Greta Thunburg, Courage, and Trumpian Cowardice

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A friend this morning was crowing about Greta Thunberg, and even likened her unto Jesus.  I have some hesitation in even sharing this as I know Thunburg would grimace at the comparison.  But I know what my friend had in mind.  Thunberg is a “voice crying in the wilderness” with the “wilderness” consisting of those of us who live lives of “quiet desperation” with our voices muted into compliance of the status quo.  Sure, Thunberg has battled depression as her father noted and this activism is a very healthy and productive means of addressing the bottled up frustration that contributes to depression.  We are all motivated to do and say the things that we do and say. And whatever is driving Greta Thunburg is beautiful and powerful.  It is so sad to see how prominent people like Steven Mnuchin and Donald Trump have sought to diminish her. They are totally unwilling to look at their motivations, their dark side.  They cling to their “objectivity.”

I want to share with you an observation from one of my blogging friends in response to my post of several days ago, quoting Jim Green’s remarks from his book, “Meditations and Depressions”: It is unrealistic, and a misunderstanding of the inner life to aspire to a state of consciousness that is entirely untouched by the storms and the tremors of our passions and our sometimes chaotic thoughts. That would be a rather sinister dream of a meaningless purity – and the end of our humanity. Our pathology and our psychopathology will always be with us. But they don’t need to be always in control. Through our askesis – our practical training and exercise – we can put them in their place: held and embraced by the infinite peace and generosity of the heart.

Greta Thunberg is More Wise Than Steven Mnuchin.

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Today U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took a swipe at the climate change heroine Greta Thunberg, saying she is in no position to give advice on the matter since she has not been to college yet.  Well, let me point out he has been to college yet he works for a man who is so insecure that he had to reassure the nation and the world about the size of his penis and lacked self-awareness to the extent that there are numerous recordings of him clearly voicing his lecherous designs on his own daughter.  And these are but two “trivial” examples of Trump’s impaired judgement. Sometimes human judgement is less impaired when one has yet to be ensconced in the comfort zone of a group think that constitutes reality in her/his culture.  And yes, she is “autistic” and thus can be described as “mentally ill” given the “authority” of the DSM-V, but “mentally ill” is not so “mentally ill” in a culture that puts a mentally ill man at the helm of its government.  This brings to mind a note by Carl Jung, “If you find a sane man, bring him to me and I will cure him.”  Jung knew well that there was a “psychopathology to everyday life” that could produce madmen who would pass as “sane.”  From Thunberg’s “seclusion” in her very private world, she has not lost the ability to peer out and look upon this human comedy and offer critique, not unlike Shakespeare who noted so famously that, “Tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in its petty pace to the last syllable of recorded time. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  Shakespeare saw the lunacy of his day and brought it to the attention of his fellow-travelers in 16th century England.  This lovely young 17- year old lady has the courage to offer a similar critique to our day; a prophetic vision always comes from beyond the pale.

The “Wounded Healer” and Its Pitfalls

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A couple of friends today introduced me to the work of a “wounded healer” that I had not run across, Marsha Linehan.  Linehan is a noted mental health professional, a professor of psychology, psychiatry, and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington who suffered severe mental health issues of her own earlier in her life.  Her turn around was the result of a mystical religious experience which, to cynics can admittedly be credited to “mental illness.”  I am not one of those critics.

The “wounded healer” is one who is not a detached “caring soul” who is offering an aloof “care” to someone who is suffering.  The “wounded healer” is one who has, and is, suffering her/himself and does not draw the distinction between “me and thee” that the aloof, detached care givers offer.  To those who are ensconced in the aloof, detached comfort zone…their mind and heart teeming with clinical lore…this patient or client is a “thing”.  Absent is the awareness of the relationship, the consciousness and experience that “there go I but by the grace of God.”  The wounded healer has seen, experienced, and owned his/her pain and can offer an empathy that those without that woundedness can offer.

However, the pitfall of the wounded healer is the inability to set boundaries.  If that person cannot recognize that even with that powerful empathy there is not simultaneously a distinction between “me and thee” he he/she will be sucked into a morass of self-indulgence in which he/she and the patient is done great harm.  You might want to check out the following link:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/201112/linehan-and-jung-wounded-healers

 

Stymied by Fear in an Arkansas Chicken Pen…by a Duck!!!

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When I was a little tyke, living in the sticks of Arkansas, I recall an innocent little moment when fear etched itself deeply into my heart so that I clearly recall the event six decades later.  I was in the chicken pen and apparently alone when suddenly I found one of my fingers inside the open mouth of a furiously squawking duck.  I guess object constancy had not sunk in with me at that early age…I must have been about two-and-a-half years old…for terror overwhelmed me as if this “crisis” was about to be the end of me.  And I don’t know how this “existential” crisis was resolved, but I faintly remember “momma” calling to me from the front porch.  At that point in development, “momma” was the solution of all woes!

This tempest in the young teapot that I was probably lasted all of a second and a half but I clearly recall it as if it happened yesterday.  Experiences at that stage of development when we are only beginning to “come on line” and find the comfort of an ego to protect us from moments like those that are very intense.  For “limits” are a very fleeting phenomenon then; had this “tragedy” presented itself to me in another year or so, I probably would have been grounded enough in reality to realize, “Hey, take your finger out of the damn duck’s mouth!”  But in that second I was immobilized, stymied by fear, without the comfort of what I would later learn to describe as “reality.”

And fear will do that to one.  At any age!  Fear is part of life but we have been given the capability of addressing our fears, even the fear of fear, but only if we have the maturity and humility to acknowledge, “I’m afraid.”  Failure to acknowledge this dimension of our human-ness will leave us crippled with maladaptive emotional and behavioral strategies than can be more deadly than the thing of which we are secretly fearful.

And this brings me to my favorite “whipping boy,” Trumpism and its raucous, shrieking mouth piece in the body of one Donald J. Trump.  The Republican Party is stymied by fear that it will not acknowledge, they have their “finger stuck in the mouth of a duck” and are so overwhelmed with the threat of this darkness that they can’t employ “the purge” that our Constitution offers.  They have dug themselves in over their heads, though they had and still have the levers of governmental process to set limits with Trump; though now it appears too late for them.  They are now trapped by their own inertia, an inertia that all of us has an element of, but one they have allowed to metastasize.   They are now enthralled with Trump and have placed their emotional, spiritual, economic, and political welfare is in his hands.

So often in my “day-to-day” Jesus comes to my mind now that His wisdom is longer mere dogma; and on this occasion it is, “Perfect love casteth out fear.”  I certainly do not, however, have “perfect love” as fear is a daily visitor to this dog-and-pony show that cavorts about in my skull.  But I do have confidence that this “perfect love” is present somewhere in my heart, and always has been…even back in that pen …and this allows me to face fears that I’ve avoided all of my life.  And this “perfect love” abides in all of our hearts, even in that of the Trumpster, though I don’t have any hope that he can find the humility to seek its comfort.  Seeking this Comfort would be tantamount to admitting a need, admitting that he is insufficient in the sense that all of us are, and that he needs forgiveness; he could then find acceptance of his internal haunts and fears and no longer have to lash out at the world.  And, btw, “forgiveness” is today an easy and almost meaningless word.  But I don’t see it as a judicial decree from some “Pillsbury doughboy in the sky” but a gift that is, yes, from “out there” in some sense, but simultaneously woven into the very fabric of our being.  It is something we have to evoke from the depths of our being, an evocation which can only occur with that Pauline “fear and trembling” that comes as we “work out our own salvation.”

Well, I’ve come along way here in this narrative, all the way from an Arkansas chicken pen in the mid-1950’s to the “insane” notion of “perfect love” here as the year 2020 beckons. And it is “insane” in the sense that there is no place for it in the “sane” world that we have allowed to descend into madness, protected from this realization by our preference for an illusory reality.   But this salvific dimension of human experience has been with us from our beginning, and even before, if one will here indulge me here, briefly, with the notion of a pre-existent deity!  And this same maddening fate would devour us all individually, and collectively, if we ever should ever lose the vision and experience of hope.

A CAVEAT HERE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FEAR AND ANXIETY— PERHAPS THE FEAR I’VE ADDRESSED ABOVE IS ON A DEEPER LEVEL ANXIETY.  IN FACT, THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH FROM Samantha Harvey, in The Guardian a couple of days ago, MAKES ME FEEL THE NEED TO ADDRESS THE ISSUE OF “ANXIETY” RATHER THAN “FEAR.”  PERHAPS ANOTHER TIME!

The flight from Bristol airport passes over in a distant smear of sound. I switch on the light, get my laptop and Google I AM AWAKE. An article explains how fear and anxiety, often conflated, belong to different parts of the amygdala – fear arises in its central nucleus, which is responsible for sending messages to the body to prepare a short-term response – run, freeze, fight – whereas anxiety arises in the area responsible for emotions, a part which affects longer-term behavioural change. Fear is a response to a threat, anxiety a response to a perceived threat – the difference between preparing to escape a saber-toothed tiger that is here and now in front of you (because it’s always saber-toothed tigers in the examples) and preparing to escape the idea of a saber-toothed tiger in case one appears around the next bend. While fear will quickly resolve – you will run away, fight it or be eaten – anxiety has no such resolution. You will need to stand guard in case. Standing guard will make the perceived threat seem more real, which necessitates a more vigilant standing guard. Fear ends when the threat is gone, while anxiety, operating in a hall of mirrors, self-perpetuates.

 

(Link to Samantha Harvey Guardian article— https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/28/its-as-if-im-falling-from-a-50-storey-building-a-novelists-year-without-sleep

Republican Party Stymied by Its Own Self-Referentiality

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Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is not “playing fair.”  The House has impeached Trump, but she is refusing to formally passing the formal impeachment document to the Senate where it has already been determined, and announced, it will not go anywhere.  The Republican Senate is now crying “foul play” as according to them the protocol clearly calls for this impeachment referral to be simply passed on to them.  But Pelosi is refusing to do this until she has the reassurance that a “fair” trial will take place, including one with witnesses. It is very ironic that the GOP is now diligently calling for protocol and “the law” to be followed though they have systematically followed the bidding of Trump to over ride such niceties when it serves their own interest.

 This is very revealing about the heart of this matter, and all matters of any magnitude involve the heart.  Yes, the GOP is correct that the Democrats have an agenda here, an “ax to grind” if you please, but then who doesn’t?  The Republicans have hoisted themselves on their own petard, hypocritically accusing the Democrats of the very thing they have assiduously practiced throughout the Trump administration…and before.  The GOP does not see that it too, like all humans, has “intentionality” though they readily see it with others.  But to those who lack “self-awareness”, the gift of at least rudimentary meta-cognition, there is no “intentionality” with themselves there is only the proclamation of what “is true.”  They fail to see that what they see as “truth” is a self-serving perspective and subject to the review of the rest of the human race.  But if you are locked in your own narrow little view of the world it is frightening to loosen the lock a bit and come to find that there are other viewpoints that need to be considered.  The more rigid one’s “narrow little view of the world” is the more difficult it is to loosen this lock a bit; at times for some it is not possible.

 Poet Emily Dickenson has a little quip that is so relevant, “The mind too near itself cannot see distinctly.”  She realized that a mind that is knotted into a self-referential ball of yarn, pulled tightly, it cannot see clearly.  It can only see what it wants to see, even if it is harmful to themselves and to those around them.  This is clearly seen in a religious cult; it is very telling that many people are seeing the Republican Party as very “knotted,” comparing the predicament of that party to cultic behavior.

My Personal Struggle With the Ego

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I write about the ego a lot here and elsewhere.  Yes, I’m critical of its role in others but often admit it is very much a personal problem.  It always is if one is a human.  But only with the acquisition of the “ego integrity” I wrote about last time can one begin to recognize just how big a role it plays in his life.

When the ego is “hitting on all eight-cylinders” it is impenetrable.  I can remember pretty well in my youth when I was very insulated with a full panoply of the ego’s machinations, including hyper religiosity.  And religion is fertile ground for the ego as it offers a haven where one can be protected with the self-delusion that “the Spirit of God is leading me and therefore I see things correctly.  My judgment is sound.”  I well recall a moment when I was 18 years of age when this impenetrable religious veneer of mine was challenged in high school.  A girl I knew very well, and still know very well today, challenged the false piety I had just demonstrated in a school assembly.  I’ll never forget being taken aback, my “cage” rattled…but only briefly!  For the ego, when threatened is so adept at just sloughing off the criticism and retreating to the cacophony of internal reassurances, “No, this is not so.  This is a bit awkward, but just go away.  This is not so.”  And with that internal litany I resumed my performance art of a fundamentalist faith and fledgling ministry. But not for long!!!  In less than a year my tenuous, extremely impoverished identity would begin to submit to the “Divine threat” of Light and an adventure that continues now a half a century later.

My defensive retreat at age 18, essentially a “doubling down” inside an internal fortress is very human.  I continue this today, utilizing one of the many Divine adaptations available when the going gets too rough, relying on literature, music, philosophy, spiritual teachers, mantra’s and such.  Oh, I must not forget gardening, in season, and my marvelous canine son, Petey, two of the best “adaptations.” The God I believe in today gives us these adaptations, these “fig leaves” to cover up the existential nakedness when it becomes too much.

One source of my literary adaptations is the wisdom of poet T.S. Eliot who declared, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”  My country right now is getting an industrial-strength dose of “reality” that we’ve been avoiding, possibly since our beginning.  This reality is trying to tell us that something is amiss and now we must find the courage to let “reality” do its work, bringing to the table the harsh rebuke of Eliot, “Oh the shame of motives late revealed, and the awareness of things ill done and done to others harm which once we took for exercise of virtue”

Ego Integrity, Shame, and Politics

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At a family get together decades ago, one of my young nephews got into some mischief, did something “wrong,” and his mother challenged him sternly, “Billy, why did you do that?”  I’ll never forget the look on the face of that five year old boy.  His eyes glared with guilt and fear, he looked away, he stammered and then announced, “No!”  His guilt was obvious to all; some of us smiled, remembering our youth when we had been there in Billy’s shoes.  Years later In my clinical practice I was presented one morning with a six year old boy with impulse control issues (adhd) who had been rescued from an abusive family by his kindly grandparents.  Sammy, as I’ll call this young tyke, eagerly greeted game playing as part of his treatment plan.  This strategy was invaluable for a patient with these issues, providing an opportunity to teach respect for rules of simple board games, as well as patience.  His moments of frustration and anger could then be explored in relation to behavior in school and family life.  Sammy had very little control over his impulses, not able to accept having made a bad move and insisting that got to have a “do-over.”  He even threw the board one time in frustration as I emphasized a simple rule.  Often he would simply lie though it was obvious that he had cheated.

Both of these young lads had not reached the developmental stage of being able to admit having made a mistake, having been “wrong”, which is a basic skill in participating in the human race.  The social body functions only if certain basic rules of organization, structure, civility, decorum, and respect for others can be adhered to.  In each of these instances, they were off to a poor start in accomplishing this goal.

“Ego integrity” can handle critical feedback from others though it often still hurts deeply.  I remember the impeachments of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.  Each of them were deeply humiliated, and tried to lie their way out of it, but ultimately had to accept their fate and admit they had erred.  In Nixon’s case, he had to accept the great humiliation of being forced to resign from office.  Each of us have an ego and our ego is designed to attempt to save face; this is how the ego is designed.  But when one has developmentally matured enough, his ego can have the integrity to accept the shame of humbly admitting, “I was wrong.  I made a mistake.”  In some contexts this might even be framed as, “I have sinned.”

When one lacks this ego integrity, and is is extremely immature and overwhelmed with shame and humiliation, the individual will go to any extreme to save face, even resorting to violence.  This violence can be overt but also subtle, i.e. taking political form, and having a devastating or catastrophic impact on the social body. This individual cannot back down.

Perspectival Entrapment vs Reality

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The perspectival entrapment that I explored a couple of days ago is egregiously being played out currently in the impasse of our government.  This impeachment issue is proving very divisive as the Republicans and Democrats have pledged their troth rigidly to their “pony in the horse race.”  Yes, I certainly see the Republicans being more intransigent…blatantly so, but either side of a disputation like this must remember that on some level they too have a “pony in the race.”  Otherwise they are as ridiculous as the bizarre and inane Republcan Congressman Louie Gohmert, who last year pointed at a Democrat being interviewed, and passionately declared, “Just look at him!  Just look how biased he is!”  This brings to my mind the New Testament admonishment, “We see through a glass darkly.” How tragic if we see darkness in others and not our own.  That is called “projection.”

Having a perspective, and feeling passionate about it, is very human and even desirable.  But when one is “dug in at the heels” on an issue to the point that he is willing to totally disregard another view on the issue, his “dug-in (ness)” will reflect merely a self-serving ego investment; and ego, when pushed to an extreme, cannot back down.  That would be admitting he was “wrong” and acknowledging wrong is a something a very insecure, fragile, egomaniac cannot do  They are inclined to double-down, round up the troops on their side of the disputation, and argue with great passion and intensity.  In an extreme they will use violence rather than endure the sting of humiliation at being wrong, a sting which could be merely the dawning of a very noble human quality–humility.  It takes humility to admit, “Oh, I was not as right as I thought I was.  I wish I’d have listened to the admonishment of the bumper-sticker, ‘Don’t believe everything you think.’”

My concern with this political morass is more than mere politics.  This conflict is about the very definition of reality in our culture, what is real and unreal, what is true and what is untrue, what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.  Oh, of course, distinctions in these matters are always more nebulous that we like to think; but, there are some basic standards of human decency that are usually more or less maintained.  Beneath the surface of the “reality” that we take for granted, there is a substrate which I like to describe as Reality.  Yes, with the capitalized “R” I’m teasing with the notion of “god”, but words like god and the rest of “god-talk” which is usually mere rhetoric I can’t help today but grimace and groan about.  To illustrate my concern, I offer a quote from Shakespeare that describes just about the whole of my spiritual life and what passes for a lot of spiritual life today, “With devotions visage and pious action, they do sugar o’er the devil himself.”  Oh for those days when my perspectival enslavement kept me in the solace of that darkness!!!

Our Existential, Perspectival Imprisonment

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There was an interesting and very revealing exchange this morning between Joy Reid (MSNBS) and an internet respondent.  Reid described the Republicans as a, “Racial and religious cult of personality.”  The internet response from a woman who obviously was a Republican quipped, “Sounds like the far left who can’t look past their own racial and cultural identity.”  This woman brought to the table a key dimension in our nation’s present drama, noting how “racial and cultural identity” shape our view of the world.  BUT, what she probably does not realize is that the “bias” she sees with Joy Reid and Democrats also is very relevant to her and the Republican Party.

This matter of perspective I have summarized as, “What you see is what you are.”  It is impossible to not let our background and very immature, even infantile, desires influence how we see the world.  BUT, it is possible to recognize…and experience…this existential quandary and thereby find a moment of “self” awareness which can make room for others, for difference.  Philosopher Paul Ricoeur put it this way, “It is impossible to have a perspective on your perspective without somehow escaping it.”  The core issue here is of the heart, a willingness to recognize…and experience…that all of us trapped in, “the small bright circle of our consciousness beyond which lies the dark.”  This “darkness” is described by some as a “gap,” the sudden ability to see that beyond our narrow little view of the world there are others who have their “own narrow little” and it needs respect just as does ours.  On this subject, which I emphasize so often here and in my day-to-day life, I think that this perspectival trap that is endemic to being human is relevant to the famous teaching of Jesus—to find our life we have to give it up; or, as I like to paraphrase, “Get over yourself.”  We are taught in my culture to be intoxicated with our ideas, our “thinking,” and fail to ever learn that, “the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”  The word is not a “thing”,  but a mere pointer to the “Thing”, aka in philosophy known as, “the Thing in itself.  Refusing to acknowledge this existential dilemma makes one an ideologue.

This is a “spiritual” matter that I’m addressing, but words like “spiritual” are so tarnished by present-day life that often it means only some “mind” set we are comfortable with.  And in dressing it up with words like “god” or the “holy spirit” we fail to recognize we are often only referring to a mind set which has no reference to anything other than the aforementioned quote by Conrad Aiken, “the small bright circle of our consciousness.”  I I am finding that words like “spiritual” and other “god-talk” rhetoric are often missing the “personal” dimension.  Making these words, and the whole of any Holy Writ, has value when we allow it to sink into the secret crevices of our heart where, per Emily Dickinson, “the meanings are.”  In Christian tradition this is relevant to the Apostle Paul who described this emotional/intellectual/spiritual quest involves being open to the “Spirit of God” which is “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”  Here I will provide the whole of the above referenced Emily Dickinson poem:

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –
‘Tis the seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –

 

The Challenge of “Naming Our Demons”

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Early in my clinical career a client of mine was a young truck driver who was dealing with substance abuse.  Shortly after the therapy began, I asked him to share about his family life as a child.  As he complied and described life in a working-class Arkansas family, he recalled his mother one time flashing her boobs at him when he was about four years of age; this event shamed him greatly and he had carried it with him into adulthood.  Not long after, as the work of therapy progressed, he suddenly told me he had recently had a homosexual encounter.  When he shared this, he immediately burst into laughter, uproarious laughter as if a burden had been lifted by the simple disclosure of these two events by which he had been shamed.  He must have intuitively sensed an, “unconditional positive regard” that was available in the clinical framework that I offered;  he felt free to share these two events, and others, without the fear of being judged.

It is shame that binds us into a self-defeating life, often with tragic outcomes.  Suddenly this young man found freedom from this shame bind and could only laugh that he had been tyrannized for most of his twenty-something years.  There is power in saying the unsayable, in admitting that which is too painful to admit.  There is power in putting subjective anguish into speech, “speaking words that give shape to our anguish” as George Eliot described it.  But speaking openly and honestly about what is going on in our heart, especially if we have been raised in a culture where this is verboten.  Many children learn to “shut down” even before they can verbalize, for they have certainly been very aware of the “tyranny of the shoulds” abounding in the household.  The reach of this tyranny is most lethal in early childhood as it shapes attitudes, the ability to trust others and one’s own subjective experience.

Here is relevant wisdom from Lauren van der Post: “There is nothing in your life too terrible or too sad that will not be your friend when you find the right name to call it, and calling it by its own name hastening it will come upright to your side.” As Carl Jung would say, “The shadow is to be embraced, not denied”; or in the words of poet Ranier Rilke, “The heart has its beastly little treasures.”