Feel with Neil

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My Inner Dancehall

Sometimes I imagine the different “parts” of my self as persons at a high school dance or a wedding reception. My Vulnerability is turned sideways, glancing only briefly toward the dancefloor. My Shame – its back to the room – droops at the wall. My Confidence locks onto my eyes whenever I glance its way, ready to join me on the floor any moment I reach for its hand.

And standing in the dark corner of the gym, with all the other personifications like Regret, which feel unwelcome…
Or…
At a reception table, seated by itself, glancing only periodically at the rest of the hall, regarding the other personifications invited to dance often, so feeling unwelcome…

There sits my Pain.

To a handclapping dance number, I groove gleefully with my personification of Joy, in a circle of other dancers gathered around Freedom personified.

The song fades and lights dim to signal the coming slow dance. I’m left without a partner, beside a nearly empty table. I look back at the floor where Joy has partnered with Freedom to sway and flow effortlessly, and Vulnerability accepts the embrace of Confidence.

My Ego can’t bear to be seen alone, naked, without a partner. To avoid being left out of the slow-dance spectacle, I extend a hand to invite the only personification nearby.

But Pain’s eyes reject me.

My Ego and I are forced to sit to save face, so we make it look as if I chose to sit to rest, spinning an empty chair to put my feet up after pouring a glass of water from the table’s untouched pitcher that’s sweating – rivulets dribbling down its smooth glass sides.

I sat with my Pain.

Still anxious I was being watched, my Ego wouldn’t let me idly watch the dancers, so prompted me to talk at Pain.

But Pain merely sat staring straight ahead at the weeping pitcher.

If I stood and left Pain, watching eyes would witness Ego’s rejection. I was trapped. Mortified. I could only stare ahead at the glass full of cold tears I had poured.

The Ego voice in my head played victim, “This is payback for avoiding Pain.”

The first of two slow dances dragged on, excruciating. My Ego’s incessant monkey-mind chatter was finally interrupted as the song was ending, because Pain had pushed back its chair to rise to its feet.

So my eyes too lifted, from the iceless glass of warming tears in front of me. Then, my Ego was mortified…

Pain was extending its hand to me, for the next slow dance.

My Ego felt every other personification watching for my response, so what could I do?

Other personas on the floor made space, we embraced, the music rolled on…

The Ego-chatter in my head faded as Pain led us in a dance I don’t even remember. Just pure expression. My mind stilled, I followed Pain’s lead with no effort.

This dance belonged to both of us.

Into my ear, “Sorry we sat out the first one. I needed you to sit with me…
Now, I need you to carry me; you lead and take me everywhere…”

Once in my arms inseparably, Pain seemed less a burden, and my steps lighter, a part of me no longer dragged behind…

My Ego snapped me out of the dance to alert me that we had been yielded the full floor. The music faded to silence breathless. All personifications were riveted, and the seated ones stood…
Confidence nodded.
Joy wept.

The gawking DJ had failed to queue the next song, so now lowered the arm of the record-player’s needle, and the crackling sound from the groove between songs echoed through the hall for long, quiet, still, breathless seconds, until…

All the personifications – from dark corners and limelight alike – rushed the floor with the opening lyric,

“Wellllll…”

The Full Neil threw up all his arms in unison…
.
.
.
.

“You know you make me wanna SHOUT!…”

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Leave a Comment below about a song that moves the Full You.

Related:
“Stay where the pain is” (Richard Rohr)

Neil D. 2022-08-18

Featured

Marriage as monument

[Personal preface here – 2 minute read]

In this article, the author describes how a movement which becomes institutionalized into a religion, becomes a monument. I have replaced this reference to religion with an individual “marriage,” for an interesting exercise…

.
In The Wisdom Pattern, Father Richard summarizes five stages of change that take place in marriage. He calls these stages the “Five M’s”: human, movement, machine, monument, and memory. This week we explore these stages as inspiration for marriage renewal.

It seems that many great things start with loving a single human being. If a person says/does something full of life that names reality well to a partner, the message often moves to the second stage of becoming a movement. That’s the period of greatest energy. A marriage is at its greatest vitality as a “Love Movement,” and marriage is merely a vehicle for that movement. The movement stage is always very exciting, creative, and also risky.

It’s risky because partners’ movement in marriage is larger than any culture, or any ability to verbalize it. We feel out of control in this stage of romantic love, and yet why would anybody want it to be anything less? Would we respect and love a spouse that we could control? I don’t think so! Yet we move rather quickly out and beyond the risky movement stage to the machine stage. This is predictable and understandable.

The mechanical or machine stage of a marriage will necessarily be a less-alive manifestation of the love between partners. This is not bad, although it is always surprising for those who see marriage as an end in itself, instead of merely a vehicle for the original vision. We need “the less noble” parts to keep us all growing toward love (1 Corinthians 12:22–24). There is no other way; but when we don’t realize a machine’s limited capacities, we try to make it into something more than it is. We make it a monument, a closed system operating inside of its own, often self-serving, logic. By then, it’s very hard to take risks for/towards our spouse.

Eventually this monument and its maintenance and self-preservation become ends in themselves. It is easy just to step on board and worship a monument without ever remembering the risk-taking love that originated it. At this point, we have jumped over the human and movement stages and have become “frozen people.” There is no hint of knowing that we are beloved by spouse and invited to inner journeys. In this state, marriage is merely an excuse to remain unconscious, holding on to a memory of something that must once have been a great adventure. Now marital love for our partner is no longer life itself, but actually a substitute for life or, worse, an avoidance of life. The secret is to know how to keep in touch with the human and movement stages without being naïve about the necessity of some machines and the inevitability of those who worship monuments. We must also be honest: all of us love monuments when they are monuments to our human, our movement, or our machine.
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Neil D. 2022-03-06

Featured

Embrace your pain?

I’d like to humbly encourage you, in the form of discouragement:

Don’t let anyone try to talk you out of your pain.

Own it. Get to know it. Intimately. It is exclusively and personally yours. It is one thing you can have all to yourself.

Many people don’t want to hear about it. Many people want to fix it so that they don’t have to watch you bear it, because they might then pay attention to their own pain.

Some kinds of people always pay attention to the pain of others at the expense of their own. Perhaps you are like that also. Either way…

Your pain wants to be known and owned.

Your pain does not like loneliness.

When we are honest with ourselves, we know we cannot run away from our pain. No matter how long we keep running, it is still there.

We should also know that “stronger” doesn’t mean more impervious to pain.

When we want stronger muscles, we might lift weights so that we can carry heavier burdens. What muscles carry pain? Your heart is a pretty impressive muscle. Exercise it.

If your heart has been bruised or broken or wounded, you may think it is too weak to carry your pain. But that’s “thinking,” and uses a different ‘muscle’ than your heart.

We can borrow thoughts, and pretend they are our own.

When it comes to the heart, though, we cannot borrow or pretend.

We can harden our heart, hoping it will suffer no more pain. But that hardened barrier also keeps the pain inside. And we know hardened arteries are not healthy. Neither is a hardened heart. It is not stronger; it is more brittle.

The only one who can know your pain intimately is you. And, oh my, we know with certainty that our pain aches to be known. Give your pain your love. Give your pain your compassion. Have a self-pity party.

We permit self-pity to shame us because we are acculturated to avoid pain. Pity is a very strong and clear signal that you have avoided your pain for too long. Maybe the people closest to you did not want to be intimate with your pain. And when you are close to them, you yourself are discouraged from being intimate with your pain.

Blaming others for your pain is irresistible if you perceive yourself too weak to carry it. But that’s a game no one ever wins (https://feelwithneil.com/2020/11/24/shitty-blame-boardgame/).

Blame all you wish, but no one else will carry your pain for you.

So perhaps now you are alone with your pain. That IS what your pain wants. Your full attention.

Be intimate with it. Love it. That is what it wants. Lift it up in your tender arms and console it. As you do, notice yourself, lifting it and holding it.

You are NOT too weak to carry your pain. You ARE carrying it – always have been, and always will be. I would discourage you from trying to forget that. It is yours. All yours. And it wants to be yours and yours alone. Self-love and self compassion begin here.

The following exercise struck me as ridiculous and corny also. But, I didn’t have to do it many times to feel its deep and lasting impact. And it helps to revisit it periodically.

In quiet solitude, sit across from a couch pillow as your pain. Study its physical details. Then have a chat, and speak to it, speak for it, and *listen*, to both of you.

What are you? “I am your pain.”

How big are you?

Where do you live, physically and literally, inside my body? Give me a moment to locate you and feel you.

Where do you want to go? “Nowhere. Nowhere different than, or apart from, you.”

What do you want?
“To be noticed. To be loved. Not to be ignored. To be picked up, right now, and held in your arms against your heart.”

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Neil D. 2021-10-02

Featured

A psycho-spiritual role for logic

I’m not an overly enthusiastic fan of reason, logic, rationalism, scientism, physicalism, thinking, etc. But I am absolutely an enthusiastic fan. What does “overly” mean to me?

When you put all of your eggs — all of your big questions — in the basket of rationalism, you cheat your humanity. The height of reason is not the height of humanity {see endnote for more}.

Logic — no matter how pure — is simply not a person’s only way of “knowing.” Let’s take up the question of, “Who am I?”

Mire your self in as much logic as you wish about the question, “Who am I?” You stumble quickly into irrational grandiosity which inflates your self-importance, like Mushu presents himself as The Great Stone Dragon to Mulan (voice, Eddie Murphy): https://youtu.be/zn_nM7x7Lcw.

At the opposite end of the Logic Pendulum‘s swing is that you are but a speck on a tiny planet in the universe, bound to be wormbait and dust.

We each sense that we are something special in the universe, but that sense does not, and cannot, come from our faculty of reason isolated from the rest of our life experience.

“Who am I?” leads us to ponder both the universal and the specific. Neither seems to make sense alone. I am part of something big, and I am an individual. Let’s play further with another question logically…

“What is my potential?”

Here, I think logic has a deep and profound psycho-spiritual role to play for a person. You are NOT the ideals and values you espouse. That’s illogical grandiosity. Yet most of us live our lives thinking and acting this way. We wish to be something we can never be. Consider it logically. An ideal is an ideal and cannot be entirely embodied by… well… a body. Neither ANY-body nor EVERY-body.

Objective truths are unreal. They objectify us. And something within us tells us that we are not mere objects, in reality. So poo-poo on your idolization of objectivity. We are each subjects—agents of action.

“Who am I? What is my potential?” Logically, I am Neil. Logically, my potential cannot exceed Neil’s theoretical potential. Logically.

Why do we get so easily tempted by lures of achievement? By promises of becoming something we wish for? Because we live in a materialistic culture with expert marketing! And those forces are not founded on logic! They appeal to “something” in us far beyond our faculty of reason. At their extreme, they are imaginary realms, outside the realm of logic.

Our imagination lures us, logic be damned!

This propensity, proclivity, impulse, and compulsion for imagination is evoked when we hear platitudes like…
Be all/the best you can be.
Be your best/full self.
Self-actualize.
Know thy-self.

So, set aside your imagination as best you can, and apply here some brutal logic. And remember that psychology informs us by unequivocal consensus that Comparison is a lethal practice for The Self.

You cannot be “that” in its imaginary entirety. You cannot be “this” at every moment. You cannot be this or that by choice, by will, voluntarily in every circumstance.

This is the fullness of logical honesty.

In the sense that you deny each of these truisms, you are logically ill. You become *mentally* ill when you rely exclusively on logic. Because “you” are so much more than an engine for reason.

A human being is much more than a thinker.

A human being is also a feeler.

We try to sort out those two, but that is an exercise of logic! Can you peel an orange with an orange peel?

Anytime we consciously exercise logic, we sense that it is incomplete. And so have the greatest minds in philosophy throughout our history.

Today’s brilliant thinkers have an imaginary hope that we haven’t YET figured out how to subsume our faculties of emotion into our faculty of reason, but will in the future—like scientific discoveries remain incomplete and point to paths we should follow for further discovery. Of course we should do that, but if the aim of those pursuits is a fantasy that we will detangle our thinking faculties from our feeling faculties, and reduce the mystery of the human being, well, then, what are we left with?

Anyhow, that may seem to have strayed from my purpose here. I have drifted into talking about universals, and not the specific You, or Me.

Stop being so hard on yourself because you do not perfectly embody ideals, which were never meant to be perfectly embodied. Be content with valuing them. You are unique in the universe, even outside of time: Never has there been, nor will there ever be, another you.

To “do You well,” practice some logic about who you are, and, especially, who you aren’t.

Then practice some more logic: The full You that you just conceived NEVER remains static.

You are this and that… sometimes.

That’s *honest* logic.

“‘Neil’ is a name which should never be spoken.” Or only spoken as a whisper. Or whatever. Why? Mystery.

This morning’s Neil is not the same as this evening’s…

Logically…

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Neil D. 2021-09-01

{ ENDNOTE

The Enlightenment is a wonderful collective achievement, but it is not the end game. It was just a corrective swing of the pendulum away from the oppression of both the superstitious middle ages and the religiosity of The Renaissance. (https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/01/whats-the-difference-between-the-renaissance-and-the-enlightenment.html)

The Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution have put us in the age of technology, biotechnology, information, etc. accompanied by political revolutions which have put the freedom of individuals on par with service by the power of the state.

If you are more interested in his characterization of European/western historical ages, I recommend reading about the aforementioned topics as well as “Deism.”

}

Featured

Brené Brown & Richard Rohr on Power

So many hymns and prayers in institutional Christianity misrepresent the revelation by Christ. Each of us has been deeply wounded by power domination in relationship(s). Our religious brainwashing bears some culpability for that. Authentic power has no relationship to domination and surrender. But because we have been normatively blinded to that by religious conditioning, we suffer under that illusory form of power. Here are words from Brené Brown and a Christian mystic on Friday the 13th…

https://cac.org/no-domination-in-god-2021-08-13/

[Excerpts]

We will continually misinterpret and misuse Jesus if we don’t first participate in the circle dance of mutuality and communion within which he participated [in the Trinity]. We, instead, make Jesus into “Christ the King,” a title he rejected in his lifetime (see John 18:37). He never sought that kind of power.
…This isn’t a vulnerable, relational one who knows how to be a brother to all creation… [W]e no longer kn[o]w Jesus in any meaningful sense that the soul [can] naturally relate to (which was the main point of the Incarnation!).
…Our notion of society, politics, and authority—which is still top-down and outside-in—would utterly change…
[T]here’s no domination in God. All divine power is shared power and the letting go of autonomous and self-serving power.
Brené Brown writes wisely about vulnerability and power… “The phrase power over is typically enough to send chills down spines: When someone holds power over us, the human spirit’s instinct is to rise, resist, and rebel. As a construct it feels wrong; in the wider geopolitical context it can mean death and despotism.”
There’s no seeking of power over in the Trinity, but only power with—a giving away, a sharing, a letting go, and thus an infinite flow of trust and mutuality. This should have changed all Christian relationships: in marriage, in culture, and even in international relations. Instead, we continue to prefer kings, wars, and empires, instead of an always leveling love…

These are tricky and loaded ideas, perhaps impossible for most of us to grasp as a single point. So instead, share with us a comment below about what these words raised up inside of you, please.

Neil D. 2021-08-14

Featured

Aching To Know

God knows I’ve diagnosed everything wrong with me and others: My relationships. But, if everything has an explanation, faith would be moot. I am infinitely valued and infinitely complex. I am God’s unique child–not another like me.

Ever.

Though I compare my self to other selves, there is no comparison.

Creation without me is senseless. For I AM!

There is no creation without me, for as long as I am ordained to be. Which is forever!

I don’t think God intends me to understand all things. What would be the point of faith then? As a child needs a parent, so I need my divine Parent.

NEED.

Not a nice-to-have.

A fundamental and desperately hopeless–without hope–NEED.

It’s how I was made. To fundamentally need to know my Origin.

The Tree of Knowledge’s fruit is forbidden NOT because it hurts God. Directly. But only because God hurts, knowing that *I* hurt when I try to eat its fruit.

Its fruit is too big, chokes me. Not because of some inferiority, or curse. Or decree that I must be subservient to a master.

I cannot know all–even about my own self. I am too gloriously and unfathomably rich and complex. And that unknowability–even of
my
own
self
–makes me ache.

When I ache, my loving Parent aches more than I.

THAT is love. Love is immeasurably more than knowing, understanding.

Love is everything.

Both ways.

And even when it doesn’t come from my way?…

It’s coming from the Other Way…

Neil D. 2021-02-15 (originally February 15, 2019]

Related: Young Messiah: “There’s still so much that I don’t know. But I do know this… I think I’m here just to be alive. To see it. Hear it. Feel it. All of it. Even when it hurts. Someday you’ll tell me why else I’m here. I don’t know when. But you will. I know that. Because… Father, I am your child.”

Featured

Flamingo earrings are a sacrament

Eight-year-old students interrogated the teacher, who has a thing for flamingos: “Why were you absent, Ms. Doe?”

“I was sick…”

One gave her a gift, 2 weeks before Christmas: The birds as earrings, which weren’t very comfortable, “But I’ll wear them anyway.”
…

If you Google “sacrament,” you’ll easily find some definition like “a religious ceremony or ritual regarded as imparting divine grace.” More deeply, it involves symbols that point to “larger realities” which simply can’t be grasped with the mind alone. After all, how do we describe encounters which impart divine grace?
…

This gift wasn’t the last day before Christmas break, like a parent might suggest. Do you think the timing suggests a much larger reality in that student’s heart? I do.

Do you think that child thinks Ms. Doe’s ears are pretty? I’d bet.

It wasn’t an apple or a gift card, but a personal favorite close to Ms. Doe’s heart. That child “knows” Ms. Doe’s heart already, and longs to be closer to it.

I think that’s ALL divine.

And I think flamingo earrings are a sacrament.

Neil D. 2020-12-11

Featured

“How do you feel?” “I don’t know…”

“How do you feel?”
“I don’t know…”

I don’t think it’s unusual not know what we’re feeling. Nor even to be unable to feel.
What are you feeling now?
Are you feeling a mixture of feelings?
Are you feeling one shallowly?
Are you feeling one deeply?

If you aren’t sure, there are some almost universal triggers to make or help you feel.

I’m not at all a fan of the musical genres jazz, classical, or country. I can enjoy occasional hits from each, but rarely more than one or two at a time. Upon hearing of my disdain for classical, my sister challenged me.

I believe this 3.5 minute piece is one of the almost universal triggers that cannot be heard without a maelstrom of accompanying feelings (listen with space to move your arms through their full ranges, and fasten your headphones or earbuds securely, for your head will dance upon your neck, and, almost certainly, you’ll need to stand, and quite possibly dance):

If you are a classical music aficionado, don’t try to convert me, but please do share with me pieces like this one, which do not require an appreciation for the art form, and do not for the uninterested include wasteful bridges, interludes, and introductions. I wish to hear more brief pieces like this, in which every note has intrinsic value, even to the infidel.

Neil D. 2020-07-19

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Eating ice cream IS a Divine Experience. Soul and Ego. “Love” and “Like”

[9 minute read]
[also about the nature of feelings, human nature, childhood innocence, addiction, hypocrisy, shame, value hierarchy, neurochemistry, psychology, Carl Jung, archetype, the unconscious, the conscious, persona, the Self, familial and filial love, mystery, Yeshua, Christ, incarnation, Trinity, God, love your enemies, enlightenment, and pizza]

A friend asked if I think “love” and “like” are synonymous, and whether we can feel one without the other. She wrestles with them often, so I thank her for this exercise.

I wonder if a difference lies in the potential for reciprocity by the object. When the object is a person or pet, they can return the sentiment. And then on top of that, it is a matter of intensity or degree. I like John. I really like Jimmy. I love Joey. But that doesn’t really circumscribe either word. You can say the same of ice cream. It doesn’t have to be a sentient being, or even an animate object.

It depends on the intention of the subject, and the subject’s relationship to the object: Context is everything. Do you love your mother the same way you love a romantic partner? Do you love your brother the same way? Is love just a deeper or wider sentiment than affection?

I do believe they are synonymous metaphysically. For God there’s no distinction between things liked versus loved. Think of God merely liking something, stopping short of loving. Nope. God’s affection is full and complete, so the notion of degree loses meaning. I absolutely believe that God loves rocks. How can God bring forth into being something which God does not love?

I suppose, friend, that in the end, they are not synonymous in a subject’s intended degree. The subject situates the object in a value hierarchy. The choice expresses a sort of strength, breadth, or depth to how the subject relates to the object. Who wants to think of themselves as putting a subjective value on ice cream in the same realm as their love for their mother.

Yet, the value we ascribe to a thing is no simple thing to understand. Love letter to my siblings led me to the conclusion of: Mystery “only.”

Our value of a thing is inaccessibly mysterious.

We can make statements to ourselves or others only in our conscious mind (our ego). It’s the arena where we attempt to resolve mystery. And inevitably fail.

These two verbs straddle and criss-cross the boundary of ego—the edge of our conscious dimensions of Self. We can make ego-only-statements about things that we *should* or should not like or love, according to a moral value system, as I hinted at in Love letter to my siblings. Is it merely a statement of my ego that I love my siblings? An expression of merely how I want to be perceived? Jung calls this the “persona”—the mask we present to other people (and, largely to our own egos).

Do I say that I love my mother out loud, because I would be judged negatively were I to say that I did *not*?

So our value hierarchy has its own persona. It’s not necessarily an expression of our unconscious value hierarchy. I might say out loud that I love my mother, when inside I feel nothing for her. Shame is about who I am versus who I wish I were. I “know” that I should love my mother, but I cannot feel it. My ego defends that shame by expressing aloud the value which is not truly a reflection of my inner relation. Shame and hypocrisy are unstrange bedfellows.

These dynamics have to do with feelings. Feelings are relationships. They are *the* exchange between the conscious and the unconscious. They do not reside in the conscious alone, nor in the unconscious alone. They do not “reside” anywhere. They are the very substance of that relationship per se, as such. When nothing is moving between the conscious and the unconscious, there is no feeling.

So feelings inform our conscious about our unconscious. They are a language or a verb about the relationship between the conscious and unconscious. That’s why we are advised to pay them full attention. To let them “be” fully. Feel our feelings.

When we choose “love” instead of “like,” we are expressing some larger, more wide-open flood of chatter between the conscious and the unconscious—more feeling. That which we love more frequently, or more deeply, touches our unconscious with greater affect and effect. Taps our soul. Tapping into our soul. Transcends our ego/conscious. Deepens/widens mystery. Expression in soul-language, not ego-talk.

The soul adores what discomfits the ego: Mystery.

If you love ice cream, eating it evokes some feeling originating from your soul. Your larger Self “relates to” eating ice cream. It is a moment when the ego and the soul are not being hypocritical, and shame is momentarily annihilated. Ego and soul are dancing in ignorantly blissful unison. The ego and the soul are both pleased by the experience. I do think that is authentic love—an overwhelming flood of communication back-and-forth between the conscious and the unconscious. Love as a verb. I do think that is an experience of mysterious relationship—union between the ego and its soul. Happiness. Joy. Pleasure. Self completeness.

As adults, rapturous moments of indulgence are frequently followed by shame. Psychology might call this “sabotaging self talk.” Your soul loves this joy, loves this attention. Your soul is that divine spark within you. It loves the ego back—very, very naturally. The experience of eating ice cream has tapped into your divinity. There should be no shame in that. But shame comes from social scripting that attempts to reflect an objective, abstract value hierarchy, and our attempts at placing bodily health within it. Yet,…

The body serves the soul. This is a mystery, not a rigid hierarchy. A relationship. Bidirectional. The flow of mysterious “speech” back-and-forth. So if we ultimately die from eating ice cream, who cares? We have to die of something?

Remember, feeling is action. Action itself. It is not a state of the conscious or the unconscious. It is not of the ego or of the soul. It is the relating between them. Biologically, it has very interesting neurochemical underpinnings. To trivialize or ignore that biology is a big mistake. We absolutely are our biology. We absolutely are also more than our biology: Our biology is necessary, just not sufficient.

Our divine spark, our soul, was created to inhabit our body. In part. But absolutely in part. Mysteriously. The archetype of the Christian Incarnation is an inevitable evolution in the self-understanding of our species. Of our Selves. It is a crystal-clear sign that the mystery of soul is to include the body AND transcend it. NOT supersede it. Both the human soul AND the human body are thereby glorified. And shall be perfectly united by resurrection. Not blended in unity which obliterates one or the other. Blended in a coexisting unity of separateness, linked together (unified) by relationship to one another. As the triune Godhead subsists in each of three Persons relating to the Others (and to us).

The beautiful value of feelings is not the feelings themselves. It is their effect and affect of communication between the conscious and the unconscious. That does not happen only in the mind. It also happens in the body. We are both conscious and unconscious of our body, just as we are both conscious and unconscious of our soul. The beauty is the motion, the relating.

Ice cream is a trigger for union between the unconscious and the conscious—-both for the body and for the soul. They are separate but inseparable. What is “it” which unifies them? It is the very fact — the reality, the existence — of us, ourselves. Our Selves. We *are* body and soul, conscious and unconscious. That is our mode of being—of existence.

It is the nature of the human being to experience being human—to experience the relating of soul and body.

We ourselves are the organizing principle of these mysterious abstractions. It is not our conscious which does the organizing, as some sort of intellectual exercise. To speak of them separately is to speak of human being separately. They are not truly separable.

…

Christ exhorted us to love our enemies. We struggle with that in our conscious minds. We define an enemy based on how they make us feel. Christ’s exhortation is a bulletin that feeling is not everything. We are not our whole Selves when we merely think, feel, and act. To understand and know our full Selves, we must “understand” and “know” in a very different way than our mind and feelings are accustomed to. The soul must be an integral part of that way. The “mind of Christ.” The Way.

Have you ever shamed a child for adoring the experience of eating ice cream? That delight is a pure and innocent experience to behold. Matthew 18:3: “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” This is part of the gospel, which means good news. How so? All of us were once a little child, and largely still carry some remnants of that little child with us today.

Conversion is reversion, not a transformation into something we are not. In that passage, it is also translated “turn.” There’s no sense in which it implies becoming something we are not.

As a child, there is nothing that I liked without loving!

Extreme passion IS childish.

Childish humility is passionate, liberating, childish indulgence (Mt 18:4).

Soul-contact.

So, back to love implying the potential for reciprocity…

When I am loving ice cream, it is stirring my soul, and my soul is very capable of loving my ego back. A relating occurs. That action can be called “loving.”

I LOVE pizza! Truly.

Matthew, Chapter 18

[omissions unmarked]

1 the disciples came to Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, 3″Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me;
10 “See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.

=====

Neil D. 2020–04–29

Featured

My love letter to me

My love letter to me
…from my mom,
…from my soul,
…from me.

[6 minute read]

My rational mind loves theology, and I can wrap many of my beliefs into tidy packages to delight my reason. But that’s horribly dangerous, just like this theology: “The wages of sin is death, and you need a savior.”

“Do you NOW see and feel, Neil? Despite the crown of thorns, humiliation, false charges, excruciating death, do I threaten my wrath? ‘Forgive them, Abba…’ He was not begging on your behalf because you are unworthy of Our love. He was vocalizing what flows inseparably FROM Our love. Our sadness that you ‘know not what you do…’ To your Selves.

“Do you NOW see and feel, Neil? When I, your passionate and personal God, say that I love you unconditionally, that means no necessity of forgiveness. Our acts of love are not to show you how sinful you are. They are deeds to show you the purity of Our love for you. There’s no need at all for forgiveness when all is love….

“Love does not originate FROM or BY forgiveness. Love is no hostage, contingent on redemption by contrition and absolution. There is NO requirement that forgiveness PRECEDE My love. Neither offense nor guilt affect pure love. Nothing binds love. Forgiveness is a coincidence of true love, NOT a prelude…

“Look at me, my son Neil. LOOK at me. Don’t be afraid. Look at my Son’s crucified, bloody face. Does He look angry?

“The sadness on his face is for you. His face is My face. I am not angry and demanding justice because you have hurt Me. I am the Lord your God, Who fears nothing. I do not fear being hurt. But I can and do feel hurt. I can and do feel sadness. They are part of love, and I AM love. So I am also Hurt. I am also Sadness. But hurt and sadness out of love, not out of fear. Fear is not part of love. Do not fear that you have hurt me, and need my forgiveness. For I love you already. Fearlessly, and fiercely.

“You only fear Me because you cannot feel and trust the fullness of pure love — yet. My Son’s passion is a show of love’s purity, not a message that you need to fear Us, nor that you needed His sacrifice…

“My Son’s passion is Our love story for you, Neil. Don’t corrupt it into a tragedy about sin and penalty and any sense of justice and consequences and conditions and laws and rules…

“His love is pure. My love is pure. Conditions and rules for gaining it are impurities.

“I am sad, because you hurt your self, child. I, the Lord Almighty, BEG and PLEAD with you, Neil… I do not COMMAND you by any other power or authority except love… Fearsomeness is false power, and I am not false. Love holds no space for fear. And I am love…

“Your very Creator is begging and pleading for you to feel Our love in the story of my Son’s life. We do not wish for you to see some sacrifice to atone for your shame and restore your worthiness. Our love is NOT affected by your sin. It doesn’t stop just because you sin. Don’t be so conceited to think you can diminish Our love! Let this love story fly past your ego and annihilate barriers of shame, to touch your tender soul, sweet boy…

“The story of Yeshua is about Our goodness and YOUR goodness… Our and your OUTRAGEOUS capacity for love. Be outraged about that! Stop – STOP – making it about your badness and failure to love. You are hurting and saddening Us and your eternal Self by your ego-centeredness. Center the story on your WHOLE Self, as I made you. Be Self-centered about THAT story.

“Look at me, my son Neil. LOOK at me. Don’t be afraid.

“Let this story through your ego-self to your soul-Self. Begging… Pleading… In love… THAT is who We are.

“Know your shame, son. We do. Let it waft into your ego’s consciousness, and your whole Self can be compassionate with it, as We are. Your repression is keeping Our love from your soul. Even your ego, Neil, can love Us, and can love all of you, if your soul can embrace your whole Self tenderly, as We created it to do. You are made to love. Your soul can do its work, son.

“Imagine my Son’s face at the wedding in Cana, with a joyous smile crinkling his eyes. Imagine the fiery warmth of those eyes locked on the eyes of the woman to be stoned, ‘Nor do I condemn you…’ That is not a warmth that flows FROM forgiving; it is the fire of passionate love, from which forgiveness – like all things truly and purely good – cannot be separated.

“We hurt when those whom We love feel hurt. Just as you do. ‘I have become one of you.’ I have joined humanity because humanity is worthy. You are worthy of Our unconditional love because that love is Ours to give, NOT yours to earn. NO conditions. I am all-powerful. And I am in you. Our power is not rooted in meting out justice. Do not be afraid. Our power is love. I dwell in you: YOUR power is love.

“The moment I and your mother brought you to life, she held you in her arms, and adored you with unconditional love. You had done nothing to earn or deserve it. It was hers to give, not yours to earn. Your soul is no different from your mother’s. Your soul is no different from Me.

“You too have unbounded power to give love without conditions. Please, Neil, pour it out, unshackled by shame, with NO conditions. And, please, begin with pouring it onto my own infinitely lovable son, whom your mother named Neil…

Neil D. 2020-03-06

This scene from The Shack is a potent exposition of how the love of the crucifixion is not a payment to a wrathful God who condemns: fuller context https://youtu.be/hUiW7bOqGPA; shorter https://youtu.be/QtVEk0oKtkM

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Advent Prequel to Footprints

YouTube video of the poem’s text with Christmas soundtrack: https://youtu.be/fD1k_hfUDFE

(Read the preface to this poem here.)

Based on Mark 5:25-34:

A woman suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” She came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. Immediately she was healed. Jesus, perceiving that power had gone out from him, turned and said, “Who touched my garments?” His disciples said, “You see the crowd pressing around you?” The woman came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace…”

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened…” (Mt 11:28)

Adeste fideles. (Come, faithful).

Advent Prequel To Footprints

(Neil Durso)

Energy, misbalanced.
Self-centered lifetime.
Other-centered lifetime.
Tiresome battles lost.

Shameful failure.
Wasted toils?
No. Delivery to the now.

A curled, sobbing heap,
Writhing on sands of self-desertion.
A finger trembling, raised to an eye…
Tap its pool of tears, running them thin,
Glimpse through the blur:

A shadow over tears on dead sand
Shades the relentless brightness of scorching shame,
Revealing a garment’s hem resting on sandaled toes.

Stretch out of despair a hand.
Touch a finger to the coarse fabric.

From that cloak, a hand extends,
Re-flavoring tears that flow still.
From a spring deep within, never fully felt.
Feel it now. Don’t wrestle floodgates inside.

Epic struggle.
Ordained end.
Rivulets of tears baptize anew.
Every ounce of unrequited effort poured out has prepared the way…

Enormous fruitlessness was the way.
En route to the quenching fruit of energy exhausted.

The garment takes you up, in its arms
So gentle, their power feels misplaced.
You tremble at tenderness so unfamiliar.

From this bottom, from this birthplace,
In His wake are one set of footprints.
…

At cool evening’s arrival,
You’re lowered lovingly
To your own feet.
Refreshed.
At His side.
He at yours.
Two sets of feet imprint the sands.

Onward in silence.
For a time.
Then,
The silence drips into distant song
On fleeting breezes.

Whispering beneath the rising chorus,
“Whither, Yeshua?”
“The City of David.”

A bright star draws your gaze.
And He is gone.

Shepherds appear.
On pilgrimage.
To Light.

Above the sonorous din of lambs’ bleating,
Lyrics grow clearer…

Carried by the parade, your heart then
Your tongue join the hosts’ song.
Reborn of unshackled brokenness,
The beckoned joins the calling:

“O… O… come, all ye faithful…”
(song)

(Read the preface to this poem here.)

-Neil D. 2019-12-16
(revised from 2018-12-24)

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Green Shirt

The gently soft-spoken 20-something didn’t seem to ever stop talking except when he asked of me simple questions and waited for replies with earnestness that made me feel like my answer would be divine and resonate with profoundly undeniable truth and universal wisdom. He sat on a park bench with his beautiful, unthreatening, expectant, wide eyes open naturally enough to look up at me as I stood beside the bench on which he sat lower. His eyes weren’t bloodshot or distant, squinted or spookily wide. His pupils locked on my gaze, without blinking, without discomfort or shame. Without abiding by any conventions of time or rhythm familiar. Just natural, as anyone’s might be awaiting an answer, unconsciously exhaling the puff of smoke from a satisfying drag off the cigarette he just bummed off me…

He did that several times, awaiting several answers to several questions. Of me. Me. Me? Me!

Not hard answers to give. But not easy questions to ask. So, wait–maybe hard questions to answer, but not hard words to summon in answer: “Yeah.” “That’s true.” I know.” “I feel you.” “Right.” “Damn.” “I know.”

Know? Do I really *know* anything?

Now I know I do.

Green Shirt talked and asked about his joy and loss of waking next to her, whose name he didn’t remember. Of being anxious about how he would get eggs and bacon like yesterday. Would the nurses let him have the medicine he needed again?

He’s glad it’s warm today.

Hopes it will be tonight, wherever he winds up.

Wants to work on my car. She knows how to service bearings. He knows he has to clean up dog poop in the park before her company lets him collect cans. She’s not afraid to work hard. Why do they think their reality’s rules make more sense?

Yeah, I suppose Yeshua from Nazareth wore some shade of white fabric in the middle eastern form of that time. But I think, yesterday morning, He wore a green t-shirt.

If you see Green Shirt today, tell her I miss him. Tell him I said hello. Tell her I remember him. Say Hello to her for me. Thank him for talking to me about her own world. Tell her I love hymn… because he trusted me just to affirm her truth. And … loved ME too.

Neil D. 2019-07-25

Einstein mis-quote on solving problems and levels of consciousness, thinking, awareness

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
[NOT Albert Einstein]

“…a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.”
[Albert Einstein, May 25, 1946, The New York Times]

The first quote is thrown around, but he never wrote it. It’s a paraphrase of the second, actual quote, from a very intriguing context about his fear of nuclear annihilation, “ATOMIC EDUCATION URGED BY EINSTEIN; Scientist in Plea for $200,000 to Promote New Type of Essential Thinking.” (https://www.nytimes.com/1946/05/25/archives/atomic-education-urged-by-einstein-scientist-in-plea-for-200000-to.html). The paraphrased sentence is:

“We need two hundred thousand dollars at once for a nation-wide campaign to let the people know that a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.”

For more wonderful quotes misattributed to Einstein: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Albert_Einstein#Unsourced_and_dubious/overly_modern_sources

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Neil D. 2023-03-29

“I’m not perfect, but…”

Has not your greatest suffering emerged from your greatest relating-ships? Your closest acquaintances?

When you share your exhaustion, frustrations, and suffering with them, and all they can offer is simple fixes, simple quips or platitudes… You weren’t looking for answers, so it insults you. To be trivialized (or worse, dismissed or rejected) by our closest loved ones is easily the most painful.

Now, reflect on that, and reflect that – meaning, isn’t that the same for them?

Can you not bear the possibility that you have been the deepest source of suffering for your loved ones? Does that not seem preposterous to you?

“Well, no, Neil, I’m not perfect, but…”

That implies you are more perfect than your loved ones; might I ask, if they are so inferior, so imperfect, why are [were] they your loved ones?

Good night, loved ones 🙂

Neil D. 2023-03-23

You can only give what you have

You can only give what you have.

If that’s untrue, tell me how.

If that’s true, tell me why you promise more than you can give. Tell me why you promise more than you have.

Tell me.

Does it involve your ego?

You can only give what you have.

If that’s true, tell me why you expect more of yourself than you can give yourself. Tell me why you expect more of yourself than you have.

Tell me.

Does it involve your ego?

I would encourage you, however, not to be too hell-bent on reigning in your ego. And here’s why…

How are you to be content with promising to give only what you have?

Must you not come to believe that what you have is not only enough, but more than enough?

What you can give to yourself and others is quite enormous.

The ego is neutral, neither good nor bad. The ego is not the person. Your ego is not you. It is a marvelous source of “information” to you, but it is not the only source, because you are not only your ego. You’re much more enormous.

If you attempt to give what you do not have in order to feed your ego, here are two very hard truths to swallow: (1) You are acting from your ego, not your heart. (2) Nobody wants or needs your ego. Except you.

Everyone else already has their own ego. What they want to experience from you is all the other parts of you except your ego. They want to see your soul, and they want their soul to be seen by your soul. If you want to give only what you have, and want to believe that what you have is enormous, it seems essential to know both your ego and your soul.

I am convinced we all sense our fakeness, that we have acted so much from our ego for so long, that we are not authentic. If you aren’t convinced of that, then I ask you to tell me again. Is it not impossible to actually give more than you have?

We know with some form of certainty that our ego is not enough for our own self.

No one likes to see how much their ego has actually controlled them. No one is thrilled to see their reflection in the mirror of hypocrisy. When we look in that mirror with honest eyes – when we see our ego for what it is – it can make us angry and make us hate our own ego.

Yet, if you are to come to believe that what you have to give is plenty – to know how enormous your power is – you cannot jettison your ego. It has its role to play. Do not neglect it, Do not hate it.

Lift it up into your tender arms and carry it with you.

The full you will not be comfortable leaving that part behind.

See what it is that you can honestly give of yourself. It’s no small thing. Because you aren’t.

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Neil D. 2023-03-11

A quintessential journal prompt from Brennan Manning

It’s nearly my birthday – a time of being asked what I want…

Brennan Manning’s book, The Furious Love of God, has 2 reflection questions at the end of each chapter. Here’s an excerpt and one that I think might be a quintessential journal prompt for fascinating responses to the very same question over time:

In the presence of the king, don’t ask for small gifts… One day Jesus was walking down the road in Galilee and the blind man, Bartimaeus, called out, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!’ The apostles tried to hush him up. But he cried louder, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!’ Jesus stops, turns, and asks, ‘What do you want?’ Without hesitation, the blind man says, ‘I want my sight!’ And Jesus says, ‘Your faith has saved you.’…

…If Jesus were to ask you, right now—what do you want?—what would you say? Seriously, what would your answer be?

My answer today, right after reading the book, anyway:

To hang out with you for all of eternity. To party and dance with you, to sit with you and cry for me, for you, for all of our brothers and sisters whenever they want to be seen and heard, for Our Father… To be in union with your love, dripping and swimming and drowning in it, with all our sisters and brothers, over and over and over, in laughs and sobs, tears and smiles, never-ending. Perhaps what I want is what I have.

Neil D. 2023-02-25

Nietzsche’s dead “God”

In the current of the Enlightenment, I think Nietzsche’s announcement that “God is dead” was close, but I don’t think “God” was yet dead. Just wounded. The work of killing has continued. And in my view, the “Enlightened” – materialists, rationalists, nihilists, skeptics, atheists – don’t deserve much credit at all for the ongoing killing. Instead, it is the “God” promoters who are managing to suck every last breath and drop of blood from the wounded “God.”

The Enlightenment had wounded the unreal, idealized, and idolized “God.” These are the “God”s defined by institutionalized religions organizing fearfully under the God banner, lusting for power to fortify their insecure egos as they sought more power over masses.

As power-lust will do, it propels these institutions to cling more tightly to their belief in definition. These institutional behaviors are reflections of individual behaviors: Each one of us, upon realizing we have not defined the world properly as it is, first clings even more tightly and grasps for control more desperately, before reality wrests our delusions from us. When we persist in our narrowness and do not surrender, we go insane. So have religious institutions, because so is their “God.”

To pretend we can define the undefinable is, well, nothing short of ill-logic, is it? Insane.

The Enlightenment suggested that many of the irrational claims and beliefs of religions were insane. Religion argues back that rationality is transcended by faith. Perhaps. But some religions also recognize that faith and reason, when both are authentic, do not conflict. These beliefs systems leave happily the dynamic equilibrium between faith and reason each informing the other. It does not have to be one or the other. But that takes a dose of humility that power institutions cannot abide. (Nor can most individual egos.)

Authentic faith demands assent from the intellect without conflict. It does not demand proof from the intellect, but it does demand assent from the intellect. When that required assent is diminished, suppressed, oppressed, ignored, or killed, faith is not authentic any longer. What “God” would demand faith be insane?

Yet, that is what many institutions still demand. These institutions are dying the same slow death as their idolized “God.” So Nietzsche’s announcement wasn’t wrong; his grammatical tense or voice was just a little too advanced. God was not dead then; God had just been wounded, and began to die.

That “God” continues to be put to death by “His” adherents. This is not to say that ALL of the beliefs and practices of these institutions is insane. but some surely are. And the longer and more vehemently these institutions cling to their insanities, the more quickly they will die, thank God (the God without quotes).

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Neil D. 2023-02-18
[origins ~2022-05-02]

For a plainly written, related reflection with no pretense to intellectualism, see Lonerwolf.com’s “Spirituality vs Religion: 11 Differences (With Pros + Cons List)“

“Hallelujah” in a cold parking lot

Need your soul stirred?

Sometimes, the only useful “words” are music, aren’t they?

“Hallelujah” in a parking lot:

I recommend the full 2:37 min (https://youtu.be/jItpkniJLVs), but if you can’t spare that right now, https://youtu.be/jItpkniJLVs?t=1m24s will start you later for the 74-sec climax.

These are brass horns warming up in a city parking lot at the chilly start of September, before the 2015 world championships.

2023-02-17 Neil D