Food?
Evolution is a slow process. Our bodies have evolved over thousands of generations to extract and digest proteins, calories, and vitamins from organic food in a certain way; ultra-processing interferes with that. It’s not necessarily that we’re eating too many calories (which we are) and engaging in insufficient regular exercise (also true), it’s that those calories, now synthesised, are coming in a way that our bodies cannot effectively assimilate. This is the advent of the Super-Size-Me Effect…
Aloneness
Intelligent beings that we are, we develop strategies to survive. The first element is to identify the cause of the problem. The idea that our parents are not up to the task of child-rearing is so cataclysmic that we deduce that the problem must lie in the only other variable of the equation, namely in ourselves. The pain, shame, and guilt resulting from the conclusion that we are unlovable are easier to endure that the spectre of incapable parents, on whom we are still fully dependent…
Misfortune
In the cultivation of emotional sobriety, we first become the witness to our own patterns of thinking and feeling. This is achieved by taking inventory of self. We then learn that we can have our feelings without our feelings having, (i.e., controlling) us. We come to realise that there is a gap between impulse and riposte, and that we can begin to work with, and gradually take up conscious residence in, that gap…
Waking Up
I cannot remember a period prior to incessant rumination about who I was going to be when I grew up. In retrospect, under ideal circumstances this question would never have arisen. I would have been secure in simply being me. That would have been the sturdy foundation for further healthy growth and development. In the absence of such a foundation, we develop neurotic tendencies and come to believe in the reality of our idealized self. The false self lures us into the belief that it is the only true self. We have been hypnotized, have fallen asleep…
Expectations
The rules of this playbook are tacitly constructed, implied, and enforced (at least we try). No conscious communication has taken place, and nothing has been mutually agreed. Now, imagine that each member of the family is playing the same game, unbeknownst to themselves and the other parties involved, and you have a recipe for a quintessentially dysfunctional home…
Signposts
We have created a culture which promises success and happiness, if only we identified and acquired the right ingredients out there. The right education, the successful career, the perfect partner, the recognition of our peers, even the right car. The title of this game is: `I’ll be happy when…..´ This is the lie of the Inner Critic, or Judge Saboteur, which is constantly engaged in judging self, others, and circumstances…
Big Mind
Recovery is about moving from illusion to truth. We acquire the insights and tools required to escape the bondage of constant anxiety and fear. Now it is clear that, while I have my feelings, I am not my feelings. That is a great leap forward indeed. It is not the full story, however, as beautifully elaborated by Stephen and Ondrea Levine in their inspiring book on cultivating Spirit in relationships, `Embracing The Beloved´…
Composure
As the crack between impulse and reply widens even further, we enter the realm of responding. Here the gap is sufficiently wide for the protagonist to observe what the impulsive reply might look like, identify and weigh up alternative options, and then make a conscious decision, followed by prompt action…
Developmental Trauma
In the spring before my sixteenth birthday my father had fallen ill. He was diagnosed with lung cancer and had surgery to remove most of his right lung. In those days, the prognosis for such patients was not very good, but his medical colleagues gave him `from one to thirty years´. He didn’t make the one. In the summer and early autumn months of that year, I spent much of the time outside of school hours with him, as he set out on the final stage of this life…
Tomb and Womb
The chrysalis is at one and the same time a tomb, for the caterpillar, and a womb, for the butterfly. In the given situation this may not be apparent at first glance. Impaired by the lens of duality, our perception ensures that one aspect, –usually the receding to which we are so attached, – tends to dominate, and we proceed to engage in a mental struggle between it and its opposite…