Healing
The most challenging years of life are, by definition, those early formative ones. Clinical research points to the fact that the fundamental wiring of our neural networks is almost completely laid down by our fourth birthday. These networks determine our temperament, our behavioral patterns, and belief systems well into adulthood. They will remain dominant until we consciously begin the practice of rewiring, of rewriting the script – if we are so lucky to realize the possibility of doing so…
Falling
When we experience pain, whether due to current issues (a bereavement, a setback, the break-up of a relationship, etc.) or the reactivation of an old episode of pain from the past (e.g. childhood trauma), a common reaction is to want to “unmake” the pain — to make it go away. This is a very human reaction and thus quite understandable. Who wants to experience pain? However, when we learn to shift from being reactive to being “response-able” (a practical definition of Emotional Sobriety), we can accept the painful stimulus as is, and then utilise it as a cue — usually in the form of a new patterns of thinking, feeling, and taking action — which will help us move forward in a healthy manner.
Feeling Better
Eventually, she’ll stop asking. Don’t mistake that silence for peace. It may be emotional self-protection. You may be in for a long, drawn-out cold war. In such a scenario, emotional maturity, otherwise known as Emotional Sobriety, can be manifested in one sentence: “You’re reading the signals correctly. Something is off. It’s work (or any one of several topics). It’s not you. Give me an hour and then you’ll have my full attention.” It’s that simple. You have taken responsibility for your own ― perhaps nebulous or confusing ― feelings, validated what she has noticed, removed the oblique blame, and joined up all the dots…
Going Upstream
Imagine a village in the foothills of a major mountain range, a village where time has appeared to stand still, bisected by a river, always cool from the glacial melt, framed on each bank by snowfields in winter and bright, iridescent, buzzing meadows in summer. Life was carefree and easy in this village until a strange phenomenon arose. First, a lone body washed up on the edge of the pool right in the middle of the hamlet. The inhabitants were perplexed and shaken. This had never happened in living memory. The corpse, which could not be identified, was respectfully buried in accordance with the cultural mores and the villagers returned to their daily routines…
His Story
In his recently-published work, “The Wisdom of the Odyssey”, one of our leading cotemporary Homeric academics, Phil Cousineau, highlights the contrast between the outward journey towards war and victory at Troy, and the onerous disoriented, decade-long, return journey undertaken by Odysseus, to his wife, son and subjects, stating that: While the Iliad asks: “How should one face death and earn honour?”, the Odyssey asks: “How should one live after war and find one’s way home?”…
To Ship Oars
This effortless effort is by no means a permission slip for inertia, a laissez-faire attitude or, indeed, indifference, but rather a manner of living life to the full, trusting in the guidance of the Universe, unattached to specific outcomes, and confident that every situation, without exception, contains gifts and opportunities for the benefit of self and Creation as a whole. By relinquishing our attempts to control outcomes and by trusting that we will be given whatever we need to handle what life throws our way, we seldom revert to the formerly ingrained fear-based patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving…
On Setbacks
My translation of the statement; to supply me with prestige, security, and the like… into the trauma-informed language of the 21st century would draw attention to every child’s needs for ample acknowledgement, attention, affection, and an ongoing felt sense of safety. For those of us who came up short in any of these areas, our Inner Child may, even decades later, continue to attempt to draw our attention to the necessity of healing the woundedness, the childhood trauma. Until these cries for help are heeded and acted upon, we will remain in bondage to impulsive, somatically driven reactions, the coping patterns of the helpless child. This is a form of mental gridlock.
Parents
My paternal grandfather died long before I was born, when my father was a boy of 14. The fact that my dad died when I was a boy of 16 would appear to be the flip side of that coin of synchronicity. He was in his 52nd year and struck me, then, as being a very old man. The luxury of the blessing of enjoying an adult-to-adult relationship with both my daughter and son is something I consciously cherish. Again, through stories and hearsay, I conclude that my paternal grandfather was not emotionally available to his eleven children, of which my father was the second youngest…
Awe
Because many of us rarely experience awe or do so only sporadically, we remain unaware of its beneficial effects on our state of heart and mind. When most of us have the experience of feeling down, for example, we usually look for distraction through busyness or light relief through comedy or entertainment. These are not only less effective than awe; they may, in fact, be counterproductive in that our stress levels are ultimately increased by the end of the day. Cultivating awe, on the other hand, can still the mind and trigger a great mental shift, propelling our neural activity beyond what had become its predictable comfort zone…
Summer Solstice
We arrived on the first day of the retreat in awe of the wild, beautiful natural surroundings of Ballycroy, Co. Mayo in the stunning, pristine, natural landscape of the Erris Blanket Bog. Here in the wild West of Ireland, it would be no surprise to encounter selkies at dusk where the sand dunes meet the ocean on the further shore of the estuary, the confluence of the two black-brown rivers as they dissolve into the broad, salty ocean. This encounter with the “wildness without” is conducive to our opening up to the “wildness within”, a wildness that often gets buried beneath layers of societal expectations, childhood coping strategies, urban living, busy schedules, family obligations, and the superficialities of life in our driven consumer society…