Tag Archives: certainty

The Ego and Its Recalcitrance

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Two days ago I shared re the need of change and the great pain that can be entailed.  Why is change so challenging and often gut-wrenchingly painful?  It has to do with the ego which is resistant to becoming other than a citadel for self-interest.  When we came into this world we found ourselves in a “world that is always already underway.”  Our family was a context, a “milieu” which was rigidly structured by the emotional and, therefore, unconscious assumptions of the parents and any child that had preceded us.  My research has suggested that our fragile ego responds with a salvivic capability of “assessing” this milieu and formulating its response.  Our “response”, however, will quickly become rigid also which is part of our neurological wiring.  But that rigid structure, regardless of how open-minded we might be, will always be resistant to change.  This rigidity is also “hard-wired” as we need to filter-out much of the “stuff” that comes our way to maintain ego-integrity  If we had no filter…or one that is wired….maladaptively…we would submit to every demand of change that comes our way and our life would look like a “sheet in the wind,.”  

This is where the Pauline “discerning spirit” is applicable.  This quip from the Apostle Paul is an admonishment to employ what Hannah Arendt has described as an, “internal dialogue,” which iis to have  second-thoughts about what we are most sure…especially those “noble-sounding” bromides that we religious people are want to cling to.  Let me paraphrase the wisdom of Paul into a modern bumper-sticker, “Don’t believe everything you think.”

A Lamentation of Reality’s Intransigence

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Today I am going to continue my “assault” on reality, the quotes necessary because “reality” is impregnable to the attack of one simple bloke like myself.  What makes it so invincible is its subtlety; it can’t be seen with the naked eye.  Its premises are commonplaces, most of which a society cannot be left without.  But so many can be lived without and a society is better off when they are given the light of day. One simple example from my youth in the American South involves racism—television shows were “white”; NFL quarterbacks were “white”; and miscegenation was verboten.

This “reality” that I am here kicking around ordinarily has the capacity to slowly evolve, to adapt to circumstances even against the down drag of inertia.  But in certain moments of history, there is tremendous “down drag” as the evolution appears too drastic and frightening to much of the population.  This leads to the socio-cultural ferment that we are currently witnessing in the United States, and even in the world.  This has led to civil war in the past.

We can’t escape the unconscious dimension of life which shapes reality.  Oh, well, we can simply assume that it does not exist and passionately insist that we know exactly what are doing.  But we don’t.  There is always more to the picture which is a frightening notion to most people. It is so frightening that people will cling desperately to their certainties and usually will find a leader who will be their champion.

If you are curious about this tenuous nature of reality, you might find the following book of interest, “The Social Construction of Reality” by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman.

A “Coronavirus” Has Struck Our Political Heart

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The coronavirus has struck our nation’s political heart.  I here am alluding to news from China that the physician who first attempted to alert his country to the presence of that virus, Wi Linliang, a 34 year old opthamologist, has now died of that virus.  When he first attempted to sound the alarm, he was told to stop and was detained for “rumor mongering” which, according to the Washington Post, is what happens in China with any news that threatens the social order.  In an autocratic political regime, fear abounds and any information that might create unrest is quashed…even if that “unrest” might be a temporary necessity.  An autocratic regime, or mindset, is just a two year old ego on steroids.

Mitt Romney mustered up the courage to warn the Republican Party, and the nation, of the “virus” of certainty which has found a voice in the person of donald j. trump. The problem with certainty of this ilk is that it is so rigid, based upon internal frailty and vulnerability, that it cannot allow any contrary thought.  In the history of this blog, I have likened it unto a group who might think that the moon is made out of cheese; once its members have invested heart and soul into that belief, they cannot be dissuaded. Any outside perspective that might deign to “intrude” will be disallowed, castigated and even attacked in favor of unexamined premises and preconceptions, regardless of how foolish or insane they might appear to others. This is because these “unexamined” premises and preconceptions are merely a house of cards, lacking any firm foundation in the “bowels” of the heart.  The more this cauldron of reptilian brain energy is confronted, the greater will be the venom and opprobrium that will be offered in response.  It does not have to be “reasonable”; it just has to be teeming with the vim and vinegar of certainty which will always be validating to those who lack existential, i.e. “spiritual” grounding.  And now the speciousness, the vacuity of the American soul has found a mouthpiece in the person of “the donald” who is the veritable “toy of some great pain.” (Ranier Rilke)  This “pain” is the anguish which spiritual teachers, such as Jesus, offered “the balm of Gilead” but not in the form of a “rational” palliative, but one in the form of faith.  This faith, however, is more than a rational construct and obsessive devotion to dogma, but something that springs from the depths of the heart.  And you cannot “think” your way into that mysterious dimension of life that drives us all; “faith” begins to blossom when you tap into that “Mystery.”

I will never forget that Mitt Romney moment.  He is deeply conservative and deeply religious; but in that moment his religiosity reached deeper into his heart than his political affiliation.  Conservatism is a vital dimension of any body politic; my country’s conservative voice is deeply frightened and has resorted to an autocrat to find its footing.  There must be other “Mitt Romneys” who will dig into their heart and find that courage to speak up if our country is to get out of this “two-year old ego mania” that we are now witnessing.

Back When I Knew I Was Right….

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I got saved when I was eight years old and I knew that the Holy Spirit came down, “like a dove”, and entered my soul and was then guiding me in “all truth and righteousness.”  I had been taught that this was the truth, and the Bible clearly told me that was so, and the Bible was the Word of God.  I knew that no one could quarrel with God.

But now I have grown up, some six decades later.  “When I was a child, I spake as a child,” but now I see just how I had self-deluded.  I do not blame this on the faith tradition I was born into; they were doing their job, offering me the rudiments of a faith, one in which I still find great value. When I began to grow up in later teens and then in my twenties, I could have found the courage to think for myself but I refused to do so, opting to draw the blinders even more tightly around my consciousness.  The notion of my finitude, that my very view of the world was a flimsy, a cauldron of the timidity and insecurity that characterized my life at that time, was a vein of thought I could not handle.  The specious “certainty” offered me a citadel that I was not able to discard at that time.

But now, as I view the tragedy that is gnawing away at the soul of my country, I see so clearly how that certainty is deadly.  It is deadly in that it is so effective at thwarting the vulnerability that is intrinsic to being an “alive” human being.  As long as one can cling to certainty, and whatever contrivances that give him that certainty, he will be “fine” in his deluded sense of reality. And when this certainty is not checked, is allowed to metastasize, something like Trump is likely to happen.  If we are lucky Trumpism will be checked before it reaches its full-flowering with an expression of Isis lunacy.self

The “Terrible Two’s” Cry for Help–Somebody Stop Me!!!

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The “terrible two’s” are the bane of many parents.  Toddlers at that age are beginning to learn the power of “no” and can frustrate mommy and daddy to no end!  But, parents intuitively know that with patient setting of limits and reinforcement for “good” behavior this internal conflict will be resolved, and the child will go on to learn the value of handling his internal conflicts and rages, dealing with them appropriately while learning to function in a social setting where other people’s wishes and needs receive consideration.

In my clinical practice, I did face circumstances where parents did not know how to set these limits and/or had a child whose neurological wiring was not amenable to learning these boundaries.  But there were occasions where parents made no effort to set limits to their two-year old, and in fact began to reward him for his outrageous behavior in the hope that he could be “bought off.”  By the time one kid in-particular reached mid-teens and was referred to me for counseling, he had learned that outrageous behavior and defiance of rules was the best way to get attention and had become the cornerstone of his identity.  In the case of one young man, he had to be placed in a residential treatment facility and not long thereafter found himself mired in the juvenile justice system.  Twenty years later, it would be amazing if I should learn that he has not been in prison for at least a stint.

This young lad had been taught that the best way to get validation (i.e. “love”) was to act out, to push limits to the point that he could not be ignored.  “Bad attention” was better than “no attention” at all and much better than accepting the mere crumbs of attention that fell from the table as a result of merely taking an ordinary role in the social structure of family and school.  A kid of this stripe makes me think of the Jim Carrey character in the movie, “The Mask” who announced with daring and bravado after still another display of craziness, leering at the camera with menacing face and grin, “Somebody stop meee!”

Donald J. Trump has been crying out from early childhood, “Somebody stop me.”  But sheer will power, augmented by tremendous wealth, taught him that he could roll over anybody that stood in his way, that, yes, even in the Presidential campaign he could announce, “I could stand in the streets of Manhattan and shoot somebody and my poll numbers would not go down.”  He is now a year and half into his term of office and his supporters are galvanized behind him, the Republican led Congress is giving him total allegiance, and evangelical Christians are standing firm behind him, avowing that God has chosen him for this occasion.  The checks-and-balances system that has been the backbone of our government has met its match, and those who could exercise these “checks-and-balances” are demonstrating abject cowardice before this mad man.

Trump is a delusional man and he has found millions of Americans and the Republican Party who are “drinking the kool-aid” and becoming intoxicated with the delusion.  Delusion is much easier than reality as the latter requires dealing with those “naughty people” who dare to look at things differently than we do.  It is much easier to pledge allegiance to a political Jim Jones and, metaphorically speaking, trek down to Jonestown, Guyana where barrels of that sweet nectar, “Certainty” will be waiting.

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Here is a list of my blogs.  I invite you to check out the other two sometime.

https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com

Politics, Belief, and “a bit of wobbly”

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Margaret Thatcher in 1990 brought the expression, “Don’t go wobbly” to the political table. At the time Saddam Hussein had invaded Iraq, Thatcher and George W. Bush were together in Aspen, Colorado discussing the ins and outs of a military response. As “W” appeared be equivocating, Thatcher told him, “This is not the time to go wobbly, George.” The opposite of, “wobbly,— going full speed ahead on a matter, throwing caution to the wind with utmost certainty–will always be appealing to many but the rigid certitude of such a stance often needs at least a tad of hesitation, a small dollop of what Shakespeare called, “the pauser reason.”

The relevance of this issue to our current political/cultural climate is obvious. And one dimension of this climate is the area of religion where “belief” is often held to so rigidly that many believers have found themselves “believing” themselves into a corner from which they can’t escape. This mind set avoids the wisdom of faith traditions that belief must be moderated with a bit of doubt here and there as when St Thomas prayed, “Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief,” or even Jesus when he prayed to his Father as the Crucifixion approached prayed, “Lord, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” Following here is a lovely poem which speaks of the need of a touch of “wobbly” in a person’s faith:

Belief by Lia Purpura

Light being
wavy and particulate
at once
is instructive—
why wouldn’t
other things or states
present as
both/and?
For instance
I both
believe and can’t.
Holding these
together produces
a wobble, I think
it’s time
to take seriously
as a stance.

Faith and Truth, per Carl Sandburg

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WHO AM I?
By: Carl Sandburg

MY head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of 
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of 
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty

And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive 
in the universe.

All of us have a body of thought rattling around our skull which constitute “truth” and is taken for granted.  This is a necessary, though in a sense specious, certainty that allows us to function in our consensually-validated reality.  But within the noisy “rattling around” in our skull, there are certainties and premises that need to be examined occasionally and Sandburg was telling us this is especially so with those posted with the sign, “Keep Off.”  Sandburg did not mean there are no “Keep Off” dimensions to our heart and mind but that we need to pay attention to this signage and occasionally entertain the notion, “Well, maybe I should look at that idea a little further?”  This is related to my often-cited favorite bumper sticker, “Don’t believe everything you think.”  One simple little example from my youth in central Arkansas was the certainty that blacks were inferior to whites.  There was no need to question it for it was a definite, and, “The Bible said it.”

I have watched so many truths fall by the wayside in my life time and have long since given up any faint belief that I own the truth, that at best there is some primordial Truth that lies beyond the grasp of our finite mind and that yes, in a sense that “Truth” even has us!  And if I ever start trying to explain that to you, flash the sign of the cross in my face and run away quickly as this is a matter that eludes the grasp of human cognition.  This “Truth” involves faith, but not of the escapist faith that is so common, but faith that there is a, “Divinity that doeth shape our ends, rough hew them how we may,” as Shakespeare told us.  And I personally think that those who are the most obnoxious about objectively knowing about that end…and usually the end for others…are doing the roughest hewing!

“Loss” Sure has its Value, Sez Naomi Shihab Nye

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Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

(Naomi Shihab Nye)

Loss is a powerful issue in my life for reasons that are hard to pinpoint.  Many others have had to deal more tragically with the issue than I but something in the depths of my heart are quite familiar with it.  I think part of it was living on the margins of society in rural Arkansas in my youth but then practicing as a mental health clinicians for about twenty years, often dealing with tragically vulnerable adolescents and families also made its impact.

Loss is counter intuitive to what we are taught in our culture.  We live in a “get, get, get” world, or as a pastor from my youth put it, “get all you can, and can all you get.”  Our culture’s commercialism gives us an acquisitive orientation, dismissing the core of all great spiritual teachings that quality and depth in life is found in giving up the quest for “more.”

Two other poetic observations come to my mind, the first by Emily Dickinson who noted, “Renunciation is a piercing virtue, letting go of a presence for an expectation.”  This “presence” is often the very “way things are” at a particular moment in our life and losing this certainty can threaten us to the very core of our being.  When I entertain this vein of thought I always think of the wisdom of T.S. Eliot who noted the need to occasionally, “live in the breakage, in the collapse of what was believed in as most certain and therefore the fittest for renunciation.”

My country is in grave peril right now.  Yes, the stock market is booming so all should be well.  Yeah, yeah, yeah!  But the very fabric of our being is now in question.  “Truth,” which admittedly is not cut and dried, is now becoming totally self-serving so that the primary rule for defining truth is that “I want it” and “people like me want it to.”  And this is a peril that faces the whole of our society, conservative and progressive. The issue is, “Can we see beyond our own nose? Can we, “see beyond the small bright circle of our consciousness, beyond which likes the darkness.” (Conrad Aiken) It is only in the darkness of allowing our certainties to be subject to questioning that the Grace of an always elusive Truth can whisper to us.  Otherwise, another Eliot observation is relevant, we will be, “united by the strife which divided them.”

Here are two other blogs that I publish.

https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com/

Post-modernism and Consciousness

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Hamlet lamented in a famous soliloquy, “Thus conscience (i.e. consciousness) doeth make cowards of us all.” Shakespeare demonstrated in his plays and sonnets a profound grasp of the human condition and beautifully illustrated our foibles in various characters such as the Prince of Denmark.  Hamlet, as well as many Shakespearean characters, portray for us a soul tortured by consciousness and Hamlet noted in this same soliloquy that such “awareness” can stymie one into inaction.  In clinical lore of recent decades, I have often run across the “Hamlet Syndrome,” the plague of many young men…usually not women…who are so conflicted they have trouble making decisions, thus their many dreams and fancies, “lose the name of action.”

Another theme of Shakespeare was madness and his understanding of this common human malady was not unrelated to his insights about consciousness.  For, there is a “common-sense” consciousness that one is given by his community and one’s lot is to be immersed in it fully; and to step outside of this comfort zone for even a moment and become aware of “consciousness” is not unrelated to madness. Asking one to take this meta-cognitive leap is like asking a fish to see water. For this leap into meta-cognition for someone who has never doubted his way of looking at the world, i.e. his conscious grasp of the world, will find the sudden dawn of a perspective on his perspective frightening.  As philosopher Paul Ricoeur noted, “To have a perspective on one’s perspective is to somehow escape it” and this escape, or even its temptation is terrifying.  The terror of this leap is so threatening that most people live their entire life comfortably ensconced in the narrow view of the world they were given by their tribe, usually deemed as decreed valid by the gods/God.

But, awareness of this issue does not relieve one from the onslaught of unconscious influences. Consciousness flows from the depths of the heart and to be conscious is to realize that the depths of the heart are endless so that one can never bask in the comfort of thinking he has arrived with a wholly “conscious” grasp of the world.  The best one hope of doing is to own a very skewed view of the world and hope that as he continues to age his “skewing” might be more amenable to other viewpoints, leaving one free of the hubris of “objectivity.”

But damn it, it was so much easier in my youth when I mindlessly and dutifully imbibed of what the Apostle Paul described as “the wisdom of this world.”  Yes, in my case doubt was always there nagging at me but I always returned to my script and just doubled-down on unexamined truth, not yet willing to acknowledge that I was merely demonstrating the “bad faith” noted by Jean Paul Sartre. But this post-modern view of the world is, and will continue to be, totally incomprehensible to those who are still comfortably ensconced in a linear view of the world.  I grew up in that linear world and remember viewing askance what was then labeled as “relativism”, often affirming brazenly, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

But most of the people who still live in that mind-set are not bad people nor is their view of the world.  I’m sure an equal number of “bad people” see the world as I do.  “Badness” is not a function of our world view but of how much we are under its tyranny.  The more rigidly certain that our way is the “right way” the more liberty will we feel that to impose our will upon other people, even under the name of God!

Truth and a Mall Santa Claus

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A street preacher, already notorious in Amarillo, Texas, disrupted a shopping mall’s Santa visitation with children recently, loudly announcing to them, “Santa Claus is not real.”  There is no doubt he was very sincere in what he was doing; for, yes, Santa Claus is not “real” but that does not mean his tradition in our country is not valid for little children.  But he demonstrated the wisdom of the bumper sticker I’ve been obsessed with recently, “Don’t believe everything you think.”

This gentleman believes he has the “truth” and that the “truth” most boldly proclaimed because hapless parents lack the spiritual depth he has or they would not subject their innocent children to this falsity.  And this illustrates the dilemma of “truth” and the danger that occurs when one is “filled with the spirit” and knows that he has the truth exclusively.  As admitted in the past, I write from experience and now realize just how arrogant I was, now seeing Truth as much more subtle part of a mystical dimension of human experience which we can never own.  But, oh is it tempting to think that we do!

I readily admit that I feel I am writing “truth” when I discourse here but have no illusion that it is axiomatic, written in stone, sent from on “high” Truth.  I have only a simple perspective, shaped by my biological and social past and for some unknown reason I am moved to “hold forth” in this venue, taking comfort in the knowledge that no one is being coerced to pay any attention.  And oh so many don’t!

The street preacher’s “truth-proclaiming” belied the certainty that consumes him about his beliefs and that certainty is now consuming American culture, especially the conservative element.  The braggadocio of Donald Trump and his promise to “Make America Great Again” appealed to a segment of the population who pines foe the days when life was more certain.  Furthermore, Trump’s rhetoric appealed to fundamentalist Christians who readily looked past his moral depravity in the hope that the “certainty” of their faith could be reassured.  Certainty is so much easier than faith.

But the certainty I’m exploring here belies a profound lack of certainty, a deep existential doubt that must be assuaged by addictively clinging to some dogma, even “dogma” that I have found to have great value once I had the courage to see the role my ego was playing in my immature and dogmatic faith.  When one is existentially insecure, he must find something to latch on to in order to alleviate the emotional, spiritual duress he would otherwise feel.

(See story about Mall Santa verbal attack, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/12/13/preacher-children-santa-claus-does-not-exist/95371826/)