“Exceptionally smart” – Daily self-help readings are empty calories

[5-minute read]

I heard someone call another person “very smart” in an “exceptional relationship.” Perhaps what they meant here was “emotionally intelligent,” or, more simply, compassionate.

When I think of compassion, it may or may not involve empathy and/or sympathy. When I think of empathy, I think of a capability of putting oneself in the emotional shoes of another. And I think that’s ultimately impossible. No person has the psychological background of anyone else.

I encourage you to be very reflective about phrases like, “I’m like her/him… I know what you mean… Same for me…” Even when a clever meme or platitude speaks to two people, be reflective about the differences between every person.

I think pure empathy involves pure humility. When we consider that we can “know” anyone else’s feelings, words can be tragically deceptive.

I propose we are drawn into this trap of positive-think because we are conditioned in a materialist culture as consumers. Beyond fickle fashions and pop entertainment, even health trends arise and pass, like junk news that will never really affect us individually.

We consume words and ideas readily, instinctively, and voraciously. And that makes the authors and conductors of self-help programs very wealthy in our culture. One of the most common things said about such “help-cults” is that they give us a sense that we are not alone. I don’t see anything wrong with that, but a consumer mindset is not a deep or reflective one.

A great video or help article is a fast-food hamburger, consumed quickly to make our momentary hunger go away, yet doing little for our health. The calories of positive platitudes are sugary soda, ultimately empty energy, despite the effects in the moment.

Absolutely no one is like you. And you’re not like anybody else. This conflict of course hinges on the word “like.” But when we use it, we use it in a passing moment like sugary soda. Be reflective about considering yourself empathic. Everything you see and hear comes to you through the filter of your own experience, which differs from the source’s experiences much more deeply than we are conscious of.

Compassion may involve empathy, but is possible without it. “Compassion” comes from Latin meaning “to suffer with.” We can suffer “with” someone because suffering is a universal human experience. Be reflective here, still. Your suffering is like no one else’s.

The field of psychology often turns to extreme cases to elucidate it concepts. Depression is an extreme of sadness. Generalizing, depressed people hate attempts to talk them out of their depression. Why? Fast food and sugary sodas are empty calories for them. And antidepressants take weeks, if not months, to do their trick, when they work at all. Depression is not a “moment” of sadness. If you are to “suffer with” someone who is depressed, you must abandon the shallowness and haste of a consumer/material culture.

An exceptionally compassionate person may have little use for pop self-help or clever memes. Exceptional compassion is neither shallow nor fast. If you are shallow/fast in any of your relationships (parent/child, friend, brother/sister, lovers), you cannot “suffer with.” You do not have to have suffered “like” them. Instead, you have been reflective about the depths of your OWN suffering, so that when you “relate” to them, you are exceptionally conscious about the uniqueness of THEIR suffering.

With exceptional compassion, you do not quickly or shallowly dismiss expressions of their suffering when they are “relating to” you. You listen exceptionally well and very actively. The patience to do that is not cultivated by our fast-food and self-help cultures. It is quite countercultural to be reflective and “in touch” with your own suffering. We look down on people who express misery, and dismiss them often quoting a sugary platitude; at other times, we preach about why their “thinking” or identity memberships are wrong.

How can we expect to “suffer with” someone else if we do not “know” the depth of our own suffering? If we have been focused not on our suffering, but instead on how to shift our identity memberships like political parties, a different religion, affirmations that “I am one of these kinds of people, not that kind…” All distracting escapes.

It is consumerist to think that cultivating self-compassion can be independent from cultivating compassion for others. Or vice versa. It is consumerist to think that coming to love yourself is a prerequisite which happens before authentically loving others. These things happen simultaneously, overlapping.

If you read a flashy article or meme today and go no deeper or longer than affirming you comply with it – sharing it on Facebook, etc. – you’ll soon be hungry again when the empty calories evaporate. You cannot learn compassion by consuming, unless you are reflectively consuming your self and others at the same time. And that takes longer than devouring french fries.

.

Neil D. 2021-07-21

A smile amidst sadness. Sacrament.

A child does something naïvely adorable, and we want to crack up. We cover our mouth and bite our lips.

A sacrament… A simple symbol imbued with holiness because of the larger, holy reality it signifies.

That impulse to smile points to the precious innocence we value.

In the middle of my deepest depression, the cuteness of an innocent child could still draw out a smile, or even laugh. Perhaps my depression wasn’t so deep? Not a question very important to me.

If you are sad, or deeply depressed, I just wish to encourage you to note when you smile. Reflect on it. Even if you don’t smile, if you had the impulse to smile but it didn’t make it to the surface, give that your attention. It is a sign and symbol of something much larger.

We can experience joy in the middle of deep suffering…

What a remarkable capacity we have.

.
Neil D. 2021-07-15

Different parts/faculties of a person

Humanity’s best science leads not to facts, but to deeper mysteries.

    Spooking Einstein
    Science is a religion
    The ego, soul, time, and wholeness
    Mystery and dignity

Why do we have to talk about different parts of our selves? I think it’s an interesting conditioning by reductive science. But even before the age of reason and the enlightenment, other non-western, non-European, non-Roman cultures talked about it. But I won’t go into eastern traditions of wisdom like Buddhism here. If it’s interesting to you, explore it.

The mind is mysterious. The psyche is mysterious. The word psyche pertains to the soul. The soul is mysterious. Our consciousness is mysterious.

A human being somehow senses that they transcend a moment in time. At any given moment, there is something which senses outside of the moment. In any given moment, we exist with some sense of other moments which are not that given moment. And that is not just moments of the past.

It isn’t hard to appreciate how everything we are in this moment is some mysterious summation of our past moments. But it’s more than that. It’s also future moments. It’s also potential. Somehow we sense that we will be, or can be, more than we are right now. We might sense that future potential because we look back. We have an inescapable sense of time. But we have also some unspeakable sense that we transcend time. We transcend the past, this moment, and in some mysterious sense, future moments.

There is some sense we have of the current moment, and some sense we have of the past and future moments. Time.

Time.

We have this sense of being bound by time, but not *completely* bound by it. None of us has trouble understanding the notion of learning from our past. And learning makes no sense without our construct of time.

Genius physicists like Einstein tell us that time is very “real.” Our consciousness and our senses tell us the same thing, even if more mysteriously than the mathematics around Einstein’s theory of relativity. But one of the many interesting things about that theory is a notion of time-space curvature. The notion of curved time doesn’t come very intuitively to us, perhaps because of our western emphasis on education and being learned.

Yet, maybe we do in fact have an intuitive sense of curved time. Again, we have this sense that we are more than what we are at this given moment. We have a sense of the past, and its impact on us. We have a sense about hopes and optimism and predictions or expectations of the future, and its impact on this current moment of our consciousness.

Not “all of us” is in this moment. Yet we are for sure existing in this moment.

I think this is why we have to talk about parts of ourselves, parts of our psyche, parts of our mind, parts of our consciousness and unconscious and subconscious. At this given moment, we cannot hold in consciousness all of what we have experienced or expect of the future. And yet, in this moment, all of what we have experienced, and all of what we might expect in the future, is affecting us in this moment.

There seem to be parts of us bound in time, but unbounded by time. Or perhaps they are not really parts of us, just conceptual constructions. Whatever this dichotomy is, we sense it. We “know” it. And that is why we talk about faculties which perceive it, faculties bound by it, and faculties which transcend it.

Isn’t it very interesting how we battle against time? Sometimes we are for it, sometimes we are against it. We want “to be better” tomorrow, but we know our bodies are deteriorating and not what they were yesterday. As we wish for better habits or circumstances for ourselves tomorrow, we put them off today. As we boast of our rational faculties and being reasonable, our actions say otherwise. So our reason follows our actions, like an excuse of denial; I will for sure do that tomorrow (since I didn’t do it today).

We battle time. Something within us is not comfortable with its constant passage and inexorable reality. I believe this is why we talk about parts of ourselves, divisions of our psyche, separate faculties of our mind.

We live both inside of time, and outside of time.

Our relationship with time is very mysterious.

We shouldn’t be embarrassed about how incomprehensible this mystery is. Einstein was a genius expert on space and time, Niels Bohr was an expert on matter and atoms and quantum theory, and Stephen Hawking was an expert on black holes and gravity and light. Despite our western obsession with reason and science, none of these genius physicist unraveled the mysteries of the universe. The more they probed them, the more mysterious reality is revealed to be.

Hawking believed that at the conclusion of mortal consciousness is nothingness. Bohr posited that the coming into being of matter at some point in the universe affected that phenom elsewhere in the universe. Einstein called that “spooky action at a distance” – perhaps the most explicit acknowledgment that mystery prevails.

When you are inclined to cling to the notion of scientific facts, remember these examples. Authentically wise scientists readily confess that the best science leads to more questions than settling facts. These are expressions about mystery. The more we pursue mystery, the more glorious mysteries get revealed. THOSE are the answers. THAT is the fact.

Facts are parts of the mysteries. Glimpses of the whole. But always inconclusive. Inconclusive so that they unfold more mystery. Each of us is as mysterious as the universe. Each of us has parts, and yet each of us is whole. Our wholeness is both inside and outside of time.

The ego and the soul are inseparable in this realm. Neither makes sense without the other. They are parts of the human person. They are facts. We “know” this in ways we can never know more deeply.

We talk about having parts of our psyche and mind because the whole is so mysterious. That is how each of us was meant to be, to ourselves, and to one another. To sense our wholeness is not to know our parts. It is to know our mystery.
.
Neil D. 2021-07-13

The power of prayer? Whatev…

The “power of prayer…” I often wonder what different people attribute to the word “power” here, particularly in the case of “prayers of petition.” When we are asking something of a Higher Power / God. What power do we have? Ask and ye shall receive… Surely we cannot receive everything we ask for. Does it come down to some sort of bargaining power that depends on how “good” we are? Or, how many people ask for the same thing?

What power do prayers of petition have?

Cutting a deal with God? “Grant me this, God, and I’ll never/always…”

“Heal Johnny, Lord…” And if Johnny heals, our prayers were answered. And if Johnny doesn’t,…??? Not enough people prayed? Not enough people in God’s favor – who are “good” – prayed?

I’m troubled by whether prayers of petition aren’t bargaining, or what their real purpose is, though my heart doesn’t let me refuse anyone who asks for prayers.

For me, authentic “power” is a transcendent mystery. Stripped of mystery, prayer doesn’t seem very powerful. We know God seldom answers petitions as we mean them. People say, God answers them in ways we might not expect (or at least recognize for some time). God forbid we leave the All-Powerful looking defenseless:)

Fundamentalism fails to demystify mysteries, thank God.

We sign petitions with the hope that if there are enough signatures, the request will move the grantor to grant it. Are prayers of petition our collective bargaining with God? That would be absurd, but I wonder.

Here is a folksy and enjoyable author who retains the mystery by simplifying it, which normally bemuses me. “Fundamentalizing” things has appeal to the simple, but I’m a hot mess who prefers to confer power to the mysterious, not simple. Yet the simple, cute, mysterious ending is worth the long read: https://seandietrich.com/quiet-places/
.
Neil D. 2021-06-25

I need your comments about depression

I don’t routinely beg for your comments, but do here, because I am very deeply curious about strong reactions to stories and opinions on depression. At the end of this article are some strong reactions that blind-side me. If those of you who see the connections clearly would describe them in your own words, I would value it deeply.

[blurb] We label a depressed state “bad.” Is that arbitrary conditioning? https://feelwithneil.com/2021/06/07/tree-envy-and-genesis/ (Tree Envy and Genesis)

Dormant, barren but for a few crackling withered and dead leaves that couldn’t escape the snare of prickly gray branches, trees are entirely alive through winter, but that form of alive is slowed and depressed into deep•rest, without which the freshness of springtime and the warmth of lush summer cannot be lived again.

They have gone dormant precisely to protect the fullness of life to come, unifying the dormancy with the fullness. As one, they are one; is it artificial for us to put them into a linear sequence on a timeline? If it is, why do memories evoke such strong emotion when recalled? When made present by recollection? Those emotions aren’t being felt in the past when that happens! And if memories can thus be made present, why can’t the emotions of anticipation count as present?

Why when humans slow down in a depressed deep-rest state to unify the future or past with the present, do we call it “bad”? Pain, sadness, suffering, depression… they are all forms of living which, like a dormant tree, are very much alive.

Trees do not get to choose a climate. They cannot uproot themselves and migrate toward the warmer equator. Do you think they resent that?

They don’t look resentful to me when the birds return to perch and sing songs in their canopy next season. They are at the mercy of the world around them.

But that is a very self-centered, egoic, anthropomorphic way of thinking and projecting the artificial constructions of our glorious mind onto other creatures, isn’t it? Are we a higher form of life than those canopies? We seem to think so, because we seem to ‘think’ we can control the climate and the world around us. ‘Think.’ Sometimes we think poorly or wrongly…

And when we look at someone gone dormant in a deep-rest state to survive for the fullness coming, we feel “bad” for them. Our feeling bad for them must contribute to their feeling bad. Has someone, or everyone, seeded a false reality in our mind with toxic words like good and bad?

Trees are blessed not to have such gullible minds, to not be born of ego. In their blessed state, they do not need a garden-God to warn them not to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Please – I’m begging – leave a comment with your impressions on the responses below, or the article itself.

.

Neil D. 2021-06-07

.
Reactions 1,2,&3 are a single share; I divided them myself for ease of commentary, but 2&3 have to be taken together for intended context. Your remarks on these shares would be deeply valuable to my curiosity about how people react to any stories or opinions about depresssion.

1. “…depression is too big a subject to minimalize as a place of regrowth. If one was able to add regrowth, they wouldn’t be depressed… if we could control it and what happens in that dormant time, I would sure like to know how…”
2. “…it wouldn’t be called depression if it were a place for inner growth–that inner growth is for self actualization… depression is way way way down under that pyramid.”
3. “Self actualized people don’t get depressed because they have good brains and don’t have a lot to worry about. Seriously.”


4. “Depression is inherently bad…. can maime and kill, so I take it a bit more seriously.”


5. “Depression cannot be controlled, cannot be thought of as self reflection. …explain how you can voluntarily control [neurotransmitters]?”

Related:
* Trees. Roaring. https://feelwithneil.com/2020/07/24/tree-roaring/
* Aching To Know https://feelwithneil.com/2021/02/16/aching-to-know/
* Ode to a Sacred Twig – An exercise for the soul https://feelwithneil.com/2020/03/12/ode-to-your-sacred-stick-an-exercise-for-the-soul/

Midwife for the soul (Rohr)

“We are not comfortable with waiting, see it as wasted time and try to avoid it, or fill it with trivial busyness. We value action for its own sake.”

We wind up running on empty, losing our sense of self, and blaming the world for it.

The article quoted here, about spiritual directors, may touch you as a person who needs one, or who can be one as a friend, in a support group, as a partner, or as a parent to young or adult children.

Being a midwife to the soul does not involve a one-time fix.

You may identify with needing the perspectives offered here – with needing a soul midwife – at the same time as being called to serve as one. That can be taken as a call to nurture your very own soul’s birth, over and over.

Excerpts

[W]e give birth and are born ourselves again and again: the birth of God in the soul is our own true birth. . . .

There are those who feel that something is happening to and within them. Their tastes are changing, and their balance has shifted. Sometimes they are brought up short by a crisis: an experience of conversion, a tragic loss, a period of great pain, a sharp awareness of being on a threshold.

As they approach midlife, women especially may feel impelled to explore their spirituality as they discover their new and unexpectedly authoritative voice.

Men and women of all ages and life experiences may sense a call, … the awareness that God expects them to do something with their lives. . . .

…the director’s task is to pay attention, to listen to what is not being said—or to what is being said but minimized. . . .

Spiritual direction is not a crisis ministry, even though the initial impulse to seek out a director may arise from a sense of urgent personal need. The midwife of the spirit is not an expert called in for the dramatic moments,… Like a midwife, she works with the whole person and is present throughout the whole process. She “has time”…offers support through every stage and waits with the birthgiver when “nothing is happening.” Of course, there are no times when nothing is happening.

Spiritual growth can be gradual and hidden; the director-midwife can discern or at least trust that something is indeed “happening.”

As a people, we are not comfortable with waiting. We see it as wasted time and try to avoid it, or at least fill it with trivial busyness. We value action for its own sake. . . . It is hard to trust in the slow work of God. . . . waiting is inevitable, ordained, and fruitful.

Tend only to the birth in you and you will find all goodness and all consolation, all delight, all being and all truth. Reject it and you reject all goodness and blessing. What comes to you in this birth brings with it pure being and blessing. But what you seek or love outside of this birth will come to nothing, no matter what you will or where you will it.

A Midwife for the Soul

.

Neil D. 2021-06-21