Journal of a Soul 39

The Human Condition

Autumn scene, Fairview Park

This title covers a multitude.  It is a phrase I have heard bandied about since I was in my mid-teens.  When I was young I was very certain of what things I really believed in; I trusted instinctively what society in its wisdom through the education system and the broadcast and print media wanted us to accept almost unquestioned; I welcomed almost wholly the accepted truths promulgated by either Church or State.  However, as soon as I got to college I was encouraged to question accepted opinions and beliefs on a cerebral level. However, it was when things began to crumble on a personal level much later in life that I really began to question the old certainties.  Questioning old certainties has always been part of the life of the thinking person.

Daily Reality

As a firm believer in the positive outcomes of such practices as those of various Meditation techniques, Yoga, Zen, TM, Tai Chi, Falun Gong, Focusing (Eugene Gendlin) and so on, and even ordinary everyday physical exercise, I have instinctively in the last twenty or so years almost always listened to the wisdom of my body.  The body, when listened to in any attentive fashion, is a great yardstick of and guide to what is truly real.  Our bodies in a physical way (through pain and the development of the various psychosomatic diseases) "know" much more about us -  stuff we either refuse to accept about ourselves or the world - or are simply unconscious of in the first place.  That's why another name for Meditation is Awareness (Anthony de Mello has written a wonderful book with this very title which is really worth reading) and Mindfulness, still another more modern synonym.  Such practices train us in precisely becoming more aware firstly of our own bodies through concentrating on or being aware of something so essentially and simply human as our very breathing, and then becoming aware of our "real" or "essential" self, or simply by learning to delight in simply being.  Doing versus Being is an interesting polarity, or contrast, or healthy tension, or dichotomy - call it what you will. They are really the two polar opposites of the see-saw of existence as it were.  I will refer to them more fully below.

What is Your Daily Reality?

My daily reality is that of a 55 year-old Special Education Teacher in a Boys' Secondary School where I teach in the Asperger's Unit as well as doing learning support for pupils who have problems in Mathematics.  In between the teaching, or perhaps more correctly, during that teaching I listen to the vicissitudes of the lives of my charges.  One boy who comes in tells me about his suicide attempts and about his friends who have cut themselves.  Young people (that is, teenagers) today have many concerns, not all as grave or as serious as the one I have briefly described in the foregoing sentence.  Others have addiction problems or are perhaps the sons of absent fathers, or of former or current drug addicts, or of abusive parents and so on and on and on. Others are just going through the usual hard and difficult identity crisis associated with their adolescent years.  However, the nub of the problem, that is of the human condition, is very simple really - all they want is a compassionate and non-judgmental adult ear.   In a sense my workaday world is never dull or dry or sterile. It is always gripping and mostly rewarding if at times somewhat tiring. All you have to do, dear reader, is to ponder what your daily reality is.  Perhaps it would be better for you to write it down for yourself, or if you are artistic you might sketch or paint it, or if musical sing it or play it. 

Lessons to Learn

Autumn Scene, Fairview Park, late November, 2011

There are many lessons we can learn from tuning in to life, from becoming aware or mindful, and I shall attempt to list some of them here.  Pardon me if you have read some of them here before because it is really very hard for me to be fresh and insightful a lot of the time.  When I write here, I often feel like I am repeating myself ad nauseam. However, I take much solace from the answer T.S. Eliot gave to an interviewer who commented that the famous and erudite poet had repeated himself much in his poems and writings that while he may have done so he certainly never said anything ever again in precisely the same way. Anyway, here are some short lessons I have learned from life:

(i) We don't get out of life alive.  This world is not a "dress rehearsal."  We only get one shot at living and we had best make the most of it.  In other words, here we have the context for Horace's famous injunction to us "to seize the day" and forget totally about tomorrow and what it may have in store for us.  Those of you who laboured in the vineyards of the Latin language will recall the actual words of Quintus Horatius Flaccus: "carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero."

(ii) Are we happy in our own skin?  Are we really happy with what we do in life, with our job, in our friends, in our partner and family? 

(iii) Have we really got time for others?  Do we really listen to them?  Or even more importantly do we really have time for ourselves? Do we really listen to our inner "self"?

(iv) Think about, or rather meditate upon that wonderful dichotomy between Being and Doing.  In reality one is not more important than the other.  It is rather the harmonious balance of both that is of utmost importance.  Doing must be challenged by Being, and Being can be  supported and enhanced and  by Doing. There is a further polarity worth mentioning here, too, that of Being and Having.  This existential dichotomy was emphasized and explicated by the psychoanalyst, psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm.  While the Western capitalist system feeds the greed for Having, the Eastern religions emphasize the overriding importance of Being.  While we need to have the basics to survive, and some social economists and psychologists suggest that after an annual income of some 44,000 $ the happiness index goes no higher.   

(v) Carl Jung, following his great friend, mentor and collaborator but later opponent, critic and rival Sigmund Freud, held that “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”  This task takes many long years of work to accomplish.

(vi) Can we live with ourselves, or accept ourselves precisely as we are?  When we make decisions can we sleep easily knowing that we have done our best and have acted from authentic motives?  If we can we are approaching what it means to be true to our core self.

To be continued

Journal of a Soul 12

Self on Caulonia Beach, this Easter season!!

Many years ago when I was a first year student at college I remember reading several of Saul Bellow’s novels.  The one that sticks out in my memory is Henderson The Rain King.  The protagonist, Henderson, is middle aged and somewhat confused as to his identity.  Not alone is he confused about his selfhood, but he simply does not know what he wants from life at all.  Then, throughout the novel we meet with his often repeated chorus: “I want.  I want!”  I think many of us modern and postmodern humans could sing the same chorus as we, too, simply don’t know what we want.  At base, what we want is some direction in our lives, some meaning.  Then the inevitable questions arise:”Who will give us this direction?  Where does that elusive meaning lie?”  These questions are not surprising at all – for, as the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustave Jung puts it, the second half of any person’s life is always about the search for meaning.  After all, the first half is necessarily about getting qualifications, marrying, rearing a family and then, and then and then etc.  And then, what?

As I type these reflections I am sitting in Calabria, South Italy, awaiting my return home to Ireland tomorrow.  Life is also about that, too, waiting. The American poet and critic, Randal Jarrell wrote a famous poem about waiting in line while he was a soldier in Korea, if I remember correctly.  He saw waiting as one of the key conditions of modern humankind, not alone that of the lonely GI.  If you have ever lived in Italy you will know that things work very, very, very slowly indeed here.  Everything is literally drowned or drowning in paperwork at all times.  So much so that any non-native is liable to wonder how anything gets done at all in this wonderfully eccentric and endearing country. However, things do gradually and eventually get done. And then, one will say, albeit much time later - It was all worth the wait!!

And Waiting, then, can be good for the soul.  Let's contemplate that so...

We Westerners don’t like to wait.  We live in a fast world.   It is decades since Alvin Toffler spoke so learnedly about the acceleration of change, never mind the speed of it.  His classic book, in which he proposed this thesis, was called Future Shock.   We want fast food, instant results, instant contact with others, instant service and so on.  As a teacher I find that the concentration of young people today is getting ever and ever poorer.  It is a very hard task to keep the attention of modern teenagers as they are used to instant gratification and stimulation from the virtual world of computer games.  A class dealing with a poem or a period in history can never really be that interesting or gripping no matter how hard the teacher tries to use modern technology to enliven his/her presentation. All knowledge, like wisdom, has to be earned through the blood, sweat and tears of study.  Sure, we can use technology to enhance our presentation of data and even our learning of it, but much spade work still needs to be done by the learner. 

As this is a journal about the soul, I wish to highlight the importance of patience, the learning to sit with the situation we find ourselves in.  Okay, so I cannot get X, Y or Z object now, or resolve A, B or C situation immediately, or earn D, E or F amounts of money!  So what?  Does it make an appreciable difference to me now at this moment? Obviously, I’m mostly talking about people in Henderson’s or Jarrell’s existential situation, not someone dying of starvation or otherwise in extremis.

If I meditate on my situation in a spiritual or soul-building sense I might ponder the following:

What is happiness for me and my loved ones?

Is the price – in terms of health, mental and physical - worth paying for what I/we earn?

Are our children really happy?

Is my job worth it in terms of the human price I’m paying?

Am I really flourishing?  Incidentally “flourishing” or “eudaimonia” was the word Aristotle used for happiness.  In other words, he did not equate happiness with any fleeting feeling.  It was, rather, a sense of flourishing, or of living life to the full in a more wholesome and holistic sense.

As I sit and wait with the realisation of all the things I cannot have now, immediately, this minute, what is at the base of my desire for them?  Is it simply my own delusions?  Do I need to tackle my own self-deceptions?  One step is surely to attempt to become aware of them in the first palce!

Am I really happy in my own skin?  Can I really live with myself?  Do I sleep easily?

As I sit here and meditate on the rhythm of my breath, can I not simply learn to be, to exist, to let the “real” me surface gently?

As I sit here, can I not gently learn to accept myself as I am, to be more patient with my “self” and with significant others in my life?

As I sit here, can I not let my breathing work in unison with the very planet on which I am a miniscule creature?

As I sit here, can I not stop repeating Henderson’s mantra, “I want, I want!”and replace it simply with “I am, I am”  Say it over and over.  Surely Being is more important than Having as Erich Fromm used to emphasise so perspicaciously?  Surely Being beats Wanting any day?