Tag Archives: Shakespeare

Shakespeare and hypocrisy

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I love Shakespeare with a passion. He is perhaps the greatest gift that the gods have offered us to date, with due respect to the holy men and women who have also graced our lives.

He was a very spiritual man and thus had a critical eye re “spirituality” and astutely took we “spiritual sorts” to task for our innate tendency to be hypocritical and insincere.

For example, in King Richard III the King confesses:

And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With old odd ends, stol’n forth of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

And then my favorite observation on this note was: With devotions visage and pious action, we do sugar o’er the devil himself. (Hamlet)

And I close with one of my favorite lines from Goethe’s Faust: They call it Reason, using light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.

Macbeth and self-control

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One of my favorite lines from Shakespeare comes from Macbeth. Caithness said of Macbeth, “He cannot buckle his distempered cause within the belt of rule.” “Distempered” meant swollen or even, in the context, “fat.” Caithness was noting that Macbeth lacked self-control, that his “cause” (or will) was so enlarged that it could not be contained by the “belt of rule.” The image is that of a corpulent man who cannot fit his belt around his middle.

It makes me think of Proverbs 25:28, “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.”

SEX!

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Well, I thought that would get your attention!

Actually, all I have to offer is a bunch of random quotes about sexuality that have stuck in my mind over the years.

One of my favorites is from Woody Allen, “Of course sex is dirty. If you do it right.” Recently I read a line from Mary Karr when she was describing her failing marriage, “Any sex that took place was of the calf-roping kind.” And I love H. L. Mencken’s pithy observation, “The trouble with abstinence is its over emphasis of sex.” Shakespeare in Othello described a copulating couple as “making the beast with two backs.” And then there is the beautifully worded phrase from the Old Testament, “the way of a man with a maiden.”

“Teach us to pray”

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T.S. Eliot declared that, “Prayer is more than an order of words, or the sounds of the voice praying, or the conscious occupation of the praying mind.” He recognized that prayer is not a perfunctory performance “because it is what Christians do”. You know, “Wind me up and watch me pray and therefore I’m a Christian.”

Prayer is a mystery and I’m not for sure how to define it. I think it always starts as a “perfunctory performance” but at some point in one’s life it needs to go beyond, to become more of a meditative enterprise.

I love what Shakespeare had to say about prayer in Hamlet. Hamlet’s step father, Claudius, is on his knees praying and lamented, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” Shakespeare recognized that when we merely throw words around, when we trot out the usual “prayer” verbiage, when we are consciously choosing our words so that we “pray right”, then our prayers “never to heaven go.”

I recently started reading Thomas R. Kelley’s book, A Testament of Devotion, and he noted the following re prayer: We pray, and yet it is not we who pray, but a Greater who prays in us. Something of our punctiform selfhood is weakened, but never lost. All we can say is, ‘Prayer is taking place, and I am given to be in the orbit.’

This is an overwhelming notion that I am presenting here. And I don’t have it figured out. And I don’t think the right thing to do is to wait until I have it figured out. The right thing to do is to pray and always remember what the Apostles asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” (See Luke ch. 11))

Communication Perils and “Penetrable” hearts.

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“Let go of your mind and come to your senses.”  This 70’s era bromide, from Fritz Perls I think, is very astute.  Perls was encouraging us to discover our ability to forego our comfort zone—that safe cognitive haven we have created—and enter the world of sensual experience, the world of feeling.  That “cognitive haven” is the egoic consciousness that Eckhart Tolle has popularized.

And, I admit that this is easier said than done, especially for us who are so firmly ensconced in the cognitive domain.  I practice meditation but it is very hard to quiten that “monkey mind” that the Buddhists speak of—that mind that is always shrieking, chattering, and cavorting about, absolutely unable to embrace the present moment, Tolle’s “Now”.

Shakespeare recognized the need of feeling and its primacy over cognition.  In the famous scene in which his mother is compulsively wringing her hands, he admonished her to “cease wringing your hands and I will wring your heart.  And so I will if it be made of penetrable stuff, if damn custom hath not bronzed it o’er so that it be proof and bulwark against sense” (sense-experience, or feeling).  Here Shakespeare is noting how cognition, one dimension of that “damn custom”, tends to “bronze o’er” the heart and make it “impenetrable.”  When the heart is open to the feeling mode, it is full of “penetrable stuff” and communication can take place.  But when this “damn custom” or cognition predominates, there is only a robot-like exchange of data.  It makes me think of the scene in the movie Rain Man where two autistic men are engaging in a conversation.  But the “conversation” consisted of each man delivering a spiel to the other only to have the other respond with a spiel of his own, a spiel having nothing to do with the other spiel.  I’m reminded from a line from one of T. S. Eliot‘s plays, in which he describes people locked in formulaic, rote conversations as “people too strange to one another for misunderstanding.”

And note the lyrics from the beautiful Simon and Garfunkel song,  “Sounds of Silence”:

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening.

And I close with the words of the Psalmist (Psalms 115:4)

They have mouths but they speak not:

Eyes have they, but they see not;

They have ears but they hear not.

 

 

“mangled guts pretending”

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Playwright Tony Kushner’s HBO mini-series (2003), “Angels in America” is one of the best things I’ve ever seen on television.  Starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson it was a poignant portrayal of 1980’s gay culture in America as it dealt with the AIDS issue.  It was beautifully written and acted.

One of my favorite lines has to do with the question, “How do people change?”  The question is posed rhetorically in a museum and a pioneer woman mannequin comes to life and answers:

Well, it has something to do with God so it’s not very nice.  God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out…and the pain!  We can’t even talk about that.  And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn.  It’s up to you to do the stitching.  And then you up you get.  And walk around.  Just mangled guts pretending.

The point is, change is difficult.  And Kushner writes poetically and thus overstates the issue.  We all find change painful but, mercifully, not that painful!  But we prefer be-bopping through our life, mindlessly following some script that we subscribed to in early childhood, not deigning to apply “mindfulness” to our lives.  To do so inevitably exposes themes in our lives, basic assumptions, that are maladaptive to say the least.  As Adrienne Rich noted once, “Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.”

And for some, gut-wrenching change is in the cards.  “Just mangled guts pretending” is their lot.  By this, I think Kushner wrote of the excruciating pain of acting purposefully when their lives have been torn asunder by “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” (Shakespeare, Hamlet) or some particular devastating “shock.”  It takes real to courage to act, and to act purposefully, when our lives have been torn apart.

I now have a youtube clip of the above scene:

Forgiveness

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Julia Kristeva’s book, Hatred and Forgiveness, is an excellent exploration of the experience of forgiveness.  Kristeva explores the issue from a variety of perspectives and concludes that psychoanalysis is best suited for the accomplishment of forgiveness.  I would broaden this observation to include “talk therapy” in general.

Kristeva, in this book and others, develops the notion that forgiveness is more than a conceptual process.  If we are trapped in the conceptual world, then we are not likely to allow the experience of forgiveness to be constellated in the depths of our heart.  For, forgiveness does not begin with a concretely existing deity dwelling “out there.”  It is an essential element in the depths of our psyche and can be resurrected if we are willing to “unpack our heart with words.”   (Shakespeare)

self soothing strategies

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In my practice as a therapist, “self-soothing” strategies were a basic intervention that I offered.  This refers to behaviors and patterns of thought which would help the client cope more adaptively with “the thousand natural shocks which flesh is heir to.”  (Shakespeare, “Hamlet”)   These could be something as simple as saying a brief mantra from time to time, planting a flower, taking a walk, watching a favorite tv show, or preparing a special meal.

I was made aware last week how this same notion of “self-soothing” can apply to spirituality/religion.  I was at a thrift shop and encountered a person who frustrated and angered me, inducing…shall we say…unsavory thoughts.  I immediately trotted out a little contrivance that I’ve borrowed from the Buddhists—“mindfulness”—and was able to then step back from moment and recognize this evocation of feelings in my heart.  I recognized that this immediately made me feel better about myself and spared me from the orgy of shame and guilt which once would have beset me.

Now some would respond to an experience like this with a trip to the confessional or would silently (or openly) castigate himself/herself for being such a sinner.  But each of these three maneuvers is merely a “self-soothing” activity and each has its place….though I much prefer mine!  It is important to have strategies to make us feel better about ourselves, to assuage our guilt/shame over the misdeeds or errant thoughts that come daily.

 

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.

slippery slope of spirituality

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“With devotion’s visage and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself,” noted Shakespeare (Hamlet).  Spirituality is a perilous journey for it so easy to become “humble”, failing to recognize that one is just being smug or arrogant.  As I like to put it…and this comes from personal experience, “Humility comes hard to the humble.”  Eckhart Tolle’s concept of “egoic consciousness” is so relevant to spirituality.  And this pseudo-humility, this “devotion’s visage and pious action” usually stems from taking oneself too seriously.

If honesty intrudes on us, we will often have to admit that our spirituality is just a song-and-dance which serves the purpose of assuaging our lonliness and isolation.  It is part of the aforementioned (in an earlier post) effort to “spin a veil to hide us from the void.” (Norman O. Brown)

Read here how John Masefield summarized this matter:

 

How many ways, how many different times

The tiger Mind has clutched at what it sought,

Only to prove supposéd virtues crimes,

The imagined godhead but a form of thought.

How many restless brains have wrought and schemed,

Padding their cage, or built, or brought to law,

Made in outlasting brass the something dreamed,

Only to prove themselves the things of awe,

Yet, in the happy moment’s lightning blink,

Comes scent, or track, or trace, the game goes by,

Some leopard thought is pawing at the brink,

Chaos below, and, up above, the sky.

Then the keen nostrils scent, about, about,

To prove the Thing Within a Thing Without.