Tag Archives: Religion and Spirituality

personal demons

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W. H. Auden noted, “We wage the war we are.” He recognized and fought his own personal demons and recognized that fighting these subjective battles is an essential part of the human experience.

In days of yesteryear, our only weapons in these battles were the passing of time and perhaps an occasional “casting out of demons.” Today we have various forms of therapy and, of course, psychotropic medications. But ultimately we are left alone to battle our haunts.

Shakespeare, the greatest therapist and spiritual teacher in the history of mankind, put it this way:

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

Doctor:
Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

Warren Jeffs and mental illness

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Warren Jeffs provides us with still another object-lesson in madness.  His private delusional system eventually was confronted by the world outside of himself and he was found guilty.  It was interesting to note that even as the hand of justice came down on him, his only defense was to recite his self-serving interpretation of FLDS holy writ.  He still didn’t get it.  And, he won’t get it.  His delusional system is too rigid.

Jeff’s delusional system was mirrored by a somewhat larger delusional system, the sectarian religious culture that he had lived in for his whole life. But that sectarian world-view was not mirrored…eventually…by the world at large.  And the “mirroring” by the world at large is what separates a sect from non-sectarian religion

We all have private belief-systems even apart from religious/spiritual beliefs.  That is to say, we all have our own private world that we live in.  But the issue is always the boundary-region between that private belief system and the world at large.  If the belief system is too rigid, if there is no permeability with the world-at-large, then madness reigns.  Mental illness is a reference problem.

The more rigid the private world view, the less permeable it is and the more likely it is that an “us-them” paradigm will emerge. Those ensconced in such a paradigm tend to be paranoid.  And, of course, the more paranoid one is the more likely one is to see “them” as being intrusive and aggressive, even threatening.  This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as the paranoid individual’s attitude, speech, and behavior eventually lead to intervention by “them.”  (For a provocative analysis of this phenomena on the group level, see Richard Hofstadter”s Paranoid Style in American Politics.)

Groups such as the FLDS are always in-bred in the sense that they are their own private reference system.  Being “in-bred” like this, it is no accident that incest and child-abuse takes place.  For incest…speaking now in terms of family-system theory…is always an illustration of a family or group feeding on itself.

the shadow

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Karl Jung wrote extensively of “the shadow”.  He described this dark side of human nature as always with it and insisted…iin my own words…“Resistance is futile”.  Or to use one of his bromides, “What we resist, persists.”  His teaching, of course, was not that this dark side should be indulged or acted upon, but that it should be embraced as part of our nature.  He taught that in this embracement we diminished the power of this shadow, given us more freedom to make mature, appropriate decisions.  In recent readings of Buddhist literature, I’ve learned that the Buddha called this shadow-side “mara” and reported that it was a daily part of his life.  Even the Apostle Paul lamented, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me.”  And, of course, in the Christian tradition, there is the ever-present “Satan.”

I think the Catholics have the right idea in confession.  There in the confessional booth, Catholics are encouraged to come and bare their deepest, darkest secrets.  In my work as a mental health counselor, much of the work I did was merely to listen to my clients lament their short-comings, to acknowledge their baser instincts.

The key is to just not pretend!  It is there and it will always be there.  To live in a world of duality is to realize that “mara” is there but to believe its power is diminished as we openly acknowledge it.  Even more so, as we openly acknowledge it “to another human being.”

 

The Secret

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I’ve read The Secret by Rhonda Byrne several times.  And I’m about ready to read it still again.  However, I am embarrassed to admit this.  I am an intelligent, educated, and erudite man so this book is “beneath” me.  It is such a light-weight, new-age, self-help book that it is roundly criticized in the professional circles that I function in.  If offers so much to so many desperate people who then lamely cling to its promises of wealth and health even though their circumstances are so limiting.  It is the new age equivalent of the “prosperity gospel” of the right-wing religious fundamentalists.

HOWEVER, I have read it repeatedly and am about to again.  This is because I whole-heartedly believe in one of its central theses—-that our thinking shapes our reality.  Get rid of “stinking thinkin “, and your world can change.  Yes, I do subscribe to that belief though I have so much “stinkiin’ thinkin” that remains.  But, as they often say in the 12-step movement, “Progress, not perfection.”

Proverbs declares, “As a man thinketh, so is he.”   Someone once said, “Our thoughts become us.”  And Mike Dooley declares daily on his web site, “Thoughts are things.  Choose the good ones.”  Byrne quotes Henry Ford in her book, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way you’re right.”