A Star has flashed across our collective inner sky. A genius has left an enduring legacy. He was bigger than life. He was a giant in the entertainment field. He wowed us with his music and his moves. So what is the relevance of Michael Jackson to our lives?
The first thing that comes to mind is the early childhood discovery of a huge talent for music. Jackson was clearly a gifted entertainer who wasted no time in perfecting his artistry. From the perspective of a life coach, it is a huge blessing in life to become aware of our calling. That Michael Jackson did this so early in life set him on a clear path. He was precocious in his art beyond his years. Many have remarked how he sang as if he had years of experience behind him. Of the seven intelligences in Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, Michael had access to two unique intelligences: a musical intelligence which contains the capacity to produce and appreciate rhythm and forms of musical expression, and a bodily-kinesthetic intelligence which demonstrates an ability to control one’s body movements. One might even argue that Michael accessed a third intelligence: a linguistic intelligence which demonstrates a sensitivity to the sounds, rhythms and meaning of words But with this success came some serious problems: a loss of balance – loss of childhood, a stunted education and conflicts with his father, resulting in early parent-child relational issues. These can have a devastating affect on one’s psychology.
From a psychological perspective, Michael had to respond to his childhood trauma of physical and emotional abuse and also to the condition of body dysmorphic disorder. In addition, the loss of a normal childhood was irreparable even though Michael tried so hard to make up for this by entertaining underprivileged and disabled children and their families at his Neverland ranch.
Childhood trauma, intentional or accidental, can result in long term psychological and even physiological disorders. Depending on when in childhood such trauma may have occurred, one can anticipate a loss of self-esteem. If Michael was emotionally abused during what Erik Erikson would identify in his model of human development as the psychosocial stage of the latency years (age 6-11), he did not have an opportunity to develop self-esteem through normal peer interactions, since he did not have the benefit of a normal childhood. In the latency years, an individual needs to resolve the conflict between “industry” and “inferiority” before one progresses to the next stage of human development in the life span. His multitude of adoring fans clearly could not make up for the need for normal emotional and psychological development, which is why Michael was so fixated on his childhood issues.
Body Dysmorphic Disorder historically known as dysmorphophobia is a preoccupation with a perceived defect in appearance and can cause severe psychological distress. Whether this was as a result of the 1986 diagnosis of vitiligo, which is an auto-immune disease that causes a loss of pigmentation, or whether vitiligo was concurrent with his body dysmorphic disorder is unclear. Nevertheless, that Michael was able to avoid social isolation which is a typical response to this condition speaks to his strength and courage to treat it and overcome it, in his own unique way. Individuals with this disorder often pursue and receive general medical, dermatological or surgical treatments to rectify their imagined defects. To his credit, Michael found a way to make this a part of his mythic persona.
The life of a celebrity often reveals an inner wasteland because one spends so much time pleasing the fans and getting stroked by an adoring public. This too can lead to a huge imbalance, even though the positive projections from his fans may have compensated a little for his own experience of self-loathing as reported by his long-time friend, Dr. Deepak Chopra. Chopra also revealed that Michael was suffering from Lupus, an auto-immune disease, although there is one report that suggests he was in remission from this.
This level of deprivation of a cultivated inner life can often lead to depression and a “loss of soul.” Surprisingly, Michael was able to compensate for this to some extent because he was clearly receptive to inner promptings in the creation and expression of his music and dance. His best-selling album “Thriller” may have been the outcome of Michael’s capacity to touch and connect with his shadow side. On the other hand, it is also possible that Michael’s emotional development was arrested in his “genital” psycho-social stage, which runs from adolescence to adulthood. During the genital psychosocial stage, an individual works towards resolution of the conflicts between identity and identity diffusion in adolescence, between intimacy and isolation in young adulthood, and between generativity and self-absorption in adulthood. This perhaps explains his less subtle sexually suggestive moves on stage and his complete lack of personal boundaries with children, especially when he dangled his son from the balcony of a hotel room. The final concert series indicates that Michael was moving into the generativity psycho-social stage of his life.
It does not appear that Michael was able to fully overcome his deeper depressive symptoms because he had to treat some of his somatic symptoms with prescription medications to which he became addicted. Michael had been admitted into various programs for chemical dependence and one wonders whether there was ever a serious consideration to receive consistent psychotherapy for his psychological and emotional well-being. Yet, despite this constant struggle with his inner demons, he was able to engage his world-wide public by bringing joy, ecstasy and a sense of human connection that transcended race, culture and ethnicity.
His lyrics evolved from expressions of romantic love (“I’ll be there”) to self-transformation (“Man in the Mirror”) to the unity of humankind (“We are the world”). Deepak Chopra revealed that the music for his final concert tour included environmental themes. So, clearly, despite his many personal trials and tribulations, psychological, legal and financial challenges, Michael was able to give the absolute very best of himself as the King of Pop, and possibly even as a father. He left an indelible impression on the lives of millions of people through his chosen vocation, creative self-expression and re-invention. One might go so far as to say that he achieved a remarkable degree of self-actualization. That is his greatest legacy.
Integral eco-archetypal image
Integral eco-archetypal image
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The Other Side of Chocolate!
On May 28, 2009, I turned sixty. In addition to dealing with the recent onset of andropause, I set an intention to stop eating chocolate on May 29! Chocolate - that wonderful after lunch and dinner "pick-me-up", that delicious break between tasks; chocolate - that chip that generously spikes my mint chip ice cream and enlivens my chocolate chip cookies.
I chose to ritualize this decision by having a final birthday treat (thank you sooo much to my co-conspirator, Honoree, nee Ms. Nancy Evelyn Hinman) - chocolate dessert at the 5 star Miro restaurant at the Baccara Spa and Resort in Goleta, California. It was important to go out in style! Farewell to all my special friends: Cadbury's, See's, Toblerone, Godiva, Giriardelli, Lindt, Paul Newman's and all the tempting chocolate treats from Trader Joe's! These were all important relationships and I want to express my gratitude and appreciation for all of the years that you have all been there for me! I promise to nod my respects to you when I next see you at the check out counter!
Why, you may ask, did I choose to let go of this delectable aphrodisiac at this time in my life?
The answer resides not only in the results of my annual physical check up but also in my decision to look at my compulsive consumption of chocolate. Yes, I have been an avowed chocoholic for years! It has helped me to deal with over-stimulation, emotional arousal and transitional moments which I had so unconsciously ritualized.
It is my intention to write about this process of releasing myself from this charming compulsion as a Life Coach so that others can do the same with their own special compulsions if they so choose.
My preferred strategy to quit chocolate is the same way I quit caffeine (for the most part), nicotine, alcohol and other substances: Cold Turkey!
Today, Sunday, I will be removing from the refrigerator the tasty chocolate sauce that I love to dash over my coconut ice cream! Tomorrow I will donate the rest of my chocolate treats to the office! Wit the loss of this seductive coping skill, I am going to be experimenting with mints, honey-sesame almonds, fresh fruit, dried fruit and other delectables - as a first step!
I am not sure there is a Chocoholic Anonymous chapter in Santa Barbara - but if not - I could always start one!
I am holding the vision for myself to let go of all of my compulsions and to experience a peak level of physical and emotional well-being as I navigae my sixties!
I look forward to keep you all informed of my progress and what happens when we disempower our compulsions - on the other side of chocolate!
Love, light and shadow,
Jalaledin
I chose to ritualize this decision by having a final birthday treat (thank you sooo much to my co-conspirator, Honoree, nee Ms. Nancy Evelyn Hinman) - chocolate dessert at the 5 star Miro restaurant at the Baccara Spa and Resort in Goleta, California. It was important to go out in style! Farewell to all my special friends: Cadbury's, See's, Toblerone, Godiva, Giriardelli, Lindt, Paul Newman's and all the tempting chocolate treats from Trader Joe's! These were all important relationships and I want to express my gratitude and appreciation for all of the years that you have all been there for me! I promise to nod my respects to you when I next see you at the check out counter!
Why, you may ask, did I choose to let go of this delectable aphrodisiac at this time in my life?
The answer resides not only in the results of my annual physical check up but also in my decision to look at my compulsive consumption of chocolate. Yes, I have been an avowed chocoholic for years! It has helped me to deal with over-stimulation, emotional arousal and transitional moments which I had so unconsciously ritualized.
It is my intention to write about this process of releasing myself from this charming compulsion as a Life Coach so that others can do the same with their own special compulsions if they so choose.
My preferred strategy to quit chocolate is the same way I quit caffeine (for the most part), nicotine, alcohol and other substances: Cold Turkey!
Today, Sunday, I will be removing from the refrigerator the tasty chocolate sauce that I love to dash over my coconut ice cream! Tomorrow I will donate the rest of my chocolate treats to the office! Wit the loss of this seductive coping skill, I am going to be experimenting with mints, honey-sesame almonds, fresh fruit, dried fruit and other delectables - as a first step!
I am not sure there is a Chocoholic Anonymous chapter in Santa Barbara - but if not - I could always start one!
I am holding the vision for myself to let go of all of my compulsions and to experience a peak level of physical and emotional well-being as I navigae my sixties!
I look forward to keep you all informed of my progress and what happens when we disempower our compulsions - on the other side of chocolate!
Love, light and shadow,
Jalaledin
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
They had it made!
This is an article by David Brooks that caught my attention today!
"In the late 1930s, a group of 268 promising young men, including John F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee, entered Harvard College. By any normal measure, they had it made. They tended to be bright, polished, affluent and ambitious. They had the benefit of the world’s most prestigious university. They had been selected even from among Harvard students as the most well adjusted.
And yet the categories of journalism and the stereotypes of normal conversation are paltry when it comes to predicting a life course. Their lives played out in ways that would defy any imagination save Dostoyevsky’s. A third of the men would suffer at least one bout of mental illness. Alcoholism would be a running plague. The most mundane personalities often produced the most solid success. One man couldn’t admit to himself that he was gay until he was in his late 70s.
The men were the subject of one of the century’s most fascinating longitudinal studies. They were selected when they were sophomores, and they have been probed, poked and measured ever since. Researchers visited their homes and investigated everything from early bed-wetting episodes to their body dimensions.
The results from the study, known as the Grant Study, have surfaced periodically in the years since. But they’ve never been so brilliantly captured as they are in an essay called “What Makes Us Happy?” by Joshua Wolf Shenk in the forthcoming issue of The Atlantic. (The essay is available online today.)
The life stories are more vivid than any theory one could concoct to explain them. One man seemed particularly gifted. He grew up in a large brownstone, the son of a rich doctor and an artistic mother. “Perhaps more than any other boy who has been in the Grant Study,” a researcher wrote while he was in college, “the following participant exemplifies the qualities of a superior personality: stability, intelligence, good judgment, health, high purpose, and ideals.”
By 31, he had developed hostile feelings toward his parents and the world. By his mid-30s, he had dropped off the study’s radar. Interviews with his friends after his early death revealed a life spent wandering, dating a potentially psychotic girlfriend, smoking a lot of dope and telling hilarious stories.
Another man was the jester of the group, possessing in college a “bubbling, effervescent personality.” He got married, did odd jobs, then went into public relations and had three kids.
He got divorced, married again, ran off with a mistress who then left him. He drank more and more heavily. He grew depressed but then came out of the closet and became a major figure in the gay rights movement. He continued drinking, though, convinced he was squeezing the most out of life. He died at age 64 when he fell down the stairs in his apartment building while drunk.
The study had produced a stream of suggestive correlations. The men were able to cope with problems better as they aged. The ones who suffered from depression by 50 were much more likely to die by 63. The men with close relationships with their siblings were much healthier in old age than those without them.
But it’s the baffling variety of their lives that strikes one the most. It is as if we all contain a multitude of characters and patterns of behavior, and these characters and patterns are bidden by cues we don’t even hear. They take center stage in consciousness and decision-making in ways we can’t even fathom. The man who is careful and meticulous in one stage of life is unrecognizable in another context.
Shenk’s treatment is superb because he weaves in the life of George Vaillant, the man who for 42 years has overseen this work. Vaillant’s overall conclusion is familiar and profound. Relationships are the key to happiness. “Happiness is love. Full Stop,” he says in a video.
In his professional life, he has lived out that creed. He has been an admired and beloved colleague and mentor. But the story is more problematic at home. When he was 10, his father, an apparently happy and accomplished man, went out by the pool of the Main Line home and shot himself. His mother shrouded the episode. They never attended a memorial service nor saw the house again.
He has been through three marriages and returned to his second wife. His children tell Shenk of a “civil war” at home and describe long periods when they wouldn’t speak to him. His oldest friend says he has a problem with intimacy.
Even when we know something, it is hard to make it so. Reading this essay, I had the same sense I had while reading Christopher Buckley’s description of his parents in The Times Magazine not long ago. There is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis simply stands mute. "
"In the late 1930s, a group of 268 promising young men, including John F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee, entered Harvard College. By any normal measure, they had it made. They tended to be bright, polished, affluent and ambitious. They had the benefit of the world’s most prestigious university. They had been selected even from among Harvard students as the most well adjusted.
And yet the categories of journalism and the stereotypes of normal conversation are paltry when it comes to predicting a life course. Their lives played out in ways that would defy any imagination save Dostoyevsky’s. A third of the men would suffer at least one bout of mental illness. Alcoholism would be a running plague. The most mundane personalities often produced the most solid success. One man couldn’t admit to himself that he was gay until he was in his late 70s.
The men were the subject of one of the century’s most fascinating longitudinal studies. They were selected when they were sophomores, and they have been probed, poked and measured ever since. Researchers visited their homes and investigated everything from early bed-wetting episodes to their body dimensions.
The results from the study, known as the Grant Study, have surfaced periodically in the years since. But they’ve never been so brilliantly captured as they are in an essay called “What Makes Us Happy?” by Joshua Wolf Shenk in the forthcoming issue of The Atlantic. (The essay is available online today.)
The life stories are more vivid than any theory one could concoct to explain them. One man seemed particularly gifted. He grew up in a large brownstone, the son of a rich doctor and an artistic mother. “Perhaps more than any other boy who has been in the Grant Study,” a researcher wrote while he was in college, “the following participant exemplifies the qualities of a superior personality: stability, intelligence, good judgment, health, high purpose, and ideals.”
By 31, he had developed hostile feelings toward his parents and the world. By his mid-30s, he had dropped off the study’s radar. Interviews with his friends after his early death revealed a life spent wandering, dating a potentially psychotic girlfriend, smoking a lot of dope and telling hilarious stories.
Another man was the jester of the group, possessing in college a “bubbling, effervescent personality.” He got married, did odd jobs, then went into public relations and had three kids.
He got divorced, married again, ran off with a mistress who then left him. He drank more and more heavily. He grew depressed but then came out of the closet and became a major figure in the gay rights movement. He continued drinking, though, convinced he was squeezing the most out of life. He died at age 64 when he fell down the stairs in his apartment building while drunk.
The study had produced a stream of suggestive correlations. The men were able to cope with problems better as they aged. The ones who suffered from depression by 50 were much more likely to die by 63. The men with close relationships with their siblings were much healthier in old age than those without them.
But it’s the baffling variety of their lives that strikes one the most. It is as if we all contain a multitude of characters and patterns of behavior, and these characters and patterns are bidden by cues we don’t even hear. They take center stage in consciousness and decision-making in ways we can’t even fathom. The man who is careful and meticulous in one stage of life is unrecognizable in another context.
Shenk’s treatment is superb because he weaves in the life of George Vaillant, the man who for 42 years has overseen this work. Vaillant’s overall conclusion is familiar and profound. Relationships are the key to happiness. “Happiness is love. Full Stop,” he says in a video.
In his professional life, he has lived out that creed. He has been an admired and beloved colleague and mentor. But the story is more problematic at home. When he was 10, his father, an apparently happy and accomplished man, went out by the pool of the Main Line home and shot himself. His mother shrouded the episode. They never attended a memorial service nor saw the house again.
He has been through three marriages and returned to his second wife. His children tell Shenk of a “civil war” at home and describe long periods when they wouldn’t speak to him. His oldest friend says he has a problem with intimacy.
Even when we know something, it is hard to make it so. Reading this essay, I had the same sense I had while reading Christopher Buckley’s description of his parents in The Times Magazine not long ago. There is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis simply stands mute. "
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Heaven and Hell
The information on Heaven and Hell provided by Elizabeth Gilbert's Balinese Medicine Man is intriguing and instructive. Here's what she says in her book "Eat, Pray, Love":
"At the moment, the person I'm enjoying the most is Ketut. The old man - truly one of the happiest humans I've ever encountered - is giving me his full access, the freedom to ask any lingering questions about divinity, about human nature. I like the meditations he has taught me, the comic simplicity of "smile in your liver" and the reassuring presence of the four spirit brothers. The other day the medicine man told me that he knows sixteen different meditation techniques, and many mantras for all different purposes. Some of them are to bring peace or happiness, some of them are for health, but some of them are purely mystical - to transport him into other realms of consciousness. For instance, he said, he knows one meditation that takes him "to up."
"To up?" I asked. "What is to up?"
"To seven levels up," he said. "To heaven."
Hearing the familiar idea of "seven levels," I asked him if he meant that his meditation took him up through the seven sacred chakras of the body, which are discussed in Yoga.
"Not chakras," he said. "places. This meditation takes me seven places in universe. Up and up. Last place I go is heaven."
I asked, "Have you been to heaven, Ketut?"
He smiled. Of course he had been there, he said. Easy to go to heaven.
"What is it like?"
"Beautiful. Everything beautiful is there. Every person beautiful is there. Everything beautiful to eat is there. Everything is love there. Heaven is love."
Then Ketut said he knows another meditation. "To down." This down meditation takes him seven levels below the world. This is a more dangerous meditation. Not for beginning people, only for a master.
I asked, "So if you go to heaven in the first meditation, then, in the second meditation you must go down to...?"
"Hell," he finished the statement.
This was interesting. Heaven and hell aren't ideas I've heard discussed very much in Hinduism. Hindus see the universe in terms of karma, a process of constant circulation, which is to say that you don't really "end up" anywhere at the end of your life - not in heaven or hell - but just get recycled back to earth again in another form, in order to resolve whatever relationships or mistakes you left uncompleted last time. When you finally achieve perfection, you graduate out of the cycle entirely and melt into The Void. The notion of karma implies that heaven and hell are only to be found here on earth, where we have the capacity to create them, manufacturing either goodness or evil depending on our destinies and our characters.
Karma is a notion I've always liked. Not so much literally. Not necessarily because I believe that I used to be Cleopatra's bartender - but more metaphorically. The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in one's lifetime its obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same old addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma (and also of Western psychology, by the way) - take care of the problems now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering - that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding - there's where you'll find heaven.
But here Ketut was talking about heaven and hell in a different way, as if they are real places in the universe which he has actually visited. At least I think that's what he meant.
Trying to get clear on this, I asked, "You have been to hell, Ketut?"
He smiled. Of course he's been there.
"What's it like in hell?"
"Same like heaven," he said.
He saw my confusion and tried to explain. "Universe is a circle, Liss."
I still wasn't sure I understood.
He said. "To up, to down - all same, at end."
I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below. I asked. "Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?"
"Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it is better for you to go up, Liss." He laughed.
I asked, "You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward through the happy places, since`heaven and hell - the destinations - are the same thing anyway.
"Same-same, " he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy on journey."
I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is...."
"Love, too," he said" (2006, pp. 261-3).
~Excerpted from "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.
"At the moment, the person I'm enjoying the most is Ketut. The old man - truly one of the happiest humans I've ever encountered - is giving me his full access, the freedom to ask any lingering questions about divinity, about human nature. I like the meditations he has taught me, the comic simplicity of "smile in your liver" and the reassuring presence of the four spirit brothers. The other day the medicine man told me that he knows sixteen different meditation techniques, and many mantras for all different purposes. Some of them are to bring peace or happiness, some of them are for health, but some of them are purely mystical - to transport him into other realms of consciousness. For instance, he said, he knows one meditation that takes him "to up."
"To up?" I asked. "What is to up?"
"To seven levels up," he said. "To heaven."
Hearing the familiar idea of "seven levels," I asked him if he meant that his meditation took him up through the seven sacred chakras of the body, which are discussed in Yoga.
"Not chakras," he said. "places. This meditation takes me seven places in universe. Up and up. Last place I go is heaven."
I asked, "Have you been to heaven, Ketut?"
He smiled. Of course he had been there, he said. Easy to go to heaven.
"What is it like?"
"Beautiful. Everything beautiful is there. Every person beautiful is there. Everything beautiful to eat is there. Everything is love there. Heaven is love."
Then Ketut said he knows another meditation. "To down." This down meditation takes him seven levels below the world. This is a more dangerous meditation. Not for beginning people, only for a master.
I asked, "So if you go to heaven in the first meditation, then, in the second meditation you must go down to...?"
"Hell," he finished the statement.
This was interesting. Heaven and hell aren't ideas I've heard discussed very much in Hinduism. Hindus see the universe in terms of karma, a process of constant circulation, which is to say that you don't really "end up" anywhere at the end of your life - not in heaven or hell - but just get recycled back to earth again in another form, in order to resolve whatever relationships or mistakes you left uncompleted last time. When you finally achieve perfection, you graduate out of the cycle entirely and melt into The Void. The notion of karma implies that heaven and hell are only to be found here on earth, where we have the capacity to create them, manufacturing either goodness or evil depending on our destinies and our characters.
Karma is a notion I've always liked. Not so much literally. Not necessarily because I believe that I used to be Cleopatra's bartender - but more metaphorically. The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in one's lifetime its obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same old addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma (and also of Western psychology, by the way) - take care of the problems now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering - that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding - there's where you'll find heaven.
But here Ketut was talking about heaven and hell in a different way, as if they are real places in the universe which he has actually visited. At least I think that's what he meant.
Trying to get clear on this, I asked, "You have been to hell, Ketut?"
He smiled. Of course he's been there.
"What's it like in hell?"
"Same like heaven," he said.
He saw my confusion and tried to explain. "Universe is a circle, Liss."
I still wasn't sure I understood.
He said. "To up, to down - all same, at end."
I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below. I asked. "Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?"
"Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it is better for you to go up, Liss." He laughed.
I asked, "You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward through the happy places, since`heaven and hell - the destinations - are the same thing anyway.
"Same-same, " he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy on journey."
I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is...."
"Love, too," he said" (2006, pp. 261-3).
~Excerpted from "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Happiness & Joy
I just finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert's # 1 New York Times Best selling autobiography "Eat, Pray, Love" in which she takes us on her quest for her own truth through Italy, India and Indonesia. If there is an excerpt from the book that has enduring value for me, it would be these two pages which she writes towards the end of her journey:
"I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. Its easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.
Recalling these teachings as I ride my bike so freely in the sunset through Bali, I keep making prayers that are really vows, presenting my state of harmony to God and saying, "This is what I would like to hold on to Please help me memorize this feeling of contentment and help me always support it." I'm putting this happiness in a bank somewhere, not merely FDIC protected but guarded by my four spirit brothers, held there as insurance against future trials in life. This is a practice I've come to call "Diligent Joy." As I focus on Diligent Joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once - that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people." (2006, pp. 260-261)
~ Excerpted from "Eat, Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.
"I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. Its easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.
Recalling these teachings as I ride my bike so freely in the sunset through Bali, I keep making prayers that are really vows, presenting my state of harmony to God and saying, "This is what I would like to hold on to Please help me memorize this feeling of contentment and help me always support it." I'm putting this happiness in a bank somewhere, not merely FDIC protected but guarded by my four spirit brothers, held there as insurance against future trials in life. This is a practice I've come to call "Diligent Joy." As I focus on Diligent Joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once - that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people." (2006, pp. 260-261)
~ Excerpted from "Eat, Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Law of Attraction vs Coherence
"CosMos - A Co-creator's Guide to the Whole-World" is an inspiring book by Ervin Laszlo, Ph.D, recipient of the 2001 Goi Peace Award (Japanese) and the 2005 Mandir Peace Prize. He has been twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. This book is co-authored by Jude Currivan, Ph.D. The authors offer these thoughts and caveat on the Law of Attraction:
"The principles of resonance and reflection are brought together in the Law of Attraction, which states that like attracts like - positive thinking and intention attract positive results, and vice-versa.
The power of our intention and the energy it unleashes are dependent on our levels of coherence and intensity. The affirmation of our positive intentions in thought, feeling, and action increases the power of our abilities. Nonetheless, it is important to appreciate that the matrix of physical, emotional, and mental levels of consciousness through which our personal and collective intentions and choices are explored and experienced require a "health warning" on interpreting the Law of Attraction too simplistically.
There are many reasons why our life circumstances are as they are. Expanding our awareness to understand them and our behavior patterns and limiting beliefs allows us to gain the perspective that enables us to become more balanced and whole. When we are willing to undertake this quest, we are empowered to "attract" our highest purpose to flow through us. This is the journey of developing deeper coherence. The most coherent ends are achieved through the most coherent means. In this context, "the means do not justify the end"; they become it." (2008, p. 105).
~Excerpted from "CosMos" By Laszlo and Currivan
"The principles of resonance and reflection are brought together in the Law of Attraction, which states that like attracts like - positive thinking and intention attract positive results, and vice-versa.
The power of our intention and the energy it unleashes are dependent on our levels of coherence and intensity. The affirmation of our positive intentions in thought, feeling, and action increases the power of our abilities. Nonetheless, it is important to appreciate that the matrix of physical, emotional, and mental levels of consciousness through which our personal and collective intentions and choices are explored and experienced require a "health warning" on interpreting the Law of Attraction too simplistically.
There are many reasons why our life circumstances are as they are. Expanding our awareness to understand them and our behavior patterns and limiting beliefs allows us to gain the perspective that enables us to become more balanced and whole. When we are willing to undertake this quest, we are empowered to "attract" our highest purpose to flow through us. This is the journey of developing deeper coherence. The most coherent ends are achieved through the most coherent means. In this context, "the means do not justify the end"; they become it." (2008, p. 105).
~Excerpted from "CosMos" By Laszlo and Currivan
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Alchemy and the Imagination
Leading Jungian analyst, Nathan Schwartz-Salant's Introduction to Jung's work on Alchemy provides an inviting preface to the topic. This book brings together an essential selection of Jung's thoughts on the topic. The relationship between alchemy and imagination is not to be underestimated:
"The alchemists knew, from their own and from the accumulated experience of centuries of traditional cultures, that their personalities could be transformed. Through initiation rites they felt different, behaved differently, and grew in new ways. No longer bound to the compulsion of adolescent states of mind, or to the flights into promiscuity that wasted their sexual energies, people in traditional cultures learned that they could 'die' and be 'reborn.' And in their reborn form they actually did see the world differently. They could, in fact, see in ways they never could before. Their imagination could become a guide to truth instead of being a capricious trickster. And some alchemists could feel a guiding center that formed in their innermost being and which was strangely linked in feeling to experiences of their most ecstatic journeys. Alchemy developed within this respect for a human concern for the sacred. As a consequence, its very methods were intrinsically bound to the power of illumination and the imagination, and it especially applied the ideas of death and rebirth, so central to initiation rites and mystical experience, to material and psychological change. To understand the alchemical quest we must recognize the intimate relationship that existed between its methods and the transformation of the human personality, or else we shall miss its essential mystery." (1995, p. 5).
~Excerpted from "Jung on Alchemy" by Nathan Schwartz-Salant
"The alchemists knew, from their own and from the accumulated experience of centuries of traditional cultures, that their personalities could be transformed. Through initiation rites they felt different, behaved differently, and grew in new ways. No longer bound to the compulsion of adolescent states of mind, or to the flights into promiscuity that wasted their sexual energies, people in traditional cultures learned that they could 'die' and be 'reborn.' And in their reborn form they actually did see the world differently. They could, in fact, see in ways they never could before. Their imagination could become a guide to truth instead of being a capricious trickster. And some alchemists could feel a guiding center that formed in their innermost being and which was strangely linked in feeling to experiences of their most ecstatic journeys. Alchemy developed within this respect for a human concern for the sacred. As a consequence, its very methods were intrinsically bound to the power of illumination and the imagination, and it especially applied the ideas of death and rebirth, so central to initiation rites and mystical experience, to material and psychological change. To understand the alchemical quest we must recognize the intimate relationship that existed between its methods and the transformation of the human personality, or else we shall miss its essential mystery." (1995, p. 5).
~Excerpted from "Jung on Alchemy" by Nathan Schwartz-Salant
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