"It should be an accepted fact of life that sometimes relationships just come to an end, and that end often occurs long prior to one of the spouses passing away. This does not mean the relationship, nor the marriage was a 'failure."
Fred SIlverberg (From a piece entitled "Divorce Is Not A Failure")
LOVE JUNKIES? MAYBE IT'S NOT LOVE!
Here's an excerpt from a blog piece on the Huffington Post entitled, "Signs That Your 'Loving Relationship' May Be an Addiction," by Suzanne B. Phillips, Psychologist, Psychoanalyst, Author:
"Addictive relating, as evidenced by the proliferation of books on the subject, is all too common, painful and suffered by both men and women. In my work with people trapped in addictive relationships, it becomes clear that their efforts to 'desperately keep someone' has much more to do with needing the other at any cost than about sharing a loving relationship."
Like Suzanne Phillips, I speak often in sessions with couples about the dynamics and dysfunction of "co-dependence," as it is popularly known, though initially, most people who are in co-dependent/addictive relationships don't know that they are.
So many people confuse love with co-dependence, just as so many people confuse love with Eros.
Those feelings of "need" - for validation, self-worth and caretaking - and the "incompleteness" one feels without the constant presence of the other in one's life are two sure signs of co-dependency. But let me say it again: co-dependence is not love, and it is not not Eros. In fact, co-dependence suffocates love and Eros, and love and Eros dissolve co-dependence
Love is that Universal feeling, the energy of the essence of All That Is, that channels through all of us to varying degrees for friends, family, lovers, nature, humanity at large and for ourselves. Love is eternal and all-encompassing and unconditional.
Eros is that special "in-love" feeling that we experience usually for one particular person at a time. It is like a laser beam that raises our vibration to the highest heights, that energy that makes the very cells of our bodies sing, that focuses and intensifies our senses. And in many cases, Eros can be fleeting, so direct self-work must be done to keep the channels open enough for it to flow through us as long as possible.
True love and Eros create independence, not dependence. Allowing love and Eros to flow through us is its own validation of the self, its own source of nurturance, and creates within us a singular feeling of completeness.
For more on this subject, you can read, or re-read, my favorite Pathwork Guide lecture: THE FORCES OF LOVE, EROS, AND SEX.
"Addictive relating, as evidenced by the proliferation of books on the subject, is all too common, painful and suffered by both men and women. In my work with people trapped in addictive relationships, it becomes clear that their efforts to 'desperately keep someone' has much more to do with needing the other at any cost than about sharing a loving relationship."
Like Suzanne Phillips, I speak often in sessions with couples about the dynamics and dysfunction of "co-dependence," as it is popularly known, though initially, most people who are in co-dependent/addictive relationships don't know that they are.
So many people confuse love with co-dependence, just as so many people confuse love with Eros.
Those feelings of "need" - for validation, self-worth and caretaking - and the "incompleteness" one feels without the constant presence of the other in one's life are two sure signs of co-dependency. But let me say it again: co-dependence is not love, and it is not not Eros. In fact, co-dependence suffocates love and Eros, and love and Eros dissolve co-dependence
Love is that Universal feeling, the energy of the essence of All That Is, that channels through all of us to varying degrees for friends, family, lovers, nature, humanity at large and for ourselves. Love is eternal and all-encompassing and unconditional.
Eros is that special "in-love" feeling that we experience usually for one particular person at a time. It is like a laser beam that raises our vibration to the highest heights, that energy that makes the very cells of our bodies sing, that focuses and intensifies our senses. And in many cases, Eros can be fleeting, so direct self-work must be done to keep the channels open enough for it to flow through us as long as possible.
True love and Eros create independence, not dependence. Allowing love and Eros to flow through us is its own validation of the self, its own source of nurturance, and creates within us a singular feeling of completeness.
For more on this subject, you can read, or re-read, my favorite Pathwork Guide lecture: THE FORCES OF LOVE, EROS, AND SEX.
PERSONALITY!
Here's more excerpts from the same class of mine that the ego material was from. This material is on "personality." Again, feel free to ask questions.
PERSONALITY
Webster’s Dictionary - The visible aspects of one’s character; a person as an embodiment of a collection of qualities.
Psychiatric Dictionary - The personality represents a compromise between inner drives and needs and the controls that limit or regulate their expression. The personality functions to maintain a stable, reciprocal relationship between the person and his environment. The personality, in other words, is a set of habits that characterize the person in his way of managing day to day living; under ordinary conditions, it is relatively stable and predictable, and for the most part it is ego-syntonic.
Freud - Three aspects of the personality: Id, Ego, Superego.
Id: Completely unconscious, its sole function is to provide for the immediate discharge of energy or tension. It contains the Pleasure Principle and the survival instinct. It is the “obscure, inaccessible part of our personality...the reservoir of the psychic representations of the drives of sex and aggression.”
Ego: The executive of the personality, controlling and governing the id and superego and maintaining communication with the external world in the interest of the total personality and its needs. It is governed by the Reality Principle, the aim of which is to postpone the discharge of energy until the actual object that will satisfy the need has been discovered or produced.
Superego: The moral or judicial branch of the personality that represents one’s perceived ideal, striving for perfection rather than pleasure or reality. It includes idealized images of parents, positive and negative, and judgments about good and bad, right and wrong, and what is deserving of reward or punishment.
Jung - Three levels of the psyche: Consciousness, Personal Unconscious, Collective Unconscious.
Consciousness: The only part of the mind that is known directly by the individual. It has four mental functions (thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting) and two attitudes (introversion and extroversion).
Personal Unconscious: Contains all psychic activities and contents which have been repressed or disregarded such as distressing thought, unsolved problems and personal conflict. The contents here are usually accessible to the consciousness when the need for them arises.
Collective Unconscious: A reservoir of latent, primordial images inherited from our ancestral past manifested as predispositions or potentialities for experiencing or responding to the world. The contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes (meaning original models after which other similar images are patterned), a major one being the persona which is a mask or facade one exhibits publicly with the intention of presenting a favorable impression in order to be accepted. A person may have more than one mask, and collectively, all of one’s masks constitute the persona. Other major archetypes include the anima, which is the feminine side of the male psyche, the animus, the masculine side of the female psyche, and the shadow, which contains the human being’s basic animal nature and is the source of the best and the worst in humanity.
Berne - Transactional Analysis emphasizes the influence of the ego states of Parent, Adult and Child on a person’s interactions with others. The Parent ego state relates to limit-setting and nurturing; it is based on the subject’s perception of their own parents. The Adult ego state is concerned with reality testing and estimating probabilities in transactions with the outside world. The Child ego state comprises the feelings, wishes, and adaptations actually experienced in childhood.
Most outcomes of an exchange are determined by ulterior transactions, psychological responses that are outside the awareness of the participants. People play games, adopting the role of Persecutor, Rescuer, or Victim, using ulterior transactions in such a way that everyone loses.
Pierrakos - Three levels of personal reality: Core, Lower Self, Mask
The Core: the human being’s whole capacity, a glowing, vital mass, both the source and the perceiver of life force. The Core has complete unity, no either-or, no good-bad. It is an indivisible vibratory operation, a process in which every person knows the truth instinctively by sensing the pulse of life. The qualitative characteristics of the core are the primal positive emotions, or movements to make contact and unify with the outside world, summed up as one supreme expression: love.
Lower Self: the source of the primal negative emotions. These destructive emotions are galvanized when positive impulses from level 1 are negated, whether from inside or outside of the organism. This negation is the seat of fight or flight reactions in their various forms and degrees - rage and hatred, panic and terror, cruelty and selfishness, the negative impulses described by Freud.
Mask: The outer husk of the human defensive structure, which presents a false face, an idealized, self image to the world. The mask seeks to conceal the Lower Self by misappropriating the energy of the Core.
Gomez - Three aspects of the personality: Childish Self, Adult Self, True Self
Childish Self: The Childish Self contains the primal basic human needs and the raw, negative feelings, such as rage and terror (and their derivatives), when those needs are not gratified. The Childish Self develops enough intellect to know that if it expresses itself directly from its raw feelings, it will receive a negative response from the environment, so it creates the Masked Self (False Self). In that effort, the Childish Self creates an idealized self image and then tries to act as if it really were that image to get what it needs and wants, trying to appear pleasing or cooperative, special, etc.
Adult Self: The Adult Self is the current, but temporary, “captain” of the personality with its will power and intellect/reasoning capacities; its tasks are to be in contact with inner and outer reality, with the Childish Self and the True Self, to facilitate a “dialogue” between the three aspects of the personality, and to know from which aspect one is coming from at any given moment; the main task of the Adult Ego is to integrate with the True Self, to give itself up, ultimately, and surrender to the True Self (This can only be done if the ego is strong, and the adult ego is strengthened by bringing the unconscious Childish Self to the surface so it can be seen and transformed, so the adult can be its mentor, to educate and love the child, finding and correcting the erroneous beliefs, and clearing the held negative feelings and the motives and constructs behind those feelings).
True Self: (Inner Self, Higher Self) This aspect is eternal, contains all of the creativity, intuition, wisdom and pure pleasure of one’s being; it is the Universe itself, consciousness in the deepest and highest sense, eternally moving; it manifests as inspirations and knowingness; the more we are in contact with the Higher Self, the more secure and safe we feel, the more able to cope with everything, the more apparent contradictions unify, fears disappear, and life becomes pleasurable; this is the real potential in everyone; it is the destiny towards which evolution moves us; it is the deep constant longing that we have inside.
Broch (“Guide”) - Personality is based on these three attributes - Love, Wisdom and Divine Will (True Self) which become Emotions, Reason and Will Power (Adult;) which become Fear, Pride and Self-Will (Child, distorted), with a predominance of one or two. The three aspects each have a place in the personality when we are functioning harmoniously. (Often, however, they are directed into the wrong channels. For example, when you need to use your love attribute, but you use your will instead.)
PERSONALITY
Webster’s Dictionary - The visible aspects of one’s character; a person as an embodiment of a collection of qualities.
Psychiatric Dictionary - The personality represents a compromise between inner drives and needs and the controls that limit or regulate their expression. The personality functions to maintain a stable, reciprocal relationship between the person and his environment. The personality, in other words, is a set of habits that characterize the person in his way of managing day to day living; under ordinary conditions, it is relatively stable and predictable, and for the most part it is ego-syntonic.
Freud - Three aspects of the personality: Id, Ego, Superego.
Id: Completely unconscious, its sole function is to provide for the immediate discharge of energy or tension. It contains the Pleasure Principle and the survival instinct. It is the “obscure, inaccessible part of our personality...the reservoir of the psychic representations of the drives of sex and aggression.”
Ego: The executive of the personality, controlling and governing the id and superego and maintaining communication with the external world in the interest of the total personality and its needs. It is governed by the Reality Principle, the aim of which is to postpone the discharge of energy until the actual object that will satisfy the need has been discovered or produced.
Superego: The moral or judicial branch of the personality that represents one’s perceived ideal, striving for perfection rather than pleasure or reality. It includes idealized images of parents, positive and negative, and judgments about good and bad, right and wrong, and what is deserving of reward or punishment.
Jung - Three levels of the psyche: Consciousness, Personal Unconscious, Collective Unconscious.
Consciousness: The only part of the mind that is known directly by the individual. It has four mental functions (thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting) and two attitudes (introversion and extroversion).
Personal Unconscious: Contains all psychic activities and contents which have been repressed or disregarded such as distressing thought, unsolved problems and personal conflict. The contents here are usually accessible to the consciousness when the need for them arises.
Collective Unconscious: A reservoir of latent, primordial images inherited from our ancestral past manifested as predispositions or potentialities for experiencing or responding to the world. The contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes (meaning original models after which other similar images are patterned), a major one being the persona which is a mask or facade one exhibits publicly with the intention of presenting a favorable impression in order to be accepted. A person may have more than one mask, and collectively, all of one’s masks constitute the persona. Other major archetypes include the anima, which is the feminine side of the male psyche, the animus, the masculine side of the female psyche, and the shadow, which contains the human being’s basic animal nature and is the source of the best and the worst in humanity.
Berne - Transactional Analysis emphasizes the influence of the ego states of Parent, Adult and Child on a person’s interactions with others. The Parent ego state relates to limit-setting and nurturing; it is based on the subject’s perception of their own parents. The Adult ego state is concerned with reality testing and estimating probabilities in transactions with the outside world. The Child ego state comprises the feelings, wishes, and adaptations actually experienced in childhood.
Most outcomes of an exchange are determined by ulterior transactions, psychological responses that are outside the awareness of the participants. People play games, adopting the role of Persecutor, Rescuer, or Victim, using ulterior transactions in such a way that everyone loses.
Pierrakos - Three levels of personal reality: Core, Lower Self, Mask
The Core: the human being’s whole capacity, a glowing, vital mass, both the source and the perceiver of life force. The Core has complete unity, no either-or, no good-bad. It is an indivisible vibratory operation, a process in which every person knows the truth instinctively by sensing the pulse of life. The qualitative characteristics of the core are the primal positive emotions, or movements to make contact and unify with the outside world, summed up as one supreme expression: love.
Lower Self: the source of the primal negative emotions. These destructive emotions are galvanized when positive impulses from level 1 are negated, whether from inside or outside of the organism. This negation is the seat of fight or flight reactions in their various forms and degrees - rage and hatred, panic and terror, cruelty and selfishness, the negative impulses described by Freud.
Mask: The outer husk of the human defensive structure, which presents a false face, an idealized, self image to the world. The mask seeks to conceal the Lower Self by misappropriating the energy of the Core.
Gomez - Three aspects of the personality: Childish Self, Adult Self, True Self
Childish Self: The Childish Self contains the primal basic human needs and the raw, negative feelings, such as rage and terror (and their derivatives), when those needs are not gratified. The Childish Self develops enough intellect to know that if it expresses itself directly from its raw feelings, it will receive a negative response from the environment, so it creates the Masked Self (False Self). In that effort, the Childish Self creates an idealized self image and then tries to act as if it really were that image to get what it needs and wants, trying to appear pleasing or cooperative, special, etc.
Adult Self: The Adult Self is the current, but temporary, “captain” of the personality with its will power and intellect/reasoning capacities; its tasks are to be in contact with inner and outer reality, with the Childish Self and the True Self, to facilitate a “dialogue” between the three aspects of the personality, and to know from which aspect one is coming from at any given moment; the main task of the Adult Ego is to integrate with the True Self, to give itself up, ultimately, and surrender to the True Self (This can only be done if the ego is strong, and the adult ego is strengthened by bringing the unconscious Childish Self to the surface so it can be seen and transformed, so the adult can be its mentor, to educate and love the child, finding and correcting the erroneous beliefs, and clearing the held negative feelings and the motives and constructs behind those feelings).
True Self: (Inner Self, Higher Self) This aspect is eternal, contains all of the creativity, intuition, wisdom and pure pleasure of one’s being; it is the Universe itself, consciousness in the deepest and highest sense, eternally moving; it manifests as inspirations and knowingness; the more we are in contact with the Higher Self, the more secure and safe we feel, the more able to cope with everything, the more apparent contradictions unify, fears disappear, and life becomes pleasurable; this is the real potential in everyone; it is the destiny towards which evolution moves us; it is the deep constant longing that we have inside.
Broch (“Guide”) - Personality is based on these three attributes - Love, Wisdom and Divine Will (True Self) which become Emotions, Reason and Will Power (Adult;) which become Fear, Pride and Self-Will (Child, distorted), with a predominance of one or two. The three aspects each have a place in the personality when we are functioning harmoniously. (Often, however, they are directed into the wrong channels. For example, when you need to use your love attribute, but you use your will instead.)
EGO!
Many people I work with ask me to explain exactly what the ego is and how it ends up becoming such a disruptive aspect of our personality. Here are some excerpts, straight from my class on THE SELF, with several descriptions of the ego from sources that I consider to be reputable and enlightened. If you have any questions, feel free...
EGO
Psychiatric Dictionary - that part of the psychic apparatus that is the mediator between the person and reality. Its prime function is the perception of reality and adaptation to it. The various tasks of the ego include perception, self-perception and self-awareness, motor control, memory, thinking, reconciling conflicting ideas and the demands of internal and external elements.
Freud - The ego is the executive of the personality, controlling and governing the id and the superego and maintaining commerce with the external world in the interest of the total personality and its needs. Instead of the pleasure principle, the ego is governed by the reality principle, the aim of which is to postpone the discharge of energy until the actual object that will satisfy the need has been discovered or produced. This secondary process does not make the mistake, as the primary process does, of regarding the image of an object as though it were the object itself.
The ego appears as something autonomous and unitary, marked off distinctively from everything else. There is only one unusual state that is not pathological in which this is not so. At the height of being in love, the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of the senses, someone in love declares that “I” and “you” are one and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.
Pierrakos - The ego stands guard at the intersection of human consciousness between inner and outer reality. A healthy ego is flexible and permeable. It can drop its mask and yield to the spontaneity of the Higher Self. It sees itself in perspective in the three dimensional setting of earth time, space and movement. It gives proportion to the expressions of inner reality and seeks avenues for those expressions in outer reality, and it takes direction from outer reality and seeks its meaning for inner reality.
The abuse of the ego is the major way that people cut themselves off from their core and create and perpetuate illness. Aligned with the character structure, the ego battles to stifle the mutual exchange of energy between the core and outer reality. From a cosmic point of view, the ego is the primary faculty with which human beings fragment their unity with themselves and the rest of existence. The purpose of Core Energetics is to align the ego with the core rather than adjust to the environment, restoring the ego to its proper function of discriminating rather than ruling. The ego cannot enter the core by force of will or by rational thought. (...just as no one can force oneself to experience love, which is the outreaching movement of the soul. Love emerges spontaneously as the person removes the obstacles of misappropriated energy that stand in the way.) Opening the ego to the core gives us joy, which is the sensation of free inner activity.
Lowen - The ego is the mediator between the inner and outer world, between the self and the other. This function derives from its position at the surface of the body and the surface of the mind. It forms a picture of the external world to which every organism must conform, and in doing so, it shapes the individual’s self-image. In turn, this self-image dictates what feelings and impulses are to be allowed expression. Within the personality, the ego is the representative of reality. The ego shapes the body through the control of the voluntary musculature.
Roberts (“Seth”) - The ego, while a portion of the whole self, can be defined as a psychological structure, composed of characteristics belonging to the personality as a whole, organized together to form a surface identity. It is the portion of the mind that looks out upon physical reality and surveys it in relation to those characteristics of which it is composed at any given time. It makes judgments according to its own idea of itself. It is important to realize the ego’s position as the most “exterior” portion of the inner self, not alienated from it, but looking outward toward physical reality. The ego tries to organize all material coming into the conscious mind. The ego cannot keep information out of the conscious mind, but it can refuse to focus directly upon it. The ego is an offshoot of the conscious mind. The conscious mind is like a gigantic camera with the ego directing the view and the focus.
The ego is your idea of your physical image in relation to the world. Your self-image is not unconscious, then. You are quite aware of it, though you often reject certain thoughts about it in favor of others. False beliefs can result in a rigid ego that insists upon using the unconscious mind in one direction only, further distorting its perceptions.
The ego, while appearing to be permanent, forever changes as it adapts to new characteristics from the whole self. The consciousness of your usual daylight hours, the ego consciousness, rises up like a flower from the ground of the unconscious bed of your own reality. The ego emerges, then falls back again into the unconscious, from which another ego then arise like a new bloom from the springtime earth. You do not have the same ego now that you had five years ago, but you are not aware of the change. The ego rises out of what you are, but as the eye cannot see its own shifting expressions, as it is not aware that it lives and dies constantly as its atomic structure changes, so you are not aware that the ego continually changes, dies and is reborn. Left alone, various portions of the identity rise and form the ego, degroup and reform, all the while maintaining a marvelous spontaneity and yet a sense of oneness. The ego cannot be annihilated. “Kill” one and another will, and must, emerge from the inner self, which is its source. Under enforced annihilation (i.e.-from drugs), there is a frantic attempt at reorganization as the inner self tries to “send up” alternate egos to handle the situation - and in those terms, the more egos you kill, the more will emerge.
EGO
Psychiatric Dictionary - that part of the psychic apparatus that is the mediator between the person and reality. Its prime function is the perception of reality and adaptation to it. The various tasks of the ego include perception, self-perception and self-awareness, motor control, memory, thinking, reconciling conflicting ideas and the demands of internal and external elements.
Freud - The ego is the executive of the personality, controlling and governing the id and the superego and maintaining commerce with the external world in the interest of the total personality and its needs. Instead of the pleasure principle, the ego is governed by the reality principle, the aim of which is to postpone the discharge of energy until the actual object that will satisfy the need has been discovered or produced. This secondary process does not make the mistake, as the primary process does, of regarding the image of an object as though it were the object itself.
The ego appears as something autonomous and unitary, marked off distinctively from everything else. There is only one unusual state that is not pathological in which this is not so. At the height of being in love, the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of the senses, someone in love declares that “I” and “you” are one and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.
Pierrakos - The ego stands guard at the intersection of human consciousness between inner and outer reality. A healthy ego is flexible and permeable. It can drop its mask and yield to the spontaneity of the Higher Self. It sees itself in perspective in the three dimensional setting of earth time, space and movement. It gives proportion to the expressions of inner reality and seeks avenues for those expressions in outer reality, and it takes direction from outer reality and seeks its meaning for inner reality.
The abuse of the ego is the major way that people cut themselves off from their core and create and perpetuate illness. Aligned with the character structure, the ego battles to stifle the mutual exchange of energy between the core and outer reality. From a cosmic point of view, the ego is the primary faculty with which human beings fragment their unity with themselves and the rest of existence. The purpose of Core Energetics is to align the ego with the core rather than adjust to the environment, restoring the ego to its proper function of discriminating rather than ruling. The ego cannot enter the core by force of will or by rational thought. (...just as no one can force oneself to experience love, which is the outreaching movement of the soul. Love emerges spontaneously as the person removes the obstacles of misappropriated energy that stand in the way.) Opening the ego to the core gives us joy, which is the sensation of free inner activity.
Lowen - The ego is the mediator between the inner and outer world, between the self and the other. This function derives from its position at the surface of the body and the surface of the mind. It forms a picture of the external world to which every organism must conform, and in doing so, it shapes the individual’s self-image. In turn, this self-image dictates what feelings and impulses are to be allowed expression. Within the personality, the ego is the representative of reality. The ego shapes the body through the control of the voluntary musculature.
Roberts (“Seth”) - The ego, while a portion of the whole self, can be defined as a psychological structure, composed of characteristics belonging to the personality as a whole, organized together to form a surface identity. It is the portion of the mind that looks out upon physical reality and surveys it in relation to those characteristics of which it is composed at any given time. It makes judgments according to its own idea of itself. It is important to realize the ego’s position as the most “exterior” portion of the inner self, not alienated from it, but looking outward toward physical reality. The ego tries to organize all material coming into the conscious mind. The ego cannot keep information out of the conscious mind, but it can refuse to focus directly upon it. The ego is an offshoot of the conscious mind. The conscious mind is like a gigantic camera with the ego directing the view and the focus.
The ego is your idea of your physical image in relation to the world. Your self-image is not unconscious, then. You are quite aware of it, though you often reject certain thoughts about it in favor of others. False beliefs can result in a rigid ego that insists upon using the unconscious mind in one direction only, further distorting its perceptions.
The ego, while appearing to be permanent, forever changes as it adapts to new characteristics from the whole self. The consciousness of your usual daylight hours, the ego consciousness, rises up like a flower from the ground of the unconscious bed of your own reality. The ego emerges, then falls back again into the unconscious, from which another ego then arise like a new bloom from the springtime earth. You do not have the same ego now that you had five years ago, but you are not aware of the change. The ego rises out of what you are, but as the eye cannot see its own shifting expressions, as it is not aware that it lives and dies constantly as its atomic structure changes, so you are not aware that the ego continually changes, dies and is reborn. Left alone, various portions of the identity rise and form the ego, degroup and reform, all the while maintaining a marvelous spontaneity and yet a sense of oneness. The ego cannot be annihilated. “Kill” one and another will, and must, emerge from the inner self, which is its source. Under enforced annihilation (i.e.-from drugs), there is a frantic attempt at reorganization as the inner self tries to “send up” alternate egos to handle the situation - and in those terms, the more egos you kill, the more will emerge.
THE DEADLY SIDE OF THE WAVE, PART 2!
Beginning in January of 2010, I wrote about an energy surge moving across the planet, The Wave is what I called it, and I wrote several articles about its impacts. Two weeks ago, I wrote that The Wave was back in full force, and indeed it is. And in one piece, I reminded my readers that there was a "Deadly Side of The Wave."
The day after Christmas 2010, I wrote this:
"Now, before 2011 has even begun, I am already hearing stories of sudden deaths, relationship break-ups or financial crises, coupled with splendid bursts of new love and creative expression and prosperity."
And it's not over yet. The collective news yesterday and today is filled with the horrific mass murder in Arizona that was part of an assassination attempt on a Democratic Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, and in my own personal reality, a dear friend died suddenly three days ago.
I'm not writing this here now because I'm "worried" about anyone, though. I know that "death" is an illusion of 3rd-dimensional physical, linear reality. I'm writing this because you may know that you have something that you desire to do yet in this particular lifetime, something that you actually planned to accomplish. It's never too late, of course, but there are windows of opportunity that we collectively open up from time to time. That's what The Wave is. An opportunity to take the fast track to your highest joy and excitement and fulfillment, or to make a fast exit.
It's always up to you.
Good-bye, my old friend. Happy trails!
The day after Christmas 2010, I wrote this:
"Now, before 2011 has even begun, I am already hearing stories of sudden deaths, relationship break-ups or financial crises, coupled with splendid bursts of new love and creative expression and prosperity."
And it's not over yet. The collective news yesterday and today is filled with the horrific mass murder in Arizona that was part of an assassination attempt on a Democratic Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, and in my own personal reality, a dear friend died suddenly three days ago.
I'm not writing this here now because I'm "worried" about anyone, though. I know that "death" is an illusion of 3rd-dimensional physical, linear reality. I'm writing this because you may know that you have something that you desire to do yet in this particular lifetime, something that you actually planned to accomplish. It's never too late, of course, but there are windows of opportunity that we collectively open up from time to time. That's what The Wave is. An opportunity to take the fast track to your highest joy and excitement and fulfillment, or to make a fast exit.
It's always up to you.
Good-bye, my old friend. Happy trails!
HAVING CHILDREN? GET A DIVORCE!
Beautiful! Lovely! How great to hear someone else revealing this: the best parents are the ones who aren't together!
In a blog piece entitled "DIVORCE'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET," Elisabeth Joy LaMotte, LCSW, says this:
"As a therapist with over fifteen years experience, I hear a lot about divorce, particularly divorces where children are involved. I have noticed a surprising sentiment among many divorcees: people secretly like their time off from parenting."
Well, thank you, Elisabeth. Nothing more refreshing than speaking and hearing the truth. I have frequently pointed out to people, and written about on this blog and others, that in my 30+ years of practicing psychotherapy, I could count on one hand the number of people who told me that they wished their parents hadn't gotten divorced when they were kids. Conversely, I can't even count how many have told me that they were glad that their parents got divorced, that it was absolutely the best thing for all involved, etc.
Here's more from LaMotte's piece:
"A newly divorced client in her forties puts it this way:
"I feel terrible admitting this, but I cherish my down-time each week. It rejuvenates me and leads to a great amount of patience and positivity when I am with my kids. I totally lacked this in the past. I sometimes wonder if what my ex and I really needed was more help with the kids, more down time, and more romance.'
"A divorced dad in his thirties echoes this sentiment, admitting:
"It wasn't until we separated that I truly invested in quality time with my kids. When we were married it was as if we were stuck on this gruesome, endless treadmill of chores, meals and obligations. I was just trying to get through the day. I'd read books to my kids and have no idea of the plot, because I was thinking about what I would say in the emails I needed to send when I finished. Now, my time with the kids is limited and precious and I make the most of it. I listen to them and I'm totally in the moment."
Yes! Yes!! YES!!!
Parenting, as we know it, folks, is not only dysfunctional, it is impossible!
In the soon-to be-extinct nuclear family model (just follow the statistical trends), 2 people (usually young) are expected to undertake the most incredibly taxing job on earth, 24-7, for two decades, with no qualifications!
That's right. Parents, of all available adults, are usually the least qualified to raise children. You need to pass two tests to get a license to drive a car or sell real estate. It's required to have a college degree or some period of focused training for most careers. Yet, to have children, one of the most important and difficult occupations in our society, all you have to do is (excuse me) fuck somebody!
Children need love to thrive, yes, but let me say two radical things here that might upset some parents or prospective parents: 1. Love is not enough; and 2. Love is not a function of biology.
In other words, in addition to love, children need guidance and training and protection, and for that, the guides in question need to be self-actualized to a significant degree, which means they need to have some amount of serious self-work under their emotional belts. And to provide the genuine love necessary for children to thrive, the caretakers in question need to be capable of giving that kind of love, not the co-dependent, over-identified, symbiotic substitute that so often is mistaken for love. And once again, to be able to channel that kind of love to another human being, the person in question has to be fairly self-actualized and... well, we're back to the self-work, aren't we?
So, what about LaMotte's piece? Well, we're obviously not at a place yet in our society where people will commit themselves to the needed self-work before they become parents (The ones that do, more and more often don't become parents.), and we're not yet at a place in our development collectively in which we will allow the wisest of the "village" to raise our children, so...
Divorce is the next best interim step!
Here's LaMotte again:
"If you dig past the pain and disappointment that devastates those who divorce, many will admit that they recharge during their time away from their children and become--albeit in time-limited doses--the parent they always wanted to be."
Hey... You're human. I understand. You may really want to express your generativity by having a child (Please don't even think about having more than one!). Fine. Then consider this: you will need at least two separate households, and preferably two complete sets of parents, as well as a small staff (housecleaner, babysitter, driver, cook) to do it right. And obviously to do that, you need to be fairly well-established financially.
Will adhering to such measures probably decrease the world's population?
Would that be a bad thing?
Happy New Year!
In a blog piece entitled "DIVORCE'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET," Elisabeth Joy LaMotte, LCSW, says this:
"As a therapist with over fifteen years experience, I hear a lot about divorce, particularly divorces where children are involved. I have noticed a surprising sentiment among many divorcees: people secretly like their time off from parenting."
Well, thank you, Elisabeth. Nothing more refreshing than speaking and hearing the truth. I have frequently pointed out to people, and written about on this blog and others, that in my 30+ years of practicing psychotherapy, I could count on one hand the number of people who told me that they wished their parents hadn't gotten divorced when they were kids. Conversely, I can't even count how many have told me that they were glad that their parents got divorced, that it was absolutely the best thing for all involved, etc.
Here's more from LaMotte's piece:
"A newly divorced client in her forties puts it this way:
"I feel terrible admitting this, but I cherish my down-time each week. It rejuvenates me and leads to a great amount of patience and positivity when I am with my kids. I totally lacked this in the past. I sometimes wonder if what my ex and I really needed was more help with the kids, more down time, and more romance.'
"A divorced dad in his thirties echoes this sentiment, admitting:
"It wasn't until we separated that I truly invested in quality time with my kids. When we were married it was as if we were stuck on this gruesome, endless treadmill of chores, meals and obligations. I was just trying to get through the day. I'd read books to my kids and have no idea of the plot, because I was thinking about what I would say in the emails I needed to send when I finished. Now, my time with the kids is limited and precious and I make the most of it. I listen to them and I'm totally in the moment."
Yes! Yes!! YES!!!
Parenting, as we know it, folks, is not only dysfunctional, it is impossible!
In the soon-to be-extinct nuclear family model (just follow the statistical trends), 2 people (usually young) are expected to undertake the most incredibly taxing job on earth, 24-7, for two decades, with no qualifications!
That's right. Parents, of all available adults, are usually the least qualified to raise children. You need to pass two tests to get a license to drive a car or sell real estate. It's required to have a college degree or some period of focused training for most careers. Yet, to have children, one of the most important and difficult occupations in our society, all you have to do is (excuse me) fuck somebody!
Children need love to thrive, yes, but let me say two radical things here that might upset some parents or prospective parents: 1. Love is not enough; and 2. Love is not a function of biology.
In other words, in addition to love, children need guidance and training and protection, and for that, the guides in question need to be self-actualized to a significant degree, which means they need to have some amount of serious self-work under their emotional belts. And to provide the genuine love necessary for children to thrive, the caretakers in question need to be capable of giving that kind of love, not the co-dependent, over-identified, symbiotic substitute that so often is mistaken for love. And once again, to be able to channel that kind of love to another human being, the person in question has to be fairly self-actualized and... well, we're back to the self-work, aren't we?
So, what about LaMotte's piece? Well, we're obviously not at a place yet in our society where people will commit themselves to the needed self-work before they become parents (The ones that do, more and more often don't become parents.), and we're not yet at a place in our development collectively in which we will allow the wisest of the "village" to raise our children, so...
Divorce is the next best interim step!
Here's LaMotte again:
"If you dig past the pain and disappointment that devastates those who divorce, many will admit that they recharge during their time away from their children and become--albeit in time-limited doses--the parent they always wanted to be."
Hey... You're human. I understand. You may really want to express your generativity by having a child (Please don't even think about having more than one!). Fine. Then consider this: you will need at least two separate households, and preferably two complete sets of parents, as well as a small staff (housecleaner, babysitter, driver, cook) to do it right. And obviously to do that, you need to be fairly well-established financially.
Will adhering to such measures probably decrease the world's population?
Would that be a bad thing?
Happy New Year!
"MC" RESPONDS TO PL'S "HAVING CHILDREN? GET A DIVORCE!"/PL RESPONDS!
Here's MC:
I relate to the comments in this article, as a divorced parent of two young children myself; I know all too well what not taking time away from the “important tasks” of childrearing does to a marriage.
It is quite astonishing how, after a divorce, sharing children with a capable ex can be such a life-saving and fulfilling experience. My question is why can’t we do this when we’re together? What interferes with creating an environment that supports two adults living self-actualized and fulfilling lives within a family dynamic?
The article by Elisabeth LaMotte speaks to the idea that marriage and parenting need a complete overhaul. This archaic standard we all attempt to live up (down) to does not work in our times. We need to redefine the entire package. We have become a nation of overachievers in areas that don’t really matter. If meaningful relationships are to survive, we need to start looking more deeply at what matters, like our true purpose for being here and understanding our true nature.
I have met countless parents who are on some sort of psychotropic drug to help cope, who have little or no sex life, and consciously or not, hold a great deal of resentment towards their spouse and others. This is clearly a toxic environment to raise children in, yet it is the most common situation of our time. I must agree that most families are ill equipped to deal with the stress and responsibilities that comes with this awesome task of raising children. The reason we find it stressful is because we are not prepared for the task.
I am an advocate for self-healing prior to having children, in fact I believe that it is infinitely more important than having the financial resources. In my experience I have known many children that have been raised by families with ample resources, families that could well afford child care, private schools and housekeepers, but these (now) adults are no more self actualized or healthier that their counterparts who went without these “luxuries”. In fact, the ones with “less” in most cases have a quicker path to recovery and self-realization than the others. It is misleading to believe that money (or a staff) can take the place of parents that have taken the time to discover who they are and worked on living to their fullest potential as loving confident human beings. Is it a coincidence that most adult individuals that do the real self introspective work on them selves decide not to have children? I believe that it is because they have become painfully aware of how bad parenting destroys lives, and not just the children's.
Maybe instead of getting married and then going through a painful and costly divorce we could redefine what families really are and start out relationships more independently. A way that gives both parents an opportunity to be more present and yet, at times, completely removed from daily care taking, a situation that takes into consideration our real needs, not the social construct that suits the corporations and governments but one that really speaks to who we really are today.
Since the divorce rate is now well-over 50%, then maybe we should start seriously looking at this social construct. Maybe instead of seeing ourselves (the majority of us) failing a system, we need to see that the system no longer meets our needs as individuals and families.
If each individual took the responsibility of healing themselves and becoming self actualized maybe the standards of what real adult relationships are would change and the choice of becoming a parent would start to take on a whole different meaning.
In the end, each of us is responsible for our own happiness, regardless of pressures to conform. You can make it work, however unorthodox. If it works and you're happy, than you've reigned supreme in a life where most people are struggling to find joy.
Here's PL:
Thank you so much for a very thoughtful, insightful, heartfelt and full response, MC. You touch on many areas, all of great significance, including a favorite subject of mine, the archaic nature of the institution of marriage. I agree that we should "look seriously at this social construct," and I do believe more and more people are. While the divorce rate is climbing, on the one hand, at the other end, the number of people getting married at young ages is declining, as is the number of young people having kids. This is great news!
I do agree, as you suggest, that marriage and childrearing can be restructured to facilitate rather than interfere with a couple's personal growth and self-actualization, and I look forward to watching that transformation unfold. Perhaps if we started spending those tens of thousands of dollars that modern weddings cost on a few years of therapy and childhood development training, that transformation would accelerate.
Thanks again, MC! Your kids are lucky to have you!
I relate to the comments in this article, as a divorced parent of two young children myself; I know all too well what not taking time away from the “important tasks” of childrearing does to a marriage.
It is quite astonishing how, after a divorce, sharing children with a capable ex can be such a life-saving and fulfilling experience. My question is why can’t we do this when we’re together? What interferes with creating an environment that supports two adults living self-actualized and fulfilling lives within a family dynamic?
The article by Elisabeth LaMotte speaks to the idea that marriage and parenting need a complete overhaul. This archaic standard we all attempt to live up (down) to does not work in our times. We need to redefine the entire package. We have become a nation of overachievers in areas that don’t really matter. If meaningful relationships are to survive, we need to start looking more deeply at what matters, like our true purpose for being here and understanding our true nature.
I have met countless parents who are on some sort of psychotropic drug to help cope, who have little or no sex life, and consciously or not, hold a great deal of resentment towards their spouse and others. This is clearly a toxic environment to raise children in, yet it is the most common situation of our time. I must agree that most families are ill equipped to deal with the stress and responsibilities that comes with this awesome task of raising children. The reason we find it stressful is because we are not prepared for the task.
I am an advocate for self-healing prior to having children, in fact I believe that it is infinitely more important than having the financial resources. In my experience I have known many children that have been raised by families with ample resources, families that could well afford child care, private schools and housekeepers, but these (now) adults are no more self actualized or healthier that their counterparts who went without these “luxuries”. In fact, the ones with “less” in most cases have a quicker path to recovery and self-realization than the others. It is misleading to believe that money (or a staff) can take the place of parents that have taken the time to discover who they are and worked on living to their fullest potential as loving confident human beings. Is it a coincidence that most adult individuals that do the real self introspective work on them selves decide not to have children? I believe that it is because they have become painfully aware of how bad parenting destroys lives, and not just the children's.
Maybe instead of getting married and then going through a painful and costly divorce we could redefine what families really are and start out relationships more independently. A way that gives both parents an opportunity to be more present and yet, at times, completely removed from daily care taking, a situation that takes into consideration our real needs, not the social construct that suits the corporations and governments but one that really speaks to who we really are today.
Since the divorce rate is now well-over 50%, then maybe we should start seriously looking at this social construct. Maybe instead of seeing ourselves (the majority of us) failing a system, we need to see that the system no longer meets our needs as individuals and families.
If each individual took the responsibility of healing themselves and becoming self actualized maybe the standards of what real adult relationships are would change and the choice of becoming a parent would start to take on a whole different meaning.
In the end, each of us is responsible for our own happiness, regardless of pressures to conform. You can make it work, however unorthodox. If it works and you're happy, than you've reigned supreme in a life where most people are struggling to find joy.
Here's PL:
Thank you so much for a very thoughtful, insightful, heartfelt and full response, MC. You touch on many areas, all of great significance, including a favorite subject of mine, the archaic nature of the institution of marriage. I agree that we should "look seriously at this social construct," and I do believe more and more people are. While the divorce rate is climbing, on the one hand, at the other end, the number of people getting married at young ages is declining, as is the number of young people having kids. This is great news!
I do agree, as you suggest, that marriage and childrearing can be restructured to facilitate rather than interfere with a couple's personal growth and self-actualization, and I look forward to watching that transformation unfold. Perhaps if we started spending those tens of thousands of dollars that modern weddings cost on a few years of therapy and childhood development training, that transformation would accelerate.
Thanks again, MC! Your kids are lucky to have you!
TODAY'S QUOTE!
"The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all there is."
Albert Einstein
(Read an interesting blog post entitled "Albert Einstein and the Scientific Proof of God" HERE.
Albert Einstein
(Read an interesting blog post entitled "Albert Einstein and the Scientific Proof of God" HERE.
TODAY'S QUOTE!
"The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear before he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist."
Steven Pressfield
Steven Pressfield
HAPPY 1-1-11! NOW GET OFF THE "GOLD" (OLD) STANDARD!!
Got some channeled information last night as part of a New Year's Eve meditation that I'd like to share with you.
The question put forward at one point was about money (Ahh, yes, money...), and how to bring more of it into one's life. The answer that came back was quite interesting.
Our evolving relationship to abundance was likened to the change-over in the early 1970's from "the gold standard," in which the value of money was tied to a specific amount of gold held by a country, to a monetary system in which the government could print money without being tethered to a quantity of precious metal. In effect, the gold standard prevented a country from printing "too much" money.
Now, while the wanton printing of money can lead to its own definite problems for a 3rd-dimensional economy, the metaphor being put forth was that we no longer need to base our levels of abundance, individually and collectively, on a fixed amount of physical material or matter, and by extrapolation, on a system of old beliefs and formulas. In other words, like coming off of the gold standard, it is time for us, now, to come off of the old standard that controls our relationship to money.
The short answer to the question of how to bring more money into our lives was given thusly: "Print more!"
Or to be more exact, create and attract more.
Ha! Sounds too easy, right? Well, that's the point. It is easy. The creation/attraction part is what we're doing all the time, in every area of our lives, whether we're conscious of it or not. Nothing happens in our lives that isn't our creation or co-creation. Shit doesn't happen, folks. Not ever.
What we do experience as hard, however, is coming off of our own personal old/gold standards - in other words, surfacing, challenging and giving up our old system of beliefs, so we can enter into life in a whole new way.
That new way has been laid out for us in many different bits of channeled information by many teachers throughout our history, including on this blog, and it comes down to to a few simple principles:
First, become conscious of what you're creating and why you're creating it. These are the first two levels of consciousness in our development after "reflex" - "awareness" and "understanding." (See my blog post "Moving through the Levels of Consciousness" for more information)
Second, become consciously connected to your emotions, and your body, which is where your feelings reside. This connections moves you beyond understanding to a place of "knowing."
Once you have become conscious and connected, knowing, the next level is "being." This place is where a lot of advanced individuals I work with today can and do get stalled in their evolutionary process. This is a place of decisive action, of exerting one's free will in a significantly conscious way.
As the entity channeling last night put it:
"2011 is about doing and being."
In other words, once you have become conscious of your inner life and able to feel your feelings freely, it is now time for action:
Time to print the money!
Instead of leading your life through a process of analyzing and excavating with your mind, this new place calls for following your desires and passion and pleasure-principle, and your five senses, letting your excitement, joy and love direct your course, while simultaneously allowing your mind and ego to return to its original intended purpose of simply observing and documenting your journey, not directing it.
The actions to be taken here are "focusing" and "letting go," which may at first blush seem mutually exclusive, but they're not. Whatever you desire - more financial abundance, greater opportunities for creative expression, deeper love, Eros and sex, more vibrancy in the health of your body - focus on it. Set your intentions to create and bring those elements into your life in whatever way works organically for you - meditating, writing, visualizing, talking to people about what you desire and intend for yourself - then, let go of the focusing until a message/direction/opportunity presents itself to you, which it always will. When it does, take the appropriate follow-up actions, and set your next set of focused intentions. And so on.
This may sound new to you, but it's actually how we operate all the time. If you desire food, for example, you feel the desire, set the intention to satisfy that desire, then go into action - walk to the store, shop, cook, etc. - until the desire is satisfied. Simple, right? Well, it's no different for anything, great or small, that you desire.
So, why would anyone get stalled so close to the "finish line?" Well, "having it all," which is what we're talking about here, being self-actualized at your highest potential, is a place of complete self-responsibility. It means we are conscious of the fact that we, totally and absolutely, create our reality, and there are no other "fall-back" positions. No parents or parental figures that can rescue us from ourselves or give us what we want in spite of our resistance, no excuses, no scenarios in which we are the victims of a cruel or unfair fate.
It is, in reality, a wonderful place to be, that place of full responsibility, or as Karen Horney put it in a recent post I put up, the place of "Prime Moral Privilege."
So, Happy New Year, everyone! Enter into this new decade knowing that you can, just like Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s character in Jerry Maguire, shout out: "SHOW ME THE MONEY!"
And then, you can print it!
The question put forward at one point was about money (Ahh, yes, money...), and how to bring more of it into one's life. The answer that came back was quite interesting.
Our evolving relationship to abundance was likened to the change-over in the early 1970's from "the gold standard," in which the value of money was tied to a specific amount of gold held by a country, to a monetary system in which the government could print money without being tethered to a quantity of precious metal. In effect, the gold standard prevented a country from printing "too much" money.
Now, while the wanton printing of money can lead to its own definite problems for a 3rd-dimensional economy, the metaphor being put forth was that we no longer need to base our levels of abundance, individually and collectively, on a fixed amount of physical material or matter, and by extrapolation, on a system of old beliefs and formulas. In other words, like coming off of the gold standard, it is time for us, now, to come off of the old standard that controls our relationship to money.
The short answer to the question of how to bring more money into our lives was given thusly: "Print more!"
Or to be more exact, create and attract more.
Ha! Sounds too easy, right? Well, that's the point. It is easy. The creation/attraction part is what we're doing all the time, in every area of our lives, whether we're conscious of it or not. Nothing happens in our lives that isn't our creation or co-creation. Shit doesn't happen, folks. Not ever.
What we do experience as hard, however, is coming off of our own personal old/gold standards - in other words, surfacing, challenging and giving up our old system of beliefs, so we can enter into life in a whole new way.
That new way has been laid out for us in many different bits of channeled information by many teachers throughout our history, including on this blog, and it comes down to to a few simple principles:
First, become conscious of what you're creating and why you're creating it. These are the first two levels of consciousness in our development after "reflex" - "awareness" and "understanding." (See my blog post "Moving through the Levels of Consciousness" for more information)
Second, become consciously connected to your emotions, and your body, which is where your feelings reside. This connections moves you beyond understanding to a place of "knowing."
Once you have become conscious and connected, knowing, the next level is "being." This place is where a lot of advanced individuals I work with today can and do get stalled in their evolutionary process. This is a place of decisive action, of exerting one's free will in a significantly conscious way.
As the entity channeling last night put it:
"2011 is about doing and being."
In other words, once you have become conscious of your inner life and able to feel your feelings freely, it is now time for action:
Time to print the money!
Instead of leading your life through a process of analyzing and excavating with your mind, this new place calls for following your desires and passion and pleasure-principle, and your five senses, letting your excitement, joy and love direct your course, while simultaneously allowing your mind and ego to return to its original intended purpose of simply observing and documenting your journey, not directing it.
The actions to be taken here are "focusing" and "letting go," which may at first blush seem mutually exclusive, but they're not. Whatever you desire - more financial abundance, greater opportunities for creative expression, deeper love, Eros and sex, more vibrancy in the health of your body - focus on it. Set your intentions to create and bring those elements into your life in whatever way works organically for you - meditating, writing, visualizing, talking to people about what you desire and intend for yourself - then, let go of the focusing until a message/direction/opportunity presents itself to you, which it always will. When it does, take the appropriate follow-up actions, and set your next set of focused intentions. And so on.
This may sound new to you, but it's actually how we operate all the time. If you desire food, for example, you feel the desire, set the intention to satisfy that desire, then go into action - walk to the store, shop, cook, etc. - until the desire is satisfied. Simple, right? Well, it's no different for anything, great or small, that you desire.
So, why would anyone get stalled so close to the "finish line?" Well, "having it all," which is what we're talking about here, being self-actualized at your highest potential, is a place of complete self-responsibility. It means we are conscious of the fact that we, totally and absolutely, create our reality, and there are no other "fall-back" positions. No parents or parental figures that can rescue us from ourselves or give us what we want in spite of our resistance, no excuses, no scenarios in which we are the victims of a cruel or unfair fate.
It is, in reality, a wonderful place to be, that place of full responsibility, or as Karen Horney put it in a recent post I put up, the place of "Prime Moral Privilege."
So, Happy New Year, everyone! Enter into this new decade knowing that you can, just like Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s character in Jerry Maguire, shout out: "SHOW ME THE MONEY!"
And then, you can print it!
TODAY'S QUOTE!
"Generativity is primarily the interest in establishing and guiding the next generation, although there are people who, because of special gifts in other directions, do not apply this drive to having offspring, but to engaging in other forms of altruistic concern and creativity which may absorb their kind of "parental" responsibility. This is a stage of growth of the healthy adult personality, and where such enrichment fails, regression from generativity to an obsessive need for pseudo intimacy takes place, often with a pervading sense of stagnation and interpersonal impoverishment. The mere fact of having, or even wanting children does not itself attest to generativity."
Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson
TODAY'S QUOTE!
"Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some idea of what we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it."
Steven Pressfield ("The War of Art")
Steven Pressfield ("The War of Art")
THE WAVE IS BACK! WOOOO!!
Here we go again! Yep. The next Wave is upon us, gathering its forces, surging across our lives, lifting us up or slamming us down, sometimes both, and yes, I mean something much larger than the snow storm we're having at the moment.
Last year, as 2010 began, we started seeing The Wave in our personal lives and in mass events. On the one hand, people experienced crises in their relationships, careers, health - more than a few left the planet, and some in rather precipitous ways - while others fell in love, experienced positive shifts in their work/creative lives, or experienced a new vitality in their bodies. And again, some experienced both the positive and the negative, sometimes even simultaneously.
En masse last year, the proverbial shit hit the fan in natural and man-made ecological disasters, in dramatic economic turmoil and in political debacles and scandals. The year ended with the spectacular revelations of Wikileaks, exposing corruption at every level of "official" society. At the same time, teen pregnancy in America sunk to its lowest level ever, with fewer people rushing into marriages or child-bearing, and President Barack Obama, despite the most extraordinary degree of obstruction ever by a recalcitrant right wing minority in the senate, still managed to get a legislative agenda passed that among other things, included a first-ever healthcare bill, tax cuts for working class people, the repeal of official discrimination against gays in the military and a treaty to halt the spread of nuclear weapons among the nations of the world.
Now, before 2011 has even begun, I am already hearing stories of sudden deaths, relationship break-ups or financial crises, coupled with splendid bursts of new love and creative expression and prosperity.
Each of us has a surf board, folks. We were born with it, so when these waves hit, these surges of energy that we've all collectively agreed to call forth at certain times in our linear history, we aren't left without the possibility of taking a great ride.
You gotta go for it, though, and do whatever it takes to open the window to your higher self. Or not. But like I said last year, there's no remaining neutral at a time like this.
The Wave is upon us.
Happy ridin'!
Last year, as 2010 began, we started seeing The Wave in our personal lives and in mass events. On the one hand, people experienced crises in their relationships, careers, health - more than a few left the planet, and some in rather precipitous ways - while others fell in love, experienced positive shifts in their work/creative lives, or experienced a new vitality in their bodies. And again, some experienced both the positive and the negative, sometimes even simultaneously.
En masse last year, the proverbial shit hit the fan in natural and man-made ecological disasters, in dramatic economic turmoil and in political debacles and scandals. The year ended with the spectacular revelations of Wikileaks, exposing corruption at every level of "official" society. At the same time, teen pregnancy in America sunk to its lowest level ever, with fewer people rushing into marriages or child-bearing, and President Barack Obama, despite the most extraordinary degree of obstruction ever by a recalcitrant right wing minority in the senate, still managed to get a legislative agenda passed that among other things, included a first-ever healthcare bill, tax cuts for working class people, the repeal of official discrimination against gays in the military and a treaty to halt the spread of nuclear weapons among the nations of the world.
Now, before 2011 has even begun, I am already hearing stories of sudden deaths, relationship break-ups or financial crises, coupled with splendid bursts of new love and creative expression and prosperity.
Each of us has a surf board, folks. We were born with it, so when these waves hit, these surges of energy that we've all collectively agreed to call forth at certain times in our linear history, we aren't left without the possibility of taking a great ride.
You gotta go for it, though, and do whatever it takes to open the window to your higher self. Or not. But like I said last year, there's no remaining neutral at a time like this.
The Wave is upon us.
Happy ridin'!
REPOST: MOVING THROUGH THE LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN GROWTH AND HEALING!
Full Permission Living is a place of being. Having moved from awareness to understanding to knowing, a person at this level of their development is simply a human… being. Eva Broch, in Pathwork Guide Lecture #127, delineates the four stages of the evolution of consciousness this way: “automatic reflex, awareness, understanding and knowing.” (See Lecture #127 in this month’s reading assignment). Spinning off from that lecture, I think of the movement through the four stages of consciousness like this: awareness, understanding, knowing and being.
Awarenessand understanding come by freeing up the mind. This is accomplished first by clearly seeing what is going on in one’s inner and outer life (awareness), and then making the cause and effect connections about the events (understanding). Awareness can begin increasing right in the first session with the therapist, acting as a mirror, offering some initial reflections and assessments. Often in a first session, a patient may say in response to the therapist’s observations: “Oh! I never realized that before.” In other words, awareness has been activated.
Understanding comes somewhat afterwards as connections are made mentally between past and present events and repetitive patterns that were previously thought of as mysterious or cruelly random. Reality is now seen in a more predictable light, and hidden agendas, intentions and beliefs are accepted as personally created realities.
Knowing comes with freeing up the emotions in the body. It is only from our gut, from within our bodies, that we can ever say “I know” something with certainty. That is why we say, “I just feel it”, when we are definite about something. The person who truly feels, knows their own truth confidently. Getting to a place of knowing takes hard work and determined effort. In addition to developing awareness and understanding, one must now undertake the “breaking” of the body’s defenses and armoring, and really feel, especially, at first, the difficult feelings of sorrow, rage and fear. This is the “point of no return.” If a person breaks through here they will never “go back” to their previous levels of functioning. They are on their way to being.
Being is just living, spontaneously and naturally, and comes from letting go. Of everything! It is living without attachment. Although awareness, understanding and knowing are part of being, they are incorporated now without effort, without thinking in the usual sense. Basic trust has been firmly re-established, but now combined with the knowledge, courage and wisdom of an adult.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Awarenessand understanding come by freeing up the mind. This is accomplished first by clearly seeing what is going on in one’s inner and outer life (awareness), and then making the cause and effect connections about the events (understanding). Awareness can begin increasing right in the first session with the therapist, acting as a mirror, offering some initial reflections and assessments. Often in a first session, a patient may say in response to the therapist’s observations: “Oh! I never realized that before.” In other words, awareness has been activated.
Understanding comes somewhat afterwards as connections are made mentally between past and present events and repetitive patterns that were previously thought of as mysterious or cruelly random. Reality is now seen in a more predictable light, and hidden agendas, intentions and beliefs are accepted as personally created realities.
Knowing comes with freeing up the emotions in the body. It is only from our gut, from within our bodies, that we can ever say “I know” something with certainty. That is why we say, “I just feel it”, when we are definite about something. The person who truly feels, knows their own truth confidently. Getting to a place of knowing takes hard work and determined effort. In addition to developing awareness and understanding, one must now undertake the “breaking” of the body’s defenses and armoring, and really feel, especially, at first, the difficult feelings of sorrow, rage and fear. This is the “point of no return.” If a person breaks through here they will never “go back” to their previous levels of functioning. They are on their way to being.
Being is just living, spontaneously and naturally, and comes from letting go. Of everything! It is living without attachment. Although awareness, understanding and knowing are part of being, they are incorporated now without effort, without thinking in the usual sense. Basic trust has been firmly re-established, but now combined with the knowledge, courage and wisdom of an adult.
TO BE CONTINUED...
UNTIL DEATH DO US PART? JUST KILL ME!
This is kind of pathetic. A Rabbi named Shmuley Boteach has a piece in the Huffington Post this morning called "The Centrality of Marriage in a Cynical Age."
The post starts out with some simple facts, which caught my interest. Here's the Rabbi:
"So forty percent of Americans in a Pew Research and Time magazine poll think that marriage is caput. And who can blame them? Marriage in our time is such a bore that eighty percent of married couples use their one date night a week, usually a Saturday, to go to a movie. Here they have an evening to finally get to know each other again as man and woman rather than Mom and Dad and the silence is so deafening that they require Hollywood noise to fill the empty spaces."
Keep going, Shmuley. You seem to be on some kind of track:
"Then there's marital sex, which has become so pathetic that, as I reported in my book 'The Kosher Sutra,' one out of three American married couples are entirely platonic while the remaining seventy percent have sex once a week for seven minutes at a time, which includes the time he spends begging. Passion in marriage is plummeting while divorce is skyrocketing. Visit the average American master bedroom and you'll see a giant, cathedral-like TV. Husband and wives have exchanged erotic desire for HBO because at least the people on the screen are doing it."
I know. I know. Obviously the Rabbi's old school perspectives come screaming through - by taking it for granted that marriage is only between a man and a woman, and who have kids, and that the set-up is that the man has to "beg for it."
But let him ask this question, anyway, before I jump in:
"Does it matter that marriage is dying? Isn't it enough for people just to commit and love each other outside the framework of any institution?"
Okay, that's my kind of question, but unfortunately, after that question, Shmuley really goes off the rails into some antiquated ideas about "what women want," and why the solution to the death of marriage... is marriage! Yep. No joke. You can read about it here if you want, but don't expect much enlightenment.
So, let's get real and let's get down to it.
Most people I know who are married, and most people I know who aren't married but know people who are married, all speak to the facts at the beginning of this piece.
Marriage. for most married people, sucks!
Say it. Look at it, because if you don't, one day you'll be looking in a mirror asking: "WTF happened to my life?!" (Oh, and as far as the kids you're supposedly staying together for as your excuse? Well, let me put it even more bluntly - For most kids, parents suck! But that's another article.)
Now, lest you think I'm just being overly negative for some unresolved reason in myself, I again refer you to the facts above. Happily married people are so rare that none of us really know any, or at least certainly not many. And for definition's sake, by "happily married" I mean passionately, joyfully, erotically so in love with someone that you so deeply desire to be with that HBO could never come between you.
You see, unlike the Rabbi, I don't think we are living in a "cynical age." I think we are waking up. We are beginning to search for the real things in life, rather than facsimiles of the real things. Just as we are more and more choosing to eat fresh, whole foods instead of processed, fake "fast foods," and we're more and more looking for creative work that fulfills our souls and not just our wallets, we are also more and more looking for genuine human connections that lift us up and make our hearts soar.
I know that love, Eros and sex when combined bring us closer to experiencing the true nature of spiritual existence while still in a physical body than almost any other experience we can have. So much of my writing and my work as an holistic psychotherapist is about how to help people open up to the capacity for Eros, and to take the delicious, powerful ride that its wave offers. Do a search on this blog for the word "Eros," and you will find many entries by me on this subject. Being in love is one of the highest highs human beings can know.
And marriage has nothing to do with it.
Marriage is an "institution," and as such, it was created for a societal purpose. It didn't develop organically out of human nature. Marriage, and the nuclear family, came about to serve the masters of sexual repression and economic consumption. Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx both wrote about this at the turn of the last century. (I won't go into it here; you can look it up.) Marriage for love is historically a relatively recent phenomenon, and that is why it is falling apart - because you don't need to get married for love to thrive. In fact, many of the societal proscriptions around marriage are the very things that cause the demise of Eros in a marriage.
"In sickness and in health, for better or for worse, until death do us part?!"
Do you get what those vows actually mean? Try saying them this way:
"Even if we are no longer in love, even if there is no passion between us, even if I refuse to love myself and stay healthy and take care of my body, you have to stay with me!"
Yeah, who wouldn't want that deal? Pour me a scotch, will ya?!
Anyway, in closing, folks, let me implore you: pursue your joy, follow your passion, seek out Eros, and you and all in your life will benefit enormously. It doesn't matter if you get married or not when you're pursuing those things. You will blossom. You will grow. And so will your kids. I'm not against marriage. What I know, though, is that what most people use marriage for undermines love. And in this age, when we are collectively working to raise our vibrations to a 4th dimension level, we cannot afford to diminish love.
Have a great weekend!
The post starts out with some simple facts, which caught my interest. Here's the Rabbi:
"So forty percent of Americans in a Pew Research and Time magazine poll think that marriage is caput. And who can blame them? Marriage in our time is such a bore that eighty percent of married couples use their one date night a week, usually a Saturday, to go to a movie. Here they have an evening to finally get to know each other again as man and woman rather than Mom and Dad and the silence is so deafening that they require Hollywood noise to fill the empty spaces."
Keep going, Shmuley. You seem to be on some kind of track:
"Then there's marital sex, which has become so pathetic that, as I reported in my book 'The Kosher Sutra,' one out of three American married couples are entirely platonic while the remaining seventy percent have sex once a week for seven minutes at a time, which includes the time he spends begging. Passion in marriage is plummeting while divorce is skyrocketing. Visit the average American master bedroom and you'll see a giant, cathedral-like TV. Husband and wives have exchanged erotic desire for HBO because at least the people on the screen are doing it."
I know. I know. Obviously the Rabbi's old school perspectives come screaming through - by taking it for granted that marriage is only between a man and a woman, and who have kids, and that the set-up is that the man has to "beg for it."
But let him ask this question, anyway, before I jump in:
"Does it matter that marriage is dying? Isn't it enough for people just to commit and love each other outside the framework of any institution?"
Okay, that's my kind of question, but unfortunately, after that question, Shmuley really goes off the rails into some antiquated ideas about "what women want," and why the solution to the death of marriage... is marriage! Yep. No joke. You can read about it here if you want, but don't expect much enlightenment.
So, let's get real and let's get down to it.
Most people I know who are married, and most people I know who aren't married but know people who are married, all speak to the facts at the beginning of this piece.
Marriage. for most married people, sucks!
Say it. Look at it, because if you don't, one day you'll be looking in a mirror asking: "WTF happened to my life?!" (Oh, and as far as the kids you're supposedly staying together for as your excuse? Well, let me put it even more bluntly - For most kids, parents suck! But that's another article.)
Now, lest you think I'm just being overly negative for some unresolved reason in myself, I again refer you to the facts above. Happily married people are so rare that none of us really know any, or at least certainly not many. And for definition's sake, by "happily married" I mean passionately, joyfully, erotically so in love with someone that you so deeply desire to be with that HBO could never come between you.
You see, unlike the Rabbi, I don't think we are living in a "cynical age." I think we are waking up. We are beginning to search for the real things in life, rather than facsimiles of the real things. Just as we are more and more choosing to eat fresh, whole foods instead of processed, fake "fast foods," and we're more and more looking for creative work that fulfills our souls and not just our wallets, we are also more and more looking for genuine human connections that lift us up and make our hearts soar.
I know that love, Eros and sex when combined bring us closer to experiencing the true nature of spiritual existence while still in a physical body than almost any other experience we can have. So much of my writing and my work as an holistic psychotherapist is about how to help people open up to the capacity for Eros, and to take the delicious, powerful ride that its wave offers. Do a search on this blog for the word "Eros," and you will find many entries by me on this subject. Being in love is one of the highest highs human beings can know.
And marriage has nothing to do with it.
Marriage is an "institution," and as such, it was created for a societal purpose. It didn't develop organically out of human nature. Marriage, and the nuclear family, came about to serve the masters of sexual repression and economic consumption. Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx both wrote about this at the turn of the last century. (I won't go into it here; you can look it up.) Marriage for love is historically a relatively recent phenomenon, and that is why it is falling apart - because you don't need to get married for love to thrive. In fact, many of the societal proscriptions around marriage are the very things that cause the demise of Eros in a marriage.
"In sickness and in health, for better or for worse, until death do us part?!"
Do you get what those vows actually mean? Try saying them this way:
"Even if we are no longer in love, even if there is no passion between us, even if I refuse to love myself and stay healthy and take care of my body, you have to stay with me!"
Yeah, who wouldn't want that deal? Pour me a scotch, will ya?!
Anyway, in closing, folks, let me implore you: pursue your joy, follow your passion, seek out Eros, and you and all in your life will benefit enormously. It doesn't matter if you get married or not when you're pursuing those things. You will blossom. You will grow. And so will your kids. I'm not against marriage. What I know, though, is that what most people use marriage for undermines love. And in this age, when we are collectively working to raise our vibrations to a 4th dimension level, we cannot afford to diminish love.
Have a great weekend!
YOU GOTTA DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO!
Here's a great little story from the HUFFINGTON POST, exactly as it was written:
Once in a while, every parent needs to get away from the kids and have a little alone time.
That's exactly what Vicki Myers, a 44-year-old Texas woman, was looking for last Friday night, as she left her three kids in her room at a Naperville, Illinois Red Roof Inn and headed out to her van in the parking lot.
When police officers shined a light into the van window, they found Myers in quite a compromised position: naked from the waist up, with a loaded pistol and a handful of sex toys in the van with her.
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
"She originally told officers she was changing," Naperville police Sgt. Gregg Bell said, but later changed her story to say that she went into the van to pleasure herself. "She had some sexual devices in the van."
She wasn't charged with leaving her children alone in the room, because they were old enough to be alone legally, Bell told the Sun-Times. But Myers faces gun charges for not having a valid registration card; she told police she thought it was legal to have the gun in her van, as it is in Texas.
You go, Mama!!
Once in a while, every parent needs to get away from the kids and have a little alone time.
That's exactly what Vicki Myers, a 44-year-old Texas woman, was looking for last Friday night, as she left her three kids in her room at a Naperville, Illinois Red Roof Inn and headed out to her van in the parking lot.
When police officers shined a light into the van window, they found Myers in quite a compromised position: naked from the waist up, with a loaded pistol and a handful of sex toys in the van with her.
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
"She originally told officers she was changing," Naperville police Sgt. Gregg Bell said, but later changed her story to say that she went into the van to pleasure herself. "She had some sexual devices in the van."
She wasn't charged with leaving her children alone in the room, because they were old enough to be alone legally, Bell told the Sun-Times. But Myers faces gun charges for not having a valid registration card; she told police she thought it was legal to have the gun in her van, as it is in Texas.
You go, Mama!!
BAD EGGS?!
A murder was committed recently in my neighborhood of Brooklyn. A son killed his mother, tried to kill his father and then tried to kill himself by jumping in front of a subway train. All on a pretty upscale block in Windsor Terrace. The event's tragedy speaks for itself, but even more tragic is this column, written by Louise Crawford for PARK SLOPE PATCH, entitled: "Matricide in a Neighborhood of Mothers."
Here are a couple of excerpts:
"How could this happen in an area known for its happy children and dedicated parents?"
"What if a child is a "bad egg" with serious mental and emotional issues?"
"Is a parent always responsible for the sins of the child?"
And here's the worst one:
"There are plenty of great parents whose children do bad things. Sadly, even good parenting can't prevent what may be hidden in a child's DNA."
WHAT?!!?
In 2010, an intelligent person could actually ask this:
"How could this happen in an area known for its happy children and dedicated parents?"
And THIS: "What if a child is a 'bad egg?"
Woah, Louise! You are really taking the abdication of parental responsibility to new heights.
BAD EGGS?!!?
Sociopaths aren't born (or hatched!), they are made, and very often by over-involved "dedicated" parents whose ego needs are so huge that the child never develops empathy or a stable sense of self. Is your dedication to protecting parents so great that you'll toss damaged kids off like... bad eggs?!
Here are a couple of excerpts:
"How could this happen in an area known for its happy children and dedicated parents?"
"What if a child is a "bad egg" with serious mental and emotional issues?"
"Is a parent always responsible for the sins of the child?"
And here's the worst one:
"There are plenty of great parents whose children do bad things. Sadly, even good parenting can't prevent what may be hidden in a child's DNA."
WHAT?!!?
In 2010, an intelligent person could actually ask this:
"How could this happen in an area known for its happy children and dedicated parents?"
And THIS: "What if a child is a 'bad egg?"
Woah, Louise! You are really taking the abdication of parental responsibility to new heights.
BAD EGGS?!!?
Sociopaths aren't born (or hatched!), they are made, and very often by over-involved "dedicated" parents whose ego needs are so huge that the child never develops empathy or a stable sense of self. Is your dedication to protecting parents so great that you'll toss damaged kids off like... bad eggs?!
WORKAROUNDS!
"What can I do that would make a difference in my life that requires no one's permission other than my own?"
According to Russell Bishop in his blog post, "Workarounds: One Simple Key to Greatness," that's the key question to creating a feeling of success in your life.
"How you frame the problem is the problem," Russell goes on to say.
I agree.
If you want to read the rest, it is HERE.
According to Russell Bishop in his blog post, "Workarounds: One Simple Key to Greatness," that's the key question to creating a feeling of success in your life.
"How you frame the problem is the problem," Russell goes on to say.
I agree.
If you want to read the rest, it is HERE.
MORE ON NARCISSISM: "ALEXITHYMIA!"
THIS is the latest from Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks, from a piece entitled: "Relationship Epidemic: Shutting Out Body Wisdom."
I guess now that the nefarious psychiatric profession is declaring that narcissistic personality disorder no longer exists, we have to give the dysfunction a new name. The Hendricks seem to have found a good one: "Alexithymia."
Their post follows below:
Is alexithymia wreaking havoc in your close relationships?
Most of us struggle at one time or another with an inability to feel what's going on inside us at the level of emotion and energy flow. The technical term for this problem is "alexithymia." If you look it up in a medical dictionary, you'll find some very interesting clues to why relationship conflicts recycle without resolution. The word alexithymia comes from the ancient Greek language and literally means "without words for feelings."
If you're alexithymic, you suffer from three main traits:
You have difficulty identifying your own feelings, emotions and body sensations.
You have difficulty describing your feelings to other people.
You have difficulty hearing or understanding the feelings of others.
We've learned a lot about alexithymia over the past several decades, first in the laboratory of our own relationship and later in working with others. We entered our own relationship 30 years ago with full-blown symptoms of alexithymia. Slowly, and with a lot of careful attention, we gradually became skilled at identifying our feelings, expressing them clearly to each other and listening to each other on the emotional level. As we gained those skills, we began teaching them to others. Now, based on sessions with more than 4,000 couples, as well as a million-and-a-half frequent flyer miles teaching seminars around the world, we can tell you that alexithymia is not only a hindrance to relationship intimacy, but a rampant, out-of-control epidemic.
The epidemic of alexithymia has spread because of two factors:
Almost none of us get any useful instructions in how to be aware of our feelings and what to do to express those feelings effectively. Few of us ever learn how to recognize the signs of feelings in others and how to respond to those feelings effectively. In other words, most of us are desperately ill-trained for one of the most important aspects of life.
Almost all of us have been in situations in which the emotions we felt were so strong and unpleasant that we invented some way to tune them out. We gritted our teeth and squeezed them out of our awareness. Then we ate or smoked or drank or shopped until we distracted ourselves from the painful, overwhelming sensation. Whatever the mechanism of distraction, it can easily become locked in as a habit and eventually even a lifestyle. In other words, if you eat to distract yourself from anger, loneliness or any other feeling that you don't know how to feel, you can quickly become mired in a lifestyle based on handling your obesity.
Alexithymia is a very costly epidemic, but its true cost cannot be tallied because of its pervasiveness. In close relationships, alexithymia keeps you from knowing who you really are, and it keeps you from really knowing your partner. That's only one of the costs, though. It's the underlying issue in many problem areas, including those in politics and business. Multiply the problem times the six billion of us who live here, and you have a planet full of people who are not allowing themselves to resonate in harmony with each other - purely because they've forgotten how to resonate with themselves.
You can read the entire piece HERE.
I guess now that the nefarious psychiatric profession is declaring that narcissistic personality disorder no longer exists, we have to give the dysfunction a new name. The Hendricks seem to have found a good one: "Alexithymia."
Their post follows below:
Is alexithymia wreaking havoc in your close relationships?
Most of us struggle at one time or another with an inability to feel what's going on inside us at the level of emotion and energy flow. The technical term for this problem is "alexithymia." If you look it up in a medical dictionary, you'll find some very interesting clues to why relationship conflicts recycle without resolution. The word alexithymia comes from the ancient Greek language and literally means "without words for feelings."
If you're alexithymic, you suffer from three main traits:
You have difficulty identifying your own feelings, emotions and body sensations.
You have difficulty describing your feelings to other people.
You have difficulty hearing or understanding the feelings of others.
We've learned a lot about alexithymia over the past several decades, first in the laboratory of our own relationship and later in working with others. We entered our own relationship 30 years ago with full-blown symptoms of alexithymia. Slowly, and with a lot of careful attention, we gradually became skilled at identifying our feelings, expressing them clearly to each other and listening to each other on the emotional level. As we gained those skills, we began teaching them to others. Now, based on sessions with more than 4,000 couples, as well as a million-and-a-half frequent flyer miles teaching seminars around the world, we can tell you that alexithymia is not only a hindrance to relationship intimacy, but a rampant, out-of-control epidemic.
The epidemic of alexithymia has spread because of two factors:
Almost none of us get any useful instructions in how to be aware of our feelings and what to do to express those feelings effectively. Few of us ever learn how to recognize the signs of feelings in others and how to respond to those feelings effectively. In other words, most of us are desperately ill-trained for one of the most important aspects of life.
Almost all of us have been in situations in which the emotions we felt were so strong and unpleasant that we invented some way to tune them out. We gritted our teeth and squeezed them out of our awareness. Then we ate or smoked or drank or shopped until we distracted ourselves from the painful, overwhelming sensation. Whatever the mechanism of distraction, it can easily become locked in as a habit and eventually even a lifestyle. In other words, if you eat to distract yourself from anger, loneliness or any other feeling that you don't know how to feel, you can quickly become mired in a lifestyle based on handling your obesity.
Alexithymia is a very costly epidemic, but its true cost cannot be tallied because of its pervasiveness. In close relationships, alexithymia keeps you from knowing who you really are, and it keeps you from really knowing your partner. That's only one of the costs, though. It's the underlying issue in many problem areas, including those in politics and business. Multiply the problem times the six billion of us who live here, and you have a planet full of people who are not allowing themselves to resonate in harmony with each other - purely because they've forgotten how to resonate with themselves.
You can read the entire piece HERE.
TODAY'S BONUS QUOTE!
"The work done by the therapist is directed towards bringing the patient from a state of not being able to play into a state of being able to play."
Mark Epstein (from "Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart")
Mark Epstein (from "Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart")
TODAY'S QUOTE!
"Any given set of circumstances can be used to create something good, to move into your own greatness, or to simply be endured. It really just comes down to how you choose to perceive what's present."
Russell Bishop (Life Coach)
Russell Bishop (Life Coach)
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