Category Archives: religion

Clinical dimensions of “nakedness”

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(Yesterday’s posting was about the subjec of nakedness in the book of Genesis.) The notion of nakedness and vulnerability is also relevant in clinical work. In one of my first cases as a therapist, a young man in his thirties had recurrent images of nakedness in his day to day life, often looking down to see if he was wearing his pants in public. He knew this was “crazy” but he also knew that it was clinically significant. He also quickly saw that this disconcerting imagery was related to several significant recent losses in his life—he had become estranged from his family, he had serious doubts about his childhood faith, and he has resigned from his job. Furthermore, he was feeling estranged from his friends. He had been cast adrift in his life. He had shorn the trappings of the middle class life that had been bequeathed him and he felt vulnerable, he felt naked.

The clinical work involved helping him to embrace this nakedness, to avoid the temptation to immediately “prozac’em”, and to explore the depths of his despair.
It amounted to holding his hands figuratively, allowing the grace of God to envelop him, and to facilitate rebirth. I offered comfort and direction as this young man dwelt for a while in what T. S. Eliot called, “the breakage, in the collapse of what was believed in as most certain, and therefore the fittest for renunciation.” Metaphorically speaking, I was a midwife. Or, a metaphor I like even better, I was a witness to a death, burial, and resurrection.

The theme of nakedness is so relevant to the work of a minister. Frederick Buechner in one of his books (and the specific title escapes my memory) wrote of the need of a minister to find the temerity and courage (and grace) to first “disrobe” his congregation before he could “clothe” it with the Grace of God. He explained that God’s Grace only comes as one is disrobed of his/her pretenses, illusions, false gods, and hypocrisies and that a minister who is not willing to address this facade cannot offer any genuine Grace. Without this disrobing there is only an easy believism that really doesn’t believe anything, there is only a religion of convenience. And, I might add, no minister can accomplish this task if he/she has not been disrobed himself/herself and does not experience recurrently from time to time.

The Illness that we Are

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In the book of Genesis the subject of nakedness is introduced to us.  Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit and felt naked, exposed, and God fashioned for them a fig leaf garment and hid their nakedness.  The Bible said that this garment hid them from their sense of shame.

Art in recent centuries, and movies in recent times, often includes the image of the nude woman, caught unawares, covering her breasts with an arm and/or her privates with a hand.  Most men also have had dreams or fears of that horrible feeling of being caught nude in public, being exposed, being vulnerable.

I think this fig leaf represents the function of the ego in human culture.  It is a contrivance that hides us from our nakedness.  It is a persona that we can present to our community and to the world and not have to show to them the frail, frightened vulnerable creature that we are in the depths of our heart.  And this ego consciousness is very important as without it there would be no “world” as we know it.  For without it, we would be teeming multitudes of quivering flesh and could not function as a culture.  We would not be a world.

But this ego consciousness has become a monster that is run amok and threatens to destroy us.  Instead of acknowledging our frailty and recognizing the frailty of others, we have organized into armed camps the purpose of which is to barricade ourselves behind piles of “stuff”.  Or, to allude briefly to one dimension of the problem, in our country we have isolated into ideologically-armed political camps, each camp unwilling to recognize its own vulnerability.  We are guilty of the sin of misplaced concreteness, “We chase the shade, and let the real be.” (John Masefield)

But as individuals we cannot correct the ills of the world. The only “illness” we are responsible for is illness that we harbor. But we can discover that as we address that illness in our own heart, as we “wage the war we are”, we will be a bit of an antidote to the collective illness that threatens us.

“We’re not getting out of this thing alive”

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Lewis Thomas, in Lives of a Cell, discoursed on death from the viewpoint of a biologist. He noted, “At the very center of the problem is the naked cold deadness of one’s own self, the only reality in nature of which we can have absolute certainty, and it is unmentionable, unthinkable.  We like to think…we can avoid the problem if we just become, next year, say, a bit smarter.”

We have the notion that, “Oh, well. We can figure this out and get beyond it. It just won’t happen to me.”  We are guilty of what Ernest Becker called the Denial of Death. In his book with that title, he argued that that civilization was organized for the purpose of denying our mortality, that it is a complicated contrivance designed merely for burying our head in the sand regarding our eventual demise, our eventual return to the dust from which we are created.  (I like Hamlet’s bemused observations about us being merely worm food.)

So, what do we do with this problem?  Well, we wrestle with it as best as we can.  Here, in my daily perambulations, you get some glimpse of one person’s doubt and insecurities…and hope…regarding this issue.  A key source of hope for me has been to realize that death is merely part of life and that death is an issue that can be addressed before the actual physical death.  By that I mean that we can die before we die, that the real issue in our fear of death is the fear of the ego’s death, and that we can let the ego die long before our physical death.   Irvin Yalom argued decades ago that those who fear death fear life and only through the death of their ego can they embrace life and live life to the fullest.

James Hillman had a relevant belief re suicide. He was a Jungian therapist and he shared in Suicide and the Soul re one client who was suicidal. He told the client…and I paraphrase…”So you want to die.  You come to me and I will help you die. But, you have to promise me that in the meantime you will not physically harm yourself.”  Hillman believed that the suicidal impulse was often a misguided impulse from the heart, that the wish to die, if handled delicately and with spiritual guidance, could be the doorway to eternal life.

Resting in His Grace

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A friend of mine in the blog-o-sphere has entitled his blog, “Resting in his Grace.”  I was reading his post this morning and the title itself spoke to me as a friend of mine is currently experiencing first-hand a powerful manifestation of this grace.  My dear friend, “KW” is dying, and he is doing so with the “grace of God” so clearly present in his life.

I should explain that KW and I grew up in a similar conservative religious environment in Arkansas.  Both of us did the obligatory “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” when we grew up and went to college and discovered there was a world outside of Arkansas.  But as we aged, we continued to have a spiritual dimension to our life and in recent years we frequently mused about holy writ from all religions, certainly including Christianity.  And in these final days and weeks of KW’s life, certain little tidbits of biblical lore have found meaning for both of us.

One of these tidbits was “grace” and I had the pleasure of sharing with him one of my favorite poems (The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry) which so beautifully conveys the grace found in the world of nature.  One line from this poem notes how animals do not “tax their lives with forethought of grief” and I think this is a fundamental dimension of grace.  We humans live day to day well aware that our life is very fragile and will come to and end sooner or later and only grace will allow us to not “tax our life with forethought of” that particular grief.

KW has battled this monster cancer for over a year now and he has wrestled with the full gamut of human emotions.  He has been very angry.  He has told me of throwing one huge fit in the backyard of his place, enraged at God. He has had “pity parties” from time to time.  He has been depressed on occasion.  But he has come to peace with his mortality and now he is comfortably ensconced in the grace of God.  It has been deeply moving to be part of this experience and this will help me immensely as I approach that point in my own life.

Get over yourself!

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There is a great story in 2 King 5 which I’ve always been intrigued with.  Naaman the leper wanted to be healed so he went to the spiritual guru of the day, Elisha, and asked for healing.  He was told to go down to the river Jordan, deep seven times, and he would be healed.  Naaman was indignant, feeling that a man of his prominence should be received more formally and a more elegant healing ceremony should be offered.  He walked away in fury.  Sometime later, he became more humble, followed through with Naaman’s advice and was healed.

This story is so relevant to the human predicament.  A man with an ailment wanted relief but he wanted this relief on his own terms. Elisha intuitively knew that a critical dimension of Naaman’s problem was ego and he knew that an appropriate step for him to take was to humble himself in some way.  And, he also knew that this relief needed to entail action. Elisha knew that going down to Barnes and Nobles and buying the latest self-help title was not enough.  Naaman needed behavioral intervention.  So, he simply sent word to Naaman to go and dip into the river Jordan seven times.  (By the way, he didn’t even meet personally with Naaman to send this message, a further “indignation” to this man’s ego. He merely sent word through a messenger.)

This is relevant to a recent posting re getting un-stuck.  Sometimes a person who is hurting might have to humble himself as part of his treatment and this “humiliation” can be as simple as reaching out and seeking help. It is very painful for some to deign to make an appointment with a counselor.  I’ve known some who will schedule an appointment hundreds of miles away merely to keep anyone from happening to see him entering a counselor’s officer.  This “humiliation” can be daring to surrender and seek help with a 12-step group or going to one’s pastor or priest or rabbi and sharing openly about one’s haunts.  It can involve accepting a diagnostic label. It can involve opening up honestly with one’s mate for the first time in the marriage.  In my clinical work I have even proposed what I call “tree therapy” to some clients, instructing them to go into the forest and talk openly to a tree just to verbalize openly about what is going on in their heart.  (When I assigned “tree therapy”, I always advised them to then seek another human being to whom they could “unpack their heart with words.” (Shakespeare)

One last note about behavioral interventions.  An often used maneuver for therapists is to assign a client the simple task of going home and planting a garden or merely getting a houseplant.  This is because a key element in any neurosis or any psychological/spiritual problem is a narcissistic streak.  The pain is so intense that it becomes all consuming. It can help to simply find the energy to take care of plants and nurture them and love them.

Stuck in a repetition compulsion

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I sometimes think I should rename my blog to some variant of “Shakespeare”.  I quote him so often.  And there is no need to quote anyone else.  No one said more.

On the subject of change, he explained why we resist it so much, noting in Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy that we, “cling to these ills that we have rather than fly to others that we know not of.”  To put it in plain red-neck English, “Hell, as bad as things are, if I fool around and make changes, things are gonna get a whole lot worse.”

This is best illustrated in a standard psycho-dynamic explanation of why a woman stays in an abusive relationship.  She usually has such low self-esteem that unconsciously she feels she deserves nothing any better.  In fact, if she manages to extricate herself from one abusive relationship, she will end up in another one very quickly.  Some unfairly and unkindly opine, “Well, that is what she asks for.”  But she is merely caught in. or trapped in, what Freud call a “repetition compulsion”,  repeating a pattern of behavior which recapitulates an emotional trauma that she lived through.

Scott Peck said in The Road Less Traveled that neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering. He was suggesting that suffering is a basic part of life and that enduring pain from time to time is just part of life. Failure to do so is to get blocked or “stuck” in life.

The key to gaining release is always to “feel” the pain, the avoidance of which keeps one locked in a maladaptive behavior pattern. Or. to use a popular bromide, “No pain, no gain.”

More about Getting Un-stuck

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So, precisely how do we get “unstuck”?  How do we extricate ourselves from that morass of unconsciousness, that residue of poor decisions that has left our life unmanageable?

There are easy maneuvers such as psychotropic medications.  Sometimes simply being tweaked biochemically can create enough personal space for us to get out of ourselves and get beyond our impasse.  And simple psychotherapy can be very effective.  On that note, it is very important that the therapist must avoid the temptation to “fix” the client, allowing  that client to stew in his/her own juices for a while, to “work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.”  Karl Jung contended that the therapeutic frame was a crucible and if the process worked correctly, the client would “heat-up” to a boiling point and a break through could be achieved.

But, as noted yesterday with the Shakespeare quotation, ultimately we are all alone with our spiritual battles and must wrestle in solitude with our demons.  However, I feel very strongly that therapists, counselors, pastors, and certainly friends must be present to facilitate the catharsis.  I think the most important step in alleviating the “stuck-ness” is for the individual to have the humility to admit that he/she is “stuck”;  and, I don’t mean some glib conciliation to the concept of being stuck.  I mean, for example, the old-fashioned fundamentalist paradigm, “I am a lost sinner” or the 12-step “I am powerless before my addiction” or “out of control” schemata.  It is necessary to realize and feel that one is out of control and that all of the rational, ego-based perambulations one can muster up will not suffice.  It is not a matter of “figuring out” anything.  It is a matter of trusting someone…and ultimately trusting a Source, or a Higher Power, or God or, in the words of Nikos Kazantzakis, “Surrendering to a rhythm not our own.”  It is a matter of humility.  And humility comes hard to the ego.   I think “stuck-ness” like all other human spiritual maladies is an issue of the ego.

A caveat is necessary.  I don’t think getting un-stuck is a simple one-time and your done phenomena.  I think we get through one episode of “stuck-ness” and later run into another one, and another one, and another one.  That has certainly been the case with me. I think there is a sense in which we always find ourselves “stuck”…in reality, with all its limitations.  The issue is discerning which of these limitations we can live with and which ones we must wrestle with and get beyond to some degree.

I have one very readable book to recommend on the subject, How People Change by Allen Wheelis.

Getting Un-stuck

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This morning I was “conversating” with a friend I have met in Sunday School.  This friend also grew up in a conservative Christian church but now subscribes to a different faith orientation as I do.  Meditation is a key emphasis in our Sunday School class and we commiserated this morning about the pronounced resistance we often face in disciplining our “monkey minds” to meditate.

Personally speaking, meditation meets fierce resistance in my heart as if something deep inside views it with fear and disdain, as if every fiber of being finds it anathema.  I think this is because of deep-seated old recordings from my youth in which anything like “meditation” had the ring of “Eastern” and “non-Christian” and was therefore “of the devil.”

But now I see meditation as a primary direction in my spiritual life, as a key element in the development of my spirituality. I see it as the next step for me to take in the experiencing of my Source, in achieving a very paltry, limited experience of the Incarnation, of the “word being made flesh.”  And this resistance I see in Pauline terms as spiritual warfare.  To borrow the words of Paul, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me, or, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me.”  For the Pauline term the “old man” is merely a term for resistance, that stubborn energy constellation that seeks to perpetuate itself, to resist change and maturity.  It is the “letter of the law” resisting the “spirit of the law”

Now still another term I like to use, from modern-day clinical colloquial jargon, is “stuck” or “stuck-ness.”  We tend to live our life in a “stuck” mode and it is very hard to get dislodged.  This is because we tend to live life on automatic pilot and our “automatic pilot” does not was to lose its autonomy.  You could think of this automatic pilot as a constellation of energy which wants to continue to discharge in the pattern to which it is accustomed.  Other relevant terms are “neurosis” or “maladaptive behavior patterns.”

And though relationships with other people, especially close and intimate relationships are essential in addressing these “stuckness”, we are ultimately alone as we battle these demons.  As Shakespeare noted in Macbeth:

MACBETH
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorry,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of the perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

DOCTOR
Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

Marianne Williamson and Shadow Politics

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Marianne Williamson is one of my favorite spiritual voices of our time. She writes in, A Return to Love:  Reflection on the Principles of ‘A Course in Miracles‘ , “ I spent years as an angry left winger before I realized that an angry generation can’t bring peace. Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it.”  She elaborated about a dream that she had at one time in her life which taught her that she was bringing to bear on the right wing animosity which had to do with her own personal issues, aside from the validity or appropriateness of the views and actions espoused by the right wing leaders .  Elsewhere in her teachings she explains that what she had to learn was to realize that she could hold firm with her political convictions and do so with great passion but without crossing the line to hating the persons who held the views that she disagreed with.

Williamson was dealing with something which is very hard to learn—how do we learn to be tolerant of the “intolerant” and even deign to learn at times that we are equally intolerant.  It is intoxicating to know you are right; but the greatest tragedies are perpetrated by people who are dogmatically assured that they are right.

This makes me think of something I recent ran across in the blog of Richard Rohr. He noted that we most pay attention when we have a lot of “anti-“ activity going on in our life, as in, “I’m against this, I’m against that…”   Rohr suggests that hen we have a lot of things we are against and are vehemently opposing them and campaigning against them, we should be given pause and should ask ourselves, “Is this our shadow rearing its ugly head?”   This is not to say we should not have standards and convictions and be ready to speak out for them.  But we need to take that “pause” occasionally and make sure that we aren’t merely grinding an axe in the guise of “truth, justice, and the American way.”

“With devotion’s visage and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself.” (Shakespeare)

Political Polarization and Spirituality

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I am following this political brouhaha closely this year in part because it is such a look-see into the human psyche, individually and collectively. I’ve said many times, “We wage the war we are” (W. H. Auden) and that is true also on the individual and collective levels.

I’m really appalled at the overt hostility present today in the political process, the unabashed hatred of O’Bama in particular. At times, on the extreme, it is not even subtle. And I look at the other side…my side…and I see that we too, the “good guys” (wink, wink)…are dug in at the heels also. I recently casually noted to a couple of friends that the real problem in our country is a spiritual problem. But, I quickly backed down, realizing how dorky that sounded. And, merely trotting out the words “spiritual problem” can sound kind of dorky.

But, let me say the same thing but in different words. We have a problem of “values”. The issue is, “What do we value, individually and collectively?” Our need is some unifying ultimate value, “Ultimate” if you please, toward which we can strive individually and collectively. Without this Ultimate value we are inevitable fragmented and any collective purpose is difficult to achieve. Now as far as naming this “Ultimate Value” I have no problem with the word “God”. But that word has been so banalized and vulgarized that many people find it off-putting.

And let me close with a John Masefield sonnet which explains why this word has become so banalized, so vulgarized:

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 themselves the things held in awe.

Masefield saw that so often the object of our worship, our “highest value”, or “God”, is merely our self.