Consciousness
Tell me a story! Part 2 - Love stories
28/07/08 15:01 Filed in: Psychology of Love | Healing stories
Moving away from grand theory and back to psychology, I have been interested in the power of stories for a long time.
Most recently, I have been talking to other storywriters and to people who have spent much time in writing journals about painful or difficult experiences on-line as blogs to share with others. I have also talked to people who kept journals, or simply used writing as a means to express difficulties or come to terms with trauma.
Before that I had been considering the work of Robert Sternberg, who wrote the book, “Love is a story”.
Sternberg’s work interested me particularly as it was a dramatic departure from normal psychology methods. Traditional psychologists have tended to frame their questions, and establish empirical research that they tested for statistical validity, and used subsequently to formulate the premises of their arguments.
There are all sorts of problems with empirical research, a lot of which have to do with the propensity of the respondents to answer questions in terms of what they feel the right answers to be in accordance with social, cultural, religious, family and other personal norms, pressures and expectations.
I believe that Sternberg used an empirical approach, but it was not his starting point.
We are not born with knowledge of what love is, what it means, how to love and how to sustain love successfully.
We learn about it. At a very early age, we learn about it unconsciously from our experience of our parents, people with whom we come into contact, physical and tactile experience, and basic physical and social interaction with others. A little later we start to absorb other images from books, films, television, kindergarten, school and every other source of emotional and social experience.
Sternberg argues, and I have some affinity with his views, that, based on these early experiences, we assemble our views about love as forms of narrative systems, as stories, which we enact in our later lives. Thus compatibility becomes a matter of finding someone with a story that might live comfortably alongside our own.
In Sternberg’s work, for example, we have “garden” stories, where the emphasis is on planting, nurturing and growing. That’s a tender narrative, although it may be a little low on excitement for some.
We have a travel story where life is a journey, a never-ending movement of discovery. The destination is less important since the person gets their emotional sustenance from the journey itself. In terms of the twenty-five or so stories, that Sternberg cites, I find this one, possibly, one of the more attractive (for me).
There’s the war story where partners remain permanently in conflict, but nevertheless, to the astonishment of observers, stay in the relationship. Perhaps the war relationship is portrayed well in the play, “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Where I might differ from Sternberg is that he argues the case that only experts like himself might interpret the stories that people have within them of which they are largely unconscious.
I’m not sure whether I believe that these stories are so unconscious, nor if they need the intercession of an expert to understand them.
I had another idea with which I experimented that yielded some interesting results. I wrote about it earlier here:
“It might be an interesting experiment for us all to go off and write our own versions of short love stories that attract or appeal to us in some very deep way. I like this idea. We could all invent our own love fables. We would need to take care to engage with our emotions and write the story we really want, not the story that conforms to all our cultural myths or social norms and ideals, or to the expectations of our partner, but something that would be truly meaningful to us in love.
It would be important for us to connect to the story with our feelings without any inventive embellishments or affectations. Perhaps we might try to write a short love story with a hopeful ending, a story of the positive possibilities of where love might take us.
But we should write a story, a piece of fiction. It might be set in modern or other times, but it would be important to express succinctly the feelings of the protagonists as they move through this story. No tricks only a story; one that takes no more than 20 or 30 minutes to narrate.
Perhaps when we have made our stories. We might sit down somewhere peaceful and calm with a glass of wine and share these stories with our loved ones. We may be amazed about what they might tell us both about each other!”
I did eventually get a few people to join in on that one. I also got a lot of resistance from people who said, “I can’t write stories”.
On the question of “can’t write”, I tried to assure people that it didn’t matter about literacy, grammar, and whether or not they had written before. I asked them to try and a couple more did.
With a select couple, I also asked them to write, a brief account of a past relationship that was most memorable to them in some way either through happiness or hurt.
What I noticed and observed:
1. I knew a couple in big difficulties. They didn’t communicate well. They both wrote love stories, ones that had the outcomes they were seeking, about love as they wanted to experience it. The process of writing a story liberated their communication. They were able to talk about what they liked, what they wanted, and what they hoped for. It was all there in the stories. I got greedy! I suggested that they then wrote another fictional story together. I didn’t care how, but one where they joined their plots together. The result almost brought tears to my eyes.
This was a very special experiment as what this pair had managed to do was, not only understand the stories they carried within them, but they had expressed how they would like to go on writing…living their lives together.
By doing something this simple, I had done more than I had ever managed to do in my brief time in marriage or relationship counselling!
2. People who are able to construct a narrative story over their life experiences seem to get more benefit than those who were only able to write past accounts in literal terms.
3. Almost everyone who wrote stories seemed to discover new aspects of, or re-experience, their emotional selves in some profound way. Their ability to communicate their feelings and understand what they were seeking in love changed in a positive way. Most felt that they were able to go on and “write their next chapter”.
4. The exercise of writing past accounts in literal terms yielded some, but less benefit in this context. (I have more to say about this.)
More soon….
Most recently, I have been talking to other storywriters and to people who have spent much time in writing journals about painful or difficult experiences on-line as blogs to share with others. I have also talked to people who kept journals, or simply used writing as a means to express difficulties or come to terms with trauma.
Before that I had been considering the work of Robert Sternberg, who wrote the book, “Love is a story”.
Sternberg’s work interested me particularly as it was a dramatic departure from normal psychology methods. Traditional psychologists have tended to frame their questions, and establish empirical research that they tested for statistical validity, and used subsequently to formulate the premises of their arguments.
There are all sorts of problems with empirical research, a lot of which have to do with the propensity of the respondents to answer questions in terms of what they feel the right answers to be in accordance with social, cultural, religious, family and other personal norms, pressures and expectations.
I believe that Sternberg used an empirical approach, but it was not his starting point.
We are not born with knowledge of what love is, what it means, how to love and how to sustain love successfully.
We learn about it. At a very early age, we learn about it unconsciously from our experience of our parents, people with whom we come into contact, physical and tactile experience, and basic physical and social interaction with others. A little later we start to absorb other images from books, films, television, kindergarten, school and every other source of emotional and social experience.
Sternberg argues, and I have some affinity with his views, that, based on these early experiences, we assemble our views about love as forms of narrative systems, as stories, which we enact in our later lives. Thus compatibility becomes a matter of finding someone with a story that might live comfortably alongside our own.
In Sternberg’s work, for example, we have “garden” stories, where the emphasis is on planting, nurturing and growing. That’s a tender narrative, although it may be a little low on excitement for some.
We have a travel story where life is a journey, a never-ending movement of discovery. The destination is less important since the person gets their emotional sustenance from the journey itself. In terms of the twenty-five or so stories, that Sternberg cites, I find this one, possibly, one of the more attractive (for me).
There’s the war story where partners remain permanently in conflict, but nevertheless, to the astonishment of observers, stay in the relationship. Perhaps the war relationship is portrayed well in the play, “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Where I might differ from Sternberg is that he argues the case that only experts like himself might interpret the stories that people have within them of which they are largely unconscious.
I’m not sure whether I believe that these stories are so unconscious, nor if they need the intercession of an expert to understand them.
I had another idea with which I experimented that yielded some interesting results. I wrote about it earlier here:
“It might be an interesting experiment for us all to go off and write our own versions of short love stories that attract or appeal to us in some very deep way. I like this idea. We could all invent our own love fables. We would need to take care to engage with our emotions and write the story we really want, not the story that conforms to all our cultural myths or social norms and ideals, or to the expectations of our partner, but something that would be truly meaningful to us in love.
It would be important for us to connect to the story with our feelings without any inventive embellishments or affectations. Perhaps we might try to write a short love story with a hopeful ending, a story of the positive possibilities of where love might take us.
But we should write a story, a piece of fiction. It might be set in modern or other times, but it would be important to express succinctly the feelings of the protagonists as they move through this story. No tricks only a story; one that takes no more than 20 or 30 minutes to narrate.
Perhaps when we have made our stories. We might sit down somewhere peaceful and calm with a glass of wine and share these stories with our loved ones. We may be amazed about what they might tell us both about each other!”
I did eventually get a few people to join in on that one. I also got a lot of resistance from people who said, “I can’t write stories”.
On the question of “can’t write”, I tried to assure people that it didn’t matter about literacy, grammar, and whether or not they had written before. I asked them to try and a couple more did.
With a select couple, I also asked them to write, a brief account of a past relationship that was most memorable to them in some way either through happiness or hurt.
What I noticed and observed:
1. I knew a couple in big difficulties. They didn’t communicate well. They both wrote love stories, ones that had the outcomes they were seeking, about love as they wanted to experience it. The process of writing a story liberated their communication. They were able to talk about what they liked, what they wanted, and what they hoped for. It was all there in the stories. I got greedy! I suggested that they then wrote another fictional story together. I didn’t care how, but one where they joined their plots together. The result almost brought tears to my eyes.
This was a very special experiment as what this pair had managed to do was, not only understand the stories they carried within them, but they had expressed how they would like to go on writing…living their lives together.
By doing something this simple, I had done more than I had ever managed to do in my brief time in marriage or relationship counselling!
2. People who are able to construct a narrative story over their life experiences seem to get more benefit than those who were only able to write past accounts in literal terms.
3. Almost everyone who wrote stories seemed to discover new aspects of, or re-experience, their emotional selves in some profound way. Their ability to communicate their feelings and understand what they were seeking in love changed in a positive way. Most felt that they were able to go on and “write their next chapter”.
4. The exercise of writing past accounts in literal terms yielded some, but less benefit in this context. (I have more to say about this.)
More soon….
|
Tell me a story! - Part 1
28/07/08 00:36 Filed in: Beyond Psychology | Healing stories
I’ve had a lifelong fascination with stories for as long as I can remember. As soon as I was old enough to read books, I devoured them. I had my first library ticket when I was about six years old.
But this is not about the confessions of a bibliophile, even though I am one. I had this metaphor in my mind tonight of how I would like to take all of my writing here on psychology and put it in a food mixer in the hope that the blending process would turn it into some coherent and cogent whole. Needless to say, I teased myself with thoughts of making a psychology pudding! ‘How many calories would that be?’ I wondered. ‘Too many,' I expect.
For those of you who have not caught the plot so far, I have rejected the duality of objectivity and subjectivity in human understanding in favour of a model of intra-personal and inter-personal (social) constructs that I have described as “consciousness”. This is both an individual and collective consciousness that upholds all of our beliefs in the world including those about science, that change through time in relation to our historical circumstances. I cannot posit any causal or relational ideas about the development of mankind. I also believe that doing so leads one to a form of philosophical circularity where one attempts to make sense of the world through the dominant ideas of the time that tend to be self-proving. If one looks through a green glass, one undoubtedly will see green. Similarly, if one examines social or historical developments through a specific branch of science, it will return a result that conforms to and validates that particular scientific approach within the limits of its understanding.
I have a real difficulty with the subject of history. I know people who love history. They can construe the entirety of our human development in terms of “great” men and women. I always have the same nagging question. I think, “Well, that’s interesting about that one individual, I suppose. But what were the millions of other people doing and thinking about at the time?” Our view of history in terms of the acts of “great” people may also be about an ideology that “great” people make history. As such, it is what we have chosen to believe.
It’s a story. It’s no better nor worse than a certain sort of journalism.
There are all sorts of stories: There are science stories that are forever changing, history stories told from the perspective of “great” individuals; there are political, moral, national, economic, war and religious stories too. But they are all stories, bodies of beliefs generally cast in terms of the consciousness of the time.
Understanding the nature of stories, that may underpin our consciousness in the world, has a personal dimension too.
We all have our personal stories, many of us may live them – sometimes over and over as repeated patterns of behaviour, some of us may believe them to be inevitable, others may regard them as pathology or science.
I believe them to be of our making. Also I feel that the only way to move beyond our current struggles in the world is to step back and examine the beliefs that underpin them, to listen to our story and decide if it’s the one we want.
At a personal level, I believe our stories are accessible to our understanding and capable of change too. Whatever others may tell us, we are capable of self-understanding and change.
But this is not about the confessions of a bibliophile, even though I am one. I had this metaphor in my mind tonight of how I would like to take all of my writing here on psychology and put it in a food mixer in the hope that the blending process would turn it into some coherent and cogent whole. Needless to say, I teased myself with thoughts of making a psychology pudding! ‘How many calories would that be?’ I wondered. ‘Too many,' I expect.
For those of you who have not caught the plot so far, I have rejected the duality of objectivity and subjectivity in human understanding in favour of a model of intra-personal and inter-personal (social) constructs that I have described as “consciousness”. This is both an individual and collective consciousness that upholds all of our beliefs in the world including those about science, that change through time in relation to our historical circumstances. I cannot posit any causal or relational ideas about the development of mankind. I also believe that doing so leads one to a form of philosophical circularity where one attempts to make sense of the world through the dominant ideas of the time that tend to be self-proving. If one looks through a green glass, one undoubtedly will see green. Similarly, if one examines social or historical developments through a specific branch of science, it will return a result that conforms to and validates that particular scientific approach within the limits of its understanding.
I have a real difficulty with the subject of history. I know people who love history. They can construe the entirety of our human development in terms of “great” men and women. I always have the same nagging question. I think, “Well, that’s interesting about that one individual, I suppose. But what were the millions of other people doing and thinking about at the time?” Our view of history in terms of the acts of “great” people may also be about an ideology that “great” people make history. As such, it is what we have chosen to believe.
It’s a story. It’s no better nor worse than a certain sort of journalism.
There are all sorts of stories: There are science stories that are forever changing, history stories told from the perspective of “great” individuals; there are political, moral, national, economic, war and religious stories too. But they are all stories, bodies of beliefs generally cast in terms of the consciousness of the time.
Understanding the nature of stories, that may underpin our consciousness in the world, has a personal dimension too.
We all have our personal stories, many of us may live them – sometimes over and over as repeated patterns of behaviour, some of us may believe them to be inevitable, others may regard them as pathology or science.
I believe them to be of our making. Also I feel that the only way to move beyond our current struggles in the world is to step back and examine the beliefs that underpin them, to listen to our story and decide if it’s the one we want.
At a personal level, I believe our stories are accessible to our understanding and capable of change too. Whatever others may tell us, we are capable of self-understanding and change.
New Horizons - Beyond Psychology
I’ve been delving into my psyche a little recently. It’s been a time of major adjustment for me of late. I’ve had the odd moments of uncertainty and doubt, but they have never persisted for that long. More often than not, those moments have been triggered by my past rather than my present. That happens too.
I wrote about synchronicity here a while ago. I still question synchronicity from time to time. I’m not sure I should since even in this time of change for me, wonderfully synchronous things happen all the time. The right person has that knack of turning up when I need them! Recently I’ve had the gift of another therapist talking to me from way across the pond. We’ve been chatting while I’ve been struggling through my bleaker moments. She has helped me no end in seeing that I struggle with those things that often she struggles with too, that my dilemmas not only relate to me, but that she has faced those same difficulties as well.
Last week we were talking about how we could describe a sense of our underlying connectedness, not only she and I, but all of us. I was grappling with that dimension of our lives in which synchronicity occurs.
I have been struggling with feelings and ideas about a new schematic for understanding how we exist in the world. Psychology spans only one dimension of our lives. It, along with all other single subject disciplines, fail to provide me with a framework through which I can make sense of our existence.
Suddenly I thought, “You’re not writing psychology at all, you’re writing philosophy with psychological overtones!” I love the idea of writing philosophy in a way, although I don’t like all philosophers. But hang on! I might be interested in a new humanistic active living philosophy, one that embraced the psyche too, of living, feeling and doing as well as simply thinking wise thoughts. The word philosophy is derived from the Greek “philo sophos” meaning a love of wisdom. I could buy into that, it might mean a whole body of beliefs that informed the way we are and acted in the world. Yes, I’ll take several large portions of that, please!
Somewhere deep down, I have a natural aversion to philosophy, all that old sterile hogwash about epistemology and ontology, of Popper versus Marx, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Kant. Who cares? But it does more readily lend itself to the overall consideration of the human condition.
So I started to ponder how one might set about approaching how we understand our lives.
I wrote to my friend, “I believe we might exist in three or four dimensions: Intellect or mind, intuition and emotions, a consciousness which is the body of "beliefs" (of which rational science is part) that upholds our way of living in the world that is infinitely changeable, and our universal interaction with nature of which our physical being is part. If I was a quantum physicist I might express all of these phenomena as variables that we might variously create, change or experience as different realities. If I were a quantum physicist and a metaphysicist, I would see all of these aspects of our being as being unified in some structural and spiritual way. I probably believe that too, but, as yet, I cannot explain it.
All that intuition is, is our own personal sense of knowing. I believe that we know or can know far more than we are frequently aware. Also I believe that most of us are more unconscious than conscious, that is to say, we are more influenced by our unconscious minds in seeing our personal reality as something that exists outside ourselves. There are all manner of things that emerge from the unconscious that I simply cannot explain...like those we are attracted to…”
She wrote back to me, “I also believe that there is another realm of awareness...that which I refer to (as many do) as universal consciousness. Is this what you mean by nature and environment? I am asking, because sometimes we connect in same thought-patterns with others that may live across the world...and, it can happen quite unexpectedly, and with very little prelude.”
She and me might be the perfect examples of what she is speaking about!
The “universal consciousness” idea worries me too.
I replied, “I wondered about the notion of our universal connectedness and where it fitted in or even what it was.
I'm not even sure I believe in it outside our physical being... I am a little concerned about creating a new metaphysical reality that may become to be regarded as god. But I do think there may be more...perhaps we need to fully comprehend our own consciousness first.
I'm reluctant to fall into the realms that may be construed as religious or other worldly and I'm very nervous of this whole phenomenon which has been the springboard everywhere for religions, cults and that which cannot be comprehended. Love to know your feelings here.
That was a big "Don’t know”. “
We share our concerns. Her reply was “I don't know either. There is something I cannot explain, but I have no idea. I do understand the concern you state about religion. It concerns me as well.”
I’m stuck at this juncture. I’ll have to ponder more on this point. I keep dipping in and out of the physical sciences to try and formulate an understanding of what this phenomenon might be. But I don’t want to go there, since inevitably that will take me towards the dogma of rational science, systems theory and mathematics. It’s not that I am opposed to rational science, but that it too is simply one part of our predominantly western collective consciousness. It too is a manufactured body of knowledge that changes in accordance with the beliefs within scientific communities, and our experience of being in the world.
Rather than imbue nature with some metaphysical quality. Perhaps I shall locate this phenomenon within consciousness, as a dimension of consciousness we have yet to understand.
I’ll finish with a few words about consciousness that I wrote in my farrago blog (Back to the Future - Part 2, Tag - "Future") last year, when I decided to revisit this subject:
“It is shifts in consciousness, not technology, consumption, money markets or any aspect of our physical environment or social, political and economic systems that causes change. Back in 1962, when Kuhn wrote about "paradigm shifts", he talked about scientific revolutions occurring when a body of beliefs, what we are calling consciousness, could no longer uphold the reality they created.
There are conflicting realities in science too that co-exist, and one may overturn, or embrace one or the other, or synthesise them in a new form of consciousness.
It is consciousness that governs our perceptions of the world that in turn creates our realities. How and what we perceive is our reality, to that extent a philosopher might say that truth is relative. I am not that sure that discussions of absolute or relative truth are that helpful in a world that is governed by consciousness and our perceptions of that world.”
Special acknowledgement
A million thanks to my good friend, Tamera Daun, for her enormous help and wisdom in considering what I have written about here, and for her permission to convey parts of our conversations in this post.
Footnote
Last night, when I sat down to write this I had intended to write a piece about self-esteem! I have been thinking about that too of late. This piece flowed out and was almost written by an accident I can’t explain.
I wrote about synchronicity here a while ago. I still question synchronicity from time to time. I’m not sure I should since even in this time of change for me, wonderfully synchronous things happen all the time. The right person has that knack of turning up when I need them! Recently I’ve had the gift of another therapist talking to me from way across the pond. We’ve been chatting while I’ve been struggling through my bleaker moments. She has helped me no end in seeing that I struggle with those things that often she struggles with too, that my dilemmas not only relate to me, but that she has faced those same difficulties as well.
Last week we were talking about how we could describe a sense of our underlying connectedness, not only she and I, but all of us. I was grappling with that dimension of our lives in which synchronicity occurs.
I have been struggling with feelings and ideas about a new schematic for understanding how we exist in the world. Psychology spans only one dimension of our lives. It, along with all other single subject disciplines, fail to provide me with a framework through which I can make sense of our existence.
Suddenly I thought, “You’re not writing psychology at all, you’re writing philosophy with psychological overtones!” I love the idea of writing philosophy in a way, although I don’t like all philosophers. But hang on! I might be interested in a new humanistic active living philosophy, one that embraced the psyche too, of living, feeling and doing as well as simply thinking wise thoughts. The word philosophy is derived from the Greek “philo sophos” meaning a love of wisdom. I could buy into that, it might mean a whole body of beliefs that informed the way we are and acted in the world. Yes, I’ll take several large portions of that, please!
Somewhere deep down, I have a natural aversion to philosophy, all that old sterile hogwash about epistemology and ontology, of Popper versus Marx, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Kant. Who cares? But it does more readily lend itself to the overall consideration of the human condition.
So I started to ponder how one might set about approaching how we understand our lives.
I wrote to my friend, “I believe we might exist in three or four dimensions: Intellect or mind, intuition and emotions, a consciousness which is the body of "beliefs" (of which rational science is part) that upholds our way of living in the world that is infinitely changeable, and our universal interaction with nature of which our physical being is part. If I was a quantum physicist I might express all of these phenomena as variables that we might variously create, change or experience as different realities. If I were a quantum physicist and a metaphysicist, I would see all of these aspects of our being as being unified in some structural and spiritual way. I probably believe that too, but, as yet, I cannot explain it.
All that intuition is, is our own personal sense of knowing. I believe that we know or can know far more than we are frequently aware. Also I believe that most of us are more unconscious than conscious, that is to say, we are more influenced by our unconscious minds in seeing our personal reality as something that exists outside ourselves. There are all manner of things that emerge from the unconscious that I simply cannot explain...like those we are attracted to…”
She wrote back to me, “I also believe that there is another realm of awareness...that which I refer to (as many do) as universal consciousness. Is this what you mean by nature and environment? I am asking, because sometimes we connect in same thought-patterns with others that may live across the world...and, it can happen quite unexpectedly, and with very little prelude.”
She and me might be the perfect examples of what she is speaking about!
The “universal consciousness” idea worries me too.
I replied, “I wondered about the notion of our universal connectedness and where it fitted in or even what it was.
I'm not even sure I believe in it outside our physical being... I am a little concerned about creating a new metaphysical reality that may become to be regarded as god. But I do think there may be more...perhaps we need to fully comprehend our own consciousness first.
I'm reluctant to fall into the realms that may be construed as religious or other worldly and I'm very nervous of this whole phenomenon which has been the springboard everywhere for religions, cults and that which cannot be comprehended. Love to know your feelings here.
That was a big "Don’t know”. “
We share our concerns. Her reply was “I don't know either. There is something I cannot explain, but I have no idea. I do understand the concern you state about religion. It concerns me as well.”
I’m stuck at this juncture. I’ll have to ponder more on this point. I keep dipping in and out of the physical sciences to try and formulate an understanding of what this phenomenon might be. But I don’t want to go there, since inevitably that will take me towards the dogma of rational science, systems theory and mathematics. It’s not that I am opposed to rational science, but that it too is simply one part of our predominantly western collective consciousness. It too is a manufactured body of knowledge that changes in accordance with the beliefs within scientific communities, and our experience of being in the world.
Rather than imbue nature with some metaphysical quality. Perhaps I shall locate this phenomenon within consciousness, as a dimension of consciousness we have yet to understand.
I’ll finish with a few words about consciousness that I wrote in my farrago blog (Back to the Future - Part 2, Tag - "Future") last year, when I decided to revisit this subject:
“It is shifts in consciousness, not technology, consumption, money markets or any aspect of our physical environment or social, political and economic systems that causes change. Back in 1962, when Kuhn wrote about "paradigm shifts", he talked about scientific revolutions occurring when a body of beliefs, what we are calling consciousness, could no longer uphold the reality they created.
There are conflicting realities in science too that co-exist, and one may overturn, or embrace one or the other, or synthesise them in a new form of consciousness.
It is consciousness that governs our perceptions of the world that in turn creates our realities. How and what we perceive is our reality, to that extent a philosopher might say that truth is relative. I am not that sure that discussions of absolute or relative truth are that helpful in a world that is governed by consciousness and our perceptions of that world.”
Special acknowledgement
A million thanks to my good friend, Tamera Daun, for her enormous help and wisdom in considering what I have written about here, and for her permission to convey parts of our conversations in this post.
Footnote
Last night, when I sat down to write this I had intended to write a piece about self-esteem! I have been thinking about that too of late. This piece flowed out and was almost written by an accident I can’t explain.
The Emperor's new clothes - On personal development and change
30/05/08 12:26 Filed in: Psychology and the social world
This post should be credited at its outset. It was inspired by the writing of another, an exceptional, talented and compassionate holistic counsellor, therapist and coach, called Tamera. You can find her blog here
A recent post of hers caused me to reflect on exactly how we exist in this world and about what holds us back in personal development, from realising our life’s potential and desires.
Living in a world dominated by rational science with its tendency to analyse and categorise our being means that we often compartmentalise ourselves into various states of thinking, feeling and being. We have notions of intellect and thought (rational powers of cognition, perception and differentiation), emotions, intuition and other personal traits like will comprised within our personal make-up yet we appear to express them separately. I know I’ve been tussling with this a lot. I have written about it before both here and in my “farrago”. I adopted the term “consciousness”, both individual and collective (social) to try and relate to our state of being in some sort of wholeness embracing all aspects of our existence.
Previously I wrote: “Notions of will, intellect and emotions working separately are unattractive (to me) since they suggest that areas of one's being might be compartmentalised and operate separately. I am certain that this is not helpful: It might be like, "I work with my intellect", "I love my partner with my feelings" and "my acts of assertion, achievement or success are achieved by my will". How saddening this is, to break up one's self in a way that allows one to express only a part of oneself in given contexts. This compartmentalisation is perhaps the product of post-industrial man, a new machine culture, where work, loving and social being, and success operate in separate personal domains. It is for this reason that I prefer the notion of consciousness where all of our faculties might operate together.”
I believe that what makes for an experience of wholeness in our life is a sense of enlightened consciousness – of being conscious of consciousness in a way. It’s an act of profound understanding, an awareness of our being in a world that exists both within and outside ourselves. But it is also a sense that we make our world and take responsibility for it. I believe it is this special understanding that facilitates progress, development, discovery, invention and change. Consciousness brings with it an awareness that our limitations are made by ourselves, either individually or collectively. Knowing and understanding the nature and source of our limitations can bring about the most wonderful possibilities of positive personal and social development, of change in our personal and social worlds.
Perhaps that is a little abstract so I’ll give a couple of examples that come to mind. I write endlessly about the nature of love. We experience love as an emotion within ourselves. What love means and what it stands for is influenced by a whole host of factors beyond ourselves. How we love is an integral part of our belief systems, of our consciousness, and of our culture that forms part of consciousness. Our beliefs about love are upheld by our families, our friends, the media, art and literature, politicians, churches and corporations, as well as our experience. Being conscious means that we have the gift of understanding, our own sense of knowing what love means and where our feelings, thoughts and beliefs about it come from. Being conscious also brings with it a sense of knowing that we may take responsibility and that we can change our lives and how we love. But it’s easy for me to say and much harder to do!
I have a certain understanding, a personal impression and sense of the wholeness that growing consciousness brings with it. What produces that sense of wholeness and often charisma in others, especially in those who become our leaders, is a sense of their own “personal knowing”: Of their consciousness of their own being in the world, and their sense of assurance that comes from taking responsibility not only for themselves in the world, but for their entire world. That’s a big one!
Perhaps the key barriers to consciousness (Others might say this differently: Some might say success or personal fulfilment. They are equally valid as they all go hand-in-hand) are about fear, self-esteem and self-confidence. Being conscious is not always a comfortable place. It can be scary too. Children in their innocence will often exhibit a greater degree of consciousness and fearlessness than us “conditioned” adults. It was a child, after all, that spotted that the “emperor’s new clothes” were nothing more than his “birthday suit”.
Being “unafraid” to express our self-belief is a wonderful release. I believe that the greatest antagonist to love is fear. Hate is not the opposite to love. It is fear. More than anything, I have come to believe that it is fear in whatever form that holds us back in our lives. Some fears are wholly sensible. They guide us in avoiding danger or life-threatening perils. That is the right place for fear. But so many of our fears are not so healthy. They are what hold us back in life, from the realisation of who we are and who we might be. Self-esteem might carry us forward where fear holds us back.
I know I’ve been guilty frequently of being held back by fear or negative self-beliefs too; more frequently than I would readily care to admit.
A little under thirty years ago I read the book “A road less travelled” by American psychotherapist, Morgan Scott Peck. I was riveted. It was sheer inspiration. I have read hundreds of psychology books since but this work still stands out. It’s about the journey of personal fulfilment. At the end of the book, Scott Peck talks about achieving a state of “grace”. (Can’t you just tell what will happen next? It did.) I’d call it something else. But he attributes the phenomena associated with “grace” as that which:
1. nurtures human life (and spiritual growth)
2. are incompletely understood by scientific thinking
3. are commonplace among humanity
4. originate outside conscious human will (the individual)
I believe he was very nearly “right on the button” but instead of developing a notion of consciousness in all its aspects of being in the world, he, in my opinion, goes completely off the rails and gets “God”. So that which he can no longer understand in terms of the world as it exists within the psyche and outside the individual, he attributes to a divine power. In a subsequent work he goes on to judge what is good and what is evil according to his newly found religious beliefs. For me at that point, he lost the plot. What a great pity. He had so much to say.
My point here is that psychology as a mode of personal exploration fails us. The answers are not all within ourselves but in our interaction with the world we make and our beliefs about that world. Only through an understanding of all the dimensions of ourselves within our world can we seek to understand it.
I believe that the biggest barrier to realising that understanding is fear.
Footnote:
Some people in the past have accused me of being naïve and idealistic. I know what they mean but I might express it differently. They claim that my work fails to acknowledge the realities of economics, economic survival and power in our lives. For me, economics and power are important dimensions of consciousness. They exist and are a fact of life. I am not sure that their consideration belongs here.
Much of our reality is informed by economics and power. It is the dominant paradigm (Dare I use that word?!) of our western world. I am sure, however, that its culture does not always serve us well. By necessity, we live with it and it would be “naïve” to believe otherwise. But often I question how well it serves us. I do not believe that focussing one’s life on financial, economic and power outcomes is likely to lead to any form of enduring personal fulfilment. Infinite economic expansion is impossible. Money is a medium of exchange and not an end in itself. We all need it. As the western world slides inexorably towards recession, perhaps a change in economic consciousness might show us the way out. For sure, some change is inevitable, although I am apprehensive about what it might be. So many periods of economic turmoil have found temporary relief in war and conflict.
So, to my critics, I know all about economics and power. We all see its distorted influences in our lives daily. But we accept it as a given fact of life. Only through developing a wider understanding of the world in we wish to dwell in as well as the world that exists, will it change. There is nothing inevitable or god-given in anything made by humankind. We can change. But we can only change by understanding the realities of what exists and that which might serve our future better. That is about consciousness; nothing more, nothing less. We make and we choose the world we live in as it in turn makes who we are. Consciousness, choice, and freedom are about taking responsibility for our world. And taking responsibility is a choice for us too.
A recent post of hers caused me to reflect on exactly how we exist in this world and about what holds us back in personal development, from realising our life’s potential and desires.
Living in a world dominated by rational science with its tendency to analyse and categorise our being means that we often compartmentalise ourselves into various states of thinking, feeling and being. We have notions of intellect and thought (rational powers of cognition, perception and differentiation), emotions, intuition and other personal traits like will comprised within our personal make-up yet we appear to express them separately. I know I’ve been tussling with this a lot. I have written about it before both here and in my “farrago”. I adopted the term “consciousness”, both individual and collective (social) to try and relate to our state of being in some sort of wholeness embracing all aspects of our existence.
Previously I wrote: “Notions of will, intellect and emotions working separately are unattractive (to me) since they suggest that areas of one's being might be compartmentalised and operate separately. I am certain that this is not helpful: It might be like, "I work with my intellect", "I love my partner with my feelings" and "my acts of assertion, achievement or success are achieved by my will". How saddening this is, to break up one's self in a way that allows one to express only a part of oneself in given contexts. This compartmentalisation is perhaps the product of post-industrial man, a new machine culture, where work, loving and social being, and success operate in separate personal domains. It is for this reason that I prefer the notion of consciousness where all of our faculties might operate together.”
I believe that what makes for an experience of wholeness in our life is a sense of enlightened consciousness – of being conscious of consciousness in a way. It’s an act of profound understanding, an awareness of our being in a world that exists both within and outside ourselves. But it is also a sense that we make our world and take responsibility for it. I believe it is this special understanding that facilitates progress, development, discovery, invention and change. Consciousness brings with it an awareness that our limitations are made by ourselves, either individually or collectively. Knowing and understanding the nature and source of our limitations can bring about the most wonderful possibilities of positive personal and social development, of change in our personal and social worlds.
Perhaps that is a little abstract so I’ll give a couple of examples that come to mind. I write endlessly about the nature of love. We experience love as an emotion within ourselves. What love means and what it stands for is influenced by a whole host of factors beyond ourselves. How we love is an integral part of our belief systems, of our consciousness, and of our culture that forms part of consciousness. Our beliefs about love are upheld by our families, our friends, the media, art and literature, politicians, churches and corporations, as well as our experience. Being conscious means that we have the gift of understanding, our own sense of knowing what love means and where our feelings, thoughts and beliefs about it come from. Being conscious also brings with it a sense of knowing that we may take responsibility and that we can change our lives and how we love. But it’s easy for me to say and much harder to do!
I have a certain understanding, a personal impression and sense of the wholeness that growing consciousness brings with it. What produces that sense of wholeness and often charisma in others, especially in those who become our leaders, is a sense of their own “personal knowing”: Of their consciousness of their own being in the world, and their sense of assurance that comes from taking responsibility not only for themselves in the world, but for their entire world. That’s a big one!
Perhaps the key barriers to consciousness (Others might say this differently: Some might say success or personal fulfilment. They are equally valid as they all go hand-in-hand) are about fear, self-esteem and self-confidence. Being conscious is not always a comfortable place. It can be scary too. Children in their innocence will often exhibit a greater degree of consciousness and fearlessness than us “conditioned” adults. It was a child, after all, that spotted that the “emperor’s new clothes” were nothing more than his “birthday suit”.
Being “unafraid” to express our self-belief is a wonderful release. I believe that the greatest antagonist to love is fear. Hate is not the opposite to love. It is fear. More than anything, I have come to believe that it is fear in whatever form that holds us back in our lives. Some fears are wholly sensible. They guide us in avoiding danger or life-threatening perils. That is the right place for fear. But so many of our fears are not so healthy. They are what hold us back in life, from the realisation of who we are and who we might be. Self-esteem might carry us forward where fear holds us back.
I know I’ve been guilty frequently of being held back by fear or negative self-beliefs too; more frequently than I would readily care to admit.
A little under thirty years ago I read the book “A road less travelled” by American psychotherapist, Morgan Scott Peck. I was riveted. It was sheer inspiration. I have read hundreds of psychology books since but this work still stands out. It’s about the journey of personal fulfilment. At the end of the book, Scott Peck talks about achieving a state of “grace”. (Can’t you just tell what will happen next? It did.) I’d call it something else. But he attributes the phenomena associated with “grace” as that which:
1. nurtures human life (and spiritual growth)
2. are incompletely understood by scientific thinking
3. are commonplace among humanity
4. originate outside conscious human will (the individual)
I believe he was very nearly “right on the button” but instead of developing a notion of consciousness in all its aspects of being in the world, he, in my opinion, goes completely off the rails and gets “God”. So that which he can no longer understand in terms of the world as it exists within the psyche and outside the individual, he attributes to a divine power. In a subsequent work he goes on to judge what is good and what is evil according to his newly found religious beliefs. For me at that point, he lost the plot. What a great pity. He had so much to say.
My point here is that psychology as a mode of personal exploration fails us. The answers are not all within ourselves but in our interaction with the world we make and our beliefs about that world. Only through an understanding of all the dimensions of ourselves within our world can we seek to understand it.
I believe that the biggest barrier to realising that understanding is fear.
Footnote:
Some people in the past have accused me of being naïve and idealistic. I know what they mean but I might express it differently. They claim that my work fails to acknowledge the realities of economics, economic survival and power in our lives. For me, economics and power are important dimensions of consciousness. They exist and are a fact of life. I am not sure that their consideration belongs here.
Much of our reality is informed by economics and power. It is the dominant paradigm (Dare I use that word?!) of our western world. I am sure, however, that its culture does not always serve us well. By necessity, we live with it and it would be “naïve” to believe otherwise. But often I question how well it serves us. I do not believe that focussing one’s life on financial, economic and power outcomes is likely to lead to any form of enduring personal fulfilment. Infinite economic expansion is impossible. Money is a medium of exchange and not an end in itself. We all need it. As the western world slides inexorably towards recession, perhaps a change in economic consciousness might show us the way out. For sure, some change is inevitable, although I am apprehensive about what it might be. So many periods of economic turmoil have found temporary relief in war and conflict.
So, to my critics, I know all about economics and power. We all see its distorted influences in our lives daily. But we accept it as a given fact of life. Only through developing a wider understanding of the world in we wish to dwell in as well as the world that exists, will it change. There is nothing inevitable or god-given in anything made by humankind. We can change. But we can only change by understanding the realities of what exists and that which might serve our future better. That is about consciousness; nothing more, nothing less. We make and we choose the world we live in as it in turn makes who we are. Consciousness, choice, and freedom are about taking responsibility for our world. And taking responsibility is a choice for us too.