“I got this…”

[3 minute read]

“I got this…” as in, I’ll handle this. Truthfully, I am in poor condition to handle anything.

I’m a little hypersensitive to my shame right now, so “setting boundaries” is a hard notion right now. Setting them takes some hardness, and I’m feeling a lot of softness. I’m growing more aware of how tired I am of judgment. It’s exhausting to judge others, and pretty damn draining to judge my own self too.

So I’m hypersensitive to judgment. Someone today told a terrible story about very nasty hurt they experienced, and some subsequent shame for not having called out their transgressor. They were later advised that they “should” have – in a nice way – called the act “mean” when it happened. In my current state, hypersensitized to judgment, I would see even that boundary exertion as casting a judgment back on the transgressor. So is there nothing that “should” be done?

A few angels in my life have recently used the expression “voice my truth.” To label someone else’s act as “mean” is not the full honesty of your own truth. For me, it’s a little too much about them. Your own truth is that you feel hurt. Why do we so seldom voice just that? When we are being hurt, why don’t we just say to our transgressor and anyone else present, “This is hurting me.”

Two probable reasons come to my mind. First, that would express vulnerability, and that’s a no-no, because I am strong. Or because I “should” be strong. According to social conditioning. And – being successfully conditioned – that’s a no-no according to my own values. When I fall short of my own values, that’s called shame. I blame society for my shame, all you bastards out there:-)

The second possibility is that we expect the world to read our mind. More poignantly, to discern the depth of our hurt. You should know you are being mean and hurting me. I shouldn’t have to say it. I’m afraid I see that too as another form of deception. Deceiving one’s self, and deceiving others.

When I was a child, I had no problem expressing hurt. And I didn’t have to do it while also casting judgment. I could sulk away and cry. It was up to my transgressor to judge their own self. And nowadays, when I am the transgressor, I do a pretty damn deep job of judging my own self. I guess “I got this…”

My wish for you today: Find your voice and speak your truth to transgressors: “This is hurting me…” Anyone can argue and deny your judgment of them. But no one can deny your own feelings. Except… ??? You know who.

Use your voice. Your child’s voice. The cry and tears that leave judgment to the transgressors themselves. It’s neither accident nor triviality that we are called “children” of God. Unlearn the rules of adulthood. Shed judgmentalism. Live from the child within, re-discovered:

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

[T. S. Eliot’s Little Gidding]

Please, leave a comment. Can we spark a movement to shift social conditioning scripts away from ineffective, retaliatory expressions of our pain? Interestingly, I think, “This is hurting me,” is also a more gently practicable means of self-compassion.

Neil D. 2020-03-28 [>103,000 Covid-19 reports in the US; 1,598 (~2%) of them have died. God have mercy.]

Don’t know what to say? Humanity is evil?

[6 minute read]
Hopelessness, powerlessness, God, and shame. Repressing our evil potential co-represses celebrating our goodness. Suffering is our fate, and why the Redeemer came. Psychology yaps out both sides of its mouth, so I prefer a Polish poet.

I see someone hurting, but can’t feel helpful. I resort to God-platitudes because I don’t know what else to say. And then I feel shame. Psychologists describe shame as a gap, a figurative distance or space, between who I feel like versus who I wish I were. I am not all that I wish I were.

I can offer God-platitudes to someone else, but recognize I don’t often internalize the platitudes myself. That gets mixed together with wanting to feel helpful and consoling, but being unable to. Double shame. And there I am feeling double shame when my friend is hurting. Triple shame…

And then I think, I’m not even capable of comforting myself without booze, etc… This friend needs a different friend. I’m not enough for my own self; how could I ever be enough for anyone else? I’m trying to exert control over a situation, over someone else’s pain; shame on me. But I don’t like to feel out of control.

I wouldn’t be obsessed about control if I internalized and believed my own God-platitudes. Why can’t I believe in God better? Why can’t I feel God within me? Why can’t I let God guide how I think and act? How can God see me as worthy of anything? Why can’t I stop this pandemic? Why can’t I figure out when I need a hug, or why I want one?

“Humans are evil. We can’t be ‘good’ on our own.”
I’ve certainly thought that before, but don’t buy it entirely any longer. I’m growing fonder of a philosophical psychologist who believes that, until we let ourselves imagine how basely evil we can be, we cannot realize how miraculous it is that we aren’t more evil! We are terrified of letting our imaginations go there, so fail to credit ourselves that we haven’t! Repressing our goodness along with our potential for badness.

An emotionally abusive partner pats himself on the back: “At least I don’t hit her.” That’s horrible. But, if you put yourself in the shoes of any abuser, where else would you begin a transformation? Have we repressed horror of our own evil potential so deeply that we cannot at all empathize with an abuser?

Do we credit ourselves for not being so bad? Why do we feel we could never be that bad? Because it’s not within us? It absolutely is; we just haven’t dived that deeply into our unconscious! We have been raised or conditioned so that our potential for evil is so deeply repressed that we can’t imagine it as part of us. It’s in us: Watch out for the tragedy of unexamined history repeating itself.

Are we independently and exclusively responsible for how good we are? Or have we fortunately not suffered traumas, or succumbed to groupthink, that have made us act out the badness within all of us? It’s probably, as usual, a mix of many things.

If we don’t feel great about who we are (and who does?), is it because we don’t let into this mix the notion of how evil we could be? Let’s give ourselves some credit!

“Humans are evil. We can’t be ‘good’ on our own.”
I have certainly felt and thought that many times. But I’m not so sure anymore.

The Christian dogma on the Incarnation is usually accompanied by some notion that we are hopelessly evil and needed redemption. Something inside of me is rejecting the narrowness that redemption is a remedy to being evil.

Saying that humans are evil is very different to me from saying that humans do evil things.

Many sages explain that evil acts are mistakes consequent from radical freedom and a radically rational will without radical perfection. Being imperfect/incomplete, to me doesn’t mean being intrinsically evil. Being fallen doesn’t mean being hopelessly broken. Our journey through life happens in a classroom of learning; we are bound to hurt others as we learn, and bound to be hurt by them as they learn. Learning is a form of suffering.

Nowadays I’m not thinking that worthiness is something to be regained by some magical act of Christ as much as it is something we already have that’s waiting to be recognized by us. Like, God already loves us just as we are, but we can’t consciously acknowledge that to ourselves–conditioned by shame, and suffering, as we are.

…grieving God…

The same philosophical psychologist mentioned above believes that life is not only full of suffering, but life is fundamentally suffering. I agree. The God of my understanding became human, and certainly had joy in his life, but it ended in great suffering that he willingly endured, as a signal of loving solidarity with all the suffering we endure. A classroom where a cosmic lesson is taught.

I’m a passionate person who experiences intense feelings–both negative and positive. Some currents of psychology tend to pathologize that as the “emotional dysregulation of borderline tendencies.” Since joy and suffering are two sides of the same coin, maybe I’m just a thick coin? Sometimes flipping and spinning very fast.

Psychologists want us to feel our feelings and not repress them. Just don’t feel them too much. And it’s “wrong” if they change too fast or too often. Like me, they just don’t know what the hell to say. The problem with platitudes.

“Just as pleasure can turn into pain, so pain can turn into pleasure…” [Why we need pain to feel happiness ]

Good and evil are two sides of the same coin, too, which is the human person with extraordinary power and freedom. When plain language is insufficient, we try platitudes. And when they are insufficient, poetry:

“There is no light without darkness, no accomplishment without suffering, no happiness without sadness…even if the sadness is just knowing that no happiness lasts forever. Our journey together will always have this balance…a pendulum cutting through time to etch the memories that we all cherish. Just know I accept your love and freely give it back…laughing or crying you make my world a richer place.” [J. Zock]

Neil D. 2020-03-22 (2 days ago, COVID-19 cases 15,219; deaths 201)

Noah and his damned movies irk my soul

After midnight, we sat in the car still running in the driveway for more than an hour, talking about the movie we had just seen. My youngest son Noah, a high school junior, aspires to a future in neuroscience. Loves the brain. He is enthralled with movies as an art form, and has broad knowledge of many things Hollywood.

Months later, there were several movies in the cinemas I would have preferred, but his choice was 1917. Talking about it many days later I was uncomfortable, feeling like he desperately wanted me to love it as much as he. I did like 1917 a lot. But his expertise in cinema made it deeper to him because its unique power lies in its having been shot as one continuous span over two days.

Now I’m thinking about why that was so powerful. I frequently marvel at how great movie-makers compress a backstory so effectively to a few minutes of screen time, then unfold the present. The background sets the stage for the current conflict and resolution. Why does that resonate with audiences universally?

Isn’t it a reflection of our own psyches and lives? Consciously or not, we live in the moment and anticipate the future based on our compressed experience of the past. A short, compressed reel runs through our near-conscious minds as we perceive reality. Like a trailer that we move into consciousness momentarily. We are largely unconscious of the full backstory of our own life and how it has shaped us, and can’t realistically expect to ever hold that entire, intricate drama in our consciousness. Even for a moment.

Movie set-ups review highlights of the past to set the stage for the current drama. That universal appeal must be a reflection of universal habit. We sort of describe or define individuals as compressions of their past achievements–and traumas. That part of a person which simultaneously lives in the past, present, and anticipates what lies ahead… I think it’s the same dimension of a person which abides concurrently in the conscious and unconscious minds. The psyche. The soul.

The soul isn’t bound by time or conscious-vs-subconscious. It inhabits all of those dimensions at once. So it is the whole story–not a concisely compressed backstory. It–the soul–is a “person” in its fullest sense, not a person’s persona or mask or role at a moment, in a given situation.

Noah’s soul is unusually visible to my eyes. I’m not going to try to explain that, as some mystery of fatherhood or anything else. It is a mystery defying explanation for me. He is a full, autonomous individual, simultaneously an extension of me and his mother and two brothers and God, and a unique, unbounded creation–essential in the universe by simple virtue of being a person.

A full person can’t be compressed into a two hour movie, of course. But great cinema is art, which always points to a larger mystery in the way that only art can. While it’s wonderful to behold a detail of a great painting, that is just one moment. Each beholding is a new moment. Unfolding. Exposition. Living. Constant generation. Creation.

I often say about Noah that he marches to the beat of his own drum. I often encourage him to stick to his guns. It is surely a parent’s bias, but no one except Noah and his two brothers seem to be as comfortable in their own skins:

When Noah seems to adhere to the norms of a 16-year-old young man, it is coincidence, not conformity.

To me, he points to the archetype of the Full Person. To behold his soul is to glimpse the boundless past, reality, and potential that is wrapped up in being a free child of God. He summons my heart to rewind the movie of my life back to that childhood. Over and over. Unfolding. Creating. Living.

Neil D. 2020-03-20

Fooled by momentary appeal. Paul Simon and Robert Pirsig

Culture and psychology have all the answers to malaise and melancholy, right? Figuring out the mysteries of life and love are easy, right? Bumper-sticker slogans and positive-thinking memes strike chords in us, so we share them in affirmation, but we mistake that for internalizing and practicing their wisdom…

The back cover of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values” – a book by Robert M. Pirsig first published in 1974.

“The problem is all inside your head”, [they say] to me

“The answer is easy if you take it logically

I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free

There must be fifty ways to leave your [sadness]”

[They say], “it’s really not my habit to intrude

Furthermore, I hope my meaning won’t be lost or misconstrued

But I’ll repeat myself at the risk of being crude

There must be fifty ways…”

[They say], “it grieves me so to see you in such pain

I wish there was something I could do to make you smile again”

I said, “I appreciate that and would you please explain

About the fifty ways”

[They say], “why don’t we both just sleep on it tonight?

And I believe in the morning you’ll begin to see the light”

And then [they coddle me] me and I realized [they] probably [were] right

There must be fifty ways to leave your [intuition and ideals and Self, and conform unquestioningly to cultural conditioning]

You just slip out the back, Jack

Make a new plan, Stan

You don’t need to be coy, Roy

Just get yourself free

Hop on the bus, Gus

You don’t need to discuss much

Just drop off the key, Lee

And get yourself free

Neil D. 2020-03-18

Hate Trump?

Hate Trump?

That makes me sad. Sadder than anything he has done besides make us hate him. Hating him gives him power over us.

Many who hate him will never meet him. Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that his persona would be less repulsive if we know him; my guess is the opposite. I’m saying that it makes me sad that such a self-destructive emotion can be triggered in us by someone we’ve never even met.

More sadness: Hate is more contagious than any germ, because media can’t transmit a virus.

Where is the outrage? That’s a question I can stomach OK. But if I’m reading psychology right, rage is a motivating emotion. I can understand if many of us think we have no other way to express that than by unproductive tribalistic hate in solidarity. But I cannot be anything except sad when that expression deepens or spreads poison.

I don’t want to be deeply affected by an administration that will eventually pass into history with very little effect left behind. Go ahead and lambaste me about all the damage he is doing. By my reading of history, the damage done by bad leaders is inextricably due in part to the strong emotions evoked in a populace. Rage is making us complicit in Trump’s ill work. Hate and unproductive outrage are doing the deeper damage to our nation’s soul.

I beg Trump-haters to look past their confirmation biases and tribalism and more deeply to their individual souls. Hate and unproductive outrage are not good for a person’s soul, so cannot be for the soul of our nation.

I beg Trump-haters to remember that half our nation elected him. That means the person to our left or right was just as likely to vote for as against. Anti-Trumpism leaves their mistaken support no way out. If they are ashamed, our hatred motivates their defenses, not a pause, nor honest reflection, nor reconsideration. If their conversion is not our wish, then what is? Is it more important for us to be on the right side than to be a good for our own selves and our country? If it is, that makes me sad too, because that’s basely unpatriotic.

Trump voters can’t hear any willingness to engage them over our shouts of vitriol. We have nothing to gain by rancor and shouting but the affirmation of our tribe, which of course we already have; where is the value in hating and unproductive rage? Nowhere. We’re unpatriotic (after all, he was elected by our democratic republic), and we’re hypocrites.

Do we honestly feel better after expressing these emotions destructively? Outrage is a motivating emotion, and we are certainly motivating–motivating people against us to be more defensively against us. Motivating more division. Killing America’s soul.

In a decade or so, I think history may look back on this administration and extol its remarkable and timely value to our country. Trump electors got to express their fear, anger, and disenfranchisement. And Trump haters got a scapegoat they needed to do the same thing. I suppose if we all get to pour out our poison, at least it doesn’t stay inside us.

Neil D. 2020-03-17

Ode to a Sacred Twig – An exercise for the soul

[5 minute read]

Ode to a Sacred Twig – An exercise for the soul

Things are sanctified by our own endowment, sanctifying us

Have a child or friend bring to you a twig or stick from outdoors, free on the ground; ask them not to freshly break one off a tree or bush. The stick can have branches (preferred), or not, and be a practical size, as small as your hand, or no longer than your forearm.

Receive it and handle it tenderly. Keep it in a sacred box or bag. The point of this meditation is that it has a soul and is in fact sacred. We endow more holiness by our reverence for any thing.

Display it now on a white or bright cloth, paper towel, or napkin.

Note how it rests on that surface. What points of the twig touch the surface, and what points float above it.
Hold it in your hands and behold all of its features. Grooves, cracks, the smoothness or jaggedness of the break which separated it from a tree.
Smell it.
If you wish, snap a piece off. But keep it always with its parent.

Yahweh… [repeat three times, saying the name as a whisper as you exhale deep diaphragm breaths that fill your lungs from the bottom up, like water flows into a vessel]

I bless you for this sacred stick…

I bless the soul you have breathed into this wood… which makes it holy.

I bless you for MY sacred soul which comes from the same being, you.

This sacred stick blesses my soul through wonder, and imagination…

Perhaps it was born a bud atop a tree towering three stories toward heaven…

Nourished by precious water gathered by its parent rooted in earth…

Perhaps it was a majestic arm extending royally green leaves to the sun’s warm energy…

Creative, creating part of restful shade cast by hundreds of its sister leaves.

Perhaps songbirds alighted for a brief spell on its larger brethren nearby…

Perhaps energetic squirrels frolicked in its neighborhood, and this branch danced in joy, delighted by that company…

Yahweh, we bless you for these fellow creatures…

We bless you for your rain and sun that gave life to this twig.

We bless you for the reign of your Son who gives life to the souls of all things.

We bless you for the whispering wind which, gentle like your Spirit, coaxed this twig to separate from its parent…

We thank the marvelous tree that brought life to this branch of itself.

We bless that parent which felt the loss, and thank it for surrendering it to us.

Yahweh…

We bless you for imparting soul to this stick and its parent, so they can be forever one.

For the breeze and snap which initiated its journey…

For your gift of gravity which sustained its journey to us…

Perhaps interrupted by rests cradled in the arms of its branch brethren…

Perhaps it was caught and rested in an hospitable bed of tender leaves on the earth…

A bed that rustled when you coaxed them to speak by breezes resembling your Spirit, keeping this twig company…

As it wondered why the birds and squirrels did not choose it for their nests.

Now, for some time, it will rest with us, as sacred company and a holy guest.

Let it care for our souls as we care for its soul.

It’s now an inseparable part of our eternal souls.

Yahweh…

We bless you for souls…

Amen.

[Add, trim, or compose your own narrative for your holy visitor, to honor it. Consider reading parts on different days, shorter readings and more time spent adoring the object. Perhaps improvise some days as you behold it. Some days say nothing, and just observe how it rests on the throne you have consecrated for it. Say the prayer with a group as they pass it around, watching each other adore it, appreciating effusive souls in moments of wonder. Whatever you do, do “do” something. The soul is an eternal being of action, and mindfulness need not always pursue stillness. Nothing can move like the affected soul!]

Related FeelWithNeil:

(KINGDOMS 1) Mystical Gardeners

(KINGDOMS 2) Dances with Leaves

-Neil D. 2020-03-12