Possible & Necessary perspective shift

     “the choice to experience the world as sacred and meaningful – to do so by dint of effort and will – is a choice that is within our power to make. It is a choice that takes strength and courage and persistence, of course; perhaps it takes even a kind of heroism. But it is possible … And more than that, it is necessary in the modern world.”

     Dreyfus H, Kelly SD. All things shining. Reading Western classics to find meaning in a secular age. Free Press, NY, 2011.

Photo: Fl_Gulfer   dpreview.com

Capacity to make adult choices

     Regarding “the old pedagogical cliché that a liberal arts education teaches you how to think”: 
     “Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that [this] cliché … is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”                     David Foster Wallace, 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College

     Dreyfus H, Kelly SD. All things shining. Reading Western classics to find meaning in a secular age. Free Press, NY, 2011.

Photo: Nate Udd   http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/your-shot/weekly-wrapper

Sadness & Lostness as a Mood; Lacking Meaningful Moral Values

     “this sadness and lostness as a mood … results from the inability of our culture, or certain segments of our culture, to confront the deepest questions about who we are: ‘I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans, as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values.’”

     “This is a generation that has an inheritance of absolutely nothing as far as meaningful moral values.” David Foster Wallace 1993

       Dreyfus H, Kelly SD. All things shining. Reading Western classics to find meaning in a secular age. Free Press, NY, 2011.

Photo: kzaz2   dpreview.com

Do the right thing! - Based on?

     "It has always been difficult, in certain situations, to act in accord with the standards of living well - the Greek philosophers called this difficulty akrasia, or weakness of will; it is the inability to do what we know to be the right thing.

     But in the contemporary world we face a deeper and more difficult problem. It is not just that we know the course of right action and fail to pursue it; we often seem not to have any sense for what the standards of living a good life are in the first place. Or said in another way, we seem to have no ground for choosing one course of action over any other."

         Dreyfus H, Kelly SD. All things shining. Reading Western classics to find meaning in a secular age. Free Press, NY, 2011.

     The knowledge transfer problem is much more complex than some of us imagined! See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/06/knowledge-transfer.html

Photo: Geza Radics   flickr.com/radicsge

Wound of the heart - part 3

         "This leaves us in a strange and painful dilemma. On one hand we hunger for love – we cannot help that. Yet at the same time, we also deflect it and refuse to fully open to it because we don’t trust in it.

         This whole pattern – not knowing we’re loved as we are, then numbing our heart to ward off this pain, thereby shutting down the pathways through which love can flow into and through us – is the wound of the heart. Although this love-wound grows out of childhood conditioning, it becomes in time a much larger spiritual problem – a disconnection from the loving openness that is our very nature.

         This universal human wound shows up in the body as emptiness, anxiety, trauma, or depression, and in relationships as the mood of unlove, with its attendant insecurity, guardedness, mistrust, and resentment. And all relationship problems follow from there.”

     Welwood J. Perfect love, imperfect relationships. Healing the wound of the heart. Trumpeter, Boston, 2006.

Photo: Helena Oswald   http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/your-shot/weekly-wrapper

Wound of the heart - part 2

         "Sometimes the wounding or separation from love happens in more subtle ways. Some parents seem loving enough, yet they covertly or unconsciously dispense their love in controlling or manipulative ways. Or they may not be attuned to the child as someone different from them, a separate being in his or her own right. Such children may feel loved for certain attributes – but not for who they really are. In their need to please their parents and fit in, they come to regard love as something outside of themselves, which they have to earn by living up to certain standards.

         Children naturally try to protect themselves from the pain of inadequate love as best they can. They learn to separate and distance themselves from what causes them pain by contracting and shutting down. The technical term for this is dissociation.

          Dissociation is our mind’s way of saying no to and turning away from our pain, our sensitivity, our need for love, our grief and anger about not getting enough of it, and from our body as well, where these feelings reside. This is one of the most basic and effective of all the defensive strategies in the child’s repertoire.  Yet it also has a major downside: It constricts or shuts off access to two main areas of our body: the vital center in the belly – the source of desire energy, eros, vital power, and instinctual knowing – and the heart center – where we respond to love and feel things most deeply. In saying no to the pain of unlove, we block the pathways through which love flows in the body and thus deprive ourselves of the very nutrient that would allow our whole life to flourish. And so we wind up severing our connection to life itself."

     Welwood J. Perfect love, imperfect relationships. Healing the wound of the heart. Trumpeter, Boston, 2006.

Wound of the heart - part 1

         "If we take an honest look within, we may notice a certain guardedness around our heart. For some people, this is a thick, impenetrable barricade. For others, it is a thinner, subtler protective shield or contraction that only emerges under threatening conditions. And nothing triggers this sense of threat so strongly as the suspicion … that we are not truly loved or accepted as we are. Numbing or shutting down the heart is an attempt to deflect pain of that.

         Not knowing that we can be loved for who we are prevents us from trusting in love itself, and this in turn causes us to turn away from life and doubt its benevolence. We may tell ourselves that love is not really available. But the deeper truth is that we don’t entirely trust it, and therefore have a hard time fully opening to it or letting it all the way into us. This disconnection from love most often grows out of not feeling fully embraced or accepted in our family or origin – whether through neglect, lack of attunement, or outright abuse. Not feeling securely held in the arms of love, we fall into the grip of fear. Inadequate love and nurturance directly impact the child’s sensitive nervous system, resulting in a certain degree of shock or trauma that will affect us for the rest of our life."

     Welwood J. Perfect love, imperfect relationships. Healing the wound of the heart. Trumpeter, Boston, 2006.

Photo: Nitin Gera   http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/your-shot/weekly-wrapper