Category Archives: mindfulness

Musings About an Identity Crisis

I wish you first a sense of theater.

Only those who know illusion

And love it will go far.

Otherwise, we spend our lives in confusion

About what to say and do about who we really are.

This poem by W. H. Auden presents an essential quandary in our quest for identity. If you find yourself wondering about “who I really am” then you have already opened a can of worms and have an identity crisis in the offing. And please note that an “identity crisis” is often a luxury, one that millions of people cannot afford, being the urgency of the day-to-day grind of trying to make a living to provide for themselves and their family But for those of you who have this luxury, I’m going to share some thoughts about the nature of identity.

The notion that “I am” assumes a whole lot. When I think about who “I am”, I am practicing selective attention as the question brings to mind only memories that are consistent with presuppositions about myself that I have been permitted and find myself comfortable with. Everything else has been excluded. But the “everything else” is still there and always beckons in the unconscious, coming to us in fears, anxieties, projections, and dreams, good and bad. Addressing an identity crisis is to realize that we have drawn the boundaries of our existence too narrowly and that the “crisis” we are now feeling merely is an opportunity to broaden these boundaries. It is to realize that our identity….the one that I’m presenting here as a false self, even as a charade in some sense…is very necessary and is not to be totally discarded. It is to realize merely that it is only part of the picture, only the surface of our real identity and for that identity to have meaning we must allow some of its excluded context to surface and be integrated into our sense of self. That “false self”, or “ego”, is very important. The problem lies only in our insistence that it be the whole of ourselves. Failure to recognize this is to find o living a very shallow life.

Let me illustrate with a snippet from another Auden poem in which he notes how that most of us “drive through life in the closed cab of occupation.” By this he meant that a person often, if not usually, sees the world through a template which is often best characterized by his occupation. Thus, a physician sees people through a medical model, an educator sees people as children needing to learn, a clinician (such as myself) sees people with the cold detachment of a diagnostic manual. But, Auden’s point was not merely about “occupations” but about a template, an ego structure through which all of us see the world, be it “occupational” or otherwise. This ego structure is our identity, our “false self” or persona, which always needs to be enlarged. And when this “enlargement” takes place, it does not invalidate the template…usually. The template usually serves a useful purpose. But we need to see the world through broader terms than we are wont to do when totally subservient to the template that with which we are so familiar and comfortable that we can’t even see it and are actually averse to seeing. (Emily Dickinson noted, “The mind too near itself to see itself distinctly.)

Let me illustrate with Mitt Romney. I think Romney was, and is, an intelligent, good human being. He had many qualities which could have made him a good President. But his worldview, his “template”, got in his way and posed some real problems in his campaign, best illustrated in the surreptitiously taped 47 percent speech to wealthy donors. His template demonstrated an extreme rigidity which often left him appearing very awkward and socially maladroit so that he often missed the nuances of personal and public interactions. For, Romney is a “corporate” person, a “corporate” mogul and persons of this cut do have a place in our culture, be that good or bad. He sees the world through the eyes of a corporate mogul and was not able to give this viewpoint pause on occasion and approach the public in more personal terms. It is not that he was “bad”. It is just that he was Mitt Romney and that “Mitt Romney” was, and is, a “corporate mogul.”

(An equally valid point is the “literarylew” is merely “literarylew” and sees the world through the template that comes across through his blog. Those who know me personally also see how clearly that “literarylew” is part and parcel of who I am, it is my identity, and yes, it really gets tiresome on occasion, or at least as annoying as hell!)

Neurophysiology and The Question of Meaning

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Politico has an interesting article today about the role that neurophysiology plays in shaping our political viewpoint. (http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/left-right-the-brain-science-of-politics-88653.html?hp=l11)

I have been curious about this research for the past year and recently ran across another blogger (Neuroresearchproject.com) with a similar curiosity. I also strongly recommend that you google the name “Jonathan Haidt” to listen to a psychologist discourse re a similar vein of thought.

This research would have given me pause at one point in my life, causing me to doubt myself, my faith, and basically everything. This research suggests that our life is largely determined by circumstances far beyond the grasp of our mind. But, now my response is, “So…..????” For, I have now feel that my grasp of reality is so very finite and is so shaped by circumstances that I can never wrap my brain around. And at times I ask, “How could I have ever thought otherwise?”

I used to be a lot more arrogant than I am now. (And, yes, I still have the taint of arrogance in my heart!) Life is just an incredible mystery and I’ve learned to find glory in that experience.

Sure, we need to study and study and study. We need to speculate as we have always been wont to do. And we will learn more and more as we go. But ultimately we will always come down to….nothing…or, as I like to put it, “No-Thing.” It is when we allow that primordial Emptiness to give us pause that we can be disrupted from the humdrum routine of the dog-and-pony show that we call our life and allow a Mystery to visit us and experience somewhat the Mystery that we are. It is there that we find our Source and then that we experience the temptation of turning that new Friend of ours into still another contrivance for our ego.

I’d like to share a poem by Edgar Simmons about detachment and its role in helping us to discover the Glory in this mystery of No-thingness.

THE MAGNETIC FIELD

Distance…which by definition
Indicates a separation from self
Is the healing poultice of metaphor,
Is the night-lighting of poetry.
As we allot to elements their weights
So to metaphor we need assign the
Weight of the ghost of distance.
Stars are stars to us
Because of distance: it is in the
Nothingness which clings us them
That we glory, tremble, and bow.
O what weight and glory lie abalance
In the stretch of vacant fields:
Metaphor: the hymn and hum of separation.

“Post Hypnotic Trance of Early Infancy”

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R. D. Laing once said that most of us life our lives in a “post hypnotic trance of early infancy.” Laing recognized that most of us live life unconsciously, driven by fears and anxieties that we acquired in our very early life before we had acquired reason. Most people do not realize that this earliest period of time was one of intense “conscious” awareness as we were soaking up the world in a way that would not be possible once the dawn of reason came at about age one and a half. (Aldous Huxley once posited the notion that our brain is basically a filter that selects what part of experience we will be open to.)

This core experience stays with us and will shape everything we do the rest of our lives. This core is inherently emotional, a “feeling state” that provides the basic orientation we have to the world and even to our own view of our self and that world. It will reflect our perception of our very place in the world and the perception of how much power we have to shape that world.

Asking someone to recognize this part of his/her existence is challenging and often impossible. I often use the following notion—it is like asking a fish to see water. A blog-o-sphere friend recently shared another image which I love—it is like asking someone who has fallen into a jar of marmalade and lived there all his/her life to see anything but marmalade. And this perceptual field is mutli-faceted, if not infinitely-faceted. But one facet will be the answer to this question, “Is this world an hospitable place?” Those raised in abject poverty are more inclined to answer “no” and adopt a stance of disappointment and hopelessness, a life confined to one poor choice after another. One that is born into a world that is stable is more likely to adopt a world view that sees potential, that sees the beauty…and the ugliness…in the world and says to himself/herself, “Hey, I can do this!”

A key task in life is the gain a perspective on our perspective and as one philosopher has said that to do so is to “somehow escape it.” I would qualify his observation with the notion that this meta-cognition is at least a step in the direction of escaping it. The next step will require courage, the courage to take the step beyond from time to time, to step into the beyond. And someone has noted, “When taking a far journey, you can’t see the destination until you have lost sight of the shore from which you departed.” It makes me think of the Call of Abraham who was asked to forsake everything and “go unto a land that I will show thee.”

Paean to the East from a Southern Cracker

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The Eastern thinkers really speak to me. Those of ancient eons but those of today, including a handful of you I have met recently in the blog-o-sphere. You just don’t “think the right way.” You deign to look at the world differently. You look different. You sound different. How could that be? How could that have happened?

This world is just not as it was presented to me. It is not static but always intrinsically dynamic, always a “process in a process in a field that never closes.” ( W. H. Auden) It has taken me 61 years to get to this place where humility is teasing me, inviting me into its solace, and I’m absolutely loving it! Sure, I’m still kicking and screaming a bit but I’m gonna get there. And I think of the observation of W. B. Yeats when he “got there,”—Throughout all the lying days of my youth/I waved my leaves and flowers in the air./Now may I wither into the Truth.

Here is a wonderful poem by Bei Dao, a contemporary Chinese poet, with favorite stanza highlighted:
ANSWERS

Cruelty is the ID pass of the cruel,
honesty the grave stone of the honest.
Look, in the sky plated gold,
crooked reflections of all the dead float around.

The glacial epoch is over,
so why is there ice everywhere?
Good Hope was rounded a long time ago,
so where are these thousands of boats racing on the Dead Sea?

I came into this world
with only blank pages, rope and my fingers;
therefore, before final judgements are given,
I need to speak in all the voices of the defendants.

Just let me say, world,
I–don’t–believe!
If a thousand challengers are under your feet
count me as challenger one-thousand-and-one.

I don’t believe the sky is always blue;
I don’t believe it was thunder echoing;
I don’t believe all dreaming is false;
I don’t believe the dead cannot bring judgement.

If the sea is doomed someday to break its levees
my heart must flood with all the bitter waters.
If the land is destined to form the hills again,
let real human beings learn to choose the higher ground.

The latest, favorable turnings, the twinkling stars
studding the naked sky,
are pictographs five-thousand years old.
They are the eyes of the future staring at us now.

Shakespeare on Hypocrisy

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Shakespeare does it again! Just when I’m taking comfort, so luxuriously ensconced in my humility, he punctures my bubble:

When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforcèd 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.

Ever caught yourself being full of yourself? Ever caught yourself being pious and righteous? Ever caught yourself doing so “like horses hot at hand”? What an incredible image this is. I can see the huge horses, snorting and pawing the air, announcing, “Hey, everyone! I’m here. Look at me.”

Now in fairness to myself, I am not as guilty of this as in my youth but it still happens. Then “mindfulness” will visit me in (spite of myself), and the sting of conscience will prick me. Then, suddenly humbled by self-awareness, I will utter the famous word of Texas Governor Rick Perry, “Oops!” For I have been caught looking foolishly full of myself.

“Hollow men” wear their faith for show. In another play, Shakespeare said of them, “With devotions visage and pious action, they do sugar o’er the devil himself.” They often mean well and are often only of guilty of immaturity. But they do great harm. I think the televangelists are a good example of this “horses hot at hand” type of faith. These fellows are usually performance artists and prey on an unlearned audience, one that lacks the gift of a discriminating ear.

To use still another notion from Shakespeare, these “hollow men” have hearts that are “bronzed over” by “damned custom” so that it is “proof and bulwark against sense.” Yes, the heart has been replaced by “damn custom” or these aforementioned cognitions, the pious jargon, so that the heart itself is “proof and bulwark” against “sense” or “feeling.” Thus the heart is empty of feeling and the person living merely in the grasp of the conceptual is a “hollow man” and must make “gallant show and promise of their mettle.”

For, the “plain and simple faith” that Jesus spoke of is not available to them, the faith that Jesus had in mind when he spoke of the need of coming to him with the faith of little children. I now work often with little children and their sweet little hearts are just overflowing with faith—faith in mommy and daddy, faith in their teachers, faith in their budding notions of “god”, faith in the world they are exploring, and even faith in an old substitute teacher like me! It is beautiful to see their simple trust. This is the “simple faith” that Shakespeare had in mind and the faith that Jesus calls us to.

But, oh, it is so much easier to just rely on what we are accustomed to, those “well worth words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness,” even if they are the “Christian” variety!

Language and our Unity with God

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I’ve always loved words and early in school discovered I had a facility for them. I had no understanding of it at the time, but in my early development I was experientially discovering that our alphabet is “26 toy soldiers that guard us from the rim of the abyss.” (Nikos Kazantzakis) My memories of those years, especially in the first grade where these “toy soldiers” first befriended me, are kind of murky. But I know that it was a stressful time.

Late in grade school the French language came to this little central Arkansas country school. Now why in the hell it was French I’ll never know. I suppose the legislature appropriated money for the schools to help pull the state out of the stone age and a government bureaucrat told the school board, “Now you’uns need a fur’en language.” The superintendent must have said, “Why hell, Why not French?” So I fumbled with the French language and was fascinated that in another country, far off from my little provincial world, people made different sounds for things that I used English for. I was bewildered. And I guess this was the dawning of some suspicion that reality might not be as rigid as I had been taught, that there was more fluidity in reality than my tribe really wanted me to know about.

So I took French often in high school also though I really didn’t learn much beyond “Paylay vue francay” and “Ooh ay la bibliotech?” And I continued in college as I had to meet a language requirement but still did not become fluent in the language. I found it interesting but could never immerse myself in it, I could never “think” in the foreign tongue, and so fluency never came my way. And since then, I’ve dabbled in Greek and Spanish and have read extensively in the field of linquistics. But when I have traveled abroad, I’ve always had to rely on “the kindness of strangers” or my wife’s greater finesse with other languages.

But instead of my awkwardness and lack of finesse with other languages, over the decades I have come to love words, to love language, and to delight in learning intricacies of other languages. Swimming in the blog-o-sphere has whetted my appetite as many new friends have introduced me to foreign concepts and provided criticism of own “well-worn words and ready phrases that built comfortable walls against the wilderness.” (Conrad Aiken).

I’ve said all of that to get to this: Twenty-five years ago I had the first real glimpse into the heart of language, seeing for the first time how it is not merely something we use but is something we breath, something we live in, and something that shapes us. I was reading about an oriental philosopher…or perhaps Alan Watt (as those were my “Alan Watts years) and the author pointed that in a particular Eastern language one who observes a book will say, “The book is seen,” whereas in the West we will say, “I see the book.” This anecdote so vividly illustrated how English reflects the Western detachment from the world and the tendency to, therefore, see the world as something to deal with objectively. This facilitates seeing the world as something to possess, something to exploit, something to “develop.”

And it also explains why Western Christianity has this view of God as someone who is “far off”, so removed from human life, and so inaccessible. Yes, Christians teach that in Jesus God was “made nigh by the blood of the cross” but their belief system reflects the insidious belief that he is still “far off” and needing to be appeased by believing and behaving the right way. They don’t understand that “the kingdom is within.” They don’t understand their unity with God.

Epistomology and Confirmation Bias

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The recent controversy in the United States over Chuck Hagel’s nomination by President Obama for Defense Secretary has given rise to the usual right-wing hysteria and obstructionism. Last week these conservatives seized upon a humorous note made by a New York newspaper columnist who facetiously suggested that Hagel had opined in Islamist radical newspapers, taking that columnist’s satirical quips as being factual.

This illustrated the problem with interpretation for all of us, conservative or liberal. We must remember to utilize the Shakespearean “pauser reason” when we hear or read something, recognizing that it is human nature to seize upon data that satisfies our agenda. Another example was Michelle “Deep Penetration” Bachman about a year ago when she sonorously intoned re the presence of sharia law in two United States communities, presenting the preposterous allegation as casual fact. Shortly thereafter someone pointed out that this was not true and that one of the cities had not existed in decades. Bachman had come across this juicy tidbit and must have had childish delight as she thought, “Oh, wait until I get to announce this!” Well, if she would have employed this “pauser reason”….recognizing that she was about to posit something that was very sensational…she could have had her handlers verify the report. But the information was just too much a “tasty morsel” and she had to pass it on, knowing that her paranoid base would go for it, much like pigs after slop.

But, I reiterate, “This childish naivety is not just a conservative problem. It is a human problem.” We always have our preconceptions and then seek information that confirms this bias, a phenomena known as “confirmation bias” or “epistemic closure.” Yes, even “LiteraryLew”, is susceptible and guilty of this human frailty…cursed be the thought! If we recognize this truth, it can humble us a bit and make us less apt to be too smug and arrogant about our “lofty” ideas and our “gospel” truth. Our ideas might have “lofty” qualities and our truth might have “gospel” qualities but probably not as much as we would like to think. Those “other guys”, that ubiquitous “them”, might just have validity in their perspective and have something to offer us.

My Paean to “Mindfulness” in the Blog-o-sphere!

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I love meeting “mind” and will share a Robert Frost poem on the matter. And by “mind” I don’t mean the routine, mechanized palaver, the “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness” (Conrad Aiken) but a “discerning” mind, one that is quickened by what I like to call the “Spirit of God”, one that is wry and witty, one that can “rock ‘n roll”, is even sarcastic on occasion and certainly ironic, one that can trot out an occasional “word fitly spoken”, and to sum it up, one that is “present”. And every time I stumble upon one of these “minds” I am given pause and say to myself, “Hey, let’s check this fellow (or fellow-ess) out! Somebody is home!” And this occasionally happens even with a five year old student. And even with my beloved dachshunds, Ludwig and Elsa, I often get the distinct impression that “Somebody is present here”. (But these doggies are going to have to hurry up and develop more fore brain capacity before they can offer me subtlety!)

Emily Dickinson described “a mind too near itself to see itself distinctly.” She was describing a mind that lacks these qualities, a mind too self-absorbed for the person to see beyond the end of his/her nose….or should I say “knows”? This self-absorbed mind lacks self-reflection without which there is no awareness.

And I have met many of these aforementioned “mindful” people and try to make sure I circulate in a circle where they are apt to be found. And I read literature by writers who are gifted with this quality. Movies and even television-shows can offer this god-given perspective if one is discriminating about his/her choices.

And in the past two years I have discovered that the blog-o-sphere is full of men and women who have this “Presence” and share from it daily. To you, my dear friends, I today doff my hat and thank you for all you have added to my life and continued to do so daily. You know who you are. You are a gift to me but also to your family, friends, and community. What I like to call “The Spirit of God” vibrates in your heart and therefore “winds of thought blow magniloquent meanings betwixt me and thee.” (Archibald MacLeish)

A CONSIDERABLE SPECK
By Robert Frost

A speck that would have been beneath my sight
On any but a paper sheet so white
Set off across what I had written there.
And I had idly poised my pen in air
To stop it with a period of ink,
When something strange about it made me think.
This was no dust spike by my breathing blown,
But unmistakenly a living mite
With inclinations it could call its own.
It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
And then came racing wildly on again
To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
Then paused again and either drank or smelt—
With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
Yet must have had a set of them complete
To express how much it didn’t want to die.
It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
It faltered: I could see it hesitate;
Then in the middle of the open sheet
Cower down in desperation to accept
Whatever I accorded it of fate.
I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
Collectivistic, regimenting love
With which the modern world is being swept.
But this poor microscopic item now!
Since it was nothing I knew evil of
I let it lie there till I hope it slept.

I have a mind myself and recognize
Mind when I meet with it in any guise.
No one can know how glad I am to find
On any sheet the least display of mind.

Thomas Merton and Humility

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Thomas Merton was such a gift to Christianity and to mankind as a whole. He had deep spiritual insight which has fallen on deaf ears in most instances as is usually the case with Truth. I often quote W. H. Auden on this note, “And Truth met him and held out her hand. And he clung in panic to his tall belief and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”

Here is a stirring observation by Merton:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and absolute poverty is the pure Glory of God written in us, as our poverty, our indigence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that could make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

As I copy this for you I am stirred once more. This is now added to my daily devotional. It is absolutely stirring and painfully humbling. I really like his conclusion, “I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.” We prefer a “program” as that is easier. A program offers “slam, bam, thank you ma’am” with everything written up neatly in a little syllogism. And when we can wrap spirituality up like that we have succeeded in co-opting God, in maintaining our illusion of supremacy under the guise of spirituality. If we look closely, with a discerning spirit (and practice “mindfulness”) we have to acknowledge, ‘Oh, this is all about me.”

I conclude with part of a stirring sonnet by John Masefield about this spiritual smugness:

How many ways, how many different times
The tiger mind has clutched at what it sought,
Only to prove supposed virtues crimes,
The imagined godhead but a form of thought.
How many restless brains have wrought and schemed,
Padding their cage, or built, or brought to law,
Made in outlasting brass the something dreamed,
Only to prove (itself) the thing held in awe.

Poetic Thoughts re Intense Emotion Running Amok

literary lew

prose/poetry/philosophy/religion