. Am I afraid of losing readers who don't want to know I have a penis? Am I afraid of breaking a taboo? (who, me??) Do I want to pretend I am just a mind, and my body is just an uninteresting machine carrying my head around?

Since I started this blog, I've struggled with just how honest I want to be. The fearful part of me does not want to offend anyone, nor allow someone to laugh at me. Yet it rankles me to have to be selective about who I admit I am. It reeks of the days when I was ashamed, when such things could not be spoken of, when mother was listening on the other side of the door.

Yet I feel there is some tremendous gift awaiting me if I put all of myself out there, even if no one is reading this blog. *I* know I have revealed myself - I have nothing left to hide. If I chat with someone who thinks I reveal too much about myself, I can say, "Boy, you should read my blog!" Of course, they will when they go home, then pretend the next day they didn't. Isn't that what we all want, to know and be known?

I long to integrate all that I am, to shed the right and the wrong, the fear and the ego, and just let be what is. Isn't that, after all, what the universe does? The sun doesn't turn its face - it shines on the sexual and the mundane, on the lawyer and the hamburger-flipper, on the suicide bomber's morning as well as the innocent people he will kill today. This, to me, is the meaning of the phrase "God is love". The universe does not ask who deserves to breathe its fresh air this morning - it freely gives regardless of our judgments.

The hard-on has faded, and now I can tuck it away and go out among the other penises and vaginas properly hiding under business clothes, in a world where we have all apparently agreed on the fantasy that certain parts of us do not exist.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/10/2006 11:23:00 PM
Gene
You are just beautiful
that's all

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/9/2006 5:24:00 PM
wow, you are brave to put that out there. and I like what you said about it.

Reclaiming Innocence

The receptionist at my new doctor's office was a young chinese girl with a big smile, soft voice, and innocent face. As she took my patient information, she chatted about herself and the world. She had the presence of an infant, as if she were grabbing her toes and softly cooing, pleased with everything, laughing at a delightfully absurd world. I could not imagine that my bodily woes and worries would make any sense to her.

As we chatted, I felt my face lighting up with the reflection of hers, and vague memories arose of a world I once knew, wide-eyed in a benign universe. I felt in love over her smile and a few meaningless words, and suddenly I wanted her, wanted to possess her laughter and light, wanted to pull her body into mine so that I could merge with her naked joy of life.

And the thought occurred, was I simply wanting to strip her of her innocence so that through her I could re-experience the pain of my own loss?

I know all too well that that there is something in me that keeps me from reentering that world - the fear of being fooled again, of being too naive, of risking vulnerability, of pain. And so I peer longingly over the wall I have built that guards me from what I long for, convinced that I need to be serious and grown up and realistic.

Yet her smile lingers in me, and I am unable to give up the desire for what I have left behind.

More thoughts from the discussion

I left the discussion yesterday feeling lonely. Perhaps I had hoped to find kindred souls, people who resonated deeply with my own experience, people whose experience I could deeply resonate with. Instead, the struggle of intellectual polemics still weighed on me, and I left, feeling unseen and unheard.

Yet a woman there had heard me - she even remarked outloud she was interested in my point of view, and wanted to talk more with me about it. No one else's remarks had gotten that particular honor.

I thought about it as I was walking away, thinking, I should go back and be open to the chance that this woman and I might have some common interest of the soul that would at least partially satisfy my hunger. But I did not turn around. The vision of being alone, unheard, not understood was so dramatic, poinent, even enrapturing, that I chose to continue in my drama than disturb it with the possibility of a different reality.

It is an old story, one I am increasingly becoming tired of. It is true that as a child, I found no connections, no one to relieve me from my self-alienation by telling me, "Here's who you are. Here's what I see when I look at you." I grew up in this strange confusing inner world of swirling thoughts and conflicting feelings, and found no one who could help me make any sense of it all, or give me a sense of who this person was who had the thoughts and feelings.

And when I go to an event like this, and I am not fully reassured that my thoughts are valuable, I fall back to the old story - still dramatic and full of pathos for me after all these years.

It is time to let the old story go, and step into my power.

I'll meet you there

I attended a discussion today on "Why are we here?", from which I wrote the previous post. As with many discussion groups I have attended, there seemed to be this sense of urgency among the participants - urgency to get their point of view across, urgent to be heard, urgent to answer the challenge leveled at their pet theory.

Many people either had "the answer" or were looking for one. It was an intellectual discussion, which I do enjoy, yet I found I was seeking to hear people's experience of wrestling with the question more than the answers they had found. For a while, I sat there inwardly criticizing them for being too much into theory instead of experience, and busily putting together a compelling argment for why they should not try to prove things. Even when the paradox of that struck me, I found it hard to give up.

And I thought to myself, what would a meeting be like if everyone stopped trying to draw conclusions, and just experienced each other's life instead? Would we all just sit there and stare at each other? How would we talk? Could we still ponder the mysteries of life without aiming to come out of meeting having decided who was right and who was wrong?

Yes - I have experienced that, and I know it is possible. It is the yin of conversation rather than the yang - it is the listening instead of the talking. It is talking just enough so that we can listen to the experience of others, rather than listening just enough so we can talk about our own ideas.

Seeking meaning through rational discourse is a bit like Barry Manilow singing "I write the song", which was written by Bruce Johnston.

I have had enough of theory. I crave touching someone's soul, and having their soul touch mine. I long to reconnect to the intimate web I was born into, the mystical world of connection with everything in me and around me.

"Out beyond right and wrong there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

 Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'

Doesn't make any sense." - Rumi

Awakening to Meaning

We wake up from the sleep of pre-birth and find ourselves in a world of feeling, mystery, rich with significance. Things around us and in us make us cry, become afraid, become happy, curious, angry. What we experience is meaningful to us from day one.

Yet, as adults, we research the world and study the laws of science, the mechanics of the universe, and discover to our dismay, that meaning is not there. The world appears fairly mechanical, operating by cause and effect. Even the study of our own brains results in a mechanistic explanation, and the study of our emotions yields an understanding of hormones and brain activity. No where in this scenario is there any purpose, any meaning, anything that explains the deep experiences we have, and continue to have, throughout our lives.

Many reach the logical conclusion that there is no meaning, and we must either invent one and live in pretense, or accept there is none and live a life of contradiction to what we believe. Others believe that meaning is defined by an authoritarian God, who simply decrees it into existence. Neither alternative is very comfortable.

A shift has happened in us when we became rational beings, during the pre-teen years - we started to look to logic instead of experience as the source of truth. Originally, we had a set of experiences, and we found various theories we learned or overheard helped us categorize and make sense out of our experience. But eventually, the theories became the truth, and we started judging our experience according to what we believed, and rejecting experience that did not fit.

When we lose experience, we become adrift in a world of rationality, cut off from our core being, the being that experiences. We ask, "Why am I here? What is my purpose in life? What meaning does my life have?" But there are no logical answers to these questions that truly satisfy. If I say I am the product of random forces that began with the big bang, that gives me no comfort in feeling I belong here on the earth. If I say my purpose is to be happy, or to satisfy my desires, it seems pretty useless to pursue pleasure, education, fame or money for this person who will be dead in 50 years. To what end do we do these things? If I say my meaning comes from my religion or God, then what of others who believe differently?

One cannot derive "ought" from "is". One can look at all the facts of the physical world, and probe the depths of brain neurology, and study the history of evolution, but never can we take a set of facts and derive a statement of "should" from them. Morality, value, purpose, meaning, are all inherently unreachable if one starts from the world of facts and reason.

Yet we all had a sense of meaning once. When we were born, we didn't question why we were there. We were intimately connected with our little universe, instantly reacting to stimuli, deeply connected in a web of objects, sensations, feelings, reactions, expression of our inward selves, instantly responding and interacting with living beings and caretakers. We were part of the web of life.

When we became convinced that logic led to truth, we lost that connection - we lost the intimacy we had with the universe, and lived in the world of facts and beliefs. And one cannot start at reason and arrive at living. We can experience a proof, but we cannot prove an experience.

What then? How do we discover the meaning of life? The answer does not lie in any rational statement, because that will never touch the soul. The answer cannot be arbitrarily chosen if it is to be real. The answer can only arise spontaneously out of experience, like sexual desire arises from our bodies.

I look at a sunset, and I do not conclude there is meaning - I discover it. I discover that the colors fascinate me, that the scene moves me, that my thoughts spontaneously wander around the world's bigness and my smallness, around how life can be full of amazing beauty that appears without anyone's effort. I did not decide there was meaning; rather, I stood before the world and discovered that meaning was there. There is no deduction here, nor induction - there is only spontaneous discovery.

It may take us years to discover a meaning for our individual lives, for we are much more complex than a sunset, much more wonderful, much more paradoxical and mysterious. But when we stand fully and honestly before our lives, and really see ourselves, we will eventually see the meaning that is there.

Comment posted by Gene
at 6/18/2006 9:28:00 PM
A beautiful poem, Alex. I look forward to your comments also.

Comment posted by Alex
at 6/13/2006 7:45:00 PM
Gene,

While I'm considering how to respond, I leave you with this:

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/It_Was_Like_This.html

Alex

Comment posted by jaiamma
at 6/12/2006 10:16:00 AM
Hi Gene, I found this post of yours to be very meaningful... (smile) My experience: "Everyone wants to be happy. No one wants to suffer." (the Dalai Lama). People who are experiencing suffering search for meaning. People who are free from suffering don't. Note I distinguish between suffering and pain. Suffering is not just the ups and downs of everyday life, but fundamentally human suffering is being burdened with the deep belief (felt in the body, emotions and mind) that who we are is limited to our fragile, mortal bodies and our personality (often dysfunctional).

Any "meaning" of life derived from intellectual analysis is like trying to find sweetness by licking a sheet of paper with the word "honey" written on it.

There have been brief moments in my life when I've experienced deep bliss. In those moments I and everything was and felt perfect, complete and deliciously beautiful. If, in those moments, someone had asked me "What's the meaning of life?" I would have laughed and said "Look at that tree! Look at that child! Look at that old beggar! Can't you see its all perfect and blissful just as it is? That's the "meaning" of life; this amazing present moment just as it is. Why search for something that is already here? Its like a fish searching for water."

So, Gene, I'm in joyful agreement with your primary points. That the "meaning" of life is found when we deeply experience the present moment just as it is, without judgment. Its beautiful that people search for the meaning of life because they are really searching for who they truly are (beyond mental concepts). Everyone wants to be happy, and everyone eventally will discover that true, unconditional happiness (meaning) is only found when they realize they are the whole cosmos; are the Divine Presence. They are not little vulnerable egos that will disappear into dust.

For me, the meaning of life is a felt experience in the body and emotions, not any kind of concept or philisopical notion. The nice thing about having those moments of bliss is that when I'm in my suffering (which is most of the time) I still feel that the "meaning" of life is this present moment. That feeling is a continual remnant or residue of my bliss experiences. I response to the question about why God allows suffering, one great sage said "I like suffering. It brings me closer to God." So, if approached with the right attitude, suffering can dissolve the ego rather than reinforce it.

The search for meaning in life is really just the search for the end of suffering. That completely defines my life; the search for the end of suffering. That search fills me to the brim with meaning & purpose. As I grow, this search is simply about accepting and surrendering to each moment just as it is (especially my pain). Continual opening of the heart is the meaning of life. Suffering ends when my feeling that I am a separate self dissolves. 99% of the time I feel separate. But that 1% has seeped deeply into the rest of my life.

I deeply appreciate Gene how you're exploring these big questions and turning the light of your awareness right back into your own being, searching for your true self. Being an optimist, I feel that as the world evolves, more and more people will engage in that search as they discover that excessive material pleasures don't bring true happiness.

Charles

I just found out that my friend Charles, about whom I've written twice before, died on Sunday. Recurrent pnemonia apparently finished the process that was inevitable anyway.

Death is the strangest thing. How can a person simply cease to exist?? If a tree is cut down, there is a wood pile, or sawdust, or rotting trunks on the ground. And of course the physical body of Charles still exists. But the spirit - the voice, personality, ideas, experiences of his life, his memories - all have suddenly vanished without a trace. We will never know anything more of what it was like to be Charles than we know at this moment, and even that will fade over time.

Here I can see the essence of spirit quite clearly. Don't talk to me about the personality just being a very complex set of neural connections, or that everything is ultimately arrangements of molicules - that does not explain what has happened here. Something spiritual has happened; something we call a spirit is no longer there. It is not a "thing" that has gone - it is a capability, a capacity to touch my life, to teach me from years of experience and from a bank of wisdom accumulated at great price. I no longer can stare into his eyes and feel the thrill of words coming from a person with very different life experiences than mine. I can no longer have my vision expanded by his particular point of view. I can no longer listen to him disrupt the chapel service with his long passionate speeches.

And some day, I will die. How can I fathom that I, not my body, but the thing that feels, experiences, weeps, laughs, thinks - that that thing will be gone? That all I have experienced and today hold as so important, will disappear? That the desire for life itself will no longer be? Who will I be, when I am no longer I? Who was I, before I was me?

I am forced once again to face that great paradox of meaning - why am I here? I have struggled with this question since I started counting the years left instead of the years lived. The task now is, to cease hiding, to cease pretending, and to wrestle with what is, allowing the dance between this thing we call reality and the thing I call me, to shape me and my philosophy as it will.

Comment posted by Heidi
at 6/9/2006 8:04:00 AM
Gene,
This one so much touched me especially with knowing several people pending death and also Charles now gone.

I think I feel like this especially when I am in the heart of getting the very thing I have longed to receive -- I feel so inadequate when it is gifted to me.

This poem makes me feel less alone in my struggle.

Heidi


[Panhala]
Life While-You-Wait
Wislawa Szymborska

Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it's mine. I can't exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play's all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can't conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can't take back,
stars you'll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run ?
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven't seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn't even clear my throat offstage).

You'd be wrong to think that it's just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I'm standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there's no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I've done.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

Two Kinds of Anger

I've been purposely avoiding putting much theory on my blog, because I tend to theorize a lot in my head, and theory does not create intimacy. Yet sometimes it can be invaluable, and this one is an important understanding for me, that might be useful to others.

I've always had issues with anger - other people's and my own. I tend to be terrified of it, and avoid it at all costs. I've suppressed much of my own anger, and have wound up often feeling like a victim and carrying resentment.

From my work with Shalom and other places, I've come to see two different emotions that I have both been calling anger:

- Passion - I may feel strongly about something, such as the war, and express my thoughts with energy. Or someone may be violating or about to violate a boundary of mine, and I say "No!" strongly, with power, with energy. I have often suppressed this energy from being expressed in my life.

- Resentment - I may dislike something that has happened to me, or some situation that I cannot change, and develop an attitude of feeling like a victim, powerless and abused. It may include the desire for vengence, or withdrawal, or the belief that I don't deserve to be happy. I have often indulged in this attitude, and suffered a lot from it.

The psychological technique of emotional release, where one brings an emotion to the surface and expresses it strongly and bodily with the purpose of releasing it, has been controversial in the field of psychology. It is done in co-counseling, primal therapy, in Shalom work, in Pathwork, in the Mankind Project, and many other systems of healing and growth with great effectiveness, yet many professionals remain against it. I've puzzled over that a lot, because it has been very effective for me. This distinction above holds the key for me.

Emotions that are habitual attitudes are strengthened the more they are practiced. Emotions that have been suppressed and are brought into our awareness give us a new option that we were resisting before. Those of us who habitually feel rage, or resentment, or sadness, or powerlessness, are not people who need to practice those emotions - we need to practice new options, new ways of looking at life, new ways of reacting to situations. Those of us who have denied the existence of certain emotions, or suppressed the expression of them, need to understand why we are cutting off part of who we are, and one method of understanding is to get us to experience it and see what we have been resisting.

What I have resisted is personal power - the kind of anger that rises up when my boundaries are being crossed, and say "No!" What I have taken on as a habitual attitude is the kind of anger that is a smouldering resentment, a feeling that I've been had, an inability to let go of the past or see life from a new angle.

This frees me to change. When I discover resentment within me, I can try on a different attitude without fearing I am "suppressing my anger" - a big no-no in psychology. Likewise, when I feel strongly about something that is not as I think it should be, I can express strength and passion without being cruel or vendictive, and that is an attitude I need to practice, since I am resistant to it.

The point in looking inside is to free ourselves, not create more rules. The point is freedom - to have more options, not fewer.

Your thoughts are welcome - I'd appreciate hearing what others think.

Comment posted by Heidi
at 6/5/2006 10:02:00 AM
Wow!

You've covered a heck of a lot of ground in a few short statements - my head is spinning!

I feel like I want to expound on each sentence and point out that there's a lot more to it! But I think you are making a point only on how we process our anger regardless of the source of any particular situation.

If I am personally resentful about a relationship or work or community issue, I've been developing a new way of dealing and it is working! You talked about changing our mental processes to get rid of old anger patterns. My counselor said this is a fairly new concept in the psychological world. The old world required us to dig into childhood issues to heal the root cause but it also believe that many of our habits were hard-wired. The new thinking has discovered that our minds can create new neural-paths to our thinking processes when we practice and eventually by-passing the old thinking habits will become natural thru practice. I find this very encouraging.

I look inside myself to find what my desired longer-term goal is and then I try to overlook the small annoyances in favor of grooming my thoughts for my larger goals. I've spent a lot of year getting to this newer place of thinking and it is working for me - like you said. Rethinking old ways of being angry so that we can better serve our deeper goals which are usually a desire for being understood and for connecting somehow.

You also pointed out that a lot of our feelings are not conscious and we tend to go on automatic in our rages and "pet peeves". Are you saying that a sign to watch for is a routine in our angry thinking? That is, if it feels routine, it is probably an old record and most probably no longer valid?

My fear in all this heady stuff is that in practicing positive thought patterns, I might be going into denial or suppressing feelings that will come back later in my head - with a vengeance. I am not entirely confident that I am doing it correctly, so I have this underlying fear that I'm missing the point.

No one's coming

I played piano a lot as a child. I found in the world of music a way that I could express the unexpressable inside of me. No one would tell me, "Don't be sad. Don't be angry" when I played sad or angry music. Somehow, music escaped the judgments and limitations placed on other expressions of feeling in our house.

When I played piano on a summer day, a fantasy would always come to mind. Someone who knew much more about music than anyone in my family or our social circle would be walking down the street, and hear my sound drift through the windows, and would stop and listen in amazement. "Someone in that house is a genius!", they would say; "Someone doesn't know the gifts he has! They need to be discovered!". And they would come in, and whisk me away to a musical school where I would be trained, and my genius would be discovered, and I would become world-renoun, and finally recognized as having something of value inside of me.

As an adult, I have a similar alternate fantasy. There is an island I periodically swim to - it is unknown, and involves hiking to a deserted part of a river, swimming across the river, climbing up rocks and down a deep slope on the other side, and there I can lay in the sun in total isolation and peace. I would do this journey, and then imagine some beautiful woman would come along, discover me, and make love to me in the sun and the wildness.

The odd thing is that I first make myself totally unreachable, and then hope that someone will reach me.

A mother would do that. If a child was lost in the woods, she would search day and night, climb over every hill, call on everyone she could think of to help, and would not give up until all hope was gone. One of the comforts of being a child in a loving family is you can try as hard as you want to hurt your parents, or destroy your world, or isolate, or be obnoxious, or become unreachable, and the parent's love and patience will always overcome the distance you create. Love will always win out. And some of us, since we did not get that at home, are still trying to get it as adults. Unfortunately, as adults, we are far more capable of hiding and isolating ourselves, of creating barriers to intimacy, of sitting in victimhood and resentments, and we can succeed, if not in actually stopping love, in preventing ourselves from experiencing love, sometimes for the rest of our lives.

This weekend, I realized that no one is coming. I can make the difficulty of getting through my barriers so difficult that no one will ever succeed. I can create a world so full of victimization that no one could ever convince me I am loved. That I can sit as a victim forever on my isolated hilltop, waiting for someone to come along and save me from myself. And that I am now poweful enough that no one can tear me away from my own insistance.

The thought of letting go of my defenses is terrifying. I've been hurt too many times. I don't want to be fooled again. Each mere glance causes years of hurt and betrayal to flare up before my eyes, and once again, I feel betrayed, and withdraw more.

Yet no one is coming. No one can save me from myself. I will be all alone unless *I* take down the walls and do not make it so difficult.

It is my choice whether or not to know love.

I am here

I'm at Shalom Mountain once again, the last in a series of four advanced leadership training classes. I arrived warmly welcomed, as I have gotten used to, and glad to see everyone again.

Joy, one of the leaders, started by talking about how supportive our community is. I was immediately triggered and went into anger and withdrawal for the evening. It took me until this morning to figure out what that was all about.

My family was less than ideal. Over time, I have developed a picture in my mind of what that ideal family would have looked like, and have been unconsciously trying to recreate it in the communities I have built. But nothing ever matches up to my ideal, and I am always dissatisfied. When Joy talked about us being a community, I immediately compared Shalom to my ideal, and it was sadly lacking. "Why don't people call me? Why doesn't anyone offer to lead a retreat with me? Where are they when I need them? This is no community!" I spent the rest of the evening withdrawn, perhaps "punishing" them for not meeting my standards.

This morning, I thought again about my happy dog meditation that I wrote about before. If I was a dog, I would not be comparing them to some ideal. I would not have expectations. I would notice I was with people who were happy, and who hugged me. I would notice that there was good things to eat and fun things to do. I would be happy for what is.

I thought about my relationships. I get angry when people aren't as I think they should be. I want those close to me to provide the perfect family I never had. If I looked at what I actually have, and don't compare it to what I think should be, it's pretty good. There's a lot to enjoy.

Our capacity to remember the past and create the future is wonderful, astounding, and indespensible. Yet, at times, that ability interferes with our ability to actually see and feel what is around us in this moment. I can easily act according to past spectors and future demands instead of present realities, and it often makes me miserable.

But at long last, I am here. I just took a shower, and my body feels fresh. Breakfast is waiting, and friendly, loving people surround me. Forget these idealistic visions of community - at least, for the moment. Right now, now is the place to be.