"Peace in oneself, peace in the world." -Thich Nhat Hanh

"Peace in oneself, peace in the world." -Thich Nhat Hanh

Saturday, April 30, 2016

Twenty One Pilots

A dear friend introduced me to a band that is new to me.  Their name is Twenty One Pilots.  They sing a lot about their/our internal workings and I highly recommend them. This one's called Stressed Out.  Give it a listen: 




Here's another: Car Radio

Thank you so much, MJJ!

Friday, April 29, 2016

Quote

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."  -Aesop

Monday, April 25, 2016

Responsibility: The Concentric Circles Model

I think many, maybe most people think about responsibility from an individual event perspective.  By this I mean that if they say they'll feed the cat today, they have to feed the cat today.  If they do, they've behaved responsibly and if they don't, they have not.  I think of that as basic responsibility.  In my opinion, a more complete way to view responsibility is to view it as a system.  I see it as a series of concentric circles.  In that system, the individual is at the center.  The most important responsibility for any person alive is the responsibility they have to themselves.  They have a responsibility to their whole being:  their brain (thoughts), their body (sensations), and their soul (emotions).  If the individual's relationship with their whole being is basically in good, working order, then their responsibility to themselves is just basic maintenance of their internal systems.  This allows the person to turn outward and focus their attention on the external world.  After that inner circle, everyone's concentric circles will be defined differently.  My first responsibilities are to my wife and child.  That's pretty common.  Then it moves out from there.  Extended family, friends, organizations, communities, geographic areas, the Earth, etc. are all among the many possibilities that can be a part of the model, and in any order the person sees fit.

I think that is all pretty straight-forward.  What is less clear is people's understanding of the importance of that inner circle.  There's a strong taboo in our society against taking care of one's whole being.  A good number of people take care of one portion of their being (for example, their brain).  Some people take care of two parts (their brain and their body).  But almost no one takes care of their whole being (brain, body, soul).  And for good reason.  It's a ton of work!  But, in my opinion, it must be done.


Methods for taking care of the brain and body are pretty obvious.  This blog is all about how to take care of the soul, so that's not what we need to talk about.  What needs discussing is the model itself.  In my experience, when people are working in the outer rings of the model, but have not taken care of the inner-most ring (which is almost everyone), they are doing so for a reason.  That reason is that they don't want to deal with what they find there:  themselves!  "Arg!  NOOOO!  Not ME!!!"  That's silly, but true. People don't want to deal with their inner needs.  Sometimes that's because they don't realize the need.  Sometimes it's because it's taboo to deal with those things.  Sometimes, there's significant trauma inside and they are afraid to confront it.  I'm sure there are many more reasons.  But whatever the reason, by refusing to deal with their inner needs, they are forcing themselves to look outward at the world.  Many, probably most people think this is a good thing.  "We shouldn't spend all this time on ourselves.  It's self-centered."  I disagree.  I believe that taking care of our holistic health is a mandatory part of living.  If we refuse to do so, we are running away from our central responsibility.  So all those wonderful things we are doing for other people, doing the dishes for our spouse, taking a child to an event, helping a person in the community, are all things we are really doing as a way to avoid our central responsibility.

"Wait, what?  Doing things for other people is selfish?  That doesn't make sense."  But it does.  We aren't really doing those things for other people.  We are doing them to help us avoid our central responsibility.  So even though they are nice things to do, that make those people happy, we really did them for ourselves, not them.  Hence, selfish.

So if doing things for other people is selfish, how can we ever be anything other than selfish?  The answer to that is to get your relationship with your whole being into good, working order.  It's not about perfection.  I don't think that's even possible.  It's about a system that functions on a basic level.  Physically, if you're 10 pounds over weight, that's not ideal.  But it's only 10 pounds.  Your system is basically working.  But if you're 75 pounds over weight, your system is not working!  You need to fix your system.  Maybe start exercising more, maybe start making healthier food choices, you get the idea.

The same is true emotionally.  If you stay on a mostly even keel, you're not depressed or overly anxious, then your system is probably basically working.  But if you're depressed or suffering from some other mental illness, or even just feel constantly stressed, then your system is not really working.

When you commit to fulfilling your central responsibility, you will slowly learn how to get all your internal systems to a level of basic functioning.  At that point, it is time to turn out toward the world.  Then you can do things for others and have it really be about them, not about selfishly avoiding your own internal needs.  

If everyone in the world was acting from this place of basic internal functioning, we wouldn't even be able to recognize this place.  It would be so different.  And so much better.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Quote

"Goodbye," said the fox.  "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:  It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."   -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Sankofa

Adinkra are symbols used in West Africa to pass wisdom from one person to another. They are used in textiles and pottery, in architecture and on signs.  Years ago, before I had any real understanding about emotions, I came across one that really spoke to me.  It is called Sankofa and it is drawn in two different ways:


It means, "Return and pick it up".  It is referring to our history, both cultural and personal.  A movie was made about it, from the perspective of African slaves, here in the United States.  Wikipedia talks about it here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankofa_(film)  It's a fantastic film, but probably not for the casual viewer.  For me, Sankofa is a reminder that there is more to me than just what is immediately present.  That I need to continually return to my past and pick up the thread of my being to help me be whole.  I do this purposefully whenever I find myself struggling internally.  It helps me to remember that life has not always been rosy, and there are reasons why I am struggling.  This allows me to be compassionate to myself and things generally get better after that.

If we can all learn to return to our history, we can develop a more complete vision of ourselves.  The whole world, both individually and collectively, would be a better place if we did.

Monday, April 18, 2016

My emotions

We lost our cat today.  She was very old.  She got sick and I had to take her to the vet.  It was time for her to go.  I loved her very much and am sad right now.  Our family will miss her very much.  Good-bye Hermione.  I love you.

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Abandonment

The emotional abandonment of a child is something that happens every day.  Any time a child is put in a situation which they are not prepared to handle, if there is no external support present, that child is being abandoned.  That means there are big abandonments and small abandonments.  If a parent walks out on their family and never comes back, that's a big abandonment.  If a parent allows a child to become addicted to video games, that's a small abandonment.  Most parents are guilty of some form of abandonment at one time or another.  Especially in our modern culture, there are so many things that children need to be taught, it's almost impossible to recognize them all.  The job of parents is not to be perfect.  The job of parents is to be aware of how easy it is to abandon a child and make an effort to avoid doing so.

The long term impact of abandonment is severe.  If a child is raised in a loving, supportive environment, but the parents make a few minor errors, the child will learn to cope with that most of the time, because most children will be able to see that those were just mistakes. But if the environment is one of neglect, most children will struggle and will continue to struggle as adults, because repeated abandonment teaches the child that their abandonment is their own fault.  Those children become adults who spend their lives feeling "less than" others.  Some seek out love and acceptance everywhere they go, often to such an extent that they don't know how to just live their lives.  Others give up and live tiny, pathetic lives, filled with dangerous, self-destructive behaviors.  Either way, the damage is severe, and commonly permanent.  

To avoid all of this, love your children and teach them how to survive in the world.

Friday, April 15, 2016

Are you cold or do you wear your emotions on your sleeve?

Repression is an emotional tool.  An effective one, even.  If your boss says something rude to you, it is probably best to push the emotions that those words caused down until you can process them without  punching him or her in the head.  Punching doesn't usually result in positive outcomes.  

Many people use repression as their main emotional tool.  And that's a problem.  It leaves them filled with emotion for which they have no outlet.  And that leads to all sorts of other problems.

There are (at least!) two different ways to repress your emotions.  One is to allow yourself to feel the emotion before you repress it.  People who do this are said to wear their emotions on their sleeve, because other people can see the pain they are causing themselves by repressing.  It hurts.  It's obvious.  But usually these people don't know what else to do.  (I used to do this.  Now my emotions are commonly still obvious to people, but that's because I choose to let them see them, not because I can't stop myself.)  They have a taboo in their brain that prevents them from just expressing what they feel, when they feel it.  The result is pain.

Another way to repress your emotions is to push them down without ever allowing yourself to feel them.  People who do this are usually called cold, because they seem disconnected from their emotions.  People who do this are usually more effective people because they don't have pesky emotions screwing with their efficiency.  But these people usually also have a hard time learning to express their emotions.  I think it feels alien to some of them and probably weak to others.  Maybe both.  

In the end, the two forms of repression are just different sides of the same coin.  Both people believe they should not express their emotions, so they don't.  And for both people, the end result is the same:  pain.  And for both people the solution is the same: Express.  Express, express, express.  Feel it and express it.  

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Quote

"The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names."  -Confucius

If you are looking for emotional wisdom, a good place to start is by recognizing your emotions and calling them by name.  It may be harder than you think to say, "Oh, I am angry right now" or "this makes me sad".  The more you do it, the easier it becomes. Slowly, more and more awareness of your emotions will come to you.  Eventually, you'll be able to feel, name and express your emotions as soon as they occur.  That's emotional health.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Health and Happiness

When I was younger, I always wanted to be happy.  Everything was about finding happiness.  As I've gotten older, I've realized that this is a bad approach.  

Happiness is a natural outcome of health.  If you're healthy, all your options are open. You can really live your life, unencumbered.  An open, unencumbered life will naturally lead to happiness because you can do anything you want.

But health is not a natural outcome of happiness.  Searching for happiness may lead you to over-eating, drugs, and dangerous behaviors of all sorts.  None of that is healthy.  Even if you achieve happiness by following that path, you will eventually destroy your health. And then you'll have neither happiness, nor health.

If you want to be happy, I urge you to pursue health.  It will take you where you want to go.

Friday, April 8, 2016

Fault vs. Responsibility

An important distinction to me is the difference between fault and responsibility.  Fault is about the cause of a problem and responsibility is about the solution to a problem.  What makes this important from an emotional perspective is when we look inside ourselves and see a mess, it is helpful to know how it got there and how it's going to get fixed. Commonly, that means our internal messes are our parent's fault, but our responsibility. They caused the mess, usually with their less than ideal parenting.  But it's our responsibility, as adults, to clean up the mess.  So, when I hear someone complaining about how their parents screwed them up, I'm always interested to hear if they recognize that they have to be the one to take responsibility and fix themselves.  And, on the other hand, I'm also always interested to hear if people who talk about responsibility are able to recognize the root of the problem.  It's very important to see both and recognize that they are different.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

How do you switch from repressing to expressing?

If you want to start trying to express your emotions instead of repressing them, I can give some tips.  First, you'll want to go somewhere private, where you won't be disturbed. Next, sit or lay down and close your eyes.  Third, try to feel the place where your emotions reside.  I can usually feel them in the middle of my torso, an inch or two below my sternum.  But I don't think everyone will feel them in the same place.  And you may have to try this multiple times to even be able to feel where they are.  When you can reliably locate where the emotions are, you need to "go there".  By that, I mean center your attention on the spot where the emotions are.  Once you can do that, you'll probably find that nothing really happens.  But if you do it for a while, or if you stop and come back another day, you'll eventually find that you feel something going on there.  What you're feeling is your emotions.  More specifically, your backed-up emotions that would like to come out.  So, while focusing your attention on your emotions, if you can consciously accept these emotions, they will release their energy and you will express.  This takes practice.  You'll probably say, "this is stupid" or "I can't do this" about a hundred times when you first start.  But you can.  Anyone can.  It just takes practice.  So, to accept your emotions, you need to realize that it's okay to have emotions.  That there's nothing wrong with you for having emotions.  That all humans have emotions.  That expressing these emotions makes you strong, because you are doing something that is hard to do.  If you can recognize these truths, you'll slowly accept your emotions and then they will come out.  Once they do, your job is to practice frequently enough that you learn how to express any time you want to.  I can now express my emotions any time, any place.  I cried a little the very second I typed that last sentence.  Sounds a little silly, huh?  But guess what?  The more you work with your emotions, the less they own you.  So I choose to work with them as much as I can.  And I hope you will too.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Uplift


To piggyback on yesterday's post, I want to talk about what would happen if "majority" communities took some responsibility for their own health and happiness.  

Because of heavy race and class segregation in the United States, we have communities of poor, disadvantaged people living next to communities of affluent people all over the country.  What would happen if, instead of affluent people complaining about the problems that poor people experience and how it affects them (the rich), what if they did something about it?  What if a rich community had a community wide meeting and said, "we want to work together with our neighbor community that is struggling.  So what we want everyone to do is, we want you all to go to that community and get to know people.  Go into businesses, schools, places of worship, even stop on the street and introduce yourself. Make it clear to them that we care about who they are and what they're up against.  Heck! Spend some money while you're there.  Every little bit helps."  With sustained effort, these two communities would be changed dramatically for ever.

We all know what would really happen though, don't we?  Eventually, something negative would happen to a rich person and the whole experiment would end.  Why?  Why wouldn't the affluent know going in to the experience that sometimes rough stuff happens in poor communities and that's just part of what has to be dealt with to lift the community up? They would know it, but they'd ignore it because they're afraid and they don't know how to deal with the fear.  

Living courageously is the responsibility of every human being.  And that's where this whole scenario comes back to emotions.  Our real problem is that our lives are filled with fear and we respond by avoiding those fearful situations or repressing the fear they cause.  But we don't respond by resolving the fear.  If we resolved the fear, situations like this would be nothing to us.  

So, if you really care about what's going on in the world, start figuring out how to sit with your emotions and not run away.  If you can accept your emotions, you'll go a long way toward mastering them, and in so doing, helping the world as well.

Peace in oneself, peace in the world.


Saturday, April 2, 2016

Race Relations

"If you grow up in the South Bronx today or in south-central Los Angeles or Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, you quickly come to understand that you have been set apart and that there's no will in this society to bring you back into the mainstream.  The kids have eyes and they can see, and they have ears and they can hear.  Kids notice that no politicians talk about this.  Nobody says we're going to make them less separate and more equal.  Nobody says that."  -Jonathan Kozol
We're seeing a lot of violence in the United States right now.  And if you listen, you'll hear many different reasons for that.  But most of those reasons are over-thought.  What I believe is the real reason is captured by the quote above by Jonathan Kozol.  Because of fear, middle and upper class White people exclude everyone else from "White" culture. This leaves everyone else feeling excluded and angry.  A lot of this anger erupts into violence and that is what we are seeing.  If we want the violence to stop, we have to find ways to create an inclusive society.

The situation African Americans are in is a good place to start.  White people have made and continue to make it clear to African Americans that they aren't wanted.  So what do many African Americans do?  They go live together in run-down, dangerous urban centers in part because it's the only place they feel welcome.  I don't blame them.  But that separation just causes more ignorance in both Black and White people and that ignorance perpetuates the problem.  

What can we do?  In many ways, our nation is becoming more inclusive.  Acceptance is being given to some minority groups that wasn't given in the past.  The LGBTQ community is rapidly gaining acceptance.  In many parts of the country misogyny is no longer accepted.  These are good things.  But the dialog about race in our country needs to shift from arguments about what's wrong to statements of solidarity.  All of us need to stop criticizing other people and start looking at what we can do to make this a country that welcomes everyone.  If nothing else, go smile at someone from a different group.  Speak to them.  We can all do our part. 

If we put our energy into working together, for the benefit of all of us, we can turn this country around.