Marriage and Pregnancy
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The Anxious Creature-self
Each person is such a unique blend of physical, psychological and philosophical attributes that no two individuals have identical fingerprints to say nothing of bodies, souls and minds. We do, however, encounter the same paradoxes that all others face and must cope with the same delusions and myths that cause individuals, families, nations and civilizations to fail. The majority of persons seeking satisfaction today have little better understanding of the unconscious yearnings, ego defenses, cultural neuroses and existential frustrations that cripple humans than the emotionally repressed Victorians of a century ago. When life goes bad and spirits falter, most persons in our society use three major ego defenses -- repression, denial, and avoidance to keep painful events from confusing them. Most people try to maintain a modicum of satisfaction without getting at the root causes of their emotional problems. Others believe the propaganda that promises satisfaction if we consume greedily -- seeking fulfillment through a relentless quest for possessions, power, pleasure and prestige. Relatively few of us become wise enough to gain the sense of purpose in our activities and permanence in our relationships that comes when we began maturing psychospiritually. THE HUMAN PARADOX There are few perceptive adults who haven’t pondered why we humans create so many disasters for ourselves by professing spirituality and then behaving selfishly. Thoughtful persons wonder why we cannot simply be decent in our relationships rather than acting selfishly and then pretending we are righteous. We fight wars among nations and battle within families, companies, religions and ethnic groups to gain some advantage. Surely the names Bosnia, East Timor, Central Africa, Kosovo, Iraq and even Columbine High School strike a mournful chord within our souls. Racism, sexism and spouse abuse is rampant in every city in the world. So are neuroticism, addiction and crime. Therefore, we really need to understand the reasons behind humanity’s most devastating failures if we are to free our souls. I paraphrase Soren Kierkegaard, the great philosopher of the First Industrial Revolution: From the beginning of the human adventure, the roots of psychology and religion, of psychotherapy and worship were intertwined as they grew out of the great existential paradox that complicates life for each and every person regardless of our illusions. I don’t know when the story of Adam and Eve, of their good and evil and the expulsion from Paradise, was first told to explain our physical, emotional and spiritual limitations. No doubt the myth originated around the campfires of ancient tribal shamans who pondered the meaning of life, the vastness of the cosmos and the reason for each person’s illnesses eventual death. Because they were fully as intelligent as we are and as completely dedicated to pleasure, prestige and possessions, they tried to make sense of the human condition. They planted in their stories about life and death and rewards and punishment, the seeds of philosophy and psychology that have grown and branched out into scores of systems for understanding life and for healing human suffering. The myth of Adam and Eve’s fall, our perceived loss of innocence in Paradise for disobeying God, with death as punishment, was an attempt to understand the tragic quartet of suffering, guilt, rage and death that has always been the bane of humankind. The Garden of Eden story reveals that we combine the often conflicting psychological and philosophical elements of life into a single entity -- our conflicted and anxious selves! We have become creature-selves who unfortunately, fight the internal wars that cripple so many individually and collectively. . The great dilemma of our existence occurs as we struggle to reconcile our emotional greed with our spiritual generosity. Of course, most scholars speak about the instinctive and the self-aware aspects of a meaningful life rather than using my term -- psychospiritual. To describe the human dilemma better, all persons at all stages of life, suffer inner conflicts and the self-contradicting traits both Paul the Apostle and Sigmund Freud recognized in themselves and others when they confessed they were seriously flawed men. Paul complained that while he regularly planned to live righteously, something within his nature often twisted the results and caused him to fail. Freud was fully cognizant of his own need for psychoanalysis in his relationships. They both made choices that harmed themselves and others. His creature-self, this interwoven psychological and philosophical aspect of life, left Paul feeling the shame that the existential paradox still causes virtually everyone. Freud also was both yin and yang, to use the Oriental concept of positive and negative energy within human personality. We regularly feel the pressure and the anxiety from guilt that comes from our internal conflicts. Of course, while psychologists and psychiatrists think of neuroticism as a sickness to be healed and pastors often consider these elements sin that must be repented, to me they seem virtually one and the same. A short time ago police officer James Dalton heroically risked his life to save a child who’d fallen into a swollen creek. He emerged, soaked and muddy and victorious to return the little girl to her mother. She embraced him, praising him as a good man. James smiled wryly and confessed, Sometimes I am. In other situations, he is grim and even cruel. At other times James brutally beats men who frustrate him with his flashlight -- and then boasts to family members about it. We are all yin and yang, and we know it, unless we have so repressed our emotions in the ego protecting self-deception that causes so many human problems. In this paradox of the creature-self entity in psychospiritual conflict, we combine the instinctive traits of the mammals through which we evolved -- with the spiritual self-awareness that is unique to humanity. Here then is our greatest personal challenge. How shall we live successfully in both worlds – like that of greedy, instinctive mammals who are racially programmed to grasp and claw our foes -- and of generous, thoughtful persons who give richly of ourselves in other situations? How shall the homosapien creature-self make life come out well without tearing itself apart? How can we humans avoid the cruel conflicts seen so often in our homes and classrooms, boardrooms and government assemblies? I shall not belabor the obvious, that we’ve lost much of our genetic programming, those instinctive mammalian methods of coping with life’s challenges. Many aspects of existence belong to the past, are not sophisticated enough for satisfaction in a complex society. Of course, some of our traits that linger cause the paradox I’ve mentioned. But, through that dulling of automatic instincts, we’ve gained the ability to ponder what it means to become a free soul, to live as a responsible member of a family or a community. We think often about ourselves, wondering about our origins, the purpose of life and where we are going. We dream grandly and bitterly grieve our failures, and sometimes, despite good intentions, make devastating choices for ourselves and our families. We remain unpredictable homespun creature-selves despite our pretensions of civilization. Solutions are not easy to come by and we surely must recognize that our ancient ancestors’ anxieties were not entirely irrational. They feared more than ghosts, angry gods and witches in the night. For countless eons they had to compete for survival with swift and fierce carnivores on the African savannah. They had no medicine or surgery and very few lived thirty years. By the time they could make fire and chip flints for tools and weapons, every family and clan understood that just staying alive put them in a difficult predicament. They saw that life could explode at any seam, at any time, pitching one into the outer darkness of annihilation. They dreaded death that crouched like a leopard laying in wait. It made no difference whether one was Hammurabi, Emperor of Assyria or an illiterate shepherd with a dozen sheep on a hillside, death always lurked close by. The dark beast may come in the first days of life for an infant -- half their children died, or in old age. But sooner or later death came for everyone. Indeed, life was nasty, brutish and short but they persevered and survived, with those universal dual creature-self or primitive and sophisticated traits that still bedevil us. Then, through the ages of our ancestors’ racial development, their predicament became our own. Their fear and anxiety, the ghastly death dread and their unconscious techniques for keeping secrets from themselves through repression, denial and avoidance, settled into our very genes where they linger today. And if you cannot see these anxieties within yourself, that failure to see life as it really is has become prima-facie evidence of your own repression, denial and avoidance. You are deceiving rather than healing yourself. This anxiety begins with the following. CHILDHOOD DISRUPTIONS Mental health workers know that the tendency toward self-defeating and destructive choices begins early in life. A beloved child feels virtually at the very heart of the universe. Everyone offers support. A sneeze brings a warm blanket, a howl about wet diapers assures immediate care and hunger pangs are quickly ended in a flow of sweet milk while being held to the soft breast of a gentle mother. The child is praised and entertained, played with and sung to; the very star of the show until convinced he or she deserves only life’s best. Life is delightful. Then, when the child feels omnipotent, and when he is comfortable at the center of the universe, life begins to shift, often with painful results, as adults make unsettling demands. Parents insist the child give up mommy’s breast,Pages: [1] 2 3 4