You HAVE to Try THIS!

     Okay, you don't 'have to,' BUT I sincerely recommend you do, because this is a surprisingly simple but not easy "game changer."

    1) Become aware of your Mood or overall Attitude. 
    Unless you feel: Open & Curious to ANYTHING that might happen, Ready to Learn & Evolve, and Grateful to be Alive, then DROP YOUR BORING, DEADENING, SELF-DEFEATING MOOD. You've done shit mood & "ordinary unhappiness" (or worse) to death. It's time to LIVE!

     2) FRESH START EVERY MORNING!
    Anything, ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING can happen today! None of us have a clue how our day will go when we first open our eyes. YET, a pessimistic or anxious, or one of our other pet shit moods loves to rush in to pathologically distort our attitude for the whole day. This is our fear-based choice akin to people choosing to return to a familiar abusive home rather than 'risk' a new safe house. BE BRAVE! Admit you don't have a clue about the future, NOR can you micromanage the future. The best you can be is PRESENT: Not Knowing, Relaxed yet Alert & Energized, Ready to Learn & Evolve, and Grateful to be Alive. 

    3) PRESENCE
    This is relatively rare, YET simple, ordinary, AND feels joyful. Have you ever been somewhere with so many overwhelming noises that you can't think clearly? For most, the source of the overwhelming noises is our own "self-talk" - the ongoing dialogue from our small self. We, as individuals, "need" a "noisy ego" like we as a society, "need" a narcissistic dictator taking a wrecking ball to our world ie like we need a hole in the head. 95% of our self-talk is useless or harmful. We CAN ignore self-talk, and CAN direct our awareness ANYWHERE we choose. 
    CHOOSE Open Awareness! Open Awareness is a meditation practice that's also the ideal way to be 24/7. When we're not narrowly focused on a specific task such as cooking a meal, or driving, our awareness is wide open to & monitoring all of our sensory inputs, in the present moment. Unless we specifically choose to narrow our awareness down, we remain open, present. This is peaceful & joyful because it's so effortless & freeing - free from our infernal neurotic, fearful, anxious self-talk. TREAT yourself to this experience - even for a minute - to appreciate the miraculous peace. This peaceful 'liminal space' feels energized at the same time, a bit like a helicopter that has risen off the ground hovering, yet able to take off in any direction when it chooses to do so.

    This 'everyday miracle' is YOURS to enjoy, yours to LIVE. It's your birthright! You WILL kick yourself if you delay letting go of needlessly living in 'ordinary unhappiness' or worse.

    

small self vs Self

St. Michael Defeating Satan (c. 1633) by Guido Reni

     

Not Separate!

    "There is something in all of us that seeks the spiritual … 

     The spiritual is inclusive. It is the deepest sense of belonging & participation. We all participate in the spiritual at all times, whether we know it or not. There’s no place to go to be separated from the spiritual, so perhaps one might say that the spiritual is that realm of human experience which religion attempts to connect us to through dogma & practice. 

    Sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it fails. Religion is a bridge to the spiritual — but the spiritual lies beyond religion. Unfortunately, in seeking the spiritual we may become attached to the bridge rather than crossing over it."      Rachel Naomi Ramen MD

 

    More and more brave, intelligent adults are freeing themself from religious & secular orthodoxies, evolving & awakening into their authentic, mature, spiritually-independent Self. 

     “We write here in conversation with Rilke and each other, opening to a ‘wiser way’ than is more generally offered in our hectic, demanding societies, where individuality is so highly praised and our inevitable interconnectedness is so poorly understood. It might well enable you to ground your life in what the ancients knew as the ‘transcendentals’: ‘the true, the good, and the beautiful.’ Those are the collective attributes we find singly and learn to live socially. 
     Rilke suggests in one of his early poems that ‘you are the future.’ You! 
     Is it the ‘you’ of the divine one Rilke often addressed simply as ‘Lord’ but equally call ‘neighbor’ or ‘friend’? Is it the ‘you’ of the poet himself? Or the ‘you’ of the reader? Rilke refused, characteristically, to define whom he is addressing. For in the deepest things in life, the truest things of the heart, the most enduring things of the soul, these three are not different. Not distinct. Not separable. 
    You are the future.”
     Mark S. Burrows, Stephanie Dowrick. “You are the Future. Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke.” Monkfish, 2024.

    It's fascinating to frequently hear a wide variety of spiritual experiences in which the experiencers are completely surprised by their experience, that it was nothing at all what they expected. Indeed one may be at a complete loss to identify the source of a powerful, authoritative voice, that neither quite sounded as if it were God, nor themself. 
    And many decades later, the awe remains ... and probably there is no difference, no distinction, no separation between Self and God.

    We CAN pull up our big adult spiritual pants and
stop externalizing the Divine!

 

"Every Day, Think As You Wake Up, 
Today I Am Fortunate To Have Woken Up, 
I Am Alive, I Have A Precious Human Life, 
I Am Not Going To Waste It 
I Am Going To Use 
All My Energies To Develop Myself, 
To Expand My Heart Out To Others, 
To Achieve Enlightenment For 
The Benefit Of All Beings, 
I Am Going To Have Kind Thoughts Toward Others... 
I Am Going To Benefit Others
As Much As I Can."

H.H. The Dalai Lama

 

Courtesy of Buddha Doodles  www.buddhadoodles.com

Hope, Courage, Patience, Perseverance

    "I believe that there’s an intelligence, a spiritual power that I don’t understand. I call it God because I don’t know what else to call this great spiritual power. It gives me strength. 
    I’ve also had amazing times alone in nature when for a moment you forget you’re human. Your humanness goes away, and you’re part of that natural world. It’s the most amazing and wonderful and beautiful feeling .....
    Traditional faith will have you believe in a loving God, and when I look at what’s happening on the planet, I think if there is a God like that, is he playing with us? Are we living in some great experiment? How can you believe in a loving God when you see the horrors that are perpetrated against nature, against animals, against each other? I sometimes think it is like an experiment which has culminated in this strange, confused creature that is human beings, and we seem to be lost. Who are we? What are we? Why are we here? I don’t know what the meaning of life is. 
    The meaning of my life is to give people hope because without hope you give up."  
    Jane Goodall PhD 1934-2025 

    There's a lot to unpack in Jane Goodall's heart-felt words. So what does she mean by "amazing times alone in nature when for a moment you forget you’re human"? 
    I understand that momentarily forgetting you're human refers to going beyond or deeper than your surface identity of name, address, history, likes / dislikes, virtues / neuroses etc, and opening up to / remembering our primal intimate Oneness & Source.      

    Goodall clearly contrasts what many of us see as human civilization blindly rushing towards self-destruction, with her sense that there is still hope, because human beings are also capable of experiencing, nurturing & sharing awe, wonder, & beauty. 

    Iain McGilchrist has been clearly explaining how human society's current tendency is "left-hemisphere-dominant" - seeing the world in a very pragmatic, abstract, detached, transactional manner: seeing only lumber when looking at a great forest, seeing only mining opportunities when looking at a majestic mountain, seeing only harvesting of fish, oil & natural gas when looking at the great oceans - focused only what they can quickly grab for short-term gain for themselves. Some, much like the tobacco industry a few decades ago, flatly deny that this way of seeing is "perpetrating horrors against nature, against animals, against each other." Many CEOs, populist politicians / dictators, billionaires, etc CAN BE clever, AND YET display no evidence at all of wisdom. 

    From a neuroscience perspective, McGilchrist would say that we are able to see things in balanced way when the left-hemisphere's exclusive emphasis on grabbing, controlling & surviving is not running the whole show. One way to facilitate this balanced, healthy, holistic perspective is being alone (and at peace) in nature. Then we more easily appreciate the right-hemisphere's way of seeing the world: appreciating our intimate inter-connectedness with everyone & everything, love, beauty, truth, the arts, mystery, spirituality, meaning, metaphor, humor, paradox, etc - AS WELL AS - the practical, limited role of the left-hemisphere. To have a clearer understanding of these two, ideally complementary ways of seeing and being in the world, I highly recommend one of McGilchrist's excellent interviews, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuqz0MO9mX0

    To paraphrase Einstein, our (left-hemisphere dominant) way of seeing / level consciousness that got us into this dire mess CANNOT possibly lift us out of it, into a better future. Our exclusive left-hemisphere ways: estranged, adversarial relationship with our own hearts, each other & Nature is what's so painfully unnatural & unsustainable. 
    Chronic fear, anxiety & anger has for too long, been drowning out our patience, wisdom & kindness. We desperately need to cultivate a FAR wiser balance.

    So can we gain some freedom from chronic fear & anxiety - when "being well-adjusted to a toxic situation is no measure of health"? 
    Well, we know that our executive function is easily shut down when we're stressed - ie stress tends to impair good judgment. 
    We also know that many are able to operate under high-stress life-or-death situations with amazing calm & competence: fire-fighters, police officers, paramedics, surgeons, psychiatrists, air traffic controllers, pilots, military personnel, martial artists, etc. 

    Common knowledge would incorrectly tell us that our level of stress is directly proportional to the degree to which we lack total control of our present situation. 
    Actually, our level of stress is mostly based on catastrophizing ie anxiously, vividly imagining the worst possible future outcome, which very rarely if ever materializes and / or being stuck re-living the past.
    The secret of the "grace under pressure" exemplified by fire-fighters etc is staying in the reality of the present moment and responding appropriately. Clearly, knowledge, training & practice in knowing what to do in challenging present situations is a basic necessity ALONG WITH knowing how to remain present, focused & grounded ie Mindful.

    Mindfulness training IS PRACTICING staying in the reality of the present moment and responding appropriately. It's best started under stress-free conditions eg being peacefully alone in nature, or in your own home away from distractions. Start by sitting, standing or lying down and remaining still, for a set period of time eg just 5 minutes at first, with eyes closed, and just quietly observe what goes on, mainly inside of you. 

    "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."  Blaise Pascal, French philosopher

     With patience, a bit of courage, and a lot of perseverance, a sustained regular practice will result in you being able to remain surprisingly calm, grounded & wisely responsive (rather than impulsively reactive in a way that everyone will later regret) to even the most serious challenges. You will also learn humility & empathy for yourself & others, because you will remain perfectly imperfect. Interestingly & a bit annoyingly, after decades of practice, you too might find major challenges surprisingly easy to accept, while small, meaningless events might still provoke you briefly. 

    So this is a life-long practice, with continual growth in wisdom, and less & less sabotaging interference by neuroses & traumas. Your quality of life, and the quality of life of those around you, will definitely progressively improve well beyond your current understanding.

“We are not isolated individuals. 

We are cells in the body of humanity, and what we do to one another we do to ourselves. 

The new story is one of interdependence, shared purpose, and sacred relationship with all Life.” 
Nancy B. Roof PhD 1929-2025

 

Another World is Possible www.kosmosjournal.org

This Still CAN and DOES Happen!

    This powerful true story was told by Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab American poet, editor, songwriter, & novelist, born to a Palestinian father and an American mother. Her story was posted (more than once) by Joel & Michelle Levey (WisdomAtWork.com), a well-known American Buddhist couple of Jewish heritage. 
    Enjoy:

Gate A-4
by Naomi Shihab Nye

    "Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed for four hours, I heard an announcement: 'If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.'

    Well -- one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

    An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. 'Help,' said the flight service person. 'Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.'

    I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly. 'Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?' The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, 'No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let's call him.'

    We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her -- Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours.

    She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies -- little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts -- out of her bag -- and was offering them to all the women at the gate.

    To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo -- we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

    And then the airline broke out free beverages from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend--by now we were holding hands--had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

    And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate -- once the crying of confusion stopped -- seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

    This can still happen anywhere.  Not everything is lost."

 

     A decade or so ago, a young woman in one of my (then in-person) mindfulness classes shared a true story about her young daughter. 
    Once when the little girl was very upset, she had told her to be a big girl, behave etc. The little girl admonished her that that didn't help at all. "When I'm upset, I need you to hug me, tell me you love me, and bring me my teddy bear." 
    So, the next time her daughter became upset, Mom did exactly as requested, and both of them were quickly soothed & happy.

 

    “In love it often feels as if we’re glimpsing the hidden architecture of the world …” 
    Pico Iyer. “Aflame. Learning from Silence.” Riverhead Books, 2025.

    In the above quote, the author might be comfortable exchanging ‘architecture’ with ‘force,' 'energy' or 'lifeblood’. 
    And 'love' is not only romantic, but perhaps even more applicable in the love one feels for everyone & everything, like heat radiating out of one's chest. Loving Kindness Meditation is a superb practice to help gradually melt the protective shield around one's heart. http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/12/deeper-dimensions-of-acceptance.html .
    Gradually, our heart & mind become less-and-less dominated by fear, and more-and-more guided by unconditional love. 
    We MUST take unconditional love seriously and actually practice it. OTHERWISE its opposite - fear, anger, hatred & violence dominate, and the meltdown of civilization begins.

 

"The Divine is not high above us. 
It is in heaven, it is in earth,
it is inside of each of us.”
Morihei Ueshiba Sensei, 
"The Art of Peace"

 

"Active Hope" - Joanna Macy

Our Best is Needed

    "The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to really hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.” Ram Dass

    We can easily remember Ram Dass' words with the help of these two short phrases:

    In the wonderful TV series, "New Amsterdam," Dr. Max Goodwin's response to even the most challenging situations was to ask, "How can I help?"
    And if we can't help, then: "At least do harm."

 

    What do we value most in a human being? What are the best attributes of people we most admire? 

    Decency, honesty, trustworthiness, reliability, kindness, acceptance, humility, courage & nurturing stand out for me.

 

    Aren't these the very same characteristics that lie deep within us all? These attributes - sparks of the Divine - we all potentially or actually manifest under optimal conditions, when we feel sufficiently safe & brave enough to lower our hardened defenses, and be authentic - our true Self? 

    We can easily differentiate between feeling rigid with fear, guarded, aggressive, enraged, versus when we feel safe, relaxed, glowing with an open-heart & open mind. 

    BUT what's really valuable is learning to recognize how we habitually remain armored, at least somewhat tight & hyper-vigilant even when there's NO "clear and present danger" AND how this constantly corrodes all our perceptions, thinking, speech & behaviors. 

    ONLY by repeatedly recognizing & releasing this default survivalist, separate-self, adversarial illusion are we able to gradually stop sabotaging our own quality of life, and the quality of life of all those around us.

    What clues do we have, that we're lost in the default survivalist, separate-self, adversarial illusion? We feel physically tight, strained, anxious, impatient, 'time poverty,' 'empty' or 'lacking' something, desperate to 'keep busy,' competitive, aggressive. OR we may feel 'lack luster,' no energy, no interests, no plans, hopeless, down. OR we may feel constantly anxious, afraid & upset by a wide variety of things, and assume that it's these that are making us sick. But fear of living AND fear of dying are common. Meditation teacher Ezra Bayda calls it the "anxious quiver of being."

    Becoming clearly aware of what's really going on, here & now occurs only in stillness, not by "keeping busy" chasing after stuff, nor running away from other stuff. Perhaps that's why we fear to, and rarely stop & look carefully. Our compulsive activity - like furiously riding a rocking horse - gives the illusion of "getting somewhere." HOWEVER, intentionally being aware of what's really here & now gradually tames our fears, and intimately engages us with the awesome mystery of Reality.

    “When I change the level of my awareness, I start attracting a different reality.” Santon Saint Pierre, French philosopher

    Living in the default survivalist, separate self, adversarial illusion feels bad & harms myself & everyone around me. 

    I CAN learn to detect this default way of being, repeatedly let it go, relax, open my heart-mind, and ALLOW my true nature - decency, honesty, trustworthiness, reliability, kindness, acceptance, humility, courage & nurturing - to shine, which radically changes EVERYTHING - our perceptions, thinking, speech & behaviors. It's a lifelong adventure.

     

Passenger - "When We Were Young"

Sweet Lullaby of Routine and Comfort

"In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
gazing at flowers."

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827)

 

“Take away the fear,
only love remains.” 

John McKay, Whole Foods CEO

     It's remarkable how often we wrongly assume that if something comes naturally & feels comfortable then it has to be what we need.  

    A good friend in university would, as soon as he sat down with a book in the library, put his face down on the book and be fast asleep until it was time to leave. When I mentioned this as a potentially serious problem, he'd rationalize this as a necessity. Sleeping felt more comfortable than studying.

    The basis of all our procrastination, intellectual bypassing, & other forms of avoidance is fear. One of the world's most celebrated extreme skiers has this advice:

    "... put down those books that are trying to help you understand or rationalize Fear, and stop, at least for now, expecting a definition of what I even mean by Fear, except you know it when you feel it. Because those intellectual desires only keep you in your head and make your experience with it more diluted & lost. Let’s focus instead on what does work, which is feeling and experiencing Fear, the way a rider intimately feels & experiences a horse.”
    ... become a warrior. This is about turning away from your old belief that Fear is a hindrance and walking in the opposite direction, toward recognizing that Fear is not only an asset and an ally, but one of the greatest experiences you’ll have in your lifetime.
    If you’re willing to enter into such unknown territory, the changes that will occur in your life and the new views you have will be shocking. At some point, you will even arrive at a place where you are truly free.
    Whatever cement you’ve been encased in will finally be gone.”
    Kristen Ulmer. “The Art of Fear: Why Conquering Fear Won’t Work and What to Do Instead.” Harper Wave, 2018.

    "The spirit of evil is negation of the life force by fear. Only boldness can deliver us from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is violated." Carl Jung 1912

    “The loss of a sense of being is the most serious side effect of the quantified, commodified, & industrialized life we have manufactured in recent times.

    As Mary Shelley describes so precisely in her metaphor of the monster (the commodified & industrialized person), we live in an age when schools and businesses stitch together the fragments of a personality and call it a human being, useful for production. But when Frankenstein’s monster one day witnesses the tender emotions of a family and begins to read the great poets, he can no longer bear his monstrosity. He becomes aware of the distance between his manufactured self and his sublime possibilities.”
    Thomas Moore. “Original Self. Living with Paradox and Authenticity.” HarperCollins, 2000. 

 
    “By adulthood, we have developed sophisticated psychological strategies & patterns to deal with the uncertainties & unpredictability of life. These strategies shape the person we become and, unfortunately, can do so in increasingly limiting and rigid ways. … our capacity for adaptation & change also slows & freezes. … limitations that actually accentuate our suffering. Life then presents us with a further challenge.
    Are we ready & willing to wake up, to let go & open to our intrinsically fleeting, illusory nature and allow ourselves to change? If we do not do so willingly, then it is inevitable that life circumstances will eventually demand that we face ourselves & shed the skin of our limiting self-conceptions to discover our true nature. Some may take up this challenge, this call, while others choose to do otherwise.

    The intellect is one dimension of ego control that dominates many individuals, particularly men. This form of ego control can be expressed as a kind of arrogance that believes it is always possible to find an intellectual, scientific, rational answer that will give a sense of security. When the intellect provides a rational answer to what is going on, it creates a sense of being in control and, therefore, safe. Refuge in the intellect serves us to some degree but eventually becomes painfully inadequate.
    One man I knew who suffered this habit was able to use his intellect to rationalize every aspect of his emotional life in such a way that he had created an intellectual armor that was almost impenetrable. His capacity to intellectually dodge and weave to avoid real contact with both his feelings and his existential fear gave him a sense of invulnerability. The challenge came when his intellectual defense began to show its limitations. As he looked through the cracks that appeared, he could see that in order to resolve his emotional and existential predicament, he would need to simply surrender his ego’s precarious position. Suddenly he could see that all of his 'understanding' was actually an obstacle to direct experience. He stood on the edge of a precipice and knew he needed to leap. His intellectual knowledge had pushed him up to the edge & left him stranded.
    This was his moment of surrender, when he knew he needed to actually let go & jump: he needed to commit himself to the process. He could see that his intellectual knowledge was a defense against real commitment. To step across this threshold, however, required that he relinquish his pride in the capacity to always find a solution that closed even the smallest chink in his reality. Essentially his intellect was finally failing him, which was terrifying. As his mind began to release its grip, rather than going insane, as he feared, he did not disappear. He felt that he began to open to a more relaxed, more present, more spacious quality that could bear the paradoxes of his existence without panic.”
    Preece R. “The Wisdom of Imperfection. The Challenge of Individuation in Buddhist Life.” Snow Lion Publications, 2006.

    “If something bursts in from another reality, that’s a regrettable embarrassment to recover from as quickly as possible; to rationalize away with our skillful choice of labels & words so we can keep clinging to the thread of what’s most familiar by breaking the thread of the sacred.
    And, of course, this is a problem for everyone without exception because we all need continuity so we at least can seem to function. But even those of us who think we’re most awake are so easily lulled asleep by the sweet lullaby of routine – never quite able to take the next steps needed.”
    Peter Kingsley “A Book of Life.” Catafalque Press, 2021.

“Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and … ”

Paul Simon "The Boy in the Bubble"

Pointers from a Wise Elder

    My blogs have been pointing to the importance of directly experiencing how each one of us is far deeper & wiser than we realize. However, our current culture shows no evidence of depth & wisdom, hence our current global situation - as if drug-crazed scriptwriters had written a dystopic Batman movie.

    “If you set out to be less than you are capable of being, I warn you, you will be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life.” Abraham Maslow 

    “The spirit of evil is negation of the life force by fear; only boldness can deliver us from fear; and if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is violated.” C.G. Jung

    “… the planet’s survival – and evolution – depends on our collective capacity to look within more honestly, and to act more consciously and less defensively in every sphere of our lives.” 
    Tony Schwartz. “What Really Matters. Searching for Wisdom in America.” Bantam Books, 1995. 

     “In the intellectual arena, healthy skepticism produces good sciences, testable procedures, and clearly defined rationales. Those who are overly attached to skepticism, however, can obliterate their own genuine inner life experiences by doubting them out of existence.”
    Tony Schwartz. “What Really Matters. Searching for Wisdom in America.” Bantam Books, 1995. 

    I try to select useful teachings of respected, intelligent, educated, loving, elder, mystics from different traditions, with strikingly similar visions of our shared meaningful potential.

    James Hollis PhD, 84-year-old highly-respected Jungian analyst & author of 20 books translated into many languages. A transcript of a recent valuable interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIA3oLncnPk

The role of dreams and the potential consequences of not paying attention to them: 

    James Hollis (JH): “Well it might be useful to each of us to recall what sleep research tells us today, that we tend to average in a single night’s sleep, 5 to 6 dreams. And some of us aren’t aware of our dreams or can’t remember them, but the truth is, that activity is going on nonetheless.
    Secondly, if we live to be 80 years old, we will have spent six years of our lives dreaming – not sleeping, that adds up to a third of our lives, repairing, restoring & processing – but six years dreaming. Nature doesn’t waste energy, so we have to say dreaming has some purpose in the whole system that we are as a complex organism.
    Moreover, if we begin to pay attention to our dreams, we begin to see that there is a presence there, another presence. I want to be as vague about that as I can, because we really don’t know – it’s a mystery that is paying attention to our life, and commenting upon it. Jung put it this way, ‘If you had the opportunity to speak to a two-million-year-old sage, wouldn’t you want that opportunity?’ What I think he was suggesting is we carry the wisdom of Nature inside of us, and there’s something in us that knows us better than we know ourselves, because in any given moment we’re likely to be under one sort of influence or another.
    We’re responding to the clamors of the world outside us or responding to intra-psychic components: complexes, drives, fears, etc. And yet there is a constancy that’s been here since our birth, and carries us through this journey, and possibly beyond, who knows. But that presence knows us better than we know ourselves, and again, may not be interested in our comfort but is interested in the truth of Nature, whatever that might prove to be. So over time, if we pay attention to our dreams, we begin to develop a conversation with some place within us that has the wisdom of Nature, which may not fit into our cultural setting at all, but which tells us the pathway that is right for us, and pathologizes us frankly when we get off that pathway.

From the standpoint of analytic psychology, we don’t say, well how quickly do I get rid of my symptoms or my fears. We say why have they come, what are they asking of us, where is it we need to apply some consciousness and perhaps some effort, and what happens over time? 

When we’re born, we have a natural authority – it’s called instinct. But we’re tiny creatures, we’re dependent, we have to respond to the pressures & messages around us, and so forth, so we lose contact with that voice within.

So what I’ve seen in people over long-term therapy through analysis is their sense of the locus of authority in their life begins to move from outside of them – because we’re always having to report to the world in some way – and begin slowly to shift to some presence within. So I could say to you, and I mean this quite sincerely, if I need to know what is the right course for me, right path for me, I sort of have to put it in there (pointing to his heart area), and whatever that presence is, it will speak to me over time. I don’t want to sound woo woo here. Sometimes it comes to us at 3 in the morning a week from now. Sometimes it’s a dream tomorrow night. Sometimes it’s an insight. But there’s something in each of us that I think we know as children, with which we lose contact, as we get adapted to the world around us. So dreams begin to tell us what the right course of life is for us, as seen from Nature’s perspective, not the society that we’re reporting to at all times.

Interviewer: "Palliative care nurse, Bonnie Ware found that the most common regret of dying people was, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/ .

What is the relationship between us not paying attention to our dreams and that deep inner voice, and having regrets later on in life?"

(JH): “Well I think the message of childhood is over-learned. It’s a factual lesson that, you are tiny, the world’s big, you are powerless, the world is all-powerful. So we tend, for understandable reasons, to relinquish that linkage to the Voice Within, and therefore instead we’re responding to the most troubled voice out there or the most insistent voice or the one we’re exposed to day-in and day-out.

People get this strange idea that you’re supposed to lie on a couch and complain about mother and father and so forth. That’s not what it’s about. On the other hand, stop and think where your most elemental messages about self & other and the nature of the traffic that goes on between arose, and you realize it came out of those formative experiences where you’re asking basic questions like, ‘Who are you? Who am I? What’s the traffic between us? How am I supposed to – Can I approach you? Oh, and by the way, what do you think of me? Do you think I’m okay as I am – or – do I have to twist myself in some way to fit something that you expect? Or do I just stay in the periphery and not ask anything of my life?’ Those elemental messages get over-learned so to speak. They’re the only game in town until there are other forces that come into our environment. In a sense, what we’re saying here is that, yes, the pressures to fit in, to not be isolated perhaps, not to be punished, are overwhelming. I’ve talked about the two threats to our well-being that all of us have: to be overwhelmed by life or abandoned by it, either of which could not only be hurtful but potentially lethal. So we quickly learn to figure out, ‘What’s the environment asking of me, so I can somehow be in accord with that, so in time I have a compatible relationship?’ But it’s in those day in day out surrenders of personal authority, and of course we do have to be socialized to fit into a family, into a culture and so forth, we’re not talking about self-absorption or narcissism here, quite the contrary. But one also has to learn a certain kind of legitimate respect for what is wishing expression through us.

How many times have I seen professionals – many physicians for example, and it pains me to say this, who became physicians because it would fit into their family expectations. The same it true of lawyers and other professionals. We’re always looking around for clues on how to live our lives, and yet we’re flush with clues, but we learn to override them. We all do.
    The feeling function – you don’t choose your feelings, they are autonomous qualitative analyses of how your life is going as seen by the deep psyche. So I can do all the ‘right’ things, achieve all my goals, yet inside it feels empty or I’m depressed or I’m self-medicated.

We have energy systems. When you’re doing what’s right for you, the energy supports you. When you’re forcing it all the time, we all know it leads to burnout and so forth.

We also have dreams, which are often compensatory by saying, your whole world’s pushing you in this direction in terms of your adaptations but you’ve neglected this whole part of your life over here. And then of course we have our old friend, psychopathology. When we push too far to one side or the other, it shows up as an anxiety disorder, as a kind of busyness that keeps us numbed, or a kind of depression that sets in.

That’s [severe depression] what led me to this work. In my early life I was an academic and I enjoyed it and I’m still a teacher. At the same time, I had to ask the question, ‘Why has my psyche autonomously withdrawn its approval & support from the agenda that I pursued?’ And it was a good agenda. At the same time, something reached out and said, ‘Now wait a second Buddy, ‘You know you’re neglecting various aspects of your life. You’ve papered over some issues that we wish to address.’ In those moments, you’re summoned to an appointment with yourself, and that’s what happens when people come in to therapy, they think it’s about their marriage - and of course that’s very important, or they might be thinking about their career, or concerned about their self-medication, or concerned about their course in life, but underneath, the real question is, are you living the life intended by your Nature, not by the culture around you.
    I realize that sounds in the abstract, rather idealistic, but the price again is psychopathology. One can spend one’s entire life adaptive, fitting in, serving what the world asks for, and it will show up in the strangest places. People will think that their trouble is to be treated by the purchase of the latest shiny thing, and its pleasure lasts for days at the most. Or one feels that ingesting a certain substance or something of that kind that one’s life is going to improve. Or you simply change your partner and that’ll fix things. Yet, there’s something inside again that is wanting expression through us.

Another way of putting this, and again this is a deliberate oversimplification but it’s true I believe, in the first half of life we have to develop enough ego strength to step out into the world, leave our parents behind, and sort of say, what’s the world asking of me, and try to meet that. It doesn’t mean you have to do everything the world’s asking, but you have to sort of at least become a presence in the face of that.

But in the second half of life, you really have to ask the question, what is life asking of me, what is the soul asking of me? When I use the word ‘soul’ it’s the literal translation of the Greek word ‘psyche’ – that deepest essence within each of us. What is wanting expression through me?

Now I for example have, from childhood on, adored my teachers because I could see them opening a world that was larger for me. So I became very identified with teaching. That’s the one consistent thread throughout my life. That’s why we’re talking today. And I don’t always find it easy. I’m an introvert. As a child I wanted to be a professional baseball player. I couldn’t have imagined, as a child, spending most of my days listening to people’s suffering. And at the same time, I can’t imagine anything more profound, more meaningful in my life. So I feel that each of us has a vocation, and by that I don’t mean job. I mean a calling in the world as a certain presence, as a value system, what is most deeply true for you and can you mobilize the courage and the consistency to live that over time? And if you do, the world may or may not approve. But it will feel right inside, and it’s a form of service. It’s not inflation, it’s not saying well it’s all about my ego and my resume or my wonderful children or my properties that I owned or whatever that might be. That’s ultimately all out there. It’s like it’ll be confirmed inside. You’ll feel the rightness of it.

I was between 33 and 35 years of age when I became depressed, and I undertook my first hour of therapy at age 35. The two halves of life are metaphorical. In fact sometimes it happens late in life, where a person loses their partner for example, and they didn’t realize the degree that they transferred their dependencies to their partner. Or if a person has been so identified with their work structure, and they’re laid off or forced to retire. Or a serious illness comes to them. It occurs when it occurs.

This is not a new idea. Tolstoy explores this in, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ which was published I think in 1885. In it, a fellow who had completely followed the instructions: went to the right school, married the right person, lived in the right neighborhood, became a lawyer and then a judge - climbing up the ladder, etc, etc. And then one day, there’s a pain in his side that doesn’t quite go away. And to make a long story short, it turns out to be a fatal illness. And all of his presumptions about life just sort of fade away. Then for the first time, after following the instructions and modeling in his culture as well as he could, for the first time he said, ‘What if my life has been wrong?’ And nobody wants to talk about it because it’s his illness, his problem, and they run from it. So he has the first honest conversation about what is my life about with a peasant who’s there to tend to him medically, and then he dies. And of course, Ivan Ilyich is like John Johnson, it’s meant to be in every person’s story. Here’s Tolstoy describing that in detail and goes through all of the stages of denial, anger & bargaining that Kübler-Ross identified and so forth, that tells us that Tolstoy was paying attention and recognizing we all have an appointment with our souls somewhere, and the question is, ‘Have I shown up? Do I keep showing up?’ And frankly, the answer is, ‘No,’ because the Voice within is so easily overwhelmed by the cacophony of noises outside of us, as well as the noises inside of us, about fitting in, being acceptable to others, and so forth."

Interviewer: "You saw your midlife depression as a signal that you had maybe made some choices that weren’t fully aligned with who you were on the inside. Tolstoy’s story is about a chap who perhaps was also not listening to that inner Voice, his soul’s calling, and ends up with a physical pain and I’ve heard you in other interviews say that what they’re describing in that book was probably cancer for that individual. So I’m really interested as to how this lack of listening to our psyche, to our soul, whether it be by not paying attention to our dreams, or by not having any solitude each day to actually reflect on our lives, what is the physical impact do you thing on our well-being when we don’t pay attention to those noises, those sounds, those messages that the body is constantly trying to send out to us if we can quiet down for a minute to start paying attention?"

(JH): “Well you know it’s human consciousness that separates our selves. We talk about the mind, we talk about the body, when they’re aspects of the same thing. The word, ‘psyche’ embraces all of that. It includes digesting your food, it has to do with cellular replacement etc, but it has to do with your emotional life, your spiritual life, your conscious intentional life. Would we be able to separate those things? Not really. We do consciously, but whatever occurs to me, affects me in all areas, of the body, my emotional life & my spiritual life. I’m using spiritual life in the most generic sense of that term: whatever speaks to you most deeply with a numinous quality to it, that is to say, something that touches you deeply within and moves you. So yes, the whole field of psychosomatic medicine is hardly new. But it’s only in the last 20 or 30 years that Western medicine has taken it seriously to realize that sometimes the venue of the pathology is in body, sometimes it’s in our unconscious behavior, sometimes it’s in our emotional life, but it always shows up in some way. There’s a best-selling book called ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ so everything that we experience shows up in the body. We know that. So that’s why I’ve said before, it’s not about suppressing a symptoms, it’s rather saying this is a distress signal sent out by the psyche and we have to ask, why has it come to us? What is it asking of us? What corrective do I need to make in my life? And that doesn’t mean every illness is psychological in origin. There are all kinds of toxic and genetic influences as well for sure. At the same time, we have to say, what is the meaning of this? What has this brought me to? To give you what sounds like a trivial example, when I was a college student, I was living frankly for sports. And I had a torn cartilage, and the surgeon went in during Spring break, and when I woke up told me, ‘I’m afraid we found a bone disorder there and we found your bones are disintegrating, and said I don’t think you’ll be walking by the time you’re 40. So I’m lying there as a 19-year-old and thinking, oh, well I never had the body to be a professional, but I had an absorption in sports. What am I going to do? And I remember thinking, well I am in a university, maybe I could become a student. In other words, I had at that moment, unknowingly, an appointment with myself. Where does this energy go now? It had been moved from one field, where’s it going to go? That happens to us all the time, through retirement, or downsizing. People experienced it through the Covid sequestering for example. They didn’t realize the degree to which their emotional needs & structures were being carried by their work office assignments or their colleagues or family members they could not visit at the time. That was an appointment with themselves for a lot of people. And some people really understood that, dug in, and found new aspects of their own personality that were crying out for expression. But again, it’s like, whose life are we living? One of the sentences from Jung that properly haunts me, and I think should haunt all of us, was where he said, ‘The greatest burden the child must bear is the unlived life of the parents.’ And what he meant by that is wherever I’m stuck or blocked, my children will be, OR, they’ll be spending their life trying to break through that barrier. So the best thing that I can show them is not a perfect human being, none of us is capable of that, it’s rather have I faced up to my fears? Have I pushed through, have I stepped into a personal authority? Because that’s the biggest project of the second half of life – the recovery of a personal authority.
    Of the plethora of voices hitting us, the noises outside, the noises inside, a lot of traffic, which voices are yours? That’s a sorting and sifting process, a discernment to use an old-fashioned word that we don’t think about very much. It’s like pulling apart the threads to say, but what is this coming from in me? I often say to clients today of a certain behavior or reaction, ‘all right, the question is not what was right or wrong here, but what was that in service to you inside?’ In other words, it could have come from an old co-dependence, it could have come from a fear-based response, from a need to fit in for example, or be acceptable to the other person. Those are not capital crimes, but they are in some way offences to the autonomy and dignity of the individual human psyche. That very adaptation that helps us survive in life, becomes problematic. The single most important thing I learned in several years of analysis when I was in training in Zurich, which was in the abstract sounds pretty obvious, but at the time was pretty devastating, namely, what you have become, is now your chief obstacle. Because what we’ve become is this adaptive personality, fitting in, climbing a career ladder, playing out social roles - some of which are terrific. I love being a parent for example, or a partner. But some of it is not who you really are, and how do you tell the difference? And that’s where the psyche begins to pathologize. It’s helpful to remember that the word ‘psychopathology,’ if I could be academic for a moment, if you translate it literally means the expression of the suffering of the soul. Once you understand that, the expression of the suffering of the soul, then, even the mildest of physiological conditions becomes, in some ways, a summons: What’s going on here? What’s interrupted the psychospiritual ecology of this organism? We don’t tend to approach that. We bring our scientific armamentarium there, and in good faith. I’m alive because of medical science, and I’m grateful. At the same time, I realize that there is a deeper summons to accountability to the soul in all of our lives."
    James Hollis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIA3oLncnPk

 

But dreamin' just comes natural
Like the first breath from a baby
Like sunshine feedin' daisies
Like the love hidden deep in your heart

"Donald And Lydia" by Steve Goodman