Perils of Excessive Love

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As is obvious, I love words. They speak volumes too us, but only if we are willing to break them open and let their meaning flow. Someone once said that to make a poem just grab a word and pull on it. It is the “pulling on it” that breaks it and lets its hidden riches spring forth.

Now we can’t do this with all words! That would get absurd. But key words, words that portend great value merit some of this “pulling”. I would like to focus briefly on the word “love.”

It is so easily used and has become so common place that often it has no value. For example, two people meet and find each other attractive, they are consumed with lust, and they “do the deed”, and ipso facto they announced, “Oh, we are in love!” Well, perhaps but only time will tell.

In my clinical practice, in my personal experience, and in my reading I have seen so many examples of horrible things take place under the name of “love.” For example, I’ve seen parents control and manipulate their children to keep them dependent on them, to keep them safe from “this evil, dangerous world”, when their real intent was merely to keep them from leaving home. I’ve seen this “invertedness” so extreme that at best the only “marrying-out” that could take place was to marry and pull up a double-wide next door to mom and daddy. I’ve seen extended families living in double-wides on a small plot of land. I’ve seen marriages gravely impaired because the primary emotional attachment with one of the partners was still with his/her mother.

A popular bromide is “love holds with an open hand.” It is often hard to love with that in mind as our own neediness is to powerful; and neediness is part of the human experience and even a component of love. But when neediness becomes paramount it could devour the other person and everyone in its path. Tangentially related, W. H. Auden asked, ‘Suppose we love no friends or wives, but certain patterns in our lives?”

C. S. Lewis in The Great Divorce describes one mother’s love as being so needy and so oblivious to the reality of her son that she is willing to “love” him into hell itself. He described this “excess of love” as a “defect”, noting “She loved her son too little, not too much….But it well may be that at this moment she’s demanding to have him down with her in hell. That kind is sometimes perfectly ready to plunge the soul they say they love in endless misery if only they can still in some fashion possess it.”

C. S. Lewis and Shame

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In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis said re shame:

Don’t you remember on earth there were things too hot to touch with you finger but you could drink them alright? Shame is like that. If you will attempt it—if you will drink the cup to the bottom—you will find it very nourishing; but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.

This made me think of the Richard Rohr observation which I recently shared, “I look daily for some little humiliation in my life.” He explained that he did this as it reflected an opportunity to address an occasion of his ego rearing its ugly head.

I think that Lewis and Rohr realize/realized the role that shame plays in spirituality. Its presence, when not addressed and acknowledged, leads to profound ugliness and even brutality in the spiritual world. But, addressed and acknowledged, embraced if you will, provides an opportunity to draw a little closer to one’s Source. For, I intuitively know that shame lies at the core of our identity and we have to tippy-toe into it as we approach that core. And, I might add it behooves us to have someone holding our hand as we begin to tippy-toe into it—perhaps a pastor, a therapist, a friend, or a spouse.

But we must avoid the easy way out which is to cling to dogma, those “well worn words and ready phrases” (Conrad Aiken) which insulate us from any real, human/spiritual experience. We must go beyond the shell of the words, the “letter of the law”, and get into the Spirit.

One last thought on this note. Twenty years ago John Bradshaw was in the self-help vanguard with a series of books on the family. In one of them he noted that in his clinical work he felt that shame was the core issue with a lot of deep seated issues, that often there were high-falutin diagnoses which could merely be explained in terms of “shame-based” behavior and emotions. My own clinical work confirms this. We are often dealing only with deep-seated shame which binds the individual and will continue to do so until it is gradually, gently, and graciously brought to the fore and experienced and then processed.

Easter Thoughts

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Easter morning.  It just ain’t like it used to be!  It used to be getting all scrubbed up, donning my Sunday best, sitting through a standard-issue Baptist sermon, and then getting home and hunting Easter eggs.  All in all, it was fun even with a dysfunctional family!  Today I will journey four hours to visit my family for a holiday gathering, watch the current crop of kids hunt for eggs, and then eat too much.  This too will be fun!  I love watching the next crop of kids do their kid things, so delightfully full of themselves, thinking it is all about them, and noting to myself, “That is just the way it should be.”  Soon they will grow up and it will then be “all about the next crop” of kids.

The magic of the holiday is not here any more.  But the meaning of the occasion is much richer for me.  It is not longer an hysteria generated by a flame-throwing preacher.  It is the meaning of a Resurrection that has taken place in my life and does so daily if I can muster up the humility to let it happen.  If we follow the advice of Paul we will “die daily” and that then requires a Resurrection, getting up and resuming our walk, continuing to “chop wood and carry water.”

Mass hysteria besets us!

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Tacitus noted, “They terrify lest they should fear.”  He had in mind fear-mongerers who were always espousing the latest doomsday scenario, reflecting the fear that their own hearts were consumed by.  And then Aescychlus noted that “the gods send tragedy so that men will have something to talk about.”  Modern media fuels hysteria with “breaking news” and such. And we thrive on it. Sometimes I think we need to get a life.  Ok, I’ll admit it  Sometimes I think I need to get a life!

Life is inherently full of fear and tragedy strikes all too often . It could hit any moment, even to myself!  But I’m not inclined to live in terror of it.  I’ll deal with it when it happens. “Sufficient unto the day will be the evil thereof.”

e e cummings and misplaced concreteness

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when god decided to invent
everything he took one
breath bigger than a circus tent
and everything began
when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because.

I read this e e cummings poem 25 years ago and have had it in my memory ever since.  It is very complex and even beyond my comprehension on some level.  Yet, I love it and it sticks with me and this fact reveals that it has great truth for me. This poem speaks to me.
I will forego the first stanza as that is beyond me.  But the second stanza deals with mankind’s fallenness, his sinfulness, his bondage to the time-space continnum, and his inability/unwillingness to venture out of that domain into freedom.  The essence of this 2nd stanza is man’s inability/unwillingness to escape the cause-effect mind-set, very much related to the time-space continuum.  And cummings realized that as long as we live there, as long as we are rooted there, we ensconced in a world that will be destroyed as it is an ephemeral world.
I have read enough in quantum physics to understand that scientists see the cause-effect domain as something that is perceptual in nature.  In fact, they would say everything is perceptual.  Some loudly protest at this point, announcing with vehemence, “Oh no, they are nihilists, saying that nothing is real.!”  I don’t think that is necessarily the case and it is certainly not the case with me.  It is just that there is a Real beyond that which we take for “real” and that Real is known only by faith.  Those who mistake the common-place world, the everyday world, the physical world as “real’ are guilty of the sin of misplaced concreteness,“chasing the shade and letting the Real be.” (John Masefield)
I just can’t wrap my head around this, however.  I believe this, and know it intuitively, but cannot understand it completely.  But the very desire to “understand it completely” is the fallen mind at work, trying to grasp and own its own spiritual nature as if it is something we can objectively apprehend.  But our “spiritual nature” is something we are…one might say “Someone” we are…and not something that we can apprehend.
Now a caveat is very important.  I am not advocating rejection of the cause-effect world.  That would be lunacy and the attempt to do so would be even more lunatic.  I am suggesting that meaning and value is given this cause-effect world when we intuitive recognize and respect…and surrender to…the Real which lies beyond the grasp of our rational mind.  And, all we have to do is to learn our own ignorance and recognize the Intelligence that graces this void that we live in, an Intelligence that has visited us on occasion.
I close with an excerpt from “The Habit of Pefection” by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

ELECTED Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorlèd ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear. Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb: 5 It is the shut, the curfew sent From there where all surrenders come Which only makes you eloquent. Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark And find the uncreated light: 10 This ruck and reel which you remark Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Darkness and Poor Choices

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Life is incredible difficult at times. And then, at the end we die. It certainly must have been easier before we developed consciousness, the “knowledge of good and evil”. But, we can’t go back. As Sartre noted, there is “No Exit.”

Most of us cope adequately at least. But there are so many who do not have the resources to cope and life just beats the hell out of them. I know a few who fall into this category and they struggle even though they have so much going for them. Auden likened them unto the “toy of some great pain.” It is as if some darkness has enthralled them and will not let them go and it has nothing to do with intelligence, or will power, or moral integrity.

People in the grip of this pain often despair completely and make horrible choices, some of which we read about in the head lines. Others lead “lives of quiet desperation.” We must always remember that:

The Void desires to have you for its creature,
A doll through whom It may ventriloquise
Its vast resentment as your very own,
Because Negation has nor form nor feature,
And all Its lust to power is impotent
Unless the actual It hates consent.
(W. H. Auden)

Family Dysfunction and Sin

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A wit noted years ago, when systems theory was in the vanguard in clinical culture, that “families are to be from.” He was addressing the need of “cutting the cord” from the family of origin which has been an issue from eons past in our history. And I don’t think we ever do it perfectly but most of us accomplish the task to some degree. In my clinical work, however, I often came across gross examples of family dysfunction where the “cutting” of that cord was difficult to impossible and the problem was often multi-generational.

T. S. Eliot wrote a very interesting play that is relevant to this issue, “The Family Reunion.” Eliot’s lead character, Harry, is deeply enmeshed with his family of origin, especially his mother…of course…and the play is about his emotional anguish as he sought to free himself from familial bondage. He also used the concept of sin to describe the emotional baggage that families breed and perpetuate, identifying it as “instinctual energy.”

He declared that “sin may strain and struggle in its dark instinctual birth to come to consciousness and find expurgation.” He noted that one basic prerequisite for this expurgation to take place is for the struggle to be made conscious, to find the light of day. He suggested that often a particular individual in a family will be the “consciousness of your unhappy family” and described it as a “bird sent flying through the purgatorial fire.”

Just as with individuals, no family is perfect. Families are always flawed as they are comprised of flawed individuals. And, as system theory teaches us, the family usually appears quite devoted to perpetuating the “flaw.” It is our task as adults to wrestle with the “demons” that have been dealt us, to seek “expurgation”, and try to not pass our particular allotment of poison on to those around us.

Paean to Wendell Berry

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Wendell Berry is one of my favorite contemporary poets. He is a farmer and a poet as well as a retired professor from the University of Kentucky. His love of nature enriches his poetry. Here is one of my favorite of his poems:

To the Holy Spirit

O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,
Who in necessity and in bounty wait,
Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken
By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.

I also highly recommend “The Peace of Wild Things” which you can find on the internet with a Google search. I recently answered a friend’s question, “How would you define grace” with the quotation of this poem. And I love his poem entitled “Marriage” which describes the torture of intimate relationship— “it is to be broken. It is to be torn open. It is not to be reached and come to rest in ever.”

Why I blog

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When I started blogging 6-7 months ago I posted about why I was doing so. I explained that I was following the Shakespearean advice to “unpack my heart with words” and also noted a verse from Job where a character reported, “My belly is full of words, like a taut wine-skin, about to burst.” Since then I have continued to find this process very cathartic and a very important element in my spiritual life. T. S. Eliot advised us to “offer our deeds to oblivion” and I think of this daily posting as one little deed that I toss out into that black hole each day, not having any idea where it is going and if it will be heard and even if it is heard whether it will matter. That is very freeing.

I want to share similar ruminations from another blogger that I recently met. Though his name and his picture mean that our back grounds are dissimilar…he did not grow up as an Arkansas honky redneck…his experiences are similar. And he has found blogging to be meaningful in ways that I have. (Now, I can only “copy-and-paste” his blog as I’m not smart enough to import a link to his blog.)

 

 

The following is from: http://santuonline.wordpress.com/
The question is quite old. It has been asked and answered by millions. Mostly the answers are quite same. But flavors are different. After all everyone is unique. Here is mine..
I was an introvert. Most of the time I used to swim in my own mind. I always felt like people were always out there to get me, humiliate me in public. I was a hell of shy kid. Apart from that I am very curious person. I like to to try out everything at least once. So, when I heard about the bloggers meet in my college, I thought of giving it a try. Watching my best friend Indrajit going around flaunting a new “BCET Bloggers” badge, I decided to have a blog of my own.
I first started one on blogger.com . It was a complete disaster. Then I came to WordPress. Another two disasters were born. I don’t even remember their names. Then came SantuOnline at last. It never had any visits or likes, because I didn’t know then about the resource called “tag“. It was September last year, that I discovered tags and my number of visits and likes grew. I got a handsome number of followers too.
I still didn’t know why I was into blogging? It was like beer. Bitter to taste, but drinking feels good. (just an example, I don’t drink ) At first, I used to search for different tags and related posts. I used to like all the pages I visited. I just knew the more I “like”-d the more visits I would get. It was a sort of race against time. I didn’t have much time everyday, but tried to do as many as possible “likes”.
Slowly, I began to slow down. Strange to hear, but that is exactly how it happened. Now, I didn’t just visit at random, and put in likes. I took my time to read each blog I visited, put in some comments and thoughts. It became a healthy outlet for my mind. My perspective changed. I met many like minded people on wordpress. Swimming in my own mind, I had accumulated tons of doubts and junk. They got cleaned. There is still a lot more to do, but it feels better now.
Needless to say, blogging has now become more than just an obsession. It is source of daily inspiration. I am not as shy as I used to be. I have opened up a lot. I am more confident. Now I don’t feel like people are always out there to humiliate me. Here, I can speak my mind without fear. I can ask any type of foolish question without being branded as immature. There are so many people here. One is bound to find at least another one just like self. It is so easy to relate on blogosphere.
Having found some exact matches of mine, I wonder “aren’t we all unique?!! then where did these people come from? ”

Shame and Socialization

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Wittgenstein said, “The notion of following a rule is logically inseparable from making a mistake.”  I would like to make my own modification of that observation and say that it is “logically inseparable from being a mistake.”

When a child reaches the age of two or so, he suddenly becomes mature enough (neurologically and emotionally) to learn of a strange, curious, and often bewildering world “out there”.  He discovers that there is a myriad of rules, of “do’s and don’ts” that he has to subscribe to,  and on some level he really does not understand why this is necessary.  After all, he is doing just mighty fine already!  For example, why should he subscribe to what “they” call “potty training”?  Why hell, merely evacuating his bowels when the urge strikes appears to be working just fine!  If a need is frustrated, why shouldn’t he just throw a conniption fit?  After all, isn’t the world his oyster?  If he doesn’t like the morning gruel, why shouldn’t he just throw it across the kitchen?  And as for that cat’s tail, doesn’t it just beg to be pulled! And of course, any self respecting young male should be able to play with his wee-wee anytime he wants, even in church!

But, the child is hard-wired neurologically to decide that it is beneficial ultimately to subscribe to those rules being proffered by the “world out there” and to “join the human race”.  And most of us do, more or less.  But when we make this decision, it always involves saying good-bye to that delightful world of instinctual experience, where all of our needs were miraculously met by our mere whim, where we were the Lord and Master of our private little kingdom . We then have to “admit” on some deeply subjective, unconscious level that this private little kingdom of ours is “wrong” and that the world “out there” is right . That is tantamount to saying that we are wrong and they are right.  It is the advent of existential guilt.

But, if things go right, the “external world of rules” will be proffered by healthy family headed by mature parents who will gently escort the young tyke into this new kingdom.  He will learn that the advantages of “selling his soul” and joining the new world will outweigh the advantages of continuing to dwell in his private, autistic shell.

However, not all children are welcomed by kindly parents and a kindly world.  Sometimes the world is unforgiving and harsh if not brutal.  The child is shamed, humiliated, and physically brutalized into subscribing to the social mores.  And, many times this does suffice and the child will learn to comply but the price tag will be a core of shame that will haunt him the rest of his life.

I would like to share an excerpt from a D. H. Lawrence novel which so eloquently illustrates this shaming process and the devastation it can wreak on an innocent child.  In Lawrence’s novel, The Rainbow, Ursula is a little girl who is delighted with the new world she is discovering and is often totally consumed with its beauty and delight . This would often run her afoul of her unforgiving father who was very insensitive to her childish curiosity and would brutally scold her for trampling on his garden when all she had been doing was taking delight in a budding plant or daisy or chasing a butterfly.

But…her soul would almost start out of her body as her father turned on her, shouting:

Who’s been trampling and dancing across where I’ve just sowed seed? I know it’s you, nuisance! Can you find nowhere else to walk, but just over my seed beds? But it’s just like you, that is—no heed but to follow your own greedy nose.

The child was …shocked. Her vulnerable little soul was flayed and trampled. Why were the footprints there? She had not wanted to make them? She stood dazzled with pain and shame and unreality.

Her soul, her consciousness seemed to die away. She became shut off and senseless, a little fixed creature whose soul had gone hard and unresponsive. The sense of her own unreality hardened her like a frost. She cared no longer. And the sight of her face, shut and superior with self-asserting indifference, made a flame of rage go over him. He wanted to break her.

And there is more and more you might wish to read if this anecdote interests you.  Lawrence is very eloquent about describing the subjective experience of his characters, including children.

He concluded with, “And very early she learned to harden her soul in resistance and denial of all that was outside her, harden herself upon her own being.”

So often this anecdote from the Lawrence novel illustrates what happens with children.  Their parents do not have any sensitivity to the reality of children and are brutal in their correction of them.  Sure, children must be corrected, they must learn about social rules and propriety.  They must learn that there are consequences for various misbehaviors,  some of which do not even appear to be misbehavior.  But these consequences do not have to be issued with such brutality and heartlessness.  When this happens, often the child dies within, shame over whelms him, and at best he becomes a little shame-bound automaton compulsively complying with the rules handed down from the existing social order.