Life's Journey towards Wisdom

     What is a meaningful, well-lived life? As we age, we realize that most of the things that in our youth we thought would make us happy, actually mean little and have already been largely forgotten.

     “Life (can be seen) as a journey towards wisdom and maturity, where both good or pleasurable and bad or painful experiences can help people learn and develop through six recognizable stages: 
 1. Egocentric (immature, self-referenced existence) 
 2. Conditioning (learning through insistent & persistent family & social traditions) 
 3. Conformist (seeking to belong by following social conventions) 
 4. Individual (starting to think, speak & act independently) 
 5. Integration (shifting values & behavior towards altruism, through recognizing one’s deep kinship with the entirety of humanity) 
 6. Universal (achieving maturity and wisdom, becoming a natural teacher and healer).” 
     Research has shown that in western society, the majority of people past their teen years are at or between stages three or four i.e. are still culturally adolescent.
       Larry Culliford. “Seeking Wisdom: A Spiritual Manifesto.” Univ of Buckingham Pr, 2018.

     "Fowler’s six stages of faith span the spectrum of development from childhood to maturity:
  a) In childhood, faith is based on fantasy & imagination;
  b) in the mythic literal stage, stories are interpreted literally;
  c) at the conventional stage, beliefs tend to be conventional & unexamined;
  d) the individuated reflective stage is characterized by demythologizing and individual responsibility for values & beliefs;
  e) the conjunctive stage, which usually emerges in midlife, involves a recognition of the unconscious and a more paradoxical understanding of truth;
  f) universalizing faith is inclusive of all being and free from ideological shackles.
      Although development does not necessarily progress in a neat, linear fashion from one stage to another, spiritual maturity implies adequately negotiating all these stages of faith. Spiritual experiences may be interpreted very differently by people at different stages of faith."
        Vaughan F. "What is Spiritual Intelligence?" Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2002; 42(2): 16-33.

     “Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it, but it divides us from truth.” Kahlil Gibran

and the day came
when the risk to remain
tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk
it took to blossom                               anais nin

"For I see the beauty in you...
It is not an idealized picture of perfection,
But rather a mosaic of starlight and blood.
The most perfect poem of a life well lived,
Of pleasure and pain,
The sacred union of dark and light,
A life of redemption, surrender, and hope,
Of selfless acts, and courageous leaps.
For I see the beauty in you...
Your light shines so brightly to me."         Lauren Elizabeth Walsh

     “Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.”           Rainer Maria Rilke

Wisdom in Paradox

      Can I, at the same time, embrace "contrasting themes; that of my deepest heart, which feels the intimacy of all things, and the walls the mind constructs, which separates all things"? (Thanissara) In other words, can I embody the nondualistic, unconditioned, spacious, timeless, empty, transpersonal ground of my being WHILE accepting, honoring & holding the dualistic, conditioned, limited, finite, material, personal aspect of my humanity?
     It's terribly common, easy, even comforting, to allow oneself to be magnetically drawn under by destructive emotions into the recurring nightmare of depressive wallowing or anxiety-ridden catastrophizing. This blows the importance of the personal self out of all proportion, thus failing to provide the essential balance that can only come from embodying our transpersonal nature.

     "... all mystics – Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare."
       Anthony de Mello. “Awareness. The Perils and Opportunities of Reality.” Doubleday, 1992.

     "In our world things are always getting broken and mended and broken again, and there is also something that never breaks. Everything rises and falls, and yet in exactly the same moment things are eternal and go nowhere at all. How do we see with a kind of binocular vision, one eye aware of how things are coming and going all the time, the other aware of how they’ve never moved at all? How do we experience this not as two separate ways of seeing, but as one seamless field of vision?" 
       Joan Sutherland. “Koans for Troubled Times.” Lion’s Roar, April 6, 2018

     “The exploration of the highest reaches of human nature and of its ultimate possibilities and aspirations … has involved for me the continuous destruction of cherished axioms, the perpetual coping with seeming paradoxes, contradictions and vagueness, and the occasional collapse around my ears of long established, firmly believe in, and seemingly unassailable laws of psychology.” Abraham Maslow

 

Helping, Fixing, Serving ... Namaste

     “… an important teaching by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen: ‘Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole.’ Remen explains that helping is based on inequality: ‘When we help we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of self-worth, integrity and wholeness. When I help I am very aware of my own strength. But we don’t serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all of our experiences. Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others and the wholeness of life.’
     Altruism at its best is a radical expression of connection, concern, inclusivity, and a sense of responsibility regarding the well-being of others. It is about consciously not robbing others of their autonomy by ‘helping’ or ‘fixing’ them. It is about the realization that our own survival is not separate from the survival of others. … altruism is characterized by selflessness, unselfishness, courage, generosity, a sense of mutuality, and a deep regard for all of life.
     I believe that our deep work is to build a strong internal infrastructure of character, recognize the perils that are disguised as goodness, and have the wherewithal to step out of the trap before it closes around us. Yet we can also fall prey to self-deception, misguided motivations, and the need for praise at one time or another. And when this happens and we recognize it, here is where we open the great gift of humility borne of failure.”        Joan Halifax. “Standing at the Edge. Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet.” Flatiron Books, 2018.
 
     “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Steve Jobs, Stanford University 

     "Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor. Perhaps, in a way, that's where humanity is now: about to discover we're not as smart as we thought we were, will be forced by life to surrender our attacks and defenses which avail us of nothing, and finally break through into the collective beauty of who we really are." Marianne Williamson 
 
      “My heartfelt wish for you: As you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love. YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE.” George Saunders, Syracuse University

  

Pathological Altruism

     Are you chronically crazy-busy, multi-tasking, harried, stressed-out & sleep-deprived from work, as well as all the work you do at home? Has this now essentially become who you are - your identity (part or subpersonality)? While one part of you may be thoroughly fused with this self-concept, doesn't another part of you resent it? Are you stuck in the glory and hell of being "stressed-out, multi-tasker, super-hero"? You likely started out being altruistic, but now may be feeling the strain of this inner conflict.
     Can you entertain the possibility that this is not who you really are? Is it possible that all the drama, noise & confusion is just a collection of no-longer-helpful habits of mind (conditioning)? Is it possible that you can notice, accept, and with self-compassion, gentleness & persistence, gradually let all of this extra stuff go?
     What will be left behind? Will you be reduced to a puddle of mush unable to do anything? After releasing the noise, only your authenticity remains. Instead of being driven by fear, you will return to being unconditional love and will nurture the people, places, & projects you deal with, like a grandparent caring for a grandchild or a gardener lovingly tending a garden - spontaneously providing what is most appropriate & necessary for all to flourish. Stabilizing in, & acting from authenticity, you are being altruistic in a healthy, sustainable way. Instead of it feeling like a strain & heavy burden, authenticity feels effortless, pleasant, nourishing, right for all concerned.
 
     "When our altruism shifts out of selfless goodness into obligation, duty, or fear … or we simply feel burned out from giving, we may start to churn with negative emotions.
     We may also believe that helping a patient, student, or relative gives us permission to offer unsolicited advice or to control their actions. … Altruism’s edge in these situations can easily crumble when our anxiousness or need to fix take the lead.
     If we can learn to view altruism as an edge, we will become more aware of the risk and peril of this geography, and can realize what’s at stake: harming others, ourselves, and even the institutions in which we serve. If we find ourselves on shaky ground, we can learn to sense when our actions are likely to send us over the edge. In the best of circumstances, we can pull ourselves out of our precarious situations and move back to solid ground.
     When altruism goes over the edge and into the abyss, it becomes pathological altruism, a term used in social psychology. Altruism that is sourced in fear, the unconscious need for social approval, the compulsion to fix other people, or unhealthy power dynamics easily crosses the line into harm. And there can be tough consequences, from personal burnout to the disempowerment of entire countries. It is important to unmask situations where we see pathological altruism operating, whether in the lives of parents, spouses, clinicians, educators, politicians, aid workers, or one’s self. Recognizing and naming this phenomenon has opened the eyes of many who have found themselves slipping down the precarious slope of good intentions gone awry.
     Pathological altruism is defined as “behavior in which attempts to promote the welfare of another, or others, results instead in harm that an external observer would conclude was reasonably foreseeable.” (Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, Guruprasad Madhavan, David Sloan Wilson eds.
“Pathological Altruism.” Oxford University Press, 2011.) 

     A familiar example of pathological altruism is codependency, in which we focus on the needs of others to the detriment of our own, often enabling addictive behavior in the process. I knew a married couple who let their twenty-five-year-old son, alcoholic and unemployed, live in their basement for a while. They didn’t want to kick him out onto the street with no job or home – but his presence strained their finances and, as a their resentment grew, tested their marriage. They tried to make him go to AA and to inpatient rehab, and they found temporary jobs for him, but their attempts to control his behavior and modulate his addiction always backfired. For their son, having a free place to stay wasn’t a good thing either, because he had no incentive to change his situation.
     Other manifestations of pathological altruism include animal hoarding and ‘helicopter’ parenting.
     Parents, teachers, health care professionals, employees within the justice system, and activists working in crisis situations are especially at risk of pathological altruism from exposure to others’ suffering. The consequences can manifest as resentment, shame, and guilt, and also as the toxic sides of the other Edge States: empathic distress, moral suffering, disrespect, and burnout.
     Also, viewing ourselves as ‘saving,’ ‘fixing,’ and ‘helping’ others can feed our latent tendencies toward power, self-importance, narcissism, and even deception of ourselves and others.”

       Joan Halifax. “Standing at the Edge. Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet.” Flatiron Books, 2018.

"How Compassion Builds Better Companies"

     Compassion - including self-compassion - would also be a welcome addition to health-care - individually as well as organizationally.

     LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner: "How Compassion Builds Better Companies" May 17, 2018

     The following was adapted from the graduation speech given by LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner at Wharton’s graduation ceremony. A version has also appeared on LinkedIn.

     "By virtue of my role at LinkedIn, I get the chance to speak with students and interns starting their careers, just like you. One of the questions I’m most frequently asked is what advice would I give my 22-year-old self?
     The advice I would give my 22-year old self is to be compassionate.
     I wasn’t very compassionate when I was your age. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t particularly compassionate until the latter stage of my career. And if it weren’t for learning the meaning and value of compassion, it’s likely I wouldn’t be on this stage today. So that’s what I’d like to talk to you about. The importance of being compassionate, and how it can change your career path, your company, and your life.
     When I was 30 years old I came across a book called The Art of Happiness. It’s about the teachings of the Dalai Lama. That’s how I first learned the difference between empathy and compassion. Empathy is feeling what another living thing feels. Compassion is putting yourself in the shoes of another person and seeing the world through their lens for the sake of alleviating their suffering.
     Though most people in western society typically use the two words interchangeably, there’s a fundamental difference. The Dalai Lama explains it this way: Picture yourself walking along a mountainous trail. You come across a person being crushed by a boulder on their chest. The empathetic response would be to feel the same sense of crushing suffocation, thus rendering you helpless. The compassionate response would be to recognize that that person is in pain and doing everything within your power to remove the boulder and alleviate their suffering. Put another way, compassion is empathy plus action.
     'Managing compassionately is not just a better way to build a team, it’s a better way to build a company.'
     That was a pretty profound realization for me, so much so that that book has remained a fixture on my nightstand ever since. It was my introduction to the meaning of compassion. However, it wouldn’t be until several years later that I had the opportunity to put it into practice. In 2001, with the encouragement of my then boss and mentor, Terry Semel, I moved to Silicon Valley and became an executive at Yahoo. A journalist once described my management style at Yahoo as 'wielding his fierce intelligence as a blunt instrument.' At least the first part was flattering.
     Though I wasn’t a yeller, I was pretty intense. If I saw something in a presentation that didn’t make sense, I could barrage the team with questions. I’d listen with the intent to reply, and not seek to understand. I expected other people to do things the way I did and grew frustrated when they didn’t. Over time, I realized how unproductive this approach was. Rather than inspire and lift people up, it was a good way to shut people down.

Aspiring to Compassion
     So I decided to change. I vowed that as long as I’d be responsible for managing other people, I would aspire to manage compassionately. That meant pausing, and being a spectator to my own thoughts, especially when getting emotional. It meant walking a mile in the other person’s shoes; and understanding their hopes, their fears, their strengths and their weaknesses. And it meant doing everything within my power to set them up to be successful.
     I’ve now been practicing this approach for well over a decade. And I can tell you with absolute conviction that managing compassionately is not just a better way to build a team, it’s a better way to build a company. I’ll give you three examples based on my experience at LinkedIn
     The first example is how Reid Hoffman transitioned me into the company. Reid is not only the visionary founder of LinkedIn, he’s one of the most thoughtful people I know. In 2008, when I joined, we had agreed I’d start as interim president to preserve our options. The night before I began, I called Reid, and asked, 'So how is this going to work? You still have the title of CEO, I’m going to be interim president. Which decisions should I make and which decisions will you make?'

KNOWLEDGE@WHARTON HIGH SCHOOL
     He said, 'That’s easy, it’s your ball. You run with it.' I was like, 'What?' He said, 'Yeah. I just went through this with the previous CEO and want to avoid making the same mistakes.'
     But Reid went further than establishing clear lines of authority. For the first 10 or so weeks I was at LinkedIn, Reid was out of the office for at least eight of them. He scheduled conferences and travel because he understood that as the founder of the company, if he were still around, people would reflexively go to him for decisions, instead of me. So he removed himself from the situation altogether until I could build that connective tissue myself. Talk about managing compassionately. I hope all of you meet someone equally invested in your success. It will make all the difference.
     That’s the first example. The second example is less a story than it is an observation.

Missing Trust
     The long-term value of a company is based on the speed and quality of its decision-making. It’s hard to make better decisions faster when people on the team lack trust in one another and are constantly questioning each other’s motivations. In an environment like that, you’ll spend most of your time navigating corporate politics, rather than focusing on the task at hand. I’ve been there, and it’s no fun.
     'Create the right culture, and you create a competitive advantage.'
     The flip side is developing a culture with a compassionate ethos. That’s what our leadership team has tried to do at LinkedIn; create a culture where people take the time to understand the other person’s perspective, and not assume nefarious intention; build trust; and align around a shared mission. After nearly 10 years, I still celebrate the fact we can make important decisions in minutes or hours that some companies debate for months. Create the right culture, and you create a competitive advantage.
     The third example, is about how compassion has become essential in the realization of LinkedIn’s vision to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Recently, we launched a product that allows members to apply to a job by asking someone in their network to provide a referral. Had you done a case study on the product, you likely would have said it had all the hallmarks of a winning strategy: It was differentiated, delivered on an essential consumer need, and moved the needle in terms of results. However, that evaluation would have been incomplete.
     Shortly after launching, Meg Garlinghouse, our head of social impact, and someone deeply committed to our vision and values, asked what effect the new feature would have on the most underserved segments of our membership — people who didn’t go to a four-year university, who don’t have the right relationships, but who do have the skills to excel in the role. It was exactly the right question to ask.

Career Advice
     Through working with organizations like Year Up and the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula, I’ve had the privilege to meet young adults who are in that position. They’re intelligent, resilient and committed to improving their lives and the lives of others. They have qualities forged by overcoming a lifetime of adversity that many of us couldn’t begin to fathom. Having hired people like that and watched them flourish, it’s become clear they don’t need handouts, they just need a hand — like all of us have needed at some point in our careers.
     So we developed a Career Advice feature which lets people without experience or established networks get help from those privileged enough to have both. In just a few short months since launch, nearly one million mentors have volunteered on LinkedIn.
     As the pace of innovation and technology continues to accelerate, it’s more important than ever that we think through the unintended consequences of our actions and not just remain fixated on maximizing shareholder value. As future business leaders, keep in mind, it’s not just about what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s about how you’re trying to accomplish it. We need to increasingly put ourselves in the shoes of those on the receiving end of new technologies — and those who might never benefit from them.
     Everything I’ve discussed thus far is about compassion in the context of work. I’d now like to shift gears and talk about how essential it is to practice compassion at home. A few years ago, I was walking to my car after a long day at the office and despite being exhausted, I was reflecting on how satisfying the day had been. However, on this particular night, the satisfaction would prove fleeting. As I opened my car door and started thinking about getting home to my wife and our two daughters, it hit me: For as hard as I worked to be compassionate at the office, I was not always as compassionate with my family.
     By the time I got home on some nights, I’d be so spent that after putting the girls to bed, I had little left to give. So when my wife, who was also tired and had had a busy day, wanted to connect, or talk about important stuff, I would reflexively say it had been a long day, I was exhausted, and could we talk about it some other time. In other words, I was doing the exact opposite of being compassionate with the one person who mattered most.
     My wife, Lisette, is the bedrock of our home and has built the foundation upon which my work exists. She’s taught me the importance of love, and kindness, and gratitude. My team at Yahoo used to joke that there was a pre-Lisette and post-Lisette version of me. They strongly preferred the latter.

Common Mistake
     Suffice it to say, I couldn’t do what I do without her.
     I was making a far too common mistake: Taking the people we’re closest to for granted by assuming they’re the ones we don’t need to make an effort with. Nothing could be further from the truth.
     It’s taken me a long time to realize what makes me happy: Simply put, it’s looking forward to going to work in the morning, and looking forward to coming home at night. The only way I can do this is by practicing compassion in both facets of my life, and not taking anything or anyone for granted.
     These are some of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned with regard to compassion. In some ways, they feel more relevant than ever. One of the defining issues of our time will be socio-economic stratification, the growing divide between the haves and have-nots. It’s already hovering at historic highs and threatens to get even worse as new technologies potentially displace millions of people from their jobs. When people lose access to economic opportunity, they become disenfranchised and that can have serious consequences on society.
     'It’s not just about the what, it’s also about the how.'
As if that wasn’t challenging enough, we’re also facing the rise of tribalism. It’s human nature to gravitate towards people that look and sound like we do. That sense of belonging helps keep us safe and feel protected. But there’s a dark downside. All these tribes spend too much time thinking about themselves, their own self-interests and their own belief models. Technology facilitates the divide by making it easier than ever to connect to those who reinforce our own worldview. It’s a vicious cycle: We don’t spend enough time thinking about other tribes, which drives us even further apart.
     But we can reverse these trends. By breaking free of our own tribes, even if only for a moment, and seeing things through the lens of people unlike ourselves, we can begin to close the gaps, whether they be socio-economic, racial, gender, political or otherwise.
     Class of 2018, you are graduating during a time when seemingly anything is possible. Once the stuff of science fiction, AI is increasingly part of our daily lives. We’re on the threshold of medical breakthroughs that could eliminate global disease. Some are attempting to colonize Mars, while others are seeking to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels. And in true Wharton fashion, one alum is attempting to do both simultaneously.
Regardless of how you decide to change the world, remember, it’s not just about the what, it’s also about the how. So I’d like to close by giving you the same advice I’d give my 22 year-old self: Be compassionate. We’ll all be better off because of it."
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/linkedin-ceo-how-compassion-can-build-a-better-company/ 

"Let Go of Words, Concepts & Internal Dialogue" - Some Reasons Why

     Most of us are unconsciously completely identified with our internal dialogue (self-talk) - our ideas, opinions, preferences, likes, dislikes, must have, must avoids, prejudices, etc. This is very common and problematic from the perspective of both Western psychology ('cognitive fusion') and the world's Wisdom traditions.

     Eckhart Tolle's take on this:
     “In romantic love, you want the other person. In true love, you want the other person’s good’ (you wish the other person well). And so other languages have different words for love to distinguish between the emotional wanting and something deeper: agape, metta, and so on. The Dalai Lama says ‘My religion is kindness.’ So words like agape, metta & kindness point to something, point to something within you – an essence from where you perceive & interact with the outside world in a very different way from the usual mentalized, conceptualized perception of reality around you, including other human beings. 
     The usual way to relate for people who have not awakened to that deeper level that I often call ‘essence,’ or your ‘essence identity,’ the usual way is to relate to other human beings through mental concepts or judgments. They become the veil that comes in between you and your perception of reality. And awakening is to become free of the compulsion to judge continuously, to interpret continuously, to label and name continuously, what’s around you and whoever you are with. 
     And when that compulsion to label everything mentally, the conceptualized reality, when that subsides, and that subsides when presence arises, then you sense something in whatever you perceive, that is a kind of recognition, whether it’s a human being, any other being - a tree or an animal, you recognize something in the other that before, when you were naming & labeling you couldn’t. 
     When we're naming & labeling, the other was always ‘the other,’ and nature was also conceptualized - especially human beings become conceptualized as ‘the other.’ In the egoic state, the ego actually emphasizes the otherness of others, by continuously criticizing, judging, having opinions, and mistaking every viewpoint for the truth. So there can be no love there, although the egoic entity sometimes talks about love. 
     Jesus said ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’, which means recognize your neighbor – the other, as yourself. And that recognition is sensing, when you look at another human being in the spaciousness of just this, sometimes called the formless dimension. What you’re looking at is form. What you’re looking at is the physical body, and also what you are perceiving is the mental form, the psychological form of that person. 
     You go beyond form, what you sense in the other, through your own presence, is the presence of the other – that which cannot be seen. It’s the essence of everything. 
     When your dog dies, all you’re left with is the fur, the bones and internal organs – the essence of that being is no longer there. But when you look at a live dog, you can sense the essence of beingness – the beingness in the other. Sometimes it’s easier with animals than with humans, because with humans you have a lot of mental identifications. So you sense the beingness, because you sense your own beingness. You could call that ‘perceiving from the heart’ – perceiving from beingness. And then you sense the beingness of the other. And that recognition is the recognition of oneness. And that’s love. Love is sensing that you share consciousness. What you love in the other, ultimately, is the consciousness. 
     It’s nice to touch the fur of a dog, or to touch another human being, but ultimately, what you love in the other is something that you cannot perceive, that is beyond the senses, you cannot mentalize. So to perceive through that space of love, is to be free of the compulsion to mentalize, to conceptualize. 
     And in practical terms it looks like this. I’m looking at Ram Das, with conceptualization, I have some image – oh, he is the famous guru, he wrote that book, or whatever concepts I have; without any concepts, there’s just suddenly a meeting, in stillness, because that’s really what it is, when you look at something without naming it, you look through the stillness. 
     And I invite you to look at the totality of your environment, not through any naming, but through the alert space of stillness."

      "A Dialogue with Ram Dass & Eckhart Tolle" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPmgTJGPzlg

At some point in time ...

    At some point in time, we finally realize that 'the story of me' is deadly boring, we wake up from the trance, face reality and start living. The present moment, according to Eckhart Tolle, is the way out of the ego.

     “[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.” Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

     “… as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its ‘problems’ because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.” Eckhart Tolle

     “How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick.” Joseph Campbell

     "The ego likes to be entertained and reaffirmed constantly. When it is made to be quiet, and not do anything interesting, it objects quite vehemently and tries to circumvent the situation by finding something to support it, such a talking, reading, daydreaming, anything to keep it going. Unless we renounce these tendencies, meditation cannot succeed.” Ayya Khema

      “Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.” C.G. Jung

      “Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.” Carlos Castaneda
 
 

 

Grief as a Solitary Burden

     “Expressing grief has always been a challenge. The main difference between our society and societies in the past is how private we are with it today. Through most of human history grief has been communal. 
     The Pueblo people of the Southwest, for example, have ‘crying songs’ to help move grief along. The Mohawk traditions have the ‘condolence ritual,’ where they tend to the bereaved with an elegant series of gestures, such as wiping tears from the eyes with the soft skin of a fawn. The healers in those traditions know it is not good to carry grief in the body for a long time. 
     But now we’re asked — and sometimes forced — to carry grief as a solitary burden. And the psyche knows we are not capable of handling grief in isolation. So it holds back from going into that territory until the conditions are right — which they rarely are. The message is ‘Get over it. Get back to work.’ 
     Again and again in my practice clients come to me with a depression that is more of an oppression: a result of so many years of sorrow that have not been touched with kindness or compassion or community. You’re left with an untenable situation: to try to walk alone with this sack of grief on your back without knowing where to take it. 
     In traditional cultures people were often given at least a year to digest a major loss. In ancient Scandinavia it was common to spend a prolonged period ‘living in the ashes.’ Not much was expected of you while you did the essential work of transforming sorrow into something of value to the community. The Jewish tradition observes a year of mourning filled with observances and rituals to help the grieving stay connected to their sorrow and not let it drift away. Most people today might get a week of bereavement leave, at best, and then everything should be fine. 
     In this culture we display a compulsive avoidance of difficult matters and an obsession with distraction. Because we cannot acknowledge our grief, we’re forced to stay on the surface of life. Poet Kahlil Gibran said, ‘The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.’ 
     We experience little genuine joy in part because we avoid the depths. We are an ascension culture. We love rising, and we fear going down. Consequently we find ways to deny the reality of this rich but difficult territory, and we are thinned psychically. We live in what I call a ‘flat-line culture,’ where the band is narrow in terms of what we let ourselves fully feel. We may cry at a wedding or when we watch a movie, but the full-throated expression of emotion is off-limits.”
     “The Geography Of Sorrow - Francis Weller On Navigating Our Losses.” The Sun Interview: by Tim McKee, October 2015. https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/478/the-geography-of-sorrow

Christi Belcourt "Medicines To Help Us" christibelcourt.com

May You Live with Ease

     "To a mind that is still the whole universe surrenders." Lao Tzu

      For many of us, our minds are far from being still. One example:
     “Though it was a divine trip, I remember often being impatient and jittery, perhaps from culture shock, perhaps from not knowing how to live without grinding and studying. This sense of not feeling comfortable in my skin plagued me during my early adulthood. From the outside I was doing splendidly: I had married the woman I loved, I had gained admission into medical school and was performing well in every way, but deep inside, I was never at ease, never confident, and never grasping the source of my anxiety. I had some unclear sense that I had been scarred deeply by my early childhood and felt that I didn’t belong, that I was not as worthy or deserving as others. How I would love to repeat that trip now with the serenity of my current self!”
        Irvin D. Yalom. “Becoming Myself. A Psychiatrist’s Memoir.” Basic Books, 2017.

     “While we all want to move beyond trauma, the part of our brain that is devoted to ensuring our survival (deep below our rational brain) is not very good at denial. Long after a traumatic experience is over, it may be reactivated at the slightest hint of danger and mobilize disturbed brain circuits and secrete massive amounts of stress hormones. This precipitates unpleasant emotions intense physical sensations, and impulsive and aggressive actions. These posttraumatic reactions feel incomprehensible and overwhelming. Feeling out of control, survivors of trauma often begin to fear that they are damaged to the core and beyond redemption. 
     Research … has revealed that trauma produces actual physiologic changes, including recalibration of the brain’s alarm system, an increase in stress hormone activity, and alterations in the system that filters relevant information from irrelevant. We now know that trauma compromises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive. These changes explain why traumatized individuals become hypervigilent to threat at the expense of spontaneously engaging in their day-to-day lives. They also help us understand why traumatized people so often keep repeating the same problems and have such trouble learning from experience. We now know that their behaviors are not the result of moral failings or signs of lack of willpower or bad character – they are caused by actual changes in the brain.
     This vast increase in our knowledge about the basic process that underlie trauma has also opened up new possibilities to palliate or even reverse the damage. We can now develop methods and experiences that utilize the brain’s own natural neuroplasticity to help survivors feel fully alive in the present and move on with their lives."
     Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015.

      “Be curious, not judgmental.” Walt Whitman
 

Christi Belcourt - "Quiet Moment of Gratitude" - christibelcourt.com

Who is Suffering?

     “… our illness is not a replication of something countless others have had before us, nor an accident of fate unrelated to ourselves but is in fact the opposite: a message from our deepest selves. And it is a message that is by and large not being heard. 
     Thus, beyond diagnosis, illness can be a call to rediscover our original alignment, to re-establish our essential wholeness; and chronic illness or pain is a particularly insistent caller. This realization saves a lot of energy! If, instead of encountering illness in ourselves as a call to arms in a psychic war against bits and pieces of our bodies and minds, we attempt to understand our symptoms in the light of the whole of our being, suddenly the question is no longer the primarily academic one of finding a label for a particular pattern of discomforts but rather one of a feeling investigation into our judgments and fears and the way they restrict our life energies. Instead of asking, What disease do I have? the question becomes, Why do I restrict energy in the particular way that I do? In other words, just who is it that is hurting?”


     “All emotions are modifications of one primordial, undifferentiated emotion that has its origin in the loss of awareness of who you are beyond name and form.” Eckhart Tolle


       Michael Greenwood. “The Unbroken Field. The Power of Intention in Healing.” Paradox publishers, 2004.

Receiver Coffee, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada   https://receivercoffee.com/