"All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why."
James Thurber
On "JOHN ADAMS"
Caught the new series on HBO last night that focuses on the roles John and Abigail Adams played in the founding of our country. Fascinating watching these flawed but inspired human beings as they overcame their own limitations, inner conflicts and contradictions, and the primitive thinking of their times to pursue the calling of their higher selves.
Ironically, there's no doubt that if the words of the Declaration of Independence were read aloud today, there would be many in government and the punditocracy decrying it as a liberal, unpatriotic, blasphemous screed.
Yet, I couldn't resist making the comparison when these individuals convened in Philadelphia in 1776 to make their momentous decision and write those memorable words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." There they were: Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin. Here we are: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Condi.
Whew!
Ironically, there's no doubt that if the words of the Declaration of Independence were read aloud today, there would be many in government and the punditocracy decrying it as a liberal, unpatriotic, blasphemous screed.
Yet, I couldn't resist making the comparison when these individuals convened in Philadelphia in 1776 to make their momentous decision and write those memorable words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." There they were: Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin. Here we are: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Condi.
Whew!
Today's Quote
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Today's Quote
"I've noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts."
Bethania McKenstry
Bethania McKenstry
Thoughtful comment on my George Carlin post by Elsa
Elsemarie Hansen said...
I found your web page after I googled George Carlin's comment "professional parents". Wanted to share one of my favorite aricles of all times: The New First Grade – Are Kids Getting Pushed Too Fast, Too Soon?
http://www.newsweek.com/id/45571
Cheers Elsa (European-born new mom living here in the US and who foresees an enourmous amount of unhappy kids/teenagers coming our way - due to parent-related-pressure)
I found your web page after I googled George Carlin's comment "professional parents". Wanted to share one of my favorite aricles of all times: The New First Grade – Are Kids Getting Pushed Too Fast, Too Soon?
http://www.newsweek.com/id/45571
Cheers Elsa (European-born new mom living here in the US and who foresees an enourmous amount of unhappy kids/teenagers coming our way - due to parent-related-pressure)
Today's Quote
"Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."
Kahlil Gibran
Kahlil Gibran
Full Permission Loving
Growing up in the Sixties, like a lot of people who are now in or just entering their mid-life, I heard a lot of radical messages about love. “Make love, not war” was a popular slogan of the peace movement during the Viet Nam era. “All You Need Is Love”, the Beatles’ anthem, reverberated via satellite around the world offering a singular solution to all of life’s problems. “Free love” was declared to be the new celebratory attitude towards sexuality. I soaked up these messages over three decades ago, and felt their rightness inside of my body back then, and I felt so optimistic about the future of the human race. I was glad to be alive in this period of humanity’s evolution. I imagined that these ideas and attitudes would soon be accepted by the majority of people everywhere because the simple wisdom expressed in them was so compelling and irrefutable. As another song from that era proclaimed on Broadway in the musical, “Hair”: “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius – harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding…”
Today, thirty years later, those messages seem either quaintly idealistic or, on the other hand, even more radical than they originally did. Many now seem to seriously doubt the power of love to overcome hatred or to resolve problems in our time, and people certainly have become very cautious, even fearful about celebrating their sexuality. Others assume that experiences of brilliant love and exquisite pleasure are fleeting moments that cannot last, so why bother?
What happened? Has love failed in its promise? Is sex not all that it’s cracked up to be? What actually is the nature of love and the purpose of sex, and why do we doubt or fear the power of these energies so much?
In my experience as a mind-body-spirit psychotherapist, I have found that people usually fear what they desire the most, and that the fear of genuine love and pleasure is ultimately at the core of every character structure. [Note: a character structure is a cluster of psychological defenses, emotional blocks and physical contractions that distort a person’s personality, body and energy flow.] Why would we fear love and pleasure? It seems counter-intuitive to fear what feels so good. Indeed, when I first suggest to a patient that they have a fear of pleasure, the response is usually one of protest: “I definitely do want to be in love.” “I totally crave good sex.” “I wish I could have it all in one relationship!” Their explanation for the lack of these experiences in their lives is that it must be something external causing the problem: “There are no available men/women out there.” “You can’t have good sex when you’re working or raising kids.” “Having it all is only possible in the beginning of a relationship.”
However, at some point in the course of therapy, when the defenses and blocks of a person’s character structure have been loosened and the emotional channels have opened, the truth becomes apparent. People discover that in their newly opened state, real love and sexual pleasure are available to them…and they are terrified of it! The openness becomes symbolic of some great unknown against which we all reflexively contract. As Eva Broch puts it in her “Guide Lecture” on the spiritual significance of sexuality: “In the human realm, the power of sexuality can, in its most ideal form, be the greatest ‘representative’ of spiritual existence. There is no other human experience that conveys so fully what spiritual bliss, oneness, and timelessness are.”
So, how do we develop a reflexive reaction against something that feels so wonderful? Perhaps we have to go back to the beginning…of our lives, to understand this particular dilemma of human existence as it is right now.
A newborn infant is an extraordinarily open system, a receptive, sensate being without any body armor, without defenses other than a kind of instinctual withdrawal reaction from pain perhaps. In such a state, everything is felt so acutely, so intensely, both pleasure and pain. If you watch a baby react to stimuli, it is always with their whole body, with the totality of who they are. When experiencing pleasure, like from the loving touch or smile of its mother or the nourishment from the breast, the little baby seems to quiver and melt from ecstasy; when it is hungry or wet in its diaper or otherwise uncomfortable, it seems to shake in agony and outrage.
While in this state of original openness, the child will inevitably experience a certain amount of frustration of its basic needs, and it will be hurt by other painful stimuli as well, such as the anger, fear or anxiety of its parents. The anguish in the child will eventually cause it to begin contracting its body, as its muscle control develops, to try and control the sensation of pain, and it will become a less open system. In a sense, the child has learned at a very visceral level that openness to receiving pleasure means openness to experiencing pain. A secondary response develops that becomes what we call second nature – in this case, a reflex to avoid “too much” pleasure. This becomes one of the final conditioned responses that must be overcome in therapy in order to become able to truly experience and sustain deep love and sexual pleasure.
Here’s Eva Broch again from the same Guide Lecture: “The ability to take frustration and pain are essential ingredients in the ability to love, to give and receive, and to experience bliss. Blocks and prohibitions of true fulfillment exist because within the adult personality, the infant still claims fulfillment according to its mode.”
“Its mode”, we can presume, means to avoid pain at all costs. Somehow, the child seeks to experience love and pleasure while avoiding feeling its hurt and pain…and this is not possible. One cannot stay open and closed at the same time. As that child grows eventually into an adult, it will develop a frustrating compromise solution, keeping only partially open, or opening only occasionally to have a taste of pleasure, followed by closing up quickly again lest pain follow. This is why people have come to believe that love and passion don’t last in a relationship.
When a person falls in love, there is a rush of energy, call it “Eros”, or “Cupid’s arrow.” I’ve come to think of that surge as a “free sample” from the universe to let us know what life could be like without defenses. For a while, regardless of one’s character structure, when we fall in love, our defenses are temporarily blown aside by the force of Eros. We see everything in beautiful colors, feel healthy and invigorated and can only see the best in ourselves and the beloved other person. This is bliss. After a while, however, the free sample is done, and our defenses begin re-asserting themselves, closing us up again. The reason for this is that we intuitively know that staying open to this amount of bliss will allow the stored up old hurt and pain we’ve been holding and hiding from to come up and out, and we reflexively try to stop that. This happens below the surface of consciousness, so we are confused and disappointed, and conclude that passionate love just doesn’t last.
What needs to be discovered, however, is that at the point when the free sample begins to run out, we have the choice to buy the whole package. If we actively seek out a process that will systematically dismantle our defenses so we can keep the emotional channels open, the passionate love can indeed not only last a lot longer, but even grow profoundly deeper. The “price” is, of course, letting all of that old pain out. What makes us recoil from doing that is the erroneous belief that we could not withstand the pain. That belief is from the childish mind, from a time when the hurt of not being loved enough was indeed too overwhelming, maybe even a matter of life and death.
Now, as adults, being disappointed in love is not a life and death matter (believe it or not!). We just react as if it was. To a baby or little child, its parents are the entire universe before whom they are completely vulnerable and upon whom they are totally dependent, without choice. For better or worse, there is nowhere else for a child to turn for love and nurturance than its parents. As an adult, however, one always has options regarding the choice of a love object, and adults also have resources available to improve the quality of a relationship that a child does not.
Furthermore, the pain of emotional deprivation to a being in a tiny, little infant body, with an unformed mind, is devastating and cannot be processed. An adult in an unfulfilling relationship has a big body and a fully formed mind with which to deal with this lack, so the feelings need not be experienced as devastating. When it seems so to an adult, it is an illusion. Though the feelings are real, created by the residual, unprocessed mind of the child inside, the danger is not. Discovering this reality and releasing the old pain is where a full spectrum therapy can help keep.
Does this mean that two people can be guaranteed to be in love “forever” if they free themselves of their defenses? Not necessarily. Being in love can have a natural course of time, short or long, just like any journey two souls may take together. All journeys have endings, even great ones. An essential ingredient of real love is its freedom. Love can be felt, given and received and ultimately followed where it leads, but if one attempts to control or possess it, which would only be done out of fear, the channel closes. This has been talked about in many places, from the Bible to the beautiful writings of Kahlil Gibran to the popular songs of our generation. “If you love somebody, set them free”, Sting sang in his hit single from the 1990s.
Monogamy in a relationship that is not based on fear is “spontaneous”, as Ellsworth Baker said in his book, “Man In The Trap.” What does that mean? To me it means that one is so in love in a singular way with one particular person that on a day to day basis there is a powerful desire to experience all of one’s sexual love energy only through that one other. There is no need for emotional or legal contracts, nor are there feelings of jealousy, ownership, obligation or betrayal under the surface. Just free love, love given freely. In my experience, this kind of spontaneous love with another is one of the most powerful and spiritual experiences we can have in physical form.
From such an open place, when the time of being in love naturally concludes between two people, the sadness felt is “clean,” without remorse or bitterness or defensiveness. One feels a poignant sweetness and a true feeling of being blessed for all that was experienced during the time of connection to the beloved other soul. The “end” of the relationship can be more like a graduation, rather than a tragedy.
To get to such a place requires that a person face their most deeply feared feelings of loss and abandonment stored up from childhood, and see those feelings all the way through to the other side. To be fearless to love, in other words, we must become fearless to lose. Anyone who I have seen become fearless in this way and find their way to genuine, free loving, confirms that the journey was worth the so-called “price.”
So, what has any of this got to do with the world’s problems and the dawning of a harmonious age? Well, I have never seen anybody who has become able to love freely wanting to make war or rob banks or even litter the street. In fact, people who become free in that way are warriors, but warriors who never have to fight in the usual sense. They are simply courageous enough to really love and fearless about the illusions around losing. They understand the channeled message in Barbara Brennan’s book, “Hands of Light”, that puts it succinctly: “Hating war is not the same as loving peace.” Nothing is more powerful than an open heart. Nothing is more powerful than love. Finally, even fears of death are transcended when one loves openly.
Perhaps, to come full circle back to the “Summer of Love” days of the late 1960s, that was the meaning of “All You Need Is Love”, and of the final message the Beatles gave to us when it was time to naturally end their relationship with us: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
Today, thirty years later, those messages seem either quaintly idealistic or, on the other hand, even more radical than they originally did. Many now seem to seriously doubt the power of love to overcome hatred or to resolve problems in our time, and people certainly have become very cautious, even fearful about celebrating their sexuality. Others assume that experiences of brilliant love and exquisite pleasure are fleeting moments that cannot last, so why bother?
What happened? Has love failed in its promise? Is sex not all that it’s cracked up to be? What actually is the nature of love and the purpose of sex, and why do we doubt or fear the power of these energies so much?
In my experience as a mind-body-spirit psychotherapist, I have found that people usually fear what they desire the most, and that the fear of genuine love and pleasure is ultimately at the core of every character structure. [Note: a character structure is a cluster of psychological defenses, emotional blocks and physical contractions that distort a person’s personality, body and energy flow.] Why would we fear love and pleasure? It seems counter-intuitive to fear what feels so good. Indeed, when I first suggest to a patient that they have a fear of pleasure, the response is usually one of protest: “I definitely do want to be in love.” “I totally crave good sex.” “I wish I could have it all in one relationship!” Their explanation for the lack of these experiences in their lives is that it must be something external causing the problem: “There are no available men/women out there.” “You can’t have good sex when you’re working or raising kids.” “Having it all is only possible in the beginning of a relationship.”
However, at some point in the course of therapy, when the defenses and blocks of a person’s character structure have been loosened and the emotional channels have opened, the truth becomes apparent. People discover that in their newly opened state, real love and sexual pleasure are available to them…and they are terrified of it! The openness becomes symbolic of some great unknown against which we all reflexively contract. As Eva Broch puts it in her “Guide Lecture” on the spiritual significance of sexuality: “In the human realm, the power of sexuality can, in its most ideal form, be the greatest ‘representative’ of spiritual existence. There is no other human experience that conveys so fully what spiritual bliss, oneness, and timelessness are.”
So, how do we develop a reflexive reaction against something that feels so wonderful? Perhaps we have to go back to the beginning…of our lives, to understand this particular dilemma of human existence as it is right now.
A newborn infant is an extraordinarily open system, a receptive, sensate being without any body armor, without defenses other than a kind of instinctual withdrawal reaction from pain perhaps. In such a state, everything is felt so acutely, so intensely, both pleasure and pain. If you watch a baby react to stimuli, it is always with their whole body, with the totality of who they are. When experiencing pleasure, like from the loving touch or smile of its mother or the nourishment from the breast, the little baby seems to quiver and melt from ecstasy; when it is hungry or wet in its diaper or otherwise uncomfortable, it seems to shake in agony and outrage.
While in this state of original openness, the child will inevitably experience a certain amount of frustration of its basic needs, and it will be hurt by other painful stimuli as well, such as the anger, fear or anxiety of its parents. The anguish in the child will eventually cause it to begin contracting its body, as its muscle control develops, to try and control the sensation of pain, and it will become a less open system. In a sense, the child has learned at a very visceral level that openness to receiving pleasure means openness to experiencing pain. A secondary response develops that becomes what we call second nature – in this case, a reflex to avoid “too much” pleasure. This becomes one of the final conditioned responses that must be overcome in therapy in order to become able to truly experience and sustain deep love and sexual pleasure.
Here’s Eva Broch again from the same Guide Lecture: “The ability to take frustration and pain are essential ingredients in the ability to love, to give and receive, and to experience bliss. Blocks and prohibitions of true fulfillment exist because within the adult personality, the infant still claims fulfillment according to its mode.”
“Its mode”, we can presume, means to avoid pain at all costs. Somehow, the child seeks to experience love and pleasure while avoiding feeling its hurt and pain…and this is not possible. One cannot stay open and closed at the same time. As that child grows eventually into an adult, it will develop a frustrating compromise solution, keeping only partially open, or opening only occasionally to have a taste of pleasure, followed by closing up quickly again lest pain follow. This is why people have come to believe that love and passion don’t last in a relationship.
When a person falls in love, there is a rush of energy, call it “Eros”, or “Cupid’s arrow.” I’ve come to think of that surge as a “free sample” from the universe to let us know what life could be like without defenses. For a while, regardless of one’s character structure, when we fall in love, our defenses are temporarily blown aside by the force of Eros. We see everything in beautiful colors, feel healthy and invigorated and can only see the best in ourselves and the beloved other person. This is bliss. After a while, however, the free sample is done, and our defenses begin re-asserting themselves, closing us up again. The reason for this is that we intuitively know that staying open to this amount of bliss will allow the stored up old hurt and pain we’ve been holding and hiding from to come up and out, and we reflexively try to stop that. This happens below the surface of consciousness, so we are confused and disappointed, and conclude that passionate love just doesn’t last.
What needs to be discovered, however, is that at the point when the free sample begins to run out, we have the choice to buy the whole package. If we actively seek out a process that will systematically dismantle our defenses so we can keep the emotional channels open, the passionate love can indeed not only last a lot longer, but even grow profoundly deeper. The “price” is, of course, letting all of that old pain out. What makes us recoil from doing that is the erroneous belief that we could not withstand the pain. That belief is from the childish mind, from a time when the hurt of not being loved enough was indeed too overwhelming, maybe even a matter of life and death.
Now, as adults, being disappointed in love is not a life and death matter (believe it or not!). We just react as if it was. To a baby or little child, its parents are the entire universe before whom they are completely vulnerable and upon whom they are totally dependent, without choice. For better or worse, there is nowhere else for a child to turn for love and nurturance than its parents. As an adult, however, one always has options regarding the choice of a love object, and adults also have resources available to improve the quality of a relationship that a child does not.
Furthermore, the pain of emotional deprivation to a being in a tiny, little infant body, with an unformed mind, is devastating and cannot be processed. An adult in an unfulfilling relationship has a big body and a fully formed mind with which to deal with this lack, so the feelings need not be experienced as devastating. When it seems so to an adult, it is an illusion. Though the feelings are real, created by the residual, unprocessed mind of the child inside, the danger is not. Discovering this reality and releasing the old pain is where a full spectrum therapy can help keep.
Does this mean that two people can be guaranteed to be in love “forever” if they free themselves of their defenses? Not necessarily. Being in love can have a natural course of time, short or long, just like any journey two souls may take together. All journeys have endings, even great ones. An essential ingredient of real love is its freedom. Love can be felt, given and received and ultimately followed where it leads, but if one attempts to control or possess it, which would only be done out of fear, the channel closes. This has been talked about in many places, from the Bible to the beautiful writings of Kahlil Gibran to the popular songs of our generation. “If you love somebody, set them free”, Sting sang in his hit single from the 1990s.
Monogamy in a relationship that is not based on fear is “spontaneous”, as Ellsworth Baker said in his book, “Man In The Trap.” What does that mean? To me it means that one is so in love in a singular way with one particular person that on a day to day basis there is a powerful desire to experience all of one’s sexual love energy only through that one other. There is no need for emotional or legal contracts, nor are there feelings of jealousy, ownership, obligation or betrayal under the surface. Just free love, love given freely. In my experience, this kind of spontaneous love with another is one of the most powerful and spiritual experiences we can have in physical form.
From such an open place, when the time of being in love naturally concludes between two people, the sadness felt is “clean,” without remorse or bitterness or defensiveness. One feels a poignant sweetness and a true feeling of being blessed for all that was experienced during the time of connection to the beloved other soul. The “end” of the relationship can be more like a graduation, rather than a tragedy.
To get to such a place requires that a person face their most deeply feared feelings of loss and abandonment stored up from childhood, and see those feelings all the way through to the other side. To be fearless to love, in other words, we must become fearless to lose. Anyone who I have seen become fearless in this way and find their way to genuine, free loving, confirms that the journey was worth the so-called “price.”
So, what has any of this got to do with the world’s problems and the dawning of a harmonious age? Well, I have never seen anybody who has become able to love freely wanting to make war or rob banks or even litter the street. In fact, people who become free in that way are warriors, but warriors who never have to fight in the usual sense. They are simply courageous enough to really love and fearless about the illusions around losing. They understand the channeled message in Barbara Brennan’s book, “Hands of Light”, that puts it succinctly: “Hating war is not the same as loving peace.” Nothing is more powerful than an open heart. Nothing is more powerful than love. Finally, even fears of death are transcended when one loves openly.
Perhaps, to come full circle back to the “Summer of Love” days of the late 1960s, that was the meaning of “All You Need Is Love”, and of the final message the Beatles gave to us when it was time to naturally end their relationship with us: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
Today's Quote
"When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative."
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Oh, and another thing...
Sex with a prostitute is not sex. Not for the prostitute, nor for the john. For each of them it's a way of controlling the opposite sex out of fear and loathing of the opposite sex. Just thought I'd throw that in because some commentators that I otherwise like, including Bill Maher, think Spitzer's acting out was because he was horny. Not a chance, Bill.
Today's Quote
"Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind."
W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
The Desire for Humiliation
Erica Jong wrote this yesterday about the Eliot Spitzer-prostitution debacle:
"I once did research on dominatrixes in New York for a novel I wrote called Any Woman's Blues and discovered that one of them -- Ava was her name -- had a powerful male lawyer washing dishes in an apron and heels during her parties. Powerful men like to be humiliated. Maybe all Attorney Generals are kinky and should stay out of public office. Think of Rudy Giuliani." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-jong/morals-to-be-drawn-from-s_b_91005.html)
Powerful men like to be humiliated? Is that so? And if so, why would it be? And what about powerful women?
Well, it might seem a little confusing, because you have to define "powerful," first of all.
There are two kinds of power - power "over" and power "for" - one is pathological, and one is not.
Power over is what is sought by those stuck in a set of character defenses, particularly psychopathy and masochism. It seeks to control people, to bend others to their wills for the purposes of the ego, and perhaps more importantly, it seeks to have power over one's own feelings. This would certainly include many politicians, of course, and especially those who trumpet loudly their own moralistic attitudes. This "reaction formation," as it's known in psychoanalytic terms, is why so many priests and "family values" types, or law enforcers, often get caught doing the very thing they're so publicly against. The reason they're so against a particular act is because the urge to do that very thing is so strong, and harshly judged, in them. This person ultimately desires to get caught, to be "humiliated," as Erica Jong points out, because it is a relief to finally be exposed. Why else would a high profile prosecuter, or a sitting president, be so indiscreet in their sexual dalliances?
Power for is a different story. This is an expression of one's innate gifts, like the power for creating art or music, power for motivating others to develop their potential, the power for innovation, for developing new approaches to old problems. This power seeks to move others, not control them. This is healthy power, "empowerment," you could say.
But here's the interesting thing - and yes this does apply to women as well as men - whether your expression of power is unhealthy or healthy, you may find yourself attracted to humiliation or defeat either way. Why? Well, because until you've crossed the threshold into emotional and psychological adulthood (which has nothing to do with age, unfortunately), you will fear your own power, whether it is expressed pathologically or not. Obviously, you're in a different kind of struggle if you're acting out all over the place and incurring the wrath of the people around you for your hypocritical behavior, but still, subverting yourself is subverting yourself. If you're holding onto the whims and wants of childhood, you cannot accept being a genuinely powerful adult, even if you really are one.
It keeps coming down to the same things, after all, doesn't it? We have to give up on our childhoods, take the losses, and move on up to grown-up life.
It's powerful.
PL
"I once did research on dominatrixes in New York for a novel I wrote called Any Woman's Blues and discovered that one of them -- Ava was her name -- had a powerful male lawyer washing dishes in an apron and heels during her parties. Powerful men like to be humiliated. Maybe all Attorney Generals are kinky and should stay out of public office. Think of Rudy Giuliani." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-jong/morals-to-be-drawn-from-s_b_91005.html)
Powerful men like to be humiliated? Is that so? And if so, why would it be? And what about powerful women?
Well, it might seem a little confusing, because you have to define "powerful," first of all.
There are two kinds of power - power "over" and power "for" - one is pathological, and one is not.
Power over is what is sought by those stuck in a set of character defenses, particularly psychopathy and masochism. It seeks to control people, to bend others to their wills for the purposes of the ego, and perhaps more importantly, it seeks to have power over one's own feelings. This would certainly include many politicians, of course, and especially those who trumpet loudly their own moralistic attitudes. This "reaction formation," as it's known in psychoanalytic terms, is why so many priests and "family values" types, or law enforcers, often get caught doing the very thing they're so publicly against. The reason they're so against a particular act is because the urge to do that very thing is so strong, and harshly judged, in them. This person ultimately desires to get caught, to be "humiliated," as Erica Jong points out, because it is a relief to finally be exposed. Why else would a high profile prosecuter, or a sitting president, be so indiscreet in their sexual dalliances?
Power for is a different story. This is an expression of one's innate gifts, like the power for creating art or music, power for motivating others to develop their potential, the power for innovation, for developing new approaches to old problems. This power seeks to move others, not control them. This is healthy power, "empowerment," you could say.
But here's the interesting thing - and yes this does apply to women as well as men - whether your expression of power is unhealthy or healthy, you may find yourself attracted to humiliation or defeat either way. Why? Well, because until you've crossed the threshold into emotional and psychological adulthood (which has nothing to do with age, unfortunately), you will fear your own power, whether it is expressed pathologically or not. Obviously, you're in a different kind of struggle if you're acting out all over the place and incurring the wrath of the people around you for your hypocritical behavior, but still, subverting yourself is subverting yourself. If you're holding onto the whims and wants of childhood, you cannot accept being a genuinely powerful adult, even if you really are one.
It keeps coming down to the same things, after all, doesn't it? We have to give up on our childhoods, take the losses, and move on up to grown-up life.
It's powerful.
PL
Today's Quote
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
Thomas Didymos
Thomas Didymos
Today's Quote
"We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be."
Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Drugs in our drinking water!
Wow! We really are all connected!
An Associated Press investigation found that a vast array of pharmaceuticals _ including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones _ have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/10/sex-hormones-mood-stabil_n_90714.html)
More from the report:
"How do the drugs get into the water? People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue. And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies _ which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public _ have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife."
Oh, yeah, and there's further evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.
What's fascinating about this to me is the reality that this story highlights - we're all inextricably connected to each other. If some portions of our population are numbing themselves, trashing their immune systems or throwing their hormonal balance out of whack, it's happening to all of us. Wow! There's a twisted kind of harmony in that, don't you think?
An Associated Press investigation found that a vast array of pharmaceuticals _ including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones _ have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/10/sex-hormones-mood-stabil_n_90714.html)
More from the report:
"How do the drugs get into the water? People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue. And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies _ which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public _ have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife."
Oh, yeah, and there's further evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.
What's fascinating about this to me is the reality that this story highlights - we're all inextricably connected to each other. If some portions of our population are numbing themselves, trashing their immune systems or throwing their hormonal balance out of whack, it's happening to all of us. Wow! There's a twisted kind of harmony in that, don't you think?
What is attractive?
It doesn't matter what age you are, what gender, what sexual orientation, whether you're single, married, with or without kids. High on the list of the most common anxieties and disturbances I encounter in people are around the issues related to body image. And man, do most people have it wrong!
Many women, for example, are convinced that men prefer skinny, young model-types to a mature, Rubenesque woman, when in fact, many surveys of men have shown the opposite to be true. Indeed, throughout history, men have always preferred full-figured woman. (See the write-up on this website- http://rubenesquepersonals.com/ - where the virtues of the "hourglass or pear-shaped woman of wide hips, an ample bust, plump cheeks, soft-full lips, and a generally healthy profile of alluring curves and crevasses" are extoled.) And in an article I recently mentioned on my blog, "Sex and the Grey-Haired Woman" (http://www.more.com/more/story.jsp?storyid=/templatedata/more/story/data/1188315869287.xml), the author, a woman, conducted a test using internet dating and found that more men preferred her when she potrayed herself with grey hair than with brown hair.
Likewise, what women find attractive in a man is not the tightness of his abs or the size of his cock or wallet, which is what many men mistakenly think. On the Mister Poll website (http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/33543/results), which claims to be the internet's largest poll database, women rated EYES as by far the most important physical characteristic in a man, with CLOTHES being a distant second! And in an article entitled, Housework Gets You Laid (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/06/housework-gets-you-laid_n_90213.html), information from a report released by the Council on Contemporary Families showed that the husbands and fathers who have been "getting better about getting off the sofa and helping around the house receive the payoff for doing more chores of... more sex!"
So, what are all of these distortions about? Well, sorry to say, but we're back to my pet dysfunctional peeve - narcissism! Yep, that rampant condition in our culture that is gutting the self-esteem of our population. The symptoms, as I've listed before are:
- Intense investment in a false self, with extreme efforts to live up to a grandiose, perfect, “special” self-image;
- Intense desires to be attached to an idealized other, who is objectified, seen as perfect and special and can be merged with in fantasy and used to bolster the idealized self-image - the “special person of a special person;”
- Others are related to as either sources of supply for emotional gratification and self-aggrandizement, or as extensions of the self, not as real, separate beings with their own needs and identities;
- There is very little capacity for real empathy with others;
- A self-righteous sense of entitlement with little ability to tolerate frustration;
- Intense underlying rejection of the real self, which is seen as weak, vulnerable, inadequate and imperfect and irreversibly flawed; anger, contempt and irritability is felt towards others who display what has been rejected in the real self;
- Deep underlying “abandonment depression” (Masterson);
- Extraordinary dependence on external validation by others for the value of personal qualities and achievements; those who do not give such support are either devalued or overvalued; criticism or negative feedback is reacted to with rage and deep feelings of woundedness; paradoxically, others who do offer approval are often devalued and seen with contempt.
Translated, this means that any man or woman who measures a prospective partner by their age, or the tightness of their skin, color of their hair or the size of their hips or bank account is narcissistically disturbed. Okay, enough said? This requires intensive, long-term dedicated work to heal. If you want to debate it, write me.
Okay then, what is true attraction based on in a healthy adult? For that answer, you have to ask yourself or anyone you know who has truly been in love. They will tell you the same things - that it wasn't any one particular characteristic, physical or otherwise, no criteria from a checklist, no measure of deeds done in the service of servitude. No, it was something indefinable in material, physical or superficial terms. It was a spark, a passionate rush, a powerful feeling of destiny or familiarity, a charge, an energetic signature. When you're with that person in that place, you know the truth about life, about yourself, about the other person. You're soaring, glowing, and seeing with a clarity that is irrefutable. You don't see body parts or measurements or net worth. You see the person's soul, the glorious, sensual, orgasmic essence of Eros in their being. You look at their body and you swell with desire to mingle and merge with that manifestation of the being in physical form. It is perfect - at any weight, at any age, of any color. You desire to reveal yourself, the good, the bad and the ugly. You desire to know everything about the other person. It's a thirst that can't be quenched, yet one that must always be pursued.
So, if you find yourself either believing that your happiness lies in living up to someone's idealized expectations of who you should be, or you find yourself searching for that imaginary "perfect" partner who will make you feel good about yoruself, know that you have a narcissistic disorder. Get help, while you still have the potential to love.
Many women, for example, are convinced that men prefer skinny, young model-types to a mature, Rubenesque woman, when in fact, many surveys of men have shown the opposite to be true. Indeed, throughout history, men have always preferred full-figured woman. (See the write-up on this website- http://rubenesquepersonals.com/ - where the virtues of the "hourglass or pear-shaped woman of wide hips, an ample bust, plump cheeks, soft-full lips, and a generally healthy profile of alluring curves and crevasses" are extoled.) And in an article I recently mentioned on my blog, "Sex and the Grey-Haired Woman" (http://www.more.com/more/story.jsp?storyid=/templatedata/more/story/data/1188315869287.xml), the author, a woman, conducted a test using internet dating and found that more men preferred her when she potrayed herself with grey hair than with brown hair.
Likewise, what women find attractive in a man is not the tightness of his abs or the size of his cock or wallet, which is what many men mistakenly think. On the Mister Poll website (http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/33543/results), which claims to be the internet's largest poll database, women rated EYES as by far the most important physical characteristic in a man, with CLOTHES being a distant second! And in an article entitled, Housework Gets You Laid (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/06/housework-gets-you-laid_n_90213.html), information from a report released by the Council on Contemporary Families showed that the husbands and fathers who have been "getting better about getting off the sofa and helping around the house receive the payoff for doing more chores of... more sex!"
So, what are all of these distortions about? Well, sorry to say, but we're back to my pet dysfunctional peeve - narcissism! Yep, that rampant condition in our culture that is gutting the self-esteem of our population. The symptoms, as I've listed before are:
- Intense investment in a false self, with extreme efforts to live up to a grandiose, perfect, “special” self-image;
- Intense desires to be attached to an idealized other, who is objectified, seen as perfect and special and can be merged with in fantasy and used to bolster the idealized self-image - the “special person of a special person;”
- Others are related to as either sources of supply for emotional gratification and self-aggrandizement, or as extensions of the self, not as real, separate beings with their own needs and identities;
- There is very little capacity for real empathy with others;
- A self-righteous sense of entitlement with little ability to tolerate frustration;
- Intense underlying rejection of the real self, which is seen as weak, vulnerable, inadequate and imperfect and irreversibly flawed; anger, contempt and irritability is felt towards others who display what has been rejected in the real self;
- Deep underlying “abandonment depression” (Masterson);
- Extraordinary dependence on external validation by others for the value of personal qualities and achievements; those who do not give such support are either devalued or overvalued; criticism or negative feedback is reacted to with rage and deep feelings of woundedness; paradoxically, others who do offer approval are often devalued and seen with contempt.
Translated, this means that any man or woman who measures a prospective partner by their age, or the tightness of their skin, color of their hair or the size of their hips or bank account is narcissistically disturbed. Okay, enough said? This requires intensive, long-term dedicated work to heal. If you want to debate it, write me.
Okay then, what is true attraction based on in a healthy adult? For that answer, you have to ask yourself or anyone you know who has truly been in love. They will tell you the same things - that it wasn't any one particular characteristic, physical or otherwise, no criteria from a checklist, no measure of deeds done in the service of servitude. No, it was something indefinable in material, physical or superficial terms. It was a spark, a passionate rush, a powerful feeling of destiny or familiarity, a charge, an energetic signature. When you're with that person in that place, you know the truth about life, about yourself, about the other person. You're soaring, glowing, and seeing with a clarity that is irrefutable. You don't see body parts or measurements or net worth. You see the person's soul, the glorious, sensual, orgasmic essence of Eros in their being. You look at their body and you swell with desire to mingle and merge with that manifestation of the being in physical form. It is perfect - at any weight, at any age, of any color. You desire to reveal yourself, the good, the bad and the ugly. You desire to know everything about the other person. It's a thirst that can't be quenched, yet one that must always be pursued.
So, if you find yourself either believing that your happiness lies in living up to someone's idealized expectations of who you should be, or you find yourself searching for that imaginary "perfect" partner who will make you feel good about yoruself, know that you have a narcissistic disorder. Get help, while you still have the potential to love.
Today's Quote
"Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?"
George Carlin
George Carlin
Today's Quote
"He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
PL on Drugs Vs. Therapy on "The Love We Make" blog
There is a lively debate going on at "The Love We Make" blog (http://thelovewemake.blogspot.com/) on the subject of drugs versus therapy. Worth checking it out. I would like to add this beautiful quote by Thomas Moore (author of Care of the Soul) for consideration:
"The Greeks told the story of the minotaur, the bull-headed flesh-eating man who lived in the center of the labyrinth. He was a threatening beast, and yet his name was Asterion - Star. I often think of this paradox as I sit with someone with tears in her eyes, searching for some way to deal with a death, a divorce, or a depression. It is a beast, this thing that stirs in the core of her being, but it is also the star of her innermost nature. We have to care for this suffering with extreme reverence so that, in our fear and anger at the beast, we do not overlook the star."
"The Greeks told the story of the minotaur, the bull-headed flesh-eating man who lived in the center of the labyrinth. He was a threatening beast, and yet his name was Asterion - Star. I often think of this paradox as I sit with someone with tears in her eyes, searching for some way to deal with a death, a divorce, or a depression. It is a beast, this thing that stirs in the core of her being, but it is also the star of her innermost nature. We have to care for this suffering with extreme reverence so that, in our fear and anger at the beast, we do not overlook the star."
Grey Hair: Good For Your Sex Life?
Enough said? Check it out at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/06/is-grey-hair-good-for-you_n_90309.html
PL on George Carlin on Child Worship
Did anyone see George Carlin's special on HBO, "Its Bad for Ya" last weekend?
Now, let me be clear, I find a lot of George's "humor" in his later years to be tired and... well... humorless, even though he is a keen observer of the foibles of human beings. His humorlessness notwithstanding, one section of his tirade on modern life in America caught my interest. He decries "a special kind of bullshit" that's taken hold in recent times in our culture: "Child Worship." Carlin defines this as an "excessive devotion to children by professional parents," otherwise referred to as "obsessive diaper sniffers," who are "over-managing their children and robbing them of their childhood." According to Carlin, "Even the simple act of playing has been taken away from children."
At one point, Carlin addresses one of my pet peeves, parents vicariously living through their children. In a most painful bullseye moment, he asks: "Isn't the pressure to succeed placed on kids for the sake of the parents just a sophisticated form of child abuse?" Yes, George, I say it is.
George goes on to say that the so-called "self-esteem movement" has been a complete failure because children never get beyond the artificially indoctrinated notion that they're "special," when in fact, children are "incomplete works." I frequently talk and blog about this "specialness training" as the genesis of narcissism. (Carlin states that studies show "all sociopaths have high self-esteem," a nonclinical misuse of both terms, but his point is understood.)
"A lot of kids never get to hear the truth about themselves," he continues, "until they're in their twenties when their boss fires them," or, I would add, until their love partners leave them because they don't want to be the all-praising parents for a grown-up person.
However jaded George Carlin, now 70 years old, may be, I do agree that child worship is bad for ya!
PL
Now, let me be clear, I find a lot of George's "humor" in his later years to be tired and... well... humorless, even though he is a keen observer of the foibles of human beings. His humorlessness notwithstanding, one section of his tirade on modern life in America caught my interest. He decries "a special kind of bullshit" that's taken hold in recent times in our culture: "Child Worship." Carlin defines this as an "excessive devotion to children by professional parents," otherwise referred to as "obsessive diaper sniffers," who are "over-managing their children and robbing them of their childhood." According to Carlin, "Even the simple act of playing has been taken away from children." At one point, Carlin addresses one of my pet peeves, parents vicariously living through their children. In a most painful bullseye moment, he asks: "Isn't the pressure to succeed placed on kids for the sake of the parents just a sophisticated form of child abuse?" Yes, George, I say it is.
George goes on to say that the so-called "self-esteem movement" has been a complete failure because children never get beyond the artificially indoctrinated notion that they're "special," when in fact, children are "incomplete works." I frequently talk and blog about this "specialness training" as the genesis of narcissism. (Carlin states that studies show "all sociopaths have high self-esteem," a nonclinical misuse of both terms, but his point is understood.)
"A lot of kids never get to hear the truth about themselves," he continues, "until they're in their twenties when their boss fires them," or, I would add, until their love partners leave them because they don't want to be the all-praising parents for a grown-up person.
However jaded George Carlin, now 70 years old, may be, I do agree that child worship is bad for ya!
PL
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