At The Crossroads: Finding Meaning in Sorrow

When shocking things happen, we as individuals strive to understand. The tradgedy at New Town, Conneticut touches us all. I cannot be distant from this horrific event. Every person who has ever loved a child, a son, a daughter, niece, nephew, or dedicated themselves to working with children has a hollow feeling of loss in their hearts. My mind struggles to make sense of this—my thoughts wander through darkness trying to find meaning.

Grief for me is a cold, lonely thing and I just want to reach out and make the world warm again.

What happened is real to me. The news reports arouse memories of the years I spent working in the schools. The Sandy Hook educators are my kindred spirits. I know their days. The reading teacher, the school psychologist—their thoughts are my thoughts. The sights and sounds of the school day--the day’s routines—the aliveness and hopefulness in the children’s faces—the deep, peaceful joy of helping them learn gave meaning to my days. To be of service to children is a wonderful work---these educators are my kindred spirits.

I remember one of my own students, a blond, blue-eyed third grade boy, who never returned from the school holiday. His friend shot him. The boys had found his father’s loaded gun under the bed.

I think about the young Connecticut shooter. Not much is known about him. He is described as a child alone in the group of peers, someone vulnerable and at risk of peer influence. Home schooled because the school environment was too much for him. His babysitter states his mother said Adam should never be left alone. As a school psychologist, these statements are red flags to me. I wonder why Adam did not receive the services he needed. I speculate did he have an undiagnosed Pervasive Developmental Delay? These individuals are often very intelligent but when a thought consumes their thinking it becomes reality--they act and react totally unaware of logical consequences, or moral rightness.

Is this shooting tragedy the result of our gun-obsessed culture? We are a gun-addicted culture; addicts use crutches—alcohol, drugs, and sex—to feel in control of their lives. It is my belief that the gun obsessed cling to their guns out of fear of the unknown and an addiction to the head rush they get when firing their guns. Getting the gun obsessed to give up a gun will be as difficult as telling a junkie his survival depends on giving up dope.

I do not need a gun to feel safe, confident or powerful and I feel sorrow for those who do need a gun to cope with life. I was saddened and disgusted to hear a former US Secretary of Education say that every school should have an armed adult—that this would keep tragedy from occurring. Guns to counteract guns—violence to counter act violence. This idea pains my soul. I believe we are at a spiritual cross road the lighted road of hope and healing, or the dark road of reactionary fear.

I have always been drawn to John Donne’s poem No Man Is An Island.

No man is an island,


Entire of itself.


Each is a piece of the continent,


A part of the main.


If a clod be washed away by the sea,


Europe is the less.


As well as if a promontory were.


As well as if a manor of thine own


Or of thine friend's were.


Each man's death diminishes me,


For I am involved in mankind.


Therefore, send not to know


For whom the bell tolls,


It tolls for thee.

How can we understand—make meaning of  this horrific tragedy? How can we help and heal? I remember reading Viktor Frankl’s book Man's Search for Meaning. In Frankl’s 1946 book he tells of his experiences as an inmate in concentration camp. He describes his self realized method of finding a reason to live, to continue. “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.”

Frankl concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. In a group therapy session during a mass fast inflicted on the camp's inmates trying to protect an anonymous fellow inmate from fatal retribution by authorities, Frankl offered the thought that for everyone in a dire condition there is someone looking down, a friend, family member, or even God, who would expect not to be disappointed. 

----A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...."

Frankl suggests that there are things we can do to help ourselves, 1.)  Creativity or giving something to the world through self-expression, 2.) Experiencing the world by interacting authentically with our environment and with others, and 3.) Changing our attitude when we are faced with a situation or circumstance that we cannot change.

Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it. At one point, Frankl writes that a person “may remain brave, dignified and unselfish, or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.”

Frankl’s most enduring insight is--forces beyond one’s control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.

How we choose to respond as a nation is a spiritual challange. May the Creator bless us and give us the strength to move forward with hope and love as we face building our tomorrow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201205/mans-search-meaning

http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2011/04/19/searching-for-meaning/

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/no-man-is-an-island/

The Synergy of Dreams

Dreams have synergy. The interaction of the individual elements of the dream, which when combined produce a total effect, or understanding that is greater than the sum of the individual elements, or contributions.

My Dream:

I was driving my car up a steep hill. I was to short to touch the pedals—so I was wondering what is making the car go fast? Because the hill is so steep and I am so short, I could barely see over the hood of the car at was up the road. There was person sitting on the passenger side. We were driving through a neighborhood. She (the passenger) yelled Slow down—Stop! The neighbors were yelling at me Slow down—Stop! I yelled my feet don’t touch the pedals. The people looked daggers at me—in their minds they were saying so why do you have a car? Why are you driving so fast?

The person next to me yelled don’t you see the family in the street and the Santa Claus talking to the children? I strained to be taller. I saw them. I tried to reach the break pedal and then I could not see what was in front of me. I thought I would have to swerve the car into something to stop the car. I swerved toward a light pole and a bunch of trash cans and come to a stop. My passenger and I got out of the car to speak to the family. I thought now they will call the police. I woke up.

When I woke up I felt frustrated. I know that cars represent my physical body moving through my physical life. I have many dreams about driving cars and I am really irritated that I have had another dream where I am feeling like my life is not under my own control. And I am angry because the next logical step in the dream would be to apologize to the family and explain my actions to the police. I am relieved I woke up before the apologies and explanations because I am tried of justifying my actions and myself to others. It is a disgusting feeling to wake up and say to myself I feel as if I am totally inadequate even in my dreams. And then I wonder why I cannot just have a restful sleep—why does the world (my society) judge me harshly even in my dreams?

I decided not to write the dream down and go back to sleep.

However when I woke up the memory of the dream was still there. That tells me I need to write it down and work with it. I wrote the dream down but I was too frustrated to analyze the dream images. So what to do in a case like this?

I relaxed into a meditative state, put myself into the dream, step back and let the dream continue. I like this process of working with dreams because when I am frustrated it puts me back into a productive focus. Our dreams always work to the service of our own good but the ego mind tends to forget this truth. I write the images and actions down as they present themselves and I make no effort to analyze or be introspective. I simply scribe what I see.

The Dream revisited:

I am driving my car. I make myself larger. Now I can see. I put on the brakes and I park the car. I greet the family. I greet Santa. Santa pulls a package from his bag and hands it to me. The package is wrapped in gold paper with a pink ribbon. I open the package—inside is a diamond heart.

I decide to look the images up in a dream symbol dictionary because I am not ready to accept the gift—it seemed too wonderful. Just that statement tells me to remember every element of the dream represents pieces of myself.

Now as I write this I say Yes, I am the driver. But I am also the critical passenger—I am the critical neighbor—I am the children—I am the parents—and I am Santa Claus. The road is obviously my life path. When they look daggers at me---they are not criticizing—they are saying see the point, look sharply. Slow down and stop, notice the life around you.

The actual life context is that I have just made a complete stop and 90 degree turn in my career life. My decision might be judged by others/my society as representing laziness or a lack of professionalism. Truthfully I worry about the opinions of others more than I should—this is a life long lesson.

My feet do not touch the pedals—I feel like I do not have control of my own life. When I strain to make myself taller, I am straining to make myself different from what I am. I cannot touch the pedals and see the road ahead at the same time. Swerving the car and stopping represents an action I have just taken in my life. The choice of running into a light pole or of running into trashcans says I can view my choice as being enlightened action or trash (something wasted.)

By revisiting the dream and accepting the present from Santa, I am giving my self a gift. The diamond quality represents that I have gained information, insight, and an idea of great value, something hard, stable and indestructible. The heart quality represents love, stamina, feelings, desire, energy, and the place of ones emotions.

The synergy of the dream tells me that what I thought I wanted was not my life path.  I should slow down and stop, notice the life around me, look sharply and see the point. There is nothing inherently wrong with making a 90-degree turn to a different choice. The value of the choice lies in my point of view. Do I see this as an enlightened action? Do I view what I was doing before as time wasted, or something of value? The gift from Santa (the gift from me to me) is that I am valuable and what I do is valuable and that the strength of what I do lies in he quality of love that I bring to the situations in which I choose to participate.

8/9/2012, I attended a spiritual gathering at the Soul Esteem Center today. The presentation was on getting beyond feelings of guilt, which was very synergistic with the message in my dream. One of the speakers was discussing the symbolism of Santa Claus (St. Nicholas)--inherent to this symbol is the idea of unconditional love. Santa is a figure who leaves you a gift with no expectation of receiving anything in return. In the context of my dream, Santa (my inner spirit) views me as worthy of nonjudgmental, unconditional love--an honoring of all that I am with no need for feelings of guilt or unworthiness on my part.

Dreams do work for our own good but sometimes we are resistant to them because of our ingrained habits and thoughts. I find the choice to revisit a dream is an effective technique for circumventing my individual resistance. It is important to realize that the dream has levels of meaning that will continue to reveal themselves over time. One of the best reasons to write dreams down is that one can revisit them at any time.

http://www.soul-esteem.com

How to Survive Doomesday: 12/21/2012

Recently I read a paragraph on a Jungian website: Many people inside our (USA) borders and across the Earth are worried about the Doomsday prediction as the Maya calendar comes to an end.   We have heard reports that some US citizens are unable to sleep and eat because they are stressed about what could happen on December 21st, 2012.  Citizens in Russia hoarding everything from kerosene to candles in preparation while inmates in a prison fall under a mass psychosis. 

What does one do with this anxiety? To me this is mind/body/spirit angst. Angst is a feeling of anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression. People are worried about their physical survival. They are worried spiritually—is this truly the end time foretold in the Bible’s revelation? What do I do if I am agnostic and cannot go to the Creator for comfort? Then one has to rely on self to find meaning. Finding meaning is a key element whether one has spiritual belief or if one chooses an agnostic path. For the agnostic the existential path is the path of finding meaning.

A central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the most important consideration for the individual is the fact that he or she is an individual—an independently acting and responsible conscious being ("existence")—rather than what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories the individual fits ("essence"). The actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called his or her "true essence" instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence used by others to define him or her. Thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life. Although it was Sartre who explicitly coined the phrase, similar notions can be found in the thought of existentialist philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Heidegger.

Are we truly doomed? I do not believe we are. The fact that human being through her or his own consciousness creates their own values and determines the meaning of their own life is an essential proposition when facing the future. Is the world ending on 12/21/2012? The truth is millions of people will die on that day and millions will be born.

We are essentially made of energy.

Einstein - "Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another." In other words, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and energy, in all of its forms, has mass. Mass also can neither be created nor destroyed, and in all of its forms, has energy. According to the theory of relativity, mass and energy as commonly understood, are two names for the same thing, and neither one is changed nor transformed into the other. Rather, neither one exists without the other existing also, as a property of a system. Rather than mass being changed into energy, the view of special relativity is that rest mass has been changed to a more mobile form of mass, but remains mass. In the transformation process, neither the amount of mass nor the amount of energy changes, since both are properties, which are connected to each other via a simple constant. Thus, if energy leaves a system by changing its form, it simply takes its system mass with it. This view requires that if either mass or energy disappears from a system, it will always be found that both have simply moved off to another place, where they may both be measured as an increase of both mass and energy corresponding to the loss in the first system.

I find this statement reassuring. However, it could be that the energy and mass moving off to another place is what is causing some individuals a great deal of painful ANGST and fear.

My inner knowing tells me that this is a time of reflection. I wish I spoke the language of calculus because it is the language of physical existence. But I speak the language of the mind, which is the spoken language of a society or culture. And I speak the language of the spirit, which is inner knowing and intuited understanding. I truly believe it is the language of the Spirit that will bring calm and the inner knowing that creates existential meaning.

The search for meaning is the main process of Life. We all know this. How many times have I looked into a mirror and reflected on my Life (this is the ultimate metaphor)?

And said why am I here? We explore our existence through careers, passions, family relationships, and group projects such as cultures, communities and governments. We also explore the meaning of life by exploring self—the ever-evolving landscape of perceptions, feelings, beliefs, responses, choice and actions.

How does one truly face doomsday? By looking face-to-face in the mirror and reflecting on the meaning of one’s own life. What do you do if you look in the mirror and you are not satisfied? Feelings of being satisfied or not satisfied are value judgments of the ego mind, the cultural mind. One needs to look deeper and seek out inner knowing. How does inner knowing become apparent? Through meditation and by going into one’s prayer closet.

Each person will face 12/21/2012 in a uniquely different way. Perhaps the actual purpose of focusing so much attention on this day is to reflect on where am I right now and who do I want to be tomorrow. Do I want to be a person filled with fear? Do I want to be selfish? Do I want to be hopeful? Do I want to be Loving?

My 12/21/2012 plan was to be on a cruise in the Galapagos Islands because I love the ocean and I love all that is alive and free. But that did not work out—I will go next year. My personal experience has taught me that life continues—dying is a choice and death is a doorway. A doomsday lifestyle is a fear-dominated lifestyle. We create the energy we live in by our intentions, choices and actions. Our intentions, choices and actions create meaning in our lives. The first step in surviving doomsday is by identifying what is meaningful in your life and honoring your meaningful intentions, choices and actions. The choice is individual, as well as collective within humanity as we are not really separate, between an evolutionary energy versus a retrograde energy.

It is never to late to take personal, constructive action—time is relative (how many points on a line?—an infinite number.) There are many esoteric individuals who suggest that those who will survive doomsday are those who have a higher vibration—in other words a higher energy. What happens when one prays, meditates, or dreams? You change your energy. You can also change your energy by chanting. If I was overwhelmed with fear and my thoughts were running wild—I would choose chanting. Here are links to guide you into the process of chanting.

http://www.wikihow.com/Chant-Om

http://video.about.com/hinduism/How-to-Chant-Om.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

http://ashevillejungcenter.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass-energy#Conservation_of_mass_and_energy