My
partner acts jealous and it feels as if he makes me more important than I am.
ANSWER
“Not
jealous – I think he feels that he is inferior. You are using the wrong word.
He thinks that you are a goddess and he is worthless. Is that what it is?
(she nods) Then it is not jealousy!
“That too is a way of manipulating people – to make them very important.
That’s a kind of strategy, a very parasitical trip. When you make somebody
very high, you have power over the person because it is in your power now to
keep him high or throw him down. If anybody – for example, [your
partner] – puts you very high on a pedestal, you think he is making you
powerful. But he is also becoming powerful, because only he can keep you on
that pedestal, nobody else. And he knows that – that you will have to
depend on him otherwise you will not be on the pedestal; you will be an
ordinary woman. He has made a goddess of you! So it is a very, very subtle
strategy to keep control over you.
“By being dependent on you, he makes you dependent on him. And you enjoy the
trip – that he is making you so high. When you enjoy the trip, you have
to fulfill a few conditions. This is the trick; this is very ancient. [He]
has not invented it; it is very ancient.
“Man has always put woman on a pedestal so that she cannot come down. Man has
either worshipped woman or condemned her. Either she is a worm crawling on
the earth or she is a goddess, but he never makes her equal to himself; that
is dangerous. Both are okay – either she is very high in the sky,
untouchable, or she is very low, again untouchable, but she is never equal.
When a woman is very low she can be repressed, punished for anything that the
man feels is wrong. Or she is a goddess; then she can be thrown from the
pedestal – that too is a kind of punishment.
“But woman needs to be equal to man – neither low nor high – and
for that man is not ready, because to make the other equal means you cannot
control her any more. You cannot control an equal. Low and high can both be
controlled but the equal person is free; the equal is equal.
“So get down from the pedestal. Just tell him that you are a human being, not
a goddess. Now what are you doing? – you must be pretending to be a
goddess, so you are cooperating with him. Don’t cooperate! You simply tell
him, ‘I am an ordinary woman as you are an ordinary man. I don’t want to be
worshipped like a goddess. I have all kinds of desires as any woman will have.
I am just plain ordinary.’ Get down from the pedestal rather than him
throwing you; simply get down. You will feel good and you will unburden him
also.
“If he cannot love you, then he will find some other woman whom he can put on
a pedestal and worship. He may be in need of a mother and not in need of a
beloved; then that is his business. But you get down from the pedestal. Never
allow anybody to put you on high, otherwise he will manipulate you. He will
say, ‘I have made you so high – now you have to follow me. Don’t do
this; that doesn’t suit you. Don’t do that; that is below you. Keep your
status.’
“So you enjoy the status but then you feel petrified. You would like to be an
alive human being. So you are trying to do two contradictory things. If you want
to be a fully warm-blooded woman, a real woman, then get down from the
pedestal. All pedestals are a kind of disease I call ‘pedestalitis’.
“Get down and tell him that you are not going to become a goddess. Be natural
and true and whatsoever happens has to be accepted. If he leaves you, that’s
his business. If he remains with you, you will be more free; he will be more
free. And this will be helping him too...because he is also wrong. He will
never be happy. First you put a woman on a pedestal; then you cannot make
love to her. How can you make love to a goddess? – it looks ugly. You
cannot make love to your mother and you have put her up as a mother, a mother
superior. Then you cannot make love to her, or even if you do, you feel
guilt. He will not be happy, because he will continuously suffer from
inferiority; he has made you superior.
“Tell him ‘I am just an ordinary woman. I don’t want any other respect.’ That
is the greatest respect we can pay to each other as human beings! That will
help.”
Making a Masterpiece of Your Life:
Ideas from Author Thomas Moore
“To
the soul, the most minute details and the most ordinary
activities, carried out with mindfulness and art, have an effect far
beyond their apparent insignificance.”
Thomas
Moore, Care of the Soul: Guide for Cultivating Depth
and Sacredness in Everyday Life
Recently I had the chance to tune into
a free teleseminar with author, religious scholar, professor and lecturer
Thomas Moore of the book, Care of the Soul, fame. The teleseminar
focused on how to make a masterpiece of your life. According to Moore, the word
“masterpiece” harkens back to Renaissance, which he’s been studying for thirty
years or so. It offers up beauty like painting, architecture, and is such a
rich source of pleasure and psychological and spiritual insight. Moore points
out that the word “masterpiece” can be sometimes be overused to mean perfect or
refer to something too sentimental. For him, the first thing that occurs is
“making an art of your life.”
Beauty is even more important for the
soul and spirit than physical health, Moore insisted. When it comes to soul and
spirit, we might not think of health, but rather what it takes to make a
beautiful life. How might people look at life and find pleasure in it, rather
than being so concerned about being right, correct, or even healthy.
Back in the third
century, it was Plotinus who said we should “sculpt” our soul and chip away
anything that doesn’t quite fit in order to reveal a beautiful life, a
beautiful personality. As a therapist, coach, or mentor, Moore suggested, it
might be helpful to ask those you’re helping: “What would it take to make your
life beautiful?” rather than focusing on any other value.
Moore alluded to the Japanese idea of wabi-sabi,
an art form where imperfection and transiency plays an important role. Truly,
we can find beauty in anything, even cracks in the walls. Aphrodite (in Greek
mythology) or Venus (in Roman myth) is a goddess of beauty or of the soul. She
is a metaphor for living a beautiful life. She restores a sense of value for
things that today are not considered so important – like taking a luxurious
bath or taking care of our hair. One aspect of our contemporary lives is that
we have lost soul, and beauty is an important part of our lives.
A masterpiece originally could have
meant a major piece an artist has done, Moore reminded us, but it can also
represent work an apprentice has done in order to show the master; it is master
work. It is important to align yourself with someone you consider to be a
master in order to do your own work. For Moore, archetypal psychologist James
Hillman was a great teacher and master as well as a friend for 38 years. A
masterpiece is not something you create at working hard at it for a long time.
It requires good luck and good timing. It’s not always the quality of work or
effort one puts in so much a magic of timing and having good luck come your
way. One thing, Moore does is try to bring luck in and make it happen and not
just wait for it.
Talking about mastery is talking about
“craft.” Moore said as he gets older, more people are asking how they can be a
good therapist or a good writer. His suggestion: Learn the basics. Grammar,
language, punctuation are critical to good writing. For therapy: it would be
helpful to study alchemy, to read the Collected Works of C.G. Jung. For
everything, it’s a matter of trying and failing,
We are bombarded right now with
information about science and health: but it might be a good idea to tone down
expectations in that arena. Health is important, Thomas agreed, but maintained
that he allows myself some unhealthy foods and gives time to things he needs in
his own life for beauty. Before getting on the call, for example, Moore went to
his piano and played some Chopin. He says he’s not a great performer but he
still likes to play for the beauty of it. His wife is an artist, so he
surrounds himself with her art and others. Someone just sent him an image of
St. Francis of Assisi surrounded by animals and nature. It’s wonderful to focus
on simple things, and look for aspects of the beautiful. Moore tries to have
erotic art around him to invoke the spirit of Eros, the spirit of the
beautiful, he said. We have to have it in his environment before we can get it
into our hearts, he said.
When asked how we can talk about things
that matter and free people from frustration that occurs when things don’t go
as planned, Moore responded that when it comes to creating a masterpiece, you
can end up focusing on the rosy part of life, but you have to be able to
confront the dark as well. Times when we are beating ourselves up are the times
to be stronger rather than to keep doing that same kind of thing. We need to
shift out of the masochistic role and be stronger and tougher in the world, he
insists. In Renaissance times they said your anger could work for you if you
can transmute it into firmness and strength, into having the spirit of the
warrior. Moore said when finds himself getting down on himself, he reminds
himself to be stronger and firmer and to look and see where he’s being too
vulnerable, too soft or easy; where he needs to be tougher, maybe event going
so far as to say things people are going to dislike. It’s part of beautiful
life, he insists. The beauty is there only because the artist is there and
allows it to happen. The artist doesn’t let people mess with them. If you do
this regularly, it doesn’t build to explosion. We need both: it’s two sides to
the coin.
Returning to the idea
of wabi-sabi, Moore stated that it’s related to Hillman’s idea of polytheism.
You don’t have to settle on one or the other. You can dye your air to cover the
grey all the while appreciating the moss growing on the wall. It’s about
allowing the natural aspect of things. As you get older and feel older, you can
reveal your age. You begin to realize the things you can’t do outnumber the
things you can do. In nature, for example, you try to create a house and before
long you’ve got moss growing where you don’t want it. After awhile, you get
cracks but those cracks can look beautiful. Allow your self with all the light
and dark and good and bad and see the beauty in the whole picture. If you
repress or hide elements that are imperfect then the perfection you personally
try to show won’t be complete; it will look suspicious to yourself and others.
Part of wabi-sabi is allowing yourself to be seen.
In the conversation, the moderator,
Katherine mentioned an article she had seen recently about Stradivarius trees.
There is a culture of people who look for the perfect trees to make the
violins. These trees grow so slow sometimes they stop growing altogether in
order to gather their strength. Our culture is so much about “new” and “do,”
she said. But the trees that stop growing produce the most beautiful sound.
James Hillman wrote an essay against
the idea of growth, saying human beings shouldn’t try to grow, Moore responded.
In Moore’s books, he doesn’t promote growth as he believes there are times when
there is no growing taking place at all in the soul. It’s a sentimental idea
that we should be growing all the time. There are times of setback and when we
seem to be going backward. Those times are important too. When we stop growing,
people go to a therapist or coach. That’s often why these periods are good for
a psyche or soul, because it forces you to stop and wonder why. A deepening
happens. It’s not about being better, but deepening more into who you are; it
creates more substance to you. If you’re growing all the time you don’t have
the substance necessarily.
Moore took questions from listeners at
the end of the teleseminar. I took the opportunity to ask him what he thought
about something that is frequently on my mind these days: how to cope with the
extreme devastation of the planet we see all around us on a daily basis in
media and in nature. Moore’s response was to reinforce the idea that can do or
hold many things at once. You can be concerned about the devastation AND you
can appreciate the beauty. Every year for twelve years, Moore went to
Schumacher College in England with his family, he related. Even though he’s not
a scientist, he would talk to the people he met there about philosophy and
spirituality and the arts. One reason we are treating nature badly is that we
personalize it by thinking hierarchically, that humans are the top of the pile.
It takes more of an artistic sense for people to appreciate nature. Maybe it
would be helpful for us when we are deeply disturbed to paint or photograph
nature. Turning something into art gets it into yourself, gets it into us,
he said. Turning more to nature as art might help develop that relationship. We
need more art and spirituality. Moore mentioned that his new book has a chapter
on natural mysticism. To be mystical you don’t have to go off and be in the
ethers, he said. Just stopping to contemplate allows you to meditate and it
prepares you for what you need to do. Moore said he learned this from Thoreau,
for whom these types of activities were a sacrament. Read Walden closely, Moore
suggested. Follow it and learn from it.
Walking in nature or watching bees may
more important than you think, he insisted. It’s a form of meditation. The
things that seem the least significant may be the most important. To go out in
nature, feel like you’re wasting time; the sight of nature is a darshan
–it transforms. It gives you the courage to go on and do your work.
Bonnie Bright is the founder of Depth Psychology Alliance, the world's first
comprehensive online community for depth psychology, and hosts
a podcast, Depth Insights, as well as editing the
semi-annual scholarly e-zine of
the same name.She
recently founded www.DepthPsychologyList.com, a free online database to find or
list depth psychology oriented
therapists and practitioners. She holds Masters degrees in
Psychology and Depth Psychology, and is a Ph.D.
candidate at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. Follow her on Twitter @bonniebright5 or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/BonnieBright.DepthPsych
Five Simple, specific
steps you can take to change your brain chemistry to be happier.
GRATITUDE.
Write down five things each day that you are grateful for. Be as specific and
as descriptive as you can. Do it at around the same time every day, to set a
pattern. When you do this exercise be careful NOT to look for or mention
stresses or hassles. If convenient, try not to repeat the previous day's items.
RATIONALE: You are training your brain to scan you inputs for things that make
you happy.
JOURNALING:
Write down your positive experiences, IN WRITING. The act of writing is more
immediate than just thinking about your experiences, and it bridges across your
semi-subconscious impressions and your conscious, verbal brain. RATIONALE: This
will help you see positive connections in your life story.
SIMPLIFY vs MULTITASKING: The conscious brain does one thing at
a time. when you multi task, your brain isn't multi tasking- it is jumping from
one thing to another, introducing frazzle and stress. RATIONALE: This will
reduce stress in your life, making you happier.
EXERCISE:
Exercise is an antidepressant. If you introduce as little as a few minutes a
day of exercise into your life, it will change your brain chemistry. It doesn't
have to be any specific exercise- any physical exertion that changes your
respiration or your body tone or your pulse will induce happiness.
RATIONALE:This is stress-reducing, simple and self-rewarding.
MEDITATION;
Meditation improves your mindfulness and your awareness. Simply focus on your
breathing. Breathe slowly and deeply, and if stray thoughts enter your mind,
deliberately ignore them and observe your own breathing. RATIONALE: This helps
you control your thoughts and helps you to relax and unwind; and with practice,
it will provide a safety valve when tensions build up within you.
As I've aged, I've become kinder to myself,
and less critical of myself. I've become my
own friend. I have seen too
many dear friends leave this world, too soon; before they understood the
great freedom that comes with aging. Whose business
is it, if I choose to read, or play, on the computer, until 4 AM, or sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to
those wonderful tunes of the 50, 60
&70's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love, I will. I will walk the
beach, in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body,and will dive
into the waves, with abandon, if I choose to, despite the pitying glances
from the jet set. They, too, will
get old. I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some
of life is just as well forgotten.
And, I eventually remember the important things. Sure, over the
years, my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break, when you
lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when some body's
beloved pet gets hit by a car? But, broken hearts are what give us strength, and
understanding, and compassion. A heart never broken, is pristine, and
sterile, and will never know the joy of being imperfect. I am so blessed
to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, andto have my
youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have
never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver. As you get
older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people
think. I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be
wrong. I like being old. It has set me free. I likethe person I
have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I
will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about
what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if Ifeel like it). MAY OUR
FRIENDSHIP NEVER COME APART, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S STRAIGHT
The 2013 New Year is here. The media continues to expose the horrors and terror that is being inflicted upon humans and nature in many parts of the world accompanied by false ideologies, religious fundamentalism and the struggle for power.
We are entering, more and more into a vortex of self-destruction based on the illusion and false belief in “our” God. And so the world has changed very little since the evolution of humanity. In psychotherapy we are also entering a place of divisions, a plethora of “treatment” methods of our ills and much confusion about what is good and ethical practice calling for legal management (control) of false practitioners selling solutions to our ills.
Over one hundred years now we are exploring and researching ways of dealing with problems of the human psyche and still the outcomes are unclear. However some more recent developments could bring us some hope. Psychology and Spirituality seem to be getting closer due to the re-discovery of ancient shamanism and spiritual practices coming from the Eastern traditions that have been unknown in the west for thousands of years. Ken Wilber’s book on “The Marriage of Sense and Soul” is only one example of an attempt of union between science of the West and spirituality of the East.
Still the majority of people are experiencing a new creeping fundamentalism that is creating a new “inquisition” that questions those attempts to ‘marry’ ancient spiritual practices with hard science. Evangelism in both scientific circles and religious groups are fighting against ways that are touching our most intimate relationships and even re-interpreting the sexual relationships in all genders.
This split between sense and soul has created much confusion in people searching for a spiritual understanding and a path of awareness that is one of the most important psycho-spiritual needs today. Many enter this search by way of Yoga (there are many), Tantra, various meditations, the Enneagram and so on. A few join ‘growth’ weekends with visiting “gurus” and get a sense of temporary well-being and talk about their ‘virtual transformation’ that eventually result in a temporary trance state leading to more confusion later. The most difficult question is still the same: “Who am I?”
There are stories in many journals about the true search of a spiritual Master or Guide that has been able to give the disciple THE WAY. However, where to find such a Master among the thousands of so called ‘enlightened’ guides that eventually take your money and go home. Many charlatans and New Age marketers can be found on the internet selling everything: from instant ‘enlightenment’ to Viagra.
Zen philosophers for millennia have been saying that if you are confused and do not know what to do, then do no-thing. This will help you to get out of the trance state of the spiritual supermarket and begin a search for a true Master.
THE TRUE MASTER
Transpersonal psychology is a branch of psychology that has been attempting to interface between spirituality and modern psychology. Studies conducted to find a definition of a Master have been many and what follows is a summary. The true Master is not a master over others, but a master of himself or herself. The very word and gestures that come from such a master reflect a state of inner wisdom. He has no personal goals, no desire to educate or change but accept things as they are – here and now.
With a true Master we experience our own true Nature and in his silence we find our calm and inner peace. A Master has much to share and not to lead us somewhere. He enables to create a mutual field of energy where disciples can find their own path to selfhood. However, to choose a path to that selfhood with a Master is not easy. It is a constant challenge; a struggle to transform our old patterns and social conditioning and that process may often be very painful and take a long time. Many choose not to go that way and seek a ‘quick fix’ instead of developing a long term discipline.
A spiritual search is not some sort of holidays from reality as it is. It takes more than a week or two of residential seminars where we may feel free to practice our spiritual discipline for a while and then get back to the chores at home. The spiritual path is a constant process of discovery of our own limitations, errors and confusions as we experience life each day.
Most people end up searching for a therapist. A good therapist may be able to help us with ways of achieving a healthier life style or a more satisfactory relationship or a deeper awareness of our blocks to growth or even gain insights how to resolve issues based on a false self. At times a good therapist will be able to guide us to find a spiritual path, but at the end, the full journey is ours alone.
A therapist, no matter how good or capable he or she may be, will never be able to become our spiritual Master. Some therapists may have their own unfinished issues to complete while others will have excellent techniques that will help us to reach a point of resolution of our life issues but at the end, the therapist has to earn a living from the therapy work (called a profession) and therefore very few have been able to dedicate themselves to a spiritual search themselves.
Many people may ask: “Do I really need to have a spiritual master”? “What for”? Life as it is today has so many distractions that an honest search requires much work and time. A spiritual guide comes when we are ready. This means that we have had a long inner struggle with our self and our shadow. The ancient monks called “the dark night of the soul”. Finally such struggle requires help from someone who has been there to guide us into the light.
Yet this struggle is worthwhile. Rumi, the great Sufi poet once said: “false gold exists because the real gold exists”. The spiritual guide is there to help us to distinguish real gold from false gold. Being clear and authentic in our aim to search for a true spiritual path must begin with the first step and that is meeting the guide and then embark on a life-long journey without end.
Today, the word “enlightenment” has been used in so many contexts including in the current New Age marketing of ‘spiritual solutions’ that is much better to begin with self-understanding and personal growth rather than search for an “enlightenment” formula. In addition, as we grow into more awareness each day, we will be able to assist others in our community to do their personal growth work. As a song states: “we are the world” – the source of all beauty and part of all Nature interconnected with everything that exists.
Most people live in a limited consciousness and therefore inhabit a dark well (Socrates) and see nothing but their shadows reflected on its walls. They believe that those shadows are THE reality. By opening our eyes and drop the veils of illusion, we may be able to eradicate the evil shadows of cultural conditioning that has been the cause of much pain for millennia. However, without a spiritual guide who has harnessed the creative energy of passion and therefore of Love for all creation rather than destruction we cannot reach the understanding that brings peace, harmony and an understanding that we are all longing for. Eradicating evil takes a spiritual discipline and not a warrior nature. Allowing the passion without the repression that leads to destruction and imbalance requires understanding and integration of the gift of creative light that comes from the pure center (heart) of each human being. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transpersonal psychology is a school of psychologythat studies the transpersonal, the transcendent or spiritual aspects of the human experience. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology describes transpersonal psychology as "the study of humanity’s highest potential, and with the recognition, understanding, and realization of unitive, spiritual, and transcendent states of consciousness" (Lajoie and Shapiro, 1992:91). Issues considered in transpersonal psychology include spiritual self-development, peak experiences, mystical experiences, systemictrance and other metaphysical experiences of living.
Transpersonal psychologists see the school as a companion to other schools of psychology that include psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and humanistic psychology. Transpersonal psychology attempts to unify modern psychology theory with frameworks from different forms of mysticism. These vary greatly depending on the origin but include religious conversion, altered states of consciousness, trance and other spiritual practices. Although Carl Jung and others have explored aspects of the spiritual and transpersonal in their work, transpersonal psychology for the most part has been overlooked by psychologists who are focused on the personal and developmental aspects of the human psyche (Cowley & Derezotes, 1994; Miller, 1998).
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