Category Archives: mental health

Plucked by a Tulip????

It was a lovely, cool spring morning in 1990 and I had just been married about 9 months. I was in our front yard and was greeted by a bounty of lovely tulip blossoms. I bent down to pluck one and as I did so, the notion fluttered through my mind, “Am I plucking or being plucked?” That was such a random, silly thought that just “happened” but it immediately caught my eye even before I knew about “mindfulness.” And it is no coincidence that this event happened shortly after my first and only marriage, each of us being in our mid thirties.

This was the beginning of the end for my rigid, “lost in the head”, concrete thinking though it would take another two decades and more for the process to get to the point where the “flow” of life would begin to take place in my heart. The boundary ambiguity noted in that observation flourished over those decades and I increasingly have become more adept at drawing less of a distinction between “me and thee.” Now I do draw distinctions; and failure to do so would be a serious problem for we do live in the “real” world where distinctions and ego-functioning is required. But I’m not trapped in the paradigm of “I’m over here” and “you are out there”; I’m more able to see my world, human and natural, in more inclusive terms.

Now, I must point out that “I” was plucking the damn tulip! But in so doing the beauty of the moment was toying with my heart, bringing to my mind and heart the notion of “being plucked.” There is such magnificent beauty in the world but we can’t see, and feel, this beauty unless we are able to let go of the rigid ego-identification which our culture always mandates. But the ego identification is so insidious that we can’t even see it without having already somehow escaped its clutches. This is relevant to an old philosophical bromide that I came across decades ago, “You can’t have a perspective on your perspective without somehow escaping it” ; or, “Asking someone to see his ‘self’ is like asking a fish to see water.” Or, even better yet, one of my Indian blog-o-sphere friends offered, “Someone who has fallen into a vat of marmalade can’t see anything but marmalade.” I liked his observation because it was new to me and registered dissonant at first, thus communicating to me effectively as I quickly mulled it over.

This drawing of distinction between “me and thee” is intrinsically a spiritual process. And I’m not even address “Spiritual” here though it is very relevant. I’m referring to “spiritual” as a human enterprise in the depths of the heart, a willingness to look inside which is an enterprise that our culture discourages. And if we deign to venture “there”, we will eventually end up wrestling with “God” in the realm of the “Spiritual.”

SNL Video Vividly Illustrates Shame

Being “Right” is a Pyrrhic Victory

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I’ve had a life-long battle with “being right.” It is certainly not unrelated to having been born and bred in “right-wing” social, political, and religious culture in the deep South of the United States where “rules” predominate. And it is always “rules” that makes one “right,” or allows him to think that he is. I think very early on I had a heart like most people but then I was offered a bargain, “Hey, you forgo that tumult in your heart where emotion and reason are doing battle, give in to reason and let it reign, and you will have the consolation of being ‘right.”’ So I spent the first two decades of my life assiduously striving to live according to the rules, failing to see just how closely this life-style approximated that of the Pharisees who Jesus upbraided so often. Since then, the “ruled” life has slowly given way to the burgeoning power of emotion, a process that received a boost in my mid-thirties when I discovered poetry. Now, nearly three decades later there is some indication that this warfare is getting closer to resolution as emotion and intellect are working much more in tandem than ever before. Now instead of using my intellect to rigidly carve up the world…and myself…I use this gift to seek common ground with others believing that there is a Unity that underlies this world of multiplicity.

And having those two dimensions of the heart working in tandem should be our goal. When “flesh and mind are delivered from mistrust” (Auden), we are witnessing something akin to the Spirit of God being present though the “Spirit of God” certainly needs more discussion than I choose to give it now. Reason, without the balance of emotion (or heart) is just an effort to stay in control, to tyrannize one’s own self and simultaneously try to tyrannize those around him. Therefore, Goethe was astute when he noted, “They call it Reason, using Light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

Now occasionally the old demon of “being right” will surface again. Recently it teased me briefly and then I took the bait slipped into the “being right” mode. It was a veritable black hole for a while until I managed to right myself and escape its clutches. For, there is no end to “being right”. We have the Taliban as one example of this but we have similar expressions of the same dark force present in our own country. And, yes it got me recently. It will always be a temptation for it is so wonderful to “know” that you are right and to “set someone straight.”

I offered a snippet of Auden’s observation about this matter earlier. Now I will share the context:

If…like your father before you, come
Where thought accuses and feeling mocks,
Believe your pain: praise the scorching rocks
For their desiccation of your lust,
Thank the bitter treatment of the tide
For its dissolution of your pride,
That the whirlwind may arrange your will
And the deluge release it to find
The spring in the desert, the fruitful
Island in the sea, where flesh and mind
Are delivered from mistrust.
(W. H. Auden “The Sea and the Mirror)

Humility Comes Hard to the Humble!

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By this, I mean that if you have been enculturated with “humility” then it is really difficult for Humility to penetrate your “humble” heart. Most pieties come to us first through enculturation and we subscribe to them because of ego satisfaction that comes from a very basic need to fit in, to adopt the values of our culture. And this was the problem that Jesus saw with the Pharisees, reproaching them for the very premise of their “humility”, calling them “whited sepulchers.” And people never like having their premises, their preconceptions, questioned and those who deign to put them on the table are asking for trouble.

With this in mind, I don’t really think it is possible to be “humble.” For it is basic human nature to take ourselves too seriously, to defensively cower before the scrutiny of “otherness”, and fight vehemently against anyone who tries to challenge our smugness. But, I do think there is Humility in the world, and active in the human heart, and always seeking to find expression. I like to think of it as a process of “humility-ization” that is always underway, the process of bringing to our conscious awareness our shortcomings, including the “thoughts and intents of the heart.” But this process, this Divine operation, will not force itself upon us but is always there awaiting our willingness to examine our heart. And, if we are willing to submit ourselves to this scrutiny, from time to time we will be stung with sudden insight that our noble vision of ourselves are less noble than we wanted to assume. “O blessed be bleak exposure on whose sword we are pricked into coming alive,” said W. H. Auden.

There is a danger with this line of thought that I will be understood to mean that human nature is dark and evil. No, but this nature is “human” and therefore naturally prefers blinders rather than the light of the Eternal day. And, when we are “pricked alive”, we merely bleed “human” for a moment before we find the Grace to accept the insight and grow.. And, when we are so “exposed”, we might ask ourselves, “Why did I ever assume otherwise”? Maturity means learning to accept short comings as a routine part of being a human and being open to learning about them when circumstances bring them to our attention. Sure, we can then be overwhelmed and even grovel before god and man, but why? Why not just recognize, “Oops! There I go being human again.” And we can discover that there is Beneficence in this universe that forgives us, a Beneficence that I like to describe as “the Grace of God.” But this Grace is always awful at first in that we must first experience the “awful” pain of “self” awareness, recognizing that we weren’t quite as virtuous as we thought. So it is not that this Grace is “awful” but that our experience in being disillusioned of our pretenses is “awful”.

I think this is relevant to what the Apostle Paul meant when he cried out, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me.” He sincerely wanted to do good…and did a lot of good…but occasionally he would be exposed by God’s “discerning Spirit” and would see his shadow side at work. He would then bleed human for a moment, then ask himself, “Why am I surprised?” and then get on his feet again and resume his walk of faith. In the words of Auden, “We wage the war we are.”

Richard Rohr Re The Profane

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Again, I must let Richard Rohr speak for me today, sharing his observations about the importance of getting beneath the surface of things. He argues that everything is profane…even religion…if you keep on the surface of it. And the profanity is particularly pronounced if it happens in the domain of religion for the sacred is blasphemed even as it is purportedly worshipped. As Shakespeare put it, “With devotion’s visage and pious action we sugar o’er the devil himself” and “When love begins to sicken and decay, it useth an enforced ceremony. There are no tricks in plain and simple faith; but hollow men, like horses hot at hand, make gallant show and promise of their mettle.”

If we just stay on the fearful or superficial side of the religious spectrum, religion is invariably defined by exclusionary purity codes that always separate things into sacred and profane. God is still distant, punitive, and scary. Then our religious job becomes putting ourselves only on the side of “sacred” things (as if you could) and to stay apart from worldly or material things, even though Jesus shows no such preference himself.

After the beginnings of mystical experience (which is just prayer experiences), one finds that what makes something secular or profane is precisely whether one lives on the surface of it. It’s not that the sacred is here and the profane is over there. Everything is profane if you live on the surface of it, and everything is sacred if you go into the depths of it—even your sin. To go inside your own mistakenness is to find God. To stay on the surface of very good things, like Bible, sacrament, priesthood, or church, is to often do very unkind and evil things, while calling them good. This important distinction is perfectly illustrated by Jesus’ parable of the publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14).

So the division for the Christian is not between secular and sacred things, but between superficial things and things at their depth. The depths always reveal grace, while staying on the surface allows one to largely miss the point (the major danger of fundamentalism, by the way). Karl Rahner, the German Jesuit, and one of my heroes of Vatican II, loved to call this “the mysticism of ordinary life.

Richard Rohr and the Ambivalence of Spirituality

“The Beast in the Human, and Vice Versa”

“Herding Cats” in the First Grade!

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In recent weeks I have made several references to my work as a substitute teacher with early elementary children. I deem this the most important work I have ever done in my life as it is helping shape young children in their early formative years when they are only beginning to make “sense” out of life. Several days ago I referred to “neurological plasticity” which describes their vulnerability in neuro-physiological terms, referring to the fact that what they are learning is very malleable at this point in their life though parts of it will soon be “set in stone. One specific part that will be “set in stone” is their basic self-percept, their basic approach to the world, the basic notion of their standing in the world and their sense of efficacy. This is the reason that early childhood education is so important and why good parenting is essential. Two verses from the Old Testament had this in mind, Psalms 127 telling us, “….”As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth,” and Proverbs 22 noting, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Unfortunately, I fear these two verses are often used to justify some training that could only be described as abusive!)

By the time these children get into school, the subjective cauldron that is their identity has been largely stabilized so that they can “learn from experience” and can function, more or less, in a structured environment. Now this “cauldron” is still bubbling and one of the basic tasks of education at this level, as well as introducing the building blocks of a formal education, is teaching them to live in accordance with a social structure. And, it is fascinating to watch these lovely children as they seek to win affirmation by curtailing those teeming impulses though so often failing to do so and facing a firm but kindly “re-direction” by a teacher…or even substitute teacher. Some of them are still so “teeming” with emotion that the “re-direction” is very painful and they are sometimes crushed.

I often describe my work in the classroom as “herding cats.” These dear little children are just so full of intense emotion, desperate needs, insecurities, emotional hunger, and impulses that it is often almost impossible for them to remember the rules of the classroom. I so remember being part of a classroom like that in my youth and so often the “re-direction” was harsh and punitive, sometimes overtly shaming. I’m pleased now to work with teachers who are much more respective of the fragile world of their charges and will often merely present the miscreant with, “Johnny (or Susie), you are not making a good choice now.” And that intervention is very effective as the child wants to merit the description “good.”

Now let me get “anthropological on your ass.” Children coming into school are raw product who are beginning the process of being “milled” into a finished product who can take their place in the social body in a couple of decades. One could call it “brain washing” but that is not as bad as it sounds. The “brain washing” I observe now is merely the presenting of values and ideas of our culture and they are not presented in a manipulative or tyrannical manner. Education always involves “brain-washing” in some sense but in the modern schools in which I now work, even in conservative Arkansas, emphasizes critical thinking which will allow these children to make mature choices in their future about what values they wish to subscribe to. Some parents opt to avoid the “brain washing” of public schools and home-school their children, failing to realize that “brain washing” will take place nevertheless but the “brain” that will be doing the washing will be very narrow and often “private.” Though some parents who home-school do a very effective job, including addressing social needs, I fear many do not and their precious children are “brain-washed” into a very narrow, maladaptive worldview.

I’d like to close with a poem by Theodore Roethke which reminds me of a more conservative approach to education which prevailed during my youth, when regimentation of the “raw product” was more the goal of the educational system.

DOLOR
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

Multi-lingualism Shaping Worldview

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Time magazine recently had an article by Jeffrey Kluger which explained why bi-lingualism has a profound impact on the development of the brain. (See http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/23/bilingualism/) Kluger noted that the child is a “crude linguist from the moment of birth—and perhaps even in the womb—as he/she can begin to recognize sound patterns and to make sense out of them producing what we first hear as ‘babble.’” This “babble” is gradually refined into a language depending on what parts of the “babble” are reinforced by the parents and others in his social world. Kluger used the example of “dog-chien” for children born into one bi-lingual family, as a child in that family will discover that two different terms from what will come to be learned as two different languages are available to refer to the same object. The child can learn to “toggle” between the two different words to describe the same object and in so doing learn nimbleness in reference to language. And this “nimbleness” will be learned at a time when “neurological plasticity” is present, meaning that it is a skill that can be learned and can stay with the child for his/her lifetime. This is significant because the child can learn to apply this “nimbleness” to the whole of his/her world and see things in less rigid ways.

Kluger also cites research by Sean Lynch that multilingual kids may exhibit social empathy sooner than children who have been exposed to only one language. Lynch noted, “The theory of mind—understanding that what’s in your head is not the same as what’s in other people’s heads–does not emerge in children until they are about three years old. Prior to that, they assume that if, say, they know a secret you probably do too. There is a kind of primal narcissism in this—a belief that their worldview is the universal one.” Lynch argues that being exposed to more than one language is very helpful in facilitating a child’s ability to forego that initial self-centeredness and learn that there are other ways of looking at the world.

I found his observation about “primal narcissism” describing the belief that your world view is the universal world view very interesting in light of our own culture. For example, even the stalemate between liberals and conservatives reflects this “primal narcissism” when elements of both belief-systems fail to understand that the other side can have a viewpoint which is worthy of respect.

I’d like to conclude with my own story of discovering a second language and how novel the experience was. When I was only six or seven years of age “French” came to the public schools in “Smallville”, Arkansas in the early ‘60’s. I found it so interesting to learn that somewhere else in the world a dog was called a “chien” or a boy a “garcon” that a father was “pere” or that an apple was a “pom.” This created in my heart even then a rudimentary notion of “difference” which continues to be a compelling interest of mine five decades later. And then one day I learned a particular expression which really nailed the phenomena down for me when I learned that when the French refer to having “goose-bumps”, they say, “I have the skin of a chicken. (avoir la chaire de poule) My little mind was at first puzzled, asking, “Well, why don’t they just use the term “goose-bumps”? “Difference” then sunk in on in some rudimentary fashion, though it would be decades before the true significance of “difference” overcome the rigid conservatism of my upbringing.

In my present employment as an occasional substitute teacher with younger elementary children, I am pleased to note that even in the conservative region of Northwest Arkansas the schools give daily attention to the prevalence of Hispanic and Marshallese children, frequently using terms and even little ditties from each of these languages. This must have a positive impact on the development of these little minds. One caveat should be noted, however. This multi-lingualism helps but it alone will not overcome other pressures in local culture, or in any culture, to maintain that “primal narcissism”.

Julia Kristeva, Semiotics, and Violence Against Women

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I recently referred to one of my favorite writers, Julia Kristeva, and her work in the field of linguistics and semiotics. And I’m glad I did so as one of by blog-o-sphere friends find her intriguing and has done some research on her which she shared with me and has stimulated a renewed curiosity of Kristeva on my part. Semiotics is the field of studying the intricacies of language but not a superficial study as in an ordinary language class. Semiotics, particularly as approached by Kristeva, delves into the heart of the linguistic process, down into the “guts” of the verbal process and uses her background in linguistics, philosophy, religion, and psychology to explore this murky, frightening, even terrifying dimension of the human heart as it was constellating. For the heart is comprised of images, feelings, conflicted drives, and emotions which most of us spend our lives oblivious to, even though this dimension of the heart drives our lives even without our awareness of it. This is the unconsciousness, a domain of “feeling” and these “feelings” control us more than reason and even determine how we use our reason. This is the reason that advertising always aims first at our feelings and this certainly true about political advertising..

Kristeva also focuses much of her work on women and the ravages that patriarchy has done on this “fairer sex”, and continues to do so today even though in our culture the tyranny of patriarchy has been diminished in the past hundred years…somewhat! I’m going to share with you my friend “V’s” recent thoughts on this dimension of Kristevan thought. I warn you, don’t read this if you are not open to having patriarchy subjected to a keen analytical mind. And, men, don’t be frightened! The views of Kristeva and her ilk…and of Ms. “V”…merit our consideration and do not have to threaten our masculinity. These views actually can help us participate in a cultural redefinition of “manhood” which our culture and our world so sorely needs.

Btw, I’ve been reading about Julia Kristeva this morning. Thanks for turning me on to her. I had never read any of her works. Also been watching some of her video interviews today. I’m now watching the video lecture “The Need to Believe and Desire to Know” on YouTube. What really intrigued me was what I found on her Wikipedia page. I quote:
“It has also been suggested (e.g., Creed, 1993) that the degradation of women and women’s bodies in popular culture (and particularly, for example, in slasher films) emerges because of the threat to identity that the mother’s body poses: it is a reminder of time spent in the undifferentiated state of the semiotic, where one has no concept of self or identity. After abjecting the mother, subjects retain an unconscious fascination with the semiotic, desiring to reunite with the mother, while at the same time fearing the loss of identity that accompanies it. Slasher films thus provide a way for audience members to safely reenact the process of abjection by vicariously expelling and destroying the mother figure.”

I also see a similar symbolism in the crucifixion of Christ. Jesus had feminine qualities which is why most females can relate to him. Even images depict him with a feminine quality. During his time, it was a ‘shame’ for men to have long hair. Women had to cover their heads (hair). A mother image was created in Jesus using mother type symbolism, such as bosom, milk, birth, etc. James W. Prescott, Ph.D. said:

“The dualistic philosophy and theistic theology of gender morality, has had and continues to have devastating consequences for woman and her children. As death of the body is necessary in some religions for salvation, re. the Crucifixion, so too is the death of woman (and her body) necessary for the death of sin and wickedness.”

I’ve searched high and low to find the origins of the love/hate relationship with the mother/women, especially among males, and I found it interesting that nature has created a ‘natural’ repulsiveness towards the mother among her male children as they grow older. This occurs in order to keep sons from mating with their mothers.

I have a dear friend from Wales, and a couple of years ago, he shared a video with me. I’ve tried to locate it but have not been successful to date and he’s forgotten the name of the video. It shows this man searching via spiritual and religious avenues to find that ultimate connection he is driven to experience. It shows him taking part in all the religions and spiritual disciplines and yet still continues to search Towards the end, you see stairs, but don’t know what’s at the top until the end. The man starts up the stairs, and the closer he comes to the top the younger he gets. Then you see this gray cord, and he turns into an infant. The cord is an umbilical cord. At the top of the stairs was his mother. Subconsciously, he was longing for that connection he once felt with his mother when he felt security, when he felt intimacy, nurture and love. When he felt one with his mother.

Back to the Wiki page, it states: “Upon entering the Mirror Stage, the child learns to distinguish between self and other, and enters the realm of shared cultural meaning, known as the symbolic. In Desire in Language (1980), Kristeva describes the symbolic as the space in which the development of language allows the child to become a “speaking subject,” and to develop a sense of identity separate from the mother. This process of separation is known as abjection, whereby the child must reject and move away from the mother in order to enter into the world of language, culture, meaning, and the social. This realm of language is called the symbolic and is contrasted with the semiotic in that it is associated with the masculine, the law, and structure.

According to Schippers (2011), where Kristeva departs from Lacan is in her belief that even after entering the symbolic, the subject continues to oscillate between the semiotic and the symbolic. Therefore, rather than arriving at a fixed identity, the subject is permanently ‘in process’. ”

“Kristeva is also known for her adoption of Plato’s idea of the chora, meaning “a nourishing maternal space” (Schippers, 2011). Kristeva’s idea of the chora has been interpreted in several ways: as a reference to the uterus, as a metaphor for the relationship between the mother and child, and as the temporal period preceding the Mirror Stage. In her essay “Motherhood According to Giovanni” from Desire in Language (1980), Kristeva refers to the chora as a “non-expressive totality formed by drives and their stases in a motility that is full of movement as it is regulated.” She goes on to suggest that it is the mother’s body that mediates between the chora and the symbolic realm: the mother has access to culture and meaning, yet also forms a totalizing bond with the child.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Kristeva

Check this new study out. Scientists find the cells of children in the mothers brains, showing the connection between mother and child is deeper than they once thought. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-discover-childrens-cells-living-in-mothers-brain

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