Life's Yearning

     I'll say it again - one's genuine callings and emotions must be acknowledged.  Then, whatever they are, these callings and emotions - Internity - must find a way to be lived.  In fact, calling and emotion are the core essence of "How I Am: Being Human" (to have, to feel, to act, to love, to speak and be heard, to see, to know).  And any attempt to diffuse ego-consciousness of this fact, or refuse personal responsibility for this fact, will sabotage Life's yearning in some way, shape or form.   
     Just look around and within.  The failure to acknowledge Life's yearning always results in combinations of physiological, psychological, social, mental, emotional and spiritual dis-ease.  Examples of this sabotage are also observed in the factors and influences of "How I Am: Being Human" (i.e, the genetics, family, community, peers, education, environment, temperament and calling of the personal and collective Relationships and Experiences).  In effect, the intentional acknowledgement or devout ignorance of one's genuine calling and emotion is revealed and reflected in the purposeful behaviors and internal motivations of Life's yearning.


Postscript: I finish these thoughts in the shadow of yet another mass killing, this time at a theater in Aurora, Colorado.  (Twelve people dead, which, averaged out, is approximately one-third of how many people die everyday from gun violence in this "land of the free."  Fifty-eight people wounded and traumatized for the rest of their lives.  A country fascinated by the horror of it all but only until the headlines change.)  My observations at this point are that the public response is appropriately focused on either the victims or guns.  What we also need to address, however, are the killer's purposeful behaviors and internal motivations.  How did the nature of his Life's yearning, his interiorization of community and his deepest callings and emotions get nurtured into such a desperate annihilation of Life?  And what measure of safety and fear do all the killers, all the victims, all the media and all the guns reveal and reflect concerning our personal and collective formulations of "How I Am: Being Human?"   

Images, Instincts and Emotions

     It makes sense to me that each and every one of us, always and everywhere, responds or reacts from within to the images, instincts and emotions of self/Self, others and otherness.  (I differentiate between responding and reacting with the idea that responding comes from an internal Perception of choices and safety whereas reacting comes from an instinctual or conditioned internal Perception of being unsafe.)  In other words, we all respond or react to others and otherness via the images, instincts and emotions of the ego-self and the deeper psychological Self (i.e., Internity).  This is because all conscious and unconscious formulations of ego and Self are internally rooted in the Life of the collective yet from there branch-out to absorb, filter and behave in symbolic expressions of individual purpose and internal motivation.  Therefore, all the images, instincts and emotions of "How I Am: Being Human" can only be accurately discovered, expressed, connected and made meaningful with this reality as the guiding concept: all behavior is purposeful and internally motivated.
     Fully comprehending and practicing this immutable reality of behavior completely shifts the discovery of consciousness, the expression of challenges, the practice of choices and the meanings of change.  In effect, the moment one refuses to explain behavior using the stimulus-response fantasy (blaming this or that person-place-thing from the recent or ancient past for "making me" do this or that behavior) one begins a more intentional experience of being alive.  But please don't misunderstand me.  I am not for a moment suggesting that one's past Relationships, Experiences or Perceptions can simply be ignored as if they didn't happen.  On the contrary, I think the archetypes of the collective unconscious and the emotions of the personal unconscious will independently demand attention (in dreams, physical illness, psychosis, neurosis and every other symbolic outcome).  Likewise, the powerful emotions and symbolic values/feelings and beliefs/thinking patterns of ego and persona cannot simply be cast aside, especially when there has been some level of trauma to one's fulfillment of the human needs.  I am convinced, however, that the "nature via nurture" Potential of all these internal realities can only remain open to the natural images, instincts and emotions of Life's yearnings by nurturing an understanding of all behavior as purposeful and internally motivated.