Category Archives: mental health

Letting Go of Pain

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As one teacher said, “The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it.” Love is the bridge. It is the whisper of underlying suchness. To enter this reality, we let go of the thoughts and feelings that filter mercy and forgiveness, the resistance, the fearful doubts that seduce awareness into identification with the unhealed. We let the mind float in the heart.

To cross from the banks of “my pain” to the shores of “the pain” we must cross the river of forgetfulness, constantly remembering our true nature and the healing that ever awaits our clear entrance into the moment. The fare is love and a constant remembering, letting go of our suffering, lightening our load. Like a ship that has to jettison its heavy cargo in order to weather rough waters, we begin to cut the fetters of our attachments with mercy and awareness, to let go of all that hinders our progress.

This wonderful, profound excerpt from Stephen Levine’s “Healing into Life and Death” is more than I can wrap my mind around. I just do not fully understand it. But a central notion, here and in the whole of the book, is letting go of our pain. Now, who would deliberately cling to their pain? Well, look around you and you will see many people doing this very thing; and then, if you are honest you will find you too are clinging to a lot of “stuff” that needs to go. I will admit, “C’est moi.” When I was a counseling intern at a psychiatric hospital, a psychiatrist noted re one of my clients, “She clings to her mental illness like most of us cling to mental health.” He was right, as this woman’s identity had morphed into one of pain or “mental illness” and to suddenly forego that identity would have been to entertain something which, in her estimation, was worse than mental illness.

Now most of us do not have “mental illness” to deal with. If we are lucky, we will have to battle some garden-variety, plain-vanilla neurosis. But, the issue is, how do we let it go? How do we let a maladaptive pattern of behavior and its underlying emotional state be cast aside? Well, I don’t have the definitive answer as those who know me well can readily attest. But I’m working on it! It do think it involves honesty, gut-wrenching honesty, as we “unpack our heart with words” (Shakespeare).

And always remember the observation of W. H. Auden, “We wage the war we are.”

Man’s Quest for Meaning

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Oliver Sacks writes in the current New Yorker re his battle with drug addiction during the 50’s and 60’s. He introduced the subject with a very thoughtful note re mankind’s quest for meaning:

To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings.

This adventure we are caught up in, from which we cannot escape, is just an incredible, mind-boggling enterprise. It has been delightful to spend my life pondering over the inimitable mysteries of life, poring over history and discovering that even thousands of years ago men and women looked up at the stars and felt the same overwhelming awe that I often experience.

We are such fragile little creatures who somehow have climbed to the top of the food chain, a success which now presents us with profound existential questions all of which can probably be summarized as this quest for meaning. And this quest for meaning inevitably tempts us with its antithesis…meaninglessness…and the struggle between the two often leads to some really poor decisions, individually and collectively.

We lost our religion in the 20th century and our culture is showing the wear-and-tear that happens when this happens to a tribe. Now, it is true we needed to “lose” our religion in that it had become moribund, primarily consisting of, “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” (Conrad Aiken) But now the task is to find spiritual roots again and these roots can be found often in the very religious traditions that we have discarded.

Opiate of the Masses

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Karl Marx famously noted that “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”  O’Bama had this notion in mind four years ago when he was unwittingly heard referring to some people who “cling to their guns and religion.”

Well, I agree but with qualification.  First, re the gun issue, yes there are some whose identity is too wrapped up in gun ownership and they make things look bad for men who own guns but have a life outside of gun ownership.  The latter aren’t nuts. Likewise with religion, there are those who use religion obsessively to cover up an impoverished identity and often they end up as certifiable nuts.

But the problem here is not guns or religion.  The problem is an impoverished identity which often does cross over into mental illness.

But my main focus here is religion.  There is so much insanity that surfaces in religion and it is so easy to throw the baby out with the bath water.  I do think religious people should give Marx’s observation attention for religion…yes, even yours and mine…does have an opiate dimension.  And that is not the fault, necessarily, of the religion we practice or believe in.  It is the fault of our human nature which tends to take ourselves too seriously and tends to interpret religious teachings in a self-serving manner. And when this tendency runs unchecked, lunacy will likely ensue.  Case in point—Westboro Baptist Church and Islamic Extremists.

Existential Guilt and Forgiveness

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Guilt is a nasty beast and is often very subtle. My upbringing instilled in me the notion of original sin, a notion that I still subscribe to though not as it was taught to me. With this emphasis of sin came overwhelming guilt and the guilt accrued as a litany of things I had done, or thought of doing, or might do which were bad. My life became a careful, compulsive routine of avoiding an ever-increasing list of “bad” things and by not doing them my guilt was assuaged. So, to speak metaphorically…and to borrow a bromide from back then…I did not “smoke, drink, chew, or go with the girls that do.”

But the problem with that guilt-ridden lifestyle is that it does not deal with the real guilt, a guilt that lies in the depths of the heart, a guilt that can best be described as existential, a guilt that is spiritual, not legal. This is not the place to go into great detail on the matter, but this existential guilt has to do with the very onset of “being”, the very emergence of our fragile ego, and its desperate effort to stave off “non-being.” That guilt is a spiritual issue and cannot be dealt with by mere intellect/cognition, cannot be addressed by following any scriptural syllogism.

Many religions become very legalistic and assuage their guilt by formulating lists of things that they don’t do, vices from which they abstain. Among some of them, it amounts to them telling themselves, “I am ok because I don’t lie, steal, cheat, smoke, drink, lust after the opposite sex, and I go to church dutifully, and tithe faithfully.”

Now, adherence to a moral code is noble. And, sociologically it is imperative that we have moral codes. But spirituality at some point in one’s life needs to go beyond simple adherence to a moral code, it needs to go beyond the “letter of the law” and enter into the domain of the spirit. And that involves getting honest, finding the courage to acknowledge that beneath that oppressive moral code…so religiously adhered to…lies a lot of ugliness that needs to find the light of day, ugliness for which we can find forgiveness. But there is no forgiveness when we hide behind that moral code fig leaf.

 

More re “Our Thoughts Become Us”

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I would like to share further re my variant of Mike Dooley’s wisdom, “Thoughts are things.  Choose the good ones.”  We are teeming with thoughts and these thoughts make up our reality.  According to cognitive behavioral therapy, they shape our behavior even though reciprocally our behavior shapes out thoughts.  It behooves us to pay attention to our thoughts from time to time, perhaps to practice the “mindfulness” taught by the Buddhists, and not allow maladaptive thoughts to hold sway over our lives.

For example, if one realizes that hatred often predominates in his/he heart, he/she needs to be given pause.  In our current political climate, hatred appears to predominate more so than I ever remember.  And I do not mean mere disapproval or dislike of the other party or candidate; that is to be understood.  But pure, unmitigated hatred often appears to be the ruling force in this political campaign and often it is the media which is fomenting this poison.

Let’s take O’Bama.  Now he is a liberal Democrat and I can certainly understand conservatives firmly opposing him and even doing so with great passion.  But when those who find themselves actually hating him  they really need to get honest with themselves and realize they are full of hatred which has nothing to do with O’Bama.

But intense emotion, especially hatred, is a powerful political tool.  People are much more likely to vote on the basis of emotion than reason though they are always going to announce with great conviction the “reasonable” nature of their convictions.

Desperate lovliness

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BRIGHT CONVERSATION WITH SAINT-EX
BY Carl Sandburg

There is a desperate lovliness to be seen
In certain flowers and bright weeds on certain planets.
With the weeds I have held long conversations
And I found them intelligent
Even though desperate and lovely.
The flowers however met me with shortspoken,
“Yes” and “No” and “Why”were their favorite words,
And they had other slow monosyllables.
They seemed to find it more difficult
Than the gaudy garrulous bright weeds
To be intelligent, desperate, and lovely.
Take a far journey now, my friend, to certain planets.
Meet then certain flowers and bright weeds and ask them
What are the dark winding roots of their desperate lovliness.
See whether you bring back the same report as mine.
See whether certain long conversations
And certain slow practices monosyllables
Haunt you and keep coming back to haunt you.
For myself, my friend, I have come to believe on certain planets anything can happen.

I think that “loveliness” always has desperate, winding roots. Most of my clinical practice was in an alternative school and this adolescents could best be described as the “weeds” that Sandburg described here. It was stunning to see how astute and intelligent so many of them were even though often they were such failures in mainstream classrooms.

 

Rumi’s Oyster Shell and Politics

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Everyone is afraid of death, but the real sufi’s just laugh; nothing tyrannizes their heart. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl. (Rumi)

Rumi’s concern is the distinction between what is real and what is unreal; or, as noted yesterday, between the ephemeral and the essential. The inability…or unwillingness…to recognize this distinction permeates our culture and is apparent where ever we choose to focus. For example, let’s take our current political morass. The prevailing focus of our politicians appears to be one thing—electability and then getting re-elected. To accomplish these purposes, they are willing to prostitute themselves to their base, to focus groups, and ultimately to the electorate. It is as if nothing else matters. Our country suffers. Our world suffers. And yet these politicians continue to focus on one thing—How do I get elected or re-elected and how does my political party get in power or maintain power?

Of course, these politicians merely reflect the values of our culture. Our culture produced them. If someone happened along who actually believed in something, someone who represented value, he/she would not be “electable” in our current environment.

So, what is the answer? Hmmm. Well, the answer lies in the realm of the Spirit but I hesitate to tender that notion as it opens a can of worms. I could discourse at length on the subject…and have…but let me cut to the chase and say this involves looking beneath the surface of things. But we don’t believe there is anything underneath the surface. We believe only in the oyster shell.

No less a luminary than Einstein deigned to look beneath the surface and he found there what he called a “mystery” and said that this evoked a “religious sentiment” in his heart. But we are so afraid of the “mystery” as it would threaten our illusion of being in control.

 

Wisdom from Rumi

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I have discoursed before about the sin of “misplaced concreteness.” I think it was C.S. Lewis who offered the term to me. This sin is the error of taking to be real that which is only ephemeral; and, it is a sin which is intrinsic to human nature. It seems to be so pronounced in our modern world with its insane consumerism but it has always been around in some shape, form, or fashion.

Shakespeare often harped on this issue. I strongly recommend you check out his sonnet 146, one of my favorite. And just recently I came across a quote from Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet, who noted, “Everyone is afraid of death, but the real sufi’s just laugh; nothing tyrannizes their heart. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.”

Our task is to always be aware of the “oyster shell” and its tyranny, realizing that inside there is a “pearl of great price” which cries out for attention and respect. I think this is what Jesus had in mind when he posed the question, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?”

 

Trashing Richard Rohr!

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I can’t stand Richard Rohr. He is a thief! Yes, I have all of these wonderful, deeply-spiritual, sublime thoughts and he puts them into print (or blog) before I do! And there he is rich and famous and I’m a mere Southern ne’er-do-well mired in the bowels of the blog-o-sphere!

Seriously, I love that man. He says everything I could ever say and says it much more eloquently and humbly than I could ever manage. I should do as I have threatened and merely let me blog consist each day of a link to Richard Rohr’s blog. (And, btw, Franciscan monks do not get rich!)

On a related note, I feel validated when I run across someone like Rohr. Conrad Aiken once noted, “This is peace to know our thoughts known.” And that is very important if life has you on an “unbeaten path” trajectory which has always been my lot. I also find this validation often here on the blog-o-sphere, crossing the path of other kindred spirits, some of which I have already shared the following Archibald MacLeish quote: Winds of thought blow magniloquent meanings betwixt me and thee.

Here is Rohr’s blog posting of today:

HEALING OUR VIOLENCE

If the self doesn’t find some way to connect radically with Being, it will live in anxiety and insecurity. The false self is inherently insecure. It’s intrinsically fragile, grasping for significance. That’s precisely because it is insignificant! So it grabs atthings like badges and uniforms and titles and hats and flags to give itself importance and power. People talk about dying for the flag of their country. They don’t realize that the Bible would definitely call that idolatry. What were you before you were an American? Will you be an American in heaven? Most of us don’t know how to answer those questions without a spiritual journey and an inner prayer life.
In prayer you will discover who you were before you were male, before you were female, before you were black, before you were white, before you were straight, before you were gay, before you were Lutheran, Mormon, or Amish. Have you ever lived there? At that naked place, you will have very little to defend, fight about, compete with, overcome, hate, or fear. You are then living in the Reign of God, or what Buddha calls the Great Compassion. Violence is unneeded and undesired.
Adapted from Healing Our Violence
Through the Journey of Centering Prayer (CD)
Prayer:
We are love, and we are made for love,
and our natural abiding place is love.

 

Nuanced Prayer of St. Anselm

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I came across a beautiful prayer by St. Anselm that I wish to share. This prayer is so foreign to how I was taught to pray decades ago. It is so convoluted, complex, and paradoxical. I guess one could call it poetical. Prayer requires nuance and St. Anselm had a nuanced faith.

O Lord my God,
Teach my heart this day where and how to see you,
Where and how to find you.
You have made me and remade me,
And you have bestowed on me
All the good things I possess,
And still I do not know you.
I have not yet done that
For which I was made.
Teach me to seek you,
For I cannot seek you
Unless you teach me,
Or find you
Unless you show yourself to me.
Let me seek you in my desire,
Let me desire you in my seeking.
Let me find you by loving you,
Let me love you when I find you.