Self-respect

     I've written a lot about "How I Am: Being Human" but the essence of it all is encompassed by this idea: Self-respect is always and everywhere in the context of others and otherness.  "How" one tends to the complex tasks of Internity - the discoveries, expressions, connections and meanings of daily life - all reveal Self-respect.  The dependent, independent, interdependent and intra-dependent cycles of one's life each reflect realizations of Self-respect.  The healthy fostering of one's Potential physiology (survival needs), psychology (safety needs), sociology (belonging needs), mentality (fun and learning needs), emotionality (power needs) and spirituality (freedom needs) can only happen with Self-respect.  Intentional Relationship with one's genetics, family, community, peers, education, environment, temperament and calling is possible but only with Self-respect.  Original, sexual, imaginative and mortal Experiences contain the intensities of the heart's desire but can only be authentically honored and practiced with Self-respect.  Consciousness, Challenges, Choices and Changes can all be genuine and responsible acts of enlightened Perception but only through the lens of Self-respect.  To have, to feel, to act, to love, to speak and be heard, to see and to know all expose one's understanding and purposeful behaviors relative to Self-respect.  One's emotional integrity or disconnected opposition; one's empathetic or judgmental values and feelings; one's competent or overcompensating beliefs and thinking patterns; all display levels of Self-respecting awareness and guidance.  Both the awareness of, or dissociation from Self-respect present behavioral glimpses of one's interior story.  Self-respect, therefore, is a natural expansion of Internity - discoveries, expressions, connections and meanings - always and everywhere in the context of others and otherness - the "How I Am" of "Being Human."  So, I ask again...   

How are you?

    

     The Consciousness, Challenges, Choices and Changes of this question, "How are you?" live within the virtually infinite combinations of ego possibilities in the above diagram.  Self-evaluation is the main component and in the words of James Hillman, "The task is to find the gold in the volcano."  My main comment at this point is that each element can be considered singly but every element factors into and influences every other.  And as complex as all of that may be, keep in mind that there are no concrete answers - only clues to better questions regarding ego health.
     As vital as all the above realities are to healthy living within the world there are even deeper realities that reign within the divinity of "How I Am."  In my next posting I intend to address how "Being Human" gets more fascinating by looking specifically at the deeper psychological Self of the collective unconscious and its transformative Potentials, Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions.    

(Note: I don't have any directions on how to successfully respond to this blog.  I fail miserably when I try to respond to other blogs and when I do succeed I have no idea how.  If you wish to dialogue or comment or ask questions - which I think would be awesome - just e-mail me at: johnmadowning@gmail.com  Peace)

Common Sense

     Practically every day we are told to use common sense like it's the most valuable asset we have.  Yet, every day we also hear "there is no such thing as common sense anymore."  The "anymore" part is often added-on and implies that once upon a time there was more common sense than there is nowadays.  This, of course, is a perception and open to debate on multiple levels (consider that once upon a time it was common sense that the earth was flat).  Add to this the complication that what might be a common sense perception to one person or group or era seems absolutely crazy to another and vice-versa (consider that many people believe God is an elderly but muscly white man with white hair and beard in a white robe and a nasty mood who had a white son).  Or, what might be a common sense perception in one circumstance is carelessly stupid in another (think of speeding through town trying to get an injured child to the hospital versus speeding through town high on something like alcohol, amphetamines or godlike self-importance).  On one hand if enough people who have enough power support the merits of a belief or value then, regardless of its accuracy or consequences, whatever it is will be perceived and accepted as common behavior (think of racism).  On the other hand, sensible behavior is full of instantaneous transformations depending on the Potentials, Relationships, Experiences and resulting Perceptions of each individual story (think of Rosa Parks).  Add to all those circumstances the reality that whenever beliefs or values become common sense perceptions they are often blindly accepted as "just the way it is."  This chronic lack of examination always creates a slippery slope because it fails to serve both common and individual sensibilities (think of health care or the food pyramid).  It seems to me that the "common" element puts the individual into a constant relationship with otherness but the "sense" element originates in the moment with the interior formulations of the individual.  Common sense, therefore, exists as an untenable contradiction because common eventually leans toward biasing and obfuscating "sense" while the motivations of the individual eventually lean toward negating "common."
     These two words, "common" and "sense," though they can't logically be used together, are nevertheless both reliant on one essential quality: Self-respect.  Unfortunately, too many believe and value the societal norm that respect is achieved by creating some level of fear.  This belief is a prime example of how the common element biases and obfuscates individual sense.  The way I see it, Self-respect is impossible to attain by using fear as a tactic because fear causes emotional desperation.  And whenever there is emotional desperation one's original positive regard for relationship with Self and all otherness is poised to become withdrawn, manipulative, rebellious or dangerously compliant to the insidiousness of what's considered common and sensible.  These situations then mix together to cause one's ego-self (the daily interactions) and one's deeper psychological Self (character and calling) to become disconnected from and oppositional to each other.  This internal experience and relationship of disconnected opposition tends to create behaviors that are often perceived as "common" and "sensible" but at their core are emotionally desperate for Self-respect.
     I submit that disconnected opposition and the resulting emotional desperation is a painfully accurate description of common sense nowadays.  Without Self-respect the "common" is subject to become an undiscovered, unexplored, disconnected and meaningless waste of Potential (consider the violence of "screen time").  Without Self-respect the intuitive "sense" is no longer trusted making one subject to emotionally desperate and destructive belonging needs (think of suicide bombers, gangs and cults).  Those resulting behaviors are then judged by those wielding power as lacking "common sense."  This perspective then justifies further attacks on Self-respect in an unexamined and violent effort to change behavior and enforce respect (think of the rampant uses of punishment).  But that hypocritical approach is exactly what caused the emotionally desperate and destructive behavior in the first place!  Under the circumstances, it seems the most common and sensible effort we should all be making - as individuals, as families, as communities, states, nations and citizens of the world - is an intentional reexamination and resistance of the mindless contrivances known as common sense.

(Note: I haven't posted in a while because I've been busy working on other projects.)

Razing Children

     I think of Life and people with these ideas in mind: mythological Calling - biological birth - psychological birth - the Experience of being alive - biological death - psychological remains.  Each complex cycle of this human project is full of discovery, expression, connection and meaning, especially during childhood when emotions absorb and record every experience.  These core experiences characterize every element of one's personal life which then interacts with the otherness of life and creates Potential, Relationship, Experience and Perception.  All these individualized variations of this emotional human project - to have, to feel, to act, to love, to speak and be heard, to see and to know - begin during childhood.  In this way the generational oats we sow - i.e., the images, energies and emotions of children - symbolize the health of families, communities, nations and all the Earth.
     That being so, it is no longer possible for me to ignore how too many of the OATS we sow - Oppression, Addiction, Trauma and Shame - are negatively affecting the behaviors and emotions of "Being Human."  We know this negative affect is happening because we can see (if we learn how to name) and sense (if we still trust our instincts) the fear around us and within us.  After all, we live in a society of multi-leveled violence and this emotional state has, unfortunately, become the biggest influencing factor and most consistent personal response.  For example, the interior lives of too many are formed on barely "having" enough to get by; too many are merely medicating how they "feel;" too many believe punishment is the only "act" that gets results; billions believe "love" is about getting and doing instead of giving and being; billions more refuse to "speak" because they are convinced they won't be "heard" or fear they will; all of us are taught to judge and compete with who and what we "see" instead of understanding the interdependence of it all; and lots of us "know" years of formal and impressive information but are deeply ignorant of ourselves and the impact we are having on all of our exterior Relationships.  These fears result in personalized forms of withdrawal, manipulation, rebellion and shoulder-shrugging compliance.
     Such a state of affairs then creates an environment where too many wide-eyed children are vicariously living through media and technology, desensitized by sexual violence, their brains stimulated by flash-second imagery and instant access, their attempts at fulfillment conformed to pointless consumption and their imaginations disengaged from kinesthetic activity.  In effect, emotionally unhealthy children are now somewhat invisible because they are the accepted norm in society.  I say "somewhat invisible" because their purposeful behaviors are attempts to be seen.  As a society, however, we continue to "treat" the "symptoms" of unhealthy children (because there's a lot of money to be made) but we have yet to really see the new norm or name it for what it really is - the consequence of Oppression, Addiction, Trauma and Shame.
     Meanwhile, the always purposeful behaviors continue: obesity, bulimia and anorexia, attention deficit, hyperactivity, violence, promiscuity, loss of self-respect, "what's in it for me" attitudes, carelessness for the future, self-destructive devotions, emotional desperation, a general disdain for responsibility and an attraction to the anonymous and easily vicious behaviors afforded by group identity.  And yet it almost never fails that whenever the subject of "kids these days" comes up most grown-ups (as opposed to adults) absolve themselves of any responsibility for the situation.  They simply think and actually believe the solution is sowing more effective Oppression, causing more Trauma ("as long as you do it with love") and creating more Shame.  But dehumanizing individuals into submissive objects whose sole purpose then becomes avoiding the soul's purpose is at the core of what causes the various forms of Addiction, no matter whether the narcotic is alcohol, medication, the media, anarchy, political power or religious ideology!!  It's all wrong and it's all disastrous to the Relationships within us and around us.  The OATS we sow, these "four horsemen" - Oppression, Addiction, Trauma and Shame - have always and everywhere been the problem, not the solution.
     The solution is rooted in concepts of shared humanity - interdependence - throughout the generations (i.e., the physiological, psychological, social, mental, emotional and spiritual health of self and others).  In effect, "we don't so much build communities as we are already built into them.  Just by being here in the world our life is with others [and otherness]." (Hillman)  At this critical point in our shared story the Earth is demanding that we commit ourselves - as individuals, families, communities, nations and the Earth's consciousness - to raising fully awake and emotionally healthy human beings.  Of course, to begin this task we need to Change how we "have, feel, act, love, speak and hear, see and know."  Then and only then will we begin to create the emotional health necessary to stop the practice of razing children.
  

The Fear of God

"The world and the Gods are dead or alive 

according to the condition of our souls."  

(James Hillman)

  
     One of my earliest psychological births was in the mid-sixties at Catholic school.  I was formally taught to believe that God lived somewhere else and he was madder than hell at me for what a couple of my dubious ancestors did (something about not sharing apples).  As a child this dogmatic guilt by association, and my being "a sinner" because of it, didn't make much sense to me but it was a perpetual concern for the nuns and priests.  They often said, "God loves you" and "suffer the little children" but in reality some of them hated us "sinners" and were hell-bent on making us suffer.  To them the whole world was evil and the devil was three-and-a-half feet tall, had a bad haircut and wore a polyester sweater vest.  Too many of us imaginative and loving children took this abusiveness to heart and soul where the Potential of our world and the Gods began dying in agony.

     I still love learning but by the second grade I already had emotional reasons to be confused and hate school.  Fortunately, there were many adults in my life who weren't violent, even on school days when they found me hiding-out in the alley unable to verbalize my fear.  These adults practiced self-discipline and the Freedom of Responsibility so I trusted their love and loved them in return, even when they firmly held my hand and walked me to school where they mistakenly believed I belonged.  They didn't really know what was going-on other than hearing "his conduct is disruptive, he doesn't listen, he daydreams, he won't sit still, he teases the girls, he doesn't work up to his potential, he doodles pictures when he's supposed to be doing math" etcetera, ad nauseum.  (This report was actually saying, "From our perspective your son's main problem is that he's a child and a sinner and we're going to fix him good.")  It wasn't until many years later around the family table when the real stories of cruelty had their cynical telling.  The elders were confused and outraged but by then my ego was flooded with shame for instincts and distrust of my own Potential.  For almost three decades the condition of my soul drowned in the intoxicating hatred I fostered for the world and the Gods.  However, these experiences were also a "compare and contrast" push toward enlightenment.  To this day I thank the fates for sending me home from school to many loving and Responsible adults who used religion to guide instead of justify their behavior.  I can well imagine the shame in the hearts and minds of those children who experienced psychological fear and cruelty at home as well as school and to this day still think they deserved it.

     Enlightenment and healthy psychological birth are cyclical experiences of naming the world, intentionally holding one's Internity up to the light of solemn examination.  The purpose is to make some meaning out of it all.  And many psychological births later I now have empathy for those nuns and priests who were vicious.  I suspect they were systematically and maybe even ritually scared and hurt during their formative years.  There's no other way to explain how the condition of their rigid souls could have become so fearfully nailed to the crosses of their own neurotic dogmas.  They must have been scared to death of us children because as children they had been scared to death.  I now understand their behavior for what it was: projections of, and overcompensations for, their own unexamined fears being presented in the black and white costume of religion. 

     Righteously scaring and hurting children has been a terrible idea for too many centuries.  Throughout history and all around the world today - within individuals, families, communities and nations - the evidence of this common practice is found in atrocious acts of all kinds and all dogmas.  I am convinced that whenever people claim to know "God's will" they are actually revealing the unexamined, mean-spirited conditioning of their own damaged egos and dying souls.  The natural condition of a child's soul, on the other hand, allows for the whole world and all the Gods to be inspirational and alive.  To meet this truth with sanctioned cruelty has always been and will always be a fundamental act of terrorism against the psychological birth of the world and the Gods. 

Ideas

      I've been writing about ideas - ego and Self; reflections and revelations; Potential, Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions; etc., etc.  I've come to understand Life in the cyclical sense of mythological Calling, biological birth, psychological birth, the experience of being alive, biological death and psychological remains.  The constant theme is Internity.  The core idea is that one's Internity is always and everywhere in participation with always and everywhere. 

     Such an idea is fluid, subject to change and open to suggestion.  The diagram below is another one of the symbols I utilize to help me formulate ideas of Potential.  My unscientific name for what's inside the circle is "The Stuff of Life."  It's a mirror.  The top half and the bottom half continuously reveal and reflect the emotional components of one's Life.  The Violence/FEAR side and the Self-respect/SAFETY side are each generalized responses.  These responses, all of which have a core emotional element, then become personally specific formulations known as characteristics and schemas.  My conviction is that in the beginning of everyone's Life the Potential for "How I Am: Being Human" is either sabotaged by Violence/FEAR or encouraged with Self-respect/SAFETY to one degree or another.  However, regardless of developmental sabotage or encouragement, neither side is an unmitigated determinant of one's genuine Internity because the forces of Life are always presenting new Consciousness, Challenges, Choices and Changes.  

   

(I think and hope that you can click on the image to enlarge it.)

     

     The real determinant of Internity is whether or not one fully comprehends and practices the connection between total Freedom and total Responsibility right Here and Now!  This relationship between Freedom and Responsibility is unbreakable and non-negotiable.  It demands reality based Consciousness of purposeful behavior as it relates to and impacts the Challenges, Choices and Changes of self and others!  Unfortunately, most people believe Freedom and Responsibility are opposing ideas.  Such beliefs are actually a diffusion of Freedom and Responsibility.  And such diffusion is being demonstrated as detached and reckless behavior all over the World.  

     The focused intention of Internity, on the other hand, understands how the Freedom of Responsibility is what brings forth the genuine Self in Relationship with all otherness.  This focused intention transforms the meaning of Life into the act of finding and aligning with one's Calling regardless of anything!  In the words of James Hillman, "The task is to find the gold in the volcano."  Joseph Campbell sums it up by saying, "The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."  Not settling for the beliefs of who you think you are (ego) but finding the core of who you really are (Self).  When All is said and done in this Life the psychological remains, created as emotional memory within others, will mirror one's awareness and practice of how Freedom and Responsibility mirror each other as the same idea.   

Formulations

     I'm fascinated by the human capacity (particularly my own) to absorb and comprehend images that are both positively inspiring and hopelessly negative.  From our first sensations to our last breath we all play host to images in a continuous flow of projections and introjections.  And even though the images are primarily outward, the deeper realities they reveal are inward.  In the words of Joseph Campbell, "When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image."  My blog post just prior to this one talked about a meditation practice where all the images one comes upon are never to be attached to but instead are to be read as formulations of the ego-self, the deeper Self and the apparent intentions of Life.  Such a meditation practice contradicts our stimulus-response conditionings but, paradoxically, it's those very same conditionings that hold clues to absorbing and comprehending images with enlightened purpose.
     I'm also intrigued by cultural symbols.  I've learned, however, to see symbols as representational gateways to truth, not as holders of truth.  Symbols are functions of mythology and as such are meant to be looked beyond because they reference the mysterious unknown that is within and beyond each one of us.  Too often, however, our desperate egos get trapped in the literalism of symbols.  This trap almost always becomes manipulative of self and others.  We then interpret Life through that system of literal beliefs, thereby making all other symbols and beliefs oppositional.  Granted, the function of ego is to differentiate the Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions (the projections and introjections) of family and cultural symbolism.  But without ritually awakening to the deeper Potential beyond the symbols (the original function of Myth) we become stuck in differences.  Under such circumstances, I think it's accurate to say that all the violence in the world is the result of our inability to move beyond the rigid beliefs we attach to symbols.  These dogmatic attachments then keep us all separated from the spiritual and scientific truth of Universal connectedness.  In effect, the righteous fervor of "my symbol contains the one truth" completely denies truth.  I think this level of denial is symbolic of personally desperate and culturally disastrous formulations of emotion.
     The emotional formulations, "within you and without you" (thank you George Harrison), then interact with the personal and impersonal Potentials of Life.  Biological birth, psychological birth, the experience of being alive, biological death and one's psychological remains all tell a story of one's emotional formulations.  The discoveries, expressions, connections and created meaning are all symbolic signposts on a path (sometimes a hero path) to and from one's Calling.  The sense of having, feeling, acting loving, speaking/being heard, seeing and knowing are all projections and introjections of emotional ego development.  Ultimately, ego formulations reveal either fearful and ignorant diffusions of responsibility or the safety and freedom of total responsibility for one's Internity.  Either way, it seems that Life is pushing us all to have ego-formulations for the sole purpose of facing challenges, making choices and creating changes - "within you and without you" - toward a deeper awareness of Self-consciousness.  In effect, the apparent intentions of the collective Life seem to be teaching that living one's personal Life with anything less than focused intention on genuine Potential will result in emotional chaos.
     Finally, with a mindful focus on genuine Potential, my future posts will talk more specifically about understanding the energies of "How I Am."  Every element in the diagram of my May 18th post symbolically reveals and reflects personal and impersonal formulations.  My effort will be to systematically show how these formulations of image, symbol, energy and emotion are original, sexual, imaginative and mortal Creations that always and everywhere mirror the fluctuating truths of "Being Human."

The Well-Being of Internity

     The most powerful and challenging meditation practice for Well-Being I have ever encountered is based on this concept: All the World - every person, place, thing, event, idea and All there is, ever was, or ever will be - is Divine and enlightened except for me.  (The idea is similar to my previous post of being Alone in an eternal garden.)  This meditation practice involves my ego at the center of consciousness while my sensations consciously and unconsciously Perceive the World.  It's my ego, then, that does most of the interpreting of internal and external Potentialities, Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions.  This meditation practice, if effective, results in humbly Perceiving the World as trying to awaken my ego to deeper realities of the numinous Self!  This practice promises to create spiritually compassionate Relationships based on gratitude for All the World's images, symbols, energies and emotions - positive and negative.  In effect, this meditation practice turns the created meaning of my Life into a deliberate reunification of ego-consciousness with the a priori elements of the Self.  And this meaningful ego-Self unity then becomes a genuine path toward discoveries, expressions and connections of and with Well-Being.
     Practicing this meditation and achieving ego-Self unity means I have to be emotionally aware enough to take total responsibility for "How I Am: Being Human."  Most of us, however, have forgotten the Potential of emotional awareness; and most of us actively resist being totally responsible for how we are.  It seems that somewhere along the way we've been taught to believe that responsibility and freedom are opposites when in fact they are identical twins.  After all, learning the World's lessons demands full responsibility for how our projections and introjections affect the personal and interpersonal Experiences of being free.  Instead, we are more likely to learn and "believe" that our Experiences are uncontrollable reactions to erratic Otherness, a belief which then allows most of our Relationships to violently carry-on unimpeded by emotional awareness or personal responsibility.  Practicing this meditation also means Perceiving how feelings and values are conditioned by the presence, or absence, of safety within the context of Relationships.  But too often safety itself is conditional, created on the inequitable premise that, "As long as I am made happy, everyone else will be safe."  Of course, such a premise is completely antithetical to emotional awareness and personal responsibility.  Additionally, this meditation practice forces one to critically evaluate the beliefs and thinking patterns that justify behavior.  And this critical evaluation typically reveals dissociations from repressed and unsafe emotional Experiences.  (Freud nailed this idea when he wrote, "That which is repressed goes through no alterations with time.")  Fundamentally, this meditation practice creates freedom by demanding emotional awareness of, and personal responsibility for, the unity of ego and Self -  Internity.
     Imagine how freeing it must be to emotionally and responsibly move about Life with a unified ego-Self Internity!  Jesus of Nazareth did so and ultimately asked this question - Who are you to judge?  The Buddha acknowledged the attachments and sorrows of ego but then walked the path of the deeper Self, imploring us all to examine the thoughts, hopes, efforts, choices, words, awareness, livelihood and knowledge that create Internity.  Throughout the human story countless others have given us mythical clues to the unification of ego and Self.  It all seems to come down to this idea from Anais Nin, "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."  Therefore, I must become fully conscious of "How I Am: Being Human."  By embracing the challenges of these concepts I can choose gratitude for All the World as it attempts to guide me toward enlightenment.  In the final analysis, practicing this meditation means to examine the ego, see beyond ego to the deeper Self, and always participate in Life with the freedom of emotional awareness and personal responsibility.  The genuine result is the Well-Being of Internity.