Cyclical Revolutions of Evolution; Progress?

Dropping our sloppy preconceptions is not easy to do
Being the exception plays to Individualism's rules

The tools and rules our minds exploit to carve out human consciousness
are evolving like our species and contain a few useless remnants

Like the 'tailbone' of competition that causes a basal kind of pain
That old jealousy that preserved the apes makes us revert to them again

Nothing's the same yet life's cyclical; our children wear our worn out genes
And dropping preconceived jeans in public is much harder than it seems. 

Relating to Others - Scratching Backs instead of Breaking Them

Given that each of us inhabits our own lovely bubble - one that reflects our beautiful selves back to us from the inside - it is a miracle that we manage to get along at all.

Even the words we use are just mutually agreed upon grunts.  But somebody stop me before I launch into the whole "Is the color red you see the same one I do..." rant.

The question is:  How do we get along when we converse, and specifically when we disagree?

What typically happens in a disagreement:

- Each person tries to assert their viewpoint to prove that they have the correct lens.  It's uncomfortable to consider that you may have been wrong all this time.

- The differences in the viewpoints are highlighted, and so a rugged wedge gets inserted between your souls.

- Eg:  "You always rescue the kids instead of letting them learn from their mistakes.  You need to back up and stop trying to fill your need to be needed."

Let's try this instead:

- Make it a practice to explain back to the other person what you understand their main points to be.  Read between the lines only when you're getting confirmation that you're on the right track.  This allows them to feel heard (even if you get it wrong they will appreciate that you are trying), and to clarify misconceptions in focus that arise.

- Look for points of agreement and highlight those, before mentioning the diverging points.  This makes it seem like the conversation is a mutual endeavor as opposed to a survival of the fittest clash.

- Seek to understand before trying to be understood.  That way you will know what the real issue is anyway, and will come across as much more respectful, which induces compliance.  Plus it makes St Francis stoked.

- Eg: "I can see that you care about our kids and just want the best for them.  We both want that and are a team!  When I allow the kids to make their own mistakes, what is it that you think I am trying to accomplish?"

Check it out: typically other people aren't doing things to intentionally upset you.  Their behavior stems from their own coping skills, fears, and entrenched modes of functioning from their families of origin.

Give 'em a break and they'll more than likely scratch your back too, instead of breaking it.
  

Generational Cycles

Did  You Know of the Day:
Did you know that you didn't invent yourself?

Ok, well in a way you did, but it's like you've been handed a spiral-shaped canvas of colors and it's been up to you what artwork you've made.
The sky may seem blue because of your inherited genetics, it could also be painted grey thanks to a different palette of D to the N to the A.

What we have inherited becomes bangingly conspicuous when we bounce it against people from other families of origin - more than likely our spouse/partner.

We see that we were raised to:
        Express love differently
   Use money differently
   Aim for different things in life
   Seek attention differently

Yes I could have found other synonyms to prevent typing the word different 4 times, but I was trying to prove the point of difference with a repetition of sameness...oh nevermind...

Here's the thing:
Not only do we approach this epic game called life with divergent sets of "rules" handed down from our upbringing, but we have also inherited the battles of previous generations.

Alcoholism may have squished your dad and his dad, and his old papa...you gonna let it squish you?
Depression may have dampened the skies of yo mama and her mama's mama, as well as Ms. Jackson.
Learned helpness is not only learned, but taught, and maybe it's been taught to you.

But uh ha, there is a glorious ray of sunshine shattering rain into a spectrum of  colors, and it is this:
YOU have the power to break these cycles!  And the stakes are so much higher than just your own life.  It will affect your kids, and their spouses, and the world we leave behind and eternity into forever and ever Amen.

Oh, but that's not the end, it's the beginning.  Wanna slay some dragons?

Waging War with Aging

 There was never a time when AGE was not on the forefront of my consciousness.

Itty bitty little Tot

"How old are you young man?" came the generic introduction from strangers since the first days I started stringing syllables together.  And ever since those yonder years I have strung together my identity based on that number.

As a kid, what feats you could perform was directly proportional to your chronological age medal. 
A 6 and 9 year old were never gonna be fairly matched. 
I looked up to the older kids, as if they were superior in ways higher than their height.  I guess the immediate threat of pummeling goes a long way to a pseudo-respect.

The Dawn of Social Dynamics and Hierarchies

As I reached the age where I started to like girls, I based my potential targets on their age.  "How old are you?" was a precursor to sending the friend over to tell her I have a crush on her.  You could never "date" anyone two years younger...especially if you were a girl for crying out loud!  My girl cousin always judged how well I was doing by how old the girl I was dating was. 

Then came the surmounting of bases.  The average age for the first kiss is 15.  To me there was nothing sweet about being 16 and still square.  I'd kissed girls at 8, but I didn't think that counted.  Unfortunately your suaveness is inversely proportionate to your trying.

Young Adulthood

Since I was 19 I felt like time was running out.  Nowadays that's laughable!  But I was a deer caught in the headlights of my options.  I have yet to solidify many of these options, and guess what?  Strangely enough the oncoming vehicle hasn't squished me!  Hmm, maybe it's not real?  Life may not be all about having it figured out according to their standards!

In America it's all about reaching 21 so you can party.  21 year olds in other countries are already phasing out of that novelty, having been able to legally drink in clubs since 18, and practically since 15.  The party scene blurs the next few years.  But it's a blissful blur.

The graph started out-running me with its statistics:
     the average person finishes college at 23
            starts a career at 24
                     gets married at 29 (27 if you're a girl)
                            buys a house at 34
                                ...
                                     dies at 79.

If my life is already mapped out for me, then what's the point of living it?
And if I've gotta check certain flagpoles like a ski race, then am I really free...to ski?

Middle Age

Ooo the ying yang black and white phase of middle age!  On the one hand we've got things figured out to a large extent...on the other hand, we may realize that all our figuring has been on the wrong math equation!  Barking up the wrong tree becomes unbearably noisy, and we're sometimes forced to rethink our identities.  Children leaving home calls roles into question.  Losing our sexual appeal is a deep loss if that's what we have built our worth on. 

It's a time of re-evaluation.  This is always a good thing.  Seldom a comfortable one; always good.

Old Age

As the circle of life closes on itself it again bares too diametrically opposed states:

1) Despair at the loss of everything.  Including dignity, status, and life itself. 
When outward life slows down, we go inwards.  If we hate what's in there, the journey's gonna suck.

OR 2) Hope and peace in the seeds of legacy and regeneration that you have sown. 
A re-prioritized sense of the importance of spirituality emerges. 

Which brings us back to the end of my last post.  Yip, it's about religion.

Cos religion (or spirituality for all those hung up on terms) is a huge deal, no matter what phase of life we're in.  It's like, figuring out the rules of a game before you get too involved in playing is a sure-fire way to increase your chances of winning!

Let's not spend our lives climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against a building that's been labeled for demolition.

Not to end on a morbid note or anything...here's a little happiness:
LIFE ROCKS; GOD IS EPIC; FALL'S COLORS APPROACH (and another summer awaits!)

The 3 Phases that Everything, and I mean Everything, Goes Through (According to Hegel) - PART 3

     The Grand Finale

Oooo you excited little critter you!  I know you can't wait for me to reveal what Hegel's 3rd phase is!  Good news: I'm a compassionate individual and you have to wait no longer!

Yes the 3rd, and final phase is called...

DIFFERENTIATED UNITY

The circle finally closes on itself like a golden 18th century ring.  It's a marriage of the dispersed elements that were haphazardly causing mischief in the second phase.  It's a new unity that's not primitive like the single life of the first phase, but not overly self-conscious like the adolescent 2nd phase.  It's adulthood, and it's anything but boring!

This Differentiated Unity brings about a new harmony as we can transcend our obsession with difference.

Hegel says that this is evident in Christianity in which God & humanity, Law & grace, Self & Other are reconciled.  There may or may not be confetti involved.

It's love, see, that allows us to live by the Spirit of the Living WORD instead of the written letter of the LAW.  Make sense?  Ok it's abstract...

...but it's also not.  Let me summarize:

When we are young (and when history is young, and philosophy is young, and thought is young) it is necessarily simplistic in its constructions of the universe.  Ignorance is bliss and it's a jolly good phase what...if you can be satisfied with it. 
Once consciousness (or global communication) allows for the idea of contradictory ideas, we are flung into an overly self-conscious phase in which we question everything, and for a while lose our identity.  Woe is us. 
But never fear, because if you are willing to expose yourself to the Dark Knight...no wait, the Dark Night, then the 3rd phase will dawn with new, unifying light: You can transcend difference without some tacky eclecticism.  You can be yourself because you are accepted just the way you are because of something that's happened on a cosmic scale.  

"Oh there he goes talking about religion again," you may say.

Well firstly, yes.

and Secondly...duh!!

Oh, and PS: http://www.AsleepInEden.com/

The 3 Phases that Everything, and I mean Everything, Goes Through (According to Hegel) - PART 2

Dum dum dee dum...Phase 2 of the growth: 

Now this part is both paradigm-shifting and uncomfortable.   Remember what it was like when you first realized that everyone was forming opinions about you?  Everyone!  Ah, the glorious hyper-self-consciousness of the teenage years!  What dawning had you awakened to?  Metaphorically, of course.  I'm well aware that you hardly ever awoke at dawn in your teenage years!

You awoke to the 2nd of Hegel's phases: A Dualistic Split.

This involves a fragmented view of reality caused by fractured divisions between Self and Other.

- In religion this is typical of the Judaism.  A chasm between people and God leads them to live a nomadic lifestyle and live in, what Hegel calls “an unhappy consciousness” (42).  Wondering around, waiting for paradise.  Some Christians...a lot of Christians...still inhabit this mindset.  The Law is something imposed on them from above; something they can never live up to.

- In child development this takes the form of developing the analytical left side of the brain through education and acculturation.  The terrible two's say waddup.  This process peaks in adolescence, when the child realizes the power of their own opinions.   

- This is the modernist phase of philosophy in which Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” rules.  And it's all about me.  Humans abuse the planet to make themselves nice pretty outfits, or to make their bank accounts look nice and pretty.  Hey, everything is a bank account, we begin to think.  Time is divided into neat little compartments, each allocated to particular causes.  Time itself is a bank account with an unalterable balance that we continuously make withdrawals from.

It's an uncomfortable phase because it's the recognition of how far we have to go.  We suddenly understand something of how little we understand (for some teenagers that takes longer than others :)  But it's necessary. 

At this point you could run back to where the world was unified and everything seemed hunky dorey...and live a life of denial...

Or you could jump down the rabbit hole head first and hope that hitting your head on the bottom causes you to become open-minded instead of well...the Mad Hatter.

If he was sane he'd never be spilling the tea!

Awakening to an Enchanted Reality in God...a Portal of 1's and 0's

Asleep in Eden.com

Go to ==> Asleep in Eden.com
Thank thee kindly!

The 3 Phases that Everything, and I mean Everything, Goes Through (According to Hegel) - PART 1

“Nietsche is dead” - God

There was this philosopher bruv Hegel who painted a circular yet progressive picture of time.  He reckoned that every kind of history (including philosophical, religious and even the history of the psyche of your eccentric neighbour Gerry) progresses through three phases (Postmodern Philosophy of Religion 38-42):

 PART 1 (Second and third parts to come...)

The first is called Monism .  It’s characterised by a primitive unity, harmony.  There is coherence between self and other as they’re all part of an undivided whole. 

-In religious terms this is exemplified by the ancient Greek, Vedic and Roman religions.  In Biblical terms it’s the unspoiled world of Eden.  Oral traditions emphasise this unity and its holism still penetrates the African worldview.  There is theanthropocosmic union between humanity, God and nature. 

The same concept occurs in biology and psychodynamics.   Babies don’t recognise the difference between themselves and others until they’re 6 months old.  Some cases of stroke victims as well as autism are characterised by a sense of blurred lines between self and other, with the boundaries bleeding into each other so to speak.  Jill Bolte Taylor speaks about the blissful realisations that came about as a result of a stroke in her left hemisphere.  Her right, holistic hemisphere didn’t differentiate between herself and creation.  

 http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

True Happiness in this Life?

What's the meaning of life?  What is the meaning of that sentence?

Since the dawn of time our species has grappled with questions about the point of our existence.  Sometimes we have driven that point into other people in wars designed to further the interest of "us"; sometimes we have poked ourselves in the eye with that point repeatedly, causing pain and a certain kind of blindness.  "Oh but we've advanced far beyond those primitive days", you say?  Ok well what does our "advanced" culture tell us about what it means to be fully happy in this life today?

"The meaning of life is to be happy, and to cause others to be happy.  Set goals, work hard towards achieving them, accomplish things, prove to others your worth and thereby gain their respect, nurture your family, find your soul mate, live in the moment, get a white picket fence and an iPhone..."

Each of these bombs separated by commas above is a complex, lifetime quest toward achieving a dream that may or may not be in line with Reality.  Ok the iPhone acquisition doesn't necessarily take a whole lifetime, merely the majority.  Fun fact: the highest rate of depression is amongst the rich (money makes you happy?); the highest rate of suicide is amongst psychiatrists (education makes you happy?), and half of the uniting of "soul mates" ends in utter despair.

Don't mean to be cynical here, but let's define the problem.  Maybe the very problem is the lack of a definition: a definition about what it means to be human.  We are very aware that to be human means to have a body, to be of the species Homo Sapien, to be in relationship, to work.  These are objective facts that have been labeled so by the uprising of Rationalism in the Enlightenment of previous centuries.  Verifiable stuff = true, non-verifiable stuff = false.  Is that assumption verifiable?  Never mind. 
It's important to understand the historical context when we talk about things like happiness, because we are not an isolated moment.  In fact the very word moment has been produced by a series of historical interactions, and to ignore where we come from is to ignore where we are going.  We could pass all this up if the issue of happiness wasn't so pressing, but the fact of the matter is that there are more diagnoses of depression than ever before, and the highest incidents of this syndrome are in the developed first world countries.  Ok, maybe the developed countries develop these definitions, and then put themselves in it, but let's set that aside for now.

Quickly, because we need to talk about concrete things in the remaining 100 words too, let's take a step back and look at our progress historically.  We used to live a much more static life, where identity was defined by the role you played in your family and society.  The world made sense because it was all God's mysterious working.  We had our place in the cosmos, and cosmic peace had a place in our minds.  Don't get me wrong, these were barbaric times in other ways, but hear me out.  These people didn't strive under Western Individualism to validate their own worth.  They weren't competing in their own minds against a myriad of other options which they could be doing. 

Ok that touches on where we find ourselves today based on where we have come from: clearly it's the opposite in terms of how we achieve our identity, meaning, and thereby happiness.  That will have to suffice for now.  Let's get to the practical stuff:

We are body, mind, and spirit.  In order to be fully happy in this life, we need to feed each of our constituents. 
The body:  Feed it literally, with good stuff.  It's obvious what is good - things that we were created to eat like fruits, vegetables, nuts, natural meat...and chocolate (lots of it!)
The mind:  Question everything.  Don't accept the paradigm that was fed to you as a child.  That worldview is a product of our parents, the desire for organization that our society has conjured up, and previous thinkers.  Dare to question the very assumptions that they have been based upon, and do your own research to verify the facts.
The spirit:  Look, love is not just a series of neurochemical reactions, and meaning is not just an evolutionarily adapted survival mechanism that makes us feel special.  Don't buy into the rationalists dualism.  Look where they came from and then their reduction makes sense.  But you'll never find true happiness unless you feed your spirit with purpose and a relationship with the Transcendent.  How to do that is another article completely.

Hey, I'm not trying to preach here.  But as someone who is truly happy, and is a mental health counselor by profession, I feel my two cents is worth at least 1.5 cents.  Take it, spend it, invest it, or throw it into a pool and make a wish.  I bet you'll wish for true happiness.