Confined to the “Pauser Reason”

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I do occasionally “practice what I preach.” Last week I shared my thoughts re the “judgment of God” being a label that we have applied to the terror of suddenly being stabbed with self-awareness after having said or done something ill-advised or even stupid. Though the “self-reflection” I’m going to share here does not merit such a harsh description, it does illustrate the value of mulling over one’s speech and, in the case, writing.   Specifically, I was musing earlier this morning over my frequent use in this venue of Shakespeare’s phrase, “the pauser reason.”

My penchant for this expression reveals just how important this “pauser” has been and still is with me. And it is a gift but like most gifts it carries a price tag. I’m sure I first acquired this skill in my early youth and must have been like a kid with a hammer—“everything’s a nail!” For learning to be hyper-vigilant in my dysfunctional family I must have quickly learned the wisdom of taking pause and learning what was likely to transpire as a result of my words and actions. I learned to be an “observer.” This detached stance to life is described in the Jungian typology terminology as a “thinking type” and I have erred too much in that direction. Yes, I “think too much” and have learned, like Hamlet, that if all my thinking “were quartered, (it) would be one part wisdom and three parts cowardice.” With this “pauser” in over-drive throughout my life I have done like T. S. Eliot and “measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

But even here I am only making an observation and not complaining. I’m increasingly happy with my life even as in retrospect I have not lived it with the abandonment that some enjoy. I think the gods knew that I couldn’t handle “abandonment” to impulses like some can and would get into too much mischief…or worse. So they huddled together and said, we’ll “buckle this guy’s distempered cause (tightly) within the belt of rule.” (Variation of a line from King Lear)

Intensity, Viola, and Meditation

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I love chamber music.  And this passion had its roots even before my wife started to learn the violin and viola.  There is an intensity in the strings that resonates with the intensity you often see demonstrated in this venue.  Here is a poem about the viola which likens the artistry of the violist to meditation:

INTENSITY AS VIOLIST by Michelle Burke

That she was not pretty she knew.

The flowers delivered into her hands post-concert by the young girl,
pretty, would be acknowledged only. To display was to invite
comparison.

Skilled at withholding, she withheld: it was a kind of giving. As
when meditation is a kind of action,

a way of leaning into music the way one leans into winter wind, the
way a mule leans into a harness,

the way a lover leans into the point of deepest penetration.

After a ship’s prow cuts the water, the water rushes back twice as
hard.

The Apocalypse Within

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Psychiatrist D. W. (Donald) Winnicott once observed regarding his clients, “The breakdown that is feared has already occurred.”  He knew that his clients’ reluctance to forthrightly address their issues was because the pain was too great for their conscious mind to undertake…at least initially.  Many of his clients had been subjected to trauma and had every reason to fear buried memories of the anguish.  Others, though not overtly traumatized, had not been able to successfully adapt to the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” and their denial system had compounded the problem to the point that often it approached “trauma.”  (Scott Peck in “The Road Less Traveled” noted that, “Neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering.”)

All of us have fears though many of them do not amount to the terror of Winnicott’s clients.  But our reluctance to face these fears can be equally intense and lock us into attitudinal and behavioral patterns that keep us from reaching the point where our life is in full flow.  We are like Hamlet and “cling to those ills that we have rather than flee to others that we know not of.”

Some whose “breakdown” was acute and merit the description “traumatic” will be prone to see catastrophe “out there” in the world rather than to address their own that are within.  Furthermore, some whose pain can only be described as “plain vanilla” still prefer to project it “out there” as their narcissism prevents them from recognizing that they have any faults.  This applies to individuals as well as groups as even groups can have a narcissistic dimension to the ideology that holds them together.

 

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Furthermore, if you will indulge my penchant for the esoteric, I even conjecture that even the healthiest individual has deep-seated memories of the catastrophe which was the birth of the ego, that primal differentiation of the ego from its matrix which in the depths of the unconscious parallels the big bang.  None of us have actual memory of this event and never will and don’t have to worry about the possibility.  We are hard-wired to have no memories of that psychic catastrophe in which the ego was born.  But I do think that sometimes refracted memories of this event filter into the pre-conscious and influence our dreams and conscious thoughts, often providing an explanation to why an individual can see so clearly why the problem is with “them” when to us looking on we muse to ourselves, “Oh, if they could only see.”  But for them to “see,” i.e. “withdraw their projections,” would entail more pain than they can bear.    Shakespeare had this denial in mind when he had Macbeth declaring, “My dull brain is racked by things forgotten.”

The Moon is Made Out of Cheese!

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This is just a whimsical notion I’ve tossed around for years to illustrate lunacy. And our imagination is a myriad of whimsical notions some of which are occasionally more outrageous than that one. This dimension of the human heart is the birthplace of everything that makes up the world, everything from the wheel to bread-ties. Without the capacity to imagine we never would have even made it to the Stone Age.  And, yes one is free to imagine that the moon is out of cheese but hopefully the notion would not find lodging in too many minds!

My mind/heart is now teeming with these whimsical notions as I have taken giant strides towards escaping the linear logic of the “literallew” of my youth. And, I feel that these whimsies are fine as they are just that—“whimsies.” But, some of them aren’t so nice…to put it mildly…and fortunately I have the “faculty of judgment” available which empowers me to not pay any attention to them. And if our imagination is in play, there will be a myriad of fancies that flutter past our mind’s eye and we cannot be dismayed by the unpleasant ones.

History is the tale of visionaries who have dared to imagine the impossible. One simple example is that unknown soul who dared to imagine that the earth was not flat back in the 16th century. Whoever he or she was must have been hesitant to share this “crazy notion” and when it was first shared the outcome was certainly not pleasant. The “tyranny of the way things are” holds us captive and it takes bold individuals to dare and question that “psychopathology of everyday life.”

I think religion should have a role in challenging this “tyranny” and does on occasion though usually the insight of the challengers is quickly co-opted and turned into dogma. Scientists are often earth-shakers as they are willing to think outside of the box and bring new dimensions to our consciousness. And art provides my favorite “earth-shakers,” people who are not only able to think outside of the box but at times outside of the box that the box is in!!!

The imagination is very much related to the body. One whose imagination finds the freedom to flow will be in touch with his/her physicality and will be comfortable with it. The unconscious, the gut-level dimension of the heart, will be allowed to speak its truths some of which are occasionally very dark at first glance. As Ranier Rilke put it, “The heart has its beastly little treasures.”

Ideas, Logs, and “Ideologues”

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A new friend of mine who reads this blog shared a thought about my recent musings re ideologues. She used her lovely artistic imagination to juxtapose the word ideologue with the admonishment of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount to the hypocrites to first remove, “the log in your eye” rather than focusing on the speck in the eye of others. Her observation points out the projection of ideologues who see in others their own faults. And, of course, they have no awareness of this and if “awareness” should venture too near to them they will “gird up their loins” and flee the threat.

But my focus here is not ideologues and their “sensible” non-sense but the beauty of the human imagination seen here with the observation of this artist/musician. (See Marthawebb.com) Artists are gifts to human kind as they can use this imagination to “play with reality” and suggest associations that others might not see. Martha’s observation has brought together a verse from the Bible and the word “ideologue” and given emphasis to the hypocrisy of “ideologue-ites.” Though the word “log” has nothing to do etymologically with the word “ideologue”, her observation will always stick in my mind when I hear the word “ideologue” or when I see one in action.

Playing with reality” is critical if we are to be human…or at least one who is “alive.”   If we don’t mature to the point where we can step back from our view of the world a bit, we will live our lives under the tyranny of a worldview that fell our way by happenstance. In some sense, “reality” will have “lived us” rather than us having “lived” in reality and by “living” participated meaningfully in it. This is what Thoreau had in mind when he declared that he feared coming to the end of his life and realizing what he had lived was not life. And Jesus had the same thing in mind when he posed the question, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?”

“Perfect Love Casteth Out Fear”…Eventually!

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Hmm. Well, if it does I’ve got a lot of work to do for I have a lot of fears. But these fears are diminishing as I’m slowly beginning to accept God’s love, realizing that this love is a dimension of life that is not “out there” in some objectified projection from our collective and individual heart. God is immanent as well as transcendent.

But fear will never go away completely for it comes with being human. Those who are so proud of being totally fearless might take caution as this could be merely the brazen arrogance of psychopathy. To be is to be vulnerable. And to be fully human, or to be in the process of maturing as a human, is to be increasingly comfortable with the experience of vulnerability. And that is often scary!

I have tried most of my life to escape vulnerability…and human-ness…with ideologue-ism. It is a very dependable escape and when we opt for that “fig leaf” we will always have the affirmation from others who have subscribed to similar ideas. And, I can assure you that it is so comforting to know that one is in the comforting warmth of like-minded “believers” and to have that firm conviction that one’s view of the world is “right.” Coming to the point of maturity and seeing that this “escape from freedom” was a self-imposed prison has taken courage that I didn’t know that I had…and, I don’t really know that I have it even yet! But I see so clearly now the tyranny of ideas when not moderated by an open heart. I see now so clearly how the ideologue-ism of those days of my life included participation in a group effort to control others. And I see this same poison so vividly illustrated today in extremist groups such as ISIS and political factions in my country who seeks to deny rights to minorities, even the right to vote and the right to health care.

 

 

 

“Apocolypse Now”—Always Near to Some

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Two days ago Senator Ted Cruz presented his stock-issue tale of woes, wrapping it up by saying, “Your world is on fire!” An alarmed three-year old girl in the crowd innocently asked, to no one in particular, “Is the world on fire?” As the crowd chuckled, Cruz tried to soften the blow with an answer but he had done his damage. This young sweetie had implanted in her innocent little heart the knowledge that the world is a dangerous place and doom is near at any moment.

Well, the world is a dangerous place and “doom” is possible any moment in that misfortune or even death is always a possibility. But Mr. Cruz and his fear-mongering allies know that trotting out a litany of woes and emphasizing impending doom is a perfect way to impact the old-brain fear-base that we all have and is especially predominant in his party’s base. Now three-year old children are very impressionable but so are these “low-information” voters that predominate the extreme of Cruz’s party. I, too, have a fear-base but I also have a neo-cortex that allows meta-cognition and the ability to formulate a hopeful scenario even in the face of apparent “doom.” For example, I am aging and the River Styx is fast approaching but this dreadful notion is not as frightening to me as I’m able to approach the end of life with hope. (So far, anyway!)

Being a Christian like Mr. Cruz, I subscribe to the notion that “Perfect love casteth out fear” but I think this should disallow fear as a political ploy. Though not a politician, I do not have any reason to subscribe to, much less constantly promulgate, a litany of woes when there is so much to be grateful for and so many opportunities before me. But, if I was a politician in the Republican Party, I too would probably have “drank the kool-aid” and know that fear-mongering…or “catastrophizing”…was the sure-fire way of winning over the base of my party. Certainly the ills of our society and of the world need to be addressed, but focusing on these issues to roil the masses is cheap and even tawdry.

 

Thoughts from a Recovering Ideologue

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Following my post of yesterday, I learned that Senator Tom Cotton illustrated a point I made by declaring that he did not regret anything he had said in his letter to Iran. Well, f course not. Any ideologue cannot back down, cannot admit that he is “wrong” because to admit that any of his ideas are less than “Right” is to understand that his perspective on the world is limited. That is much related to something uncovered recently in his college newspaper editorials in which he declared, “Spare me the diversity seminars.”   “Diversity seminars” are of as much value to him as they are to ISIS. If the notion…and experience of diversity…sunk into his heart it would totally melt down. The house of cards that is his reality would come tumbling down.

Of course, I am talking from experience and am guilty of the “projection” that I speak of so often. For, just as an alcoholic in recovery announces that “once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic” and ideologue in recovery like myself has to make a similar announcement, “Once an ideologue, always an ideologue.” But with alcoholism and with ideologue-ism, “confessing the sin” is a step in the direction of addressing the underlying issue. As poet Conrad Aiken noted, “To name the abyss is to avoid it,” though in this case I would say “to begin to get some distance from it.”

Yes, ideas are still very important to me. And, furthermore, without ideas we could not function as human beings. But, seeing that ideas are not the “thing-in-itself” I am now less obnoxious than I used to be and can even handle the realization that some who stumble upon this palaver are briefly stunned before flashing a sign of the cross at the computer screen and running from the room screaming. And that is the right thing for them to do for I offer here only a finite perspective on the world and for those who respond with disapproval are doing the right thing…for them! And I will never want to kill them, or shame and humiliate them. Heck, I won’t even try to stop them from voting! Diversity is good! As the French say, “Vive le difference!”

But sharing this notion with Tom Cotton and his minions would be…borrowing rural Arkansas wisdom from my dear momma…”like pouring water on a duck’s back.” And for you “city folks,” the water just runs off a duck’s back without ever penetrating the surface and getting to the skin. So with his intransigence he is safe. And that allows him to feel really good about himself and makes him politically tenable with like-minded souls. But in his position, there are many more important issues on the table than his own safe, smug little worldview. And that is something we must all remember each day.

 

 

GOP Facing God’s Judgment!

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Matthew 12:36-27 “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

I used to interpret these words of Jesus to mean that some time in the distant future I would stand before God and listen to Him remind me of ugly and stupid things that I had said and done in my life. But now think that one dimension of the “judgment of God,” occurs at those moments when “reality” confronts me with the lunacy of a particular vein of thought that has preoccupied me, influencing my speech and my behavior. Some of these “judgments,” especially from my youth, still make me cringe with the realization, “How could I have said that? How could I have done that!” Sometimes the angst is so intense it is even visceral. These are my “Rick Perry moments” when I realize I had completely made an ass of myself; and, yes, I often respond with Perry’s famous, “Oops.” For, our words reveal what is going on in our hearts, that unconscious domain which we can never “know” in the sense of “wrapping out head around it.”  But these “Rick Perry moments” have helped me to learn that this region of my heart is ever present and offers many opportunities to learn something about myself.

The Republican Party in the U.S. Congress is currently being exposed to this same “judgment of God” as the “The Letter” they impulsively wrote to Iran is being deemed “ill-advised”  by many.  Some of those who signed this letter are voicing second thoughts about the decision and criticism from outside the GOP echo chamber is mounting. But having “second thoughts” about our thoughts, words, and deeds, individually and collectively, is part of being a human and the self-reflection can lead to modifying one’s agenda. This is listening to “reality” rather than stubbornly and blindingly continuing on a course of action or with a vein of thought simple because it is too painful to acknowledge to oneself and others, “Oops! I was wrong.” This simple self-reflection is a God-given neurological gift if we have the courage to use our forebrain to monitor old-brain impulses.   But for those moments when we fail to do so, we have the T. S. Eliot wisdom, “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.”

The unconscious fear of being exposed is intrinsic to human nature. But I have learned that the pain is more bearable since I found the courage to acknowledge that I always have so much I’m hiding and that when bits of it surfaces I should see it as a gift, albeit a painful gift!  I think it was Ranier Rilke that said, “The heart has its beastly little treasures.” The God-given gift of self-reflection makes the moments of vulnerability less intense and allows me to say, “Oh there you go again, being human!”

Having the “thoughts and intents of our heart” exposed often evokes the feeling of being “wrong.” But this feeling of being “wrong” is ok as we are all only human and will always find ourselves subscribing to ideas that are self-serving and ultimately counter-productive for everyone. But when we are trapped in our ideas…when we are ideologues…we are so invested in our ideas that we cannot allow them to be modified by the feedback of others. People who cannot acknowledge and experience this fear of being wrong, i.e. the “judgment of God,” will likely spend their lives projecting their anguish onto others, seeing the “wrong” out there and often seeking to obliterate it. As psychologist Martha Beck noted, “You spot it, you got it!” People obsessed with attacking and condemning others for being “wrong,” are merely diverting their attention from the painful challenge of the Apostle Paul to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

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AN AFTERTHOUGHT—Well, the Apostle Paul’s suggestion is a good one but after thinking about it, I’ve decided, “Bah humbug! I’m gonna continue to blame those dang Republicans!!!  Listen, I’m “preaching” here and don’t think I should have to “practice what I preach!”

(For more info on the backlash the Republicans are experiencing, see the following link—http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/14/gop-iran-letter-criticism_n_6868398.html)

 

 

 

 

Out Smarting our Brains!!!

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Wray Herbert is a journalist who has written about science and psychology for the past 25 years. He recently wrote in Salon a report about neurophysiology and the ability to “out smart our own brains.” (See the following link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/temptation-in-the-neurons_b_6861836.html) Of course he does not believe that we can actually “out-smart” our own brain but with willingness to learn from modern neurophysiology we can learn that our thought patterns are often driven by something other than we are conscious. With this gift of meta-cognition we can self-monitor on occasion and identify maladaptive patterns of thinking and behaving. In my clinical practice I would often use cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) strategies, one of which was to help clients identify these “mal-adaptive thought patterns” which CBT calls, “stinkin’ thinkin’”

Recently Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas raised my ire with his letter to Iran that signed also by 47 other senators. This action reveals a rigid certainty in their heart which allowed him them to jeopardize complex negotiations between President Obama and other world leaders with Iran over nuclear disarmament. If Cotton and his colleagues could have employed the Shakespearean “pauser reason” they could have been more judicious in pursuing their goals. Having spent most of my life in Arkansas and being a “good ole boy” myself, Mr. Cotton is really “grinding my gears.” or, as I like to put it, has my “panties in a wad.”

My emotional reaction has reminded me that I’ve spent most of my life as an ideologue myself and that the first half of this self-imposed prison sentence found me very rigid. Though now I have changed, there is always a residual presence of the ideologue, which I call, “literallew,” that I have never exorcised and never will completely. For example, I often find myself taking my own “pet thoughts” too seriously and at times find myself using them as a hammer. Eckhart Tolle’s teachings tell us that “thought” is what confines us to the space-time continuum, living our life in the past or in the future but not in the Present moment. And, there is only the Present moment. The past and future are only fancies many of which are not realistic and sometimes delusional. And Tolle certainly realizes that we cannot do without “thinking” but insists that if we acknowledge other dimensions of our reality then our “thinking” can be less rigid and less self-centered.

“Pet ideas” are so easy to take so seriously because they often embody and perpetuate a view of the world with which we are comfortable. If we are too fond of these “pets” we will be unable to compromise with diverse points of view; for, allowing these “pets” to be questioned will tap a fear our ego has of losing control. But slavery to these “pet ideas” is always just slavery to our ego and the ego never likes to consider the possibility that it is not in control. To a person in such bondage, the consideration of neurophysiology (and the unconscious) on his thinking is just not permitted.

Decades ago I read a relevant observation somewhere, “Our thinking is the belated rationalization of conclusions to which we’ve already been led by our desires.”