The Feminine and Punctuation May Well Save the World

This piece is dedicated to exited women, brave and vulnerable, who have inspired me beyond words. 

 “The world will be saved by the Western woman.”
—The Dalai Lama, Vancouver Peace Summit 2009

An ambiguous pronouncement, what does it mean? I have been pondering that since it hit my Twitter feed during the 2009 summit. Was it just another demand for women to solve the messes created by the patriarchy? Frankly, I was more annoyed than inspired by this proclamation.

This year presented the deeply alarming war on women and, for me, the chance to revise and republish a paper that I had written in 2008 on the correct usage of punctuation; and, when adding the final touches to the paper—suddenly the Dalai Lama’s words had a new clarity.

So, imagine saving the world with a mash-up of:

• The current political standpoint—specifically, the legislative war on women
• Rejecting the effects of patriarchy—specifically the madonna/whore split

And, lastly:

• Correctly wielding punctuation—specifically, the slash—rightly known as the virgule

You might be wondering, “Oh criminy, where is she going with this?” Admittedly, right-wing politics, Jungian psychology and punctuation might be considered critical thinking non-sequiturs. I cannot imagine even one unanimously satisfactory menu that Rush Limbaugh, Marion Woodman and Grammar Girl would agree upon. Therefore, it is most unlikely, under any circumstances, that the trio would ever occupy the same public space. Not even Chez Panisse’s well-nigh perfect menu would suit all three representatives of this mash-up.

To Jungians, the war on women and the madonna/whore split are obviously connected. The 2012 legislative war on women has introduced more non-Jungians (American women, especially), to Jungian concepts than at any time since Joseph Campbell was featured on the PBS series, The Hero With a Thousand Faces in 1988. Activist, feminist women have discovered the machinations of the madonna/whore complex as both psychic and political realities. They are studying Jung all over again and some are studying psychology for the first time.

While I do not believe that at any time in the past 6000 years any group (or groups) of men convened and decided to make the lives of women as unbearably miserable in as many ways as they could imagine, that has been the precise effect of unbridled patriarchy.

One thing that the patriarchy has consistently done across the centuries and around the globe is to forcefully re-assert itself in when anxiety strikes those in the uppermost reaches of the patriarchy’s power pyramid. It is the nature of patriarchy to distribute discomfort downwards while hoarding power upwards. Women live at the bottom of the pyramid worldwide. Financial and political anxiety on the part of the patriarchal mindset is predictably creating survival nightmares for the most vulnerable of women.

The War on Women:

The war on women—that is, the over 1200 proposed and passed laws intended to limit and even deny women’s bodily autonomy—is, more accurately, a war on disobedient women. The patriarchy is desperately trying to reclaim its authority (power) over women. In morality-cloaked language, the message is that women who want to control their fertility should simply practice celibacy. Which is an indirect way of calling any contraception- or abortion-seeking woman a whore. Of course, Rush Limbaugh actually called Sandra Fluke a prostitute in February 2012 for seeking contraception coverage. The legislation merely implies it.

That legislation ranges from draconian restrictions on abortions (36 states); to ascertaining the ability of any medical or service personnel to deny contraception to customers/patients (20 states); to requiring that doctors lie to women who might opt for abortions (Kansas and Arizona); to forced unnecessary trans-vaginal, pre-abortion ultrasounds (six states); to declaring a woman pregnant two weeks before she ovulates (Arizona); to the Roman Catholic Church attempting to impose its religious patrimony on to the public at large by denying contraception coverage for all its 1.74 million US employees (national: hospitals, universities, etc.), even though most such employees are non-Catholic; and, especially since 98% of American Catholic women use birth control, just like every other American woman. In addition to these general outrages, there are specific cases of women being forced to give birth while shackled to hospital beds and other egregious attempts to control women’s bodies and fertility. What a tangle. What erupted?

Clearly the far right is trying to relegate women into lives that do not include reproductive agency or bodily autonomy. These misogynistic laws appear to be cruelly punitive and medieval. What possible social benefit is there to forcing women to have unwanted pregnancies and to bear unwanted children? The very ideologues passing these laws are completely and peculiarly opposed to providing for throngs of unwanted children and the life-threatening complications of pregnancy and childbirth onto unwilling mothers. Are they unaware of the consequences of such legislation?

Or is something else driving this policy?

What, then, is the patriarchal panic behind this madness? Let’s back up and take a look at the madonna/whore construct, created in the underbelly of the patriarchy.

Madonna/Whore:

Madonna or whore—one or the other. A choice must be made—that is the reality of most women; indeed, the notion of the feminine itself has been bifurcated. She is defined as either a madonna—or she is a defined as a whore. Although, she was never in the conversation about terminology; nor did she participate in any negotiations about the outcomes of this imposed destiny. In truth, she never was allowed to define herself; she was defined from outside herself.

“The essence of oppression is that one is defined from the outside by those who define themselves as superior by criteria of their own choice.”
—Andrea Dworkin

By dint of the prevailing culture, each generation receives and revivifies the patriarchy, generation after generation with astonishingly little change. Such is the psychic and political milieu in which we all swim.

At best, the origins of the madonna/whore split occurred in an attempt to understand the full circle of all things feminine. A splitting apart to understand the parts; and ultimately the whole, if you will. The origins of this division seem to have been forgotten along with the consciousness that there is a patriarchy at all. Truthfully, some have benefitted so handsomely from the patriarchy, that it perhaps rather behooved them to forget the original purpose and deny its existence.

The inability of those benefiting from patriarchal privileges to even see their own privileges eventually drove women into the open rebellion known as feminism. The first-wave feminists, (the original suffragettes, circa the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries), simply wanted legal rights; they had little language to name and frame the inequities in which they lived. Although, a few first wave feminists actually wanted rights on all levels and the unshackling of all things patriarchal, (Mary Wollstonecraft and to a lesser degree, Susan B. Anthony), most of the energy was directed towards securing the right to vote for women; and to cease being the chattel of, first their fathers, and then, their husbands. That took about 100 years.

Harken to the 1960s when the second-wave of feminism arose: this feminism crafted language for the conditions that women experienced. Discourse and discussion developed among women, we named marital rape and sexual harassment. We identified objectification and gave scores of inequities names that are now in common and legal parlance. We fought for—and won—the rights to contraception, abortion, to work outside the home and, occasionally, to be paid equally for doing so. We won the right to compete in schools, in sports, to serve in the military, to have rapists and abusive spouses prosecuted and to determine our own lives to a much greater degree than ever before.

Second-wave feminists began defining themselves on their own terms—at least in part—and rejecting the patriarchal insistence that women be the either emotional caretakers of men vis-à-vis the madonna role, or be declared whores who were expected to absorb the overwhelming majority of patriarchal hatred and abuse.

The patriarchy grew quite agitated with women’s new unwillingness to accept providing to men lifelong emotional succor. It attempted to lure women back into madonnahood, which some tried, but that role no longer fit. No matter what their individual stories were, most women had encountered a fuller sense of themselves. Although, many were seduced with material comforts and manipulations of elevated status, the madonna role was too small for most women to inhabit.

Meanwhile, the patriarchy responded with online gonzo pornography; therefore creating an unlimited supply of virtual whores. Dr. Gail Dines best defines gonzo porn: “…the biggest moneymaker for the $100 billion porn industry—which depicts hard-core, body-punishing sex, in which women are represented as dehumanized commodities who enjoy torture, violence and humiliation…” And, despite the fact that most porn users claim to be using erotica, over 90% of online porn involves violence against women and contempt for the obvious pain of the performers.

Sex trafficking rose as well. A greater percentage of people are enslaved now—both sexual and forced labor, the vast majority of whom are women—than there were when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. At least the patriarchy’s hatred of women is out in the open now, it simply cannot be denied by any thinking person.

Alongside gonzo porn, came the right-wing foot stomping that women re-conform their idea of what women should be; thereby supplying men with an equally abundant supply of madonnas. ‘Cept, it didn’t work.

And the greatest patriarchal secret of all was revealed to the non-Jungian public at about the same time: that the opposite of man is not woman; the opposite of man is boy. The notion that males should emotionally tend themselves without using women along the way is a late twentieth century concept.

The patriarchy has, historically, tortured, maimed, raped, enslaved and murdered women it deemed whores (or witches) for the crime of not providing the emotional comfort that the patriarchy proscribed. The ability of any man to accuse any woman of whoredom exists to this day. A surfeit of madonnas allows men—and animus-possessed women—to remain emotionally immature. Who wants to grow up if that can be avoided, Peter Pan? Nice to have a lot of Wendy’s around.

This current spate of legislation is but the latest patriarchal temper tantrum in reaction to the actuality that there are just not enough Wendys (read: madonnas) to perform the patriarchy’s bidding. We are left to presume that the supply of whores is ample. Or, at least digitally reproduced in sufficient numbers to avert a supply crisis.

Back to the War on Women—

Jungian analyst Gissette Paris writes in The Sacrament of Abortion, “…feminine power is a set of contradictions—the power of life and death. The feminine’s life-giving, protective powers cannot function properly if she does not possess full power, namely, the power over death as well as life.”

Full feminine power terrifies the patriarchal mind. Those minds prefer a bifurcated feminine: “Those whores who defy us with birth control and abortion must be made to suffer,” is the unwritten part of the 1200+ pieces of legislation that have rained upon women in every state in the past seven months. The legal roar commanding women surrender their reproductive rights to the patriarchy is an infantile demand for comfort—to shield grown men, especially powerful men—from the emotional demands of adulthood.

So, the patriarchal threats increase in severity and scope: should a woman become pregnant because she is having survival sex, (sorry, but that is the reality for many poor women), or raped or incested—then she must be forced to show her pregnant self to the world and then we will thereupon call her a whore. Furthermore, forced pregnancy will be imposed upon all women by means of denying women contraception. Thus spake the patriarchy. We hear you loud and clear, old patty-poo. Yes, we do.

The unspoken, and unwritten, patriarchal demand is actually for a greater number of available madonnas. And no tactics are too extreme, too grotesque to employ. The patriarchy is growing miserably uncomfortable. This is all the Wendys’ fault, of course. She must be made to understand her first obligation is to provide succor. And provide it now, damnit.

Women, for the most part, have absorbed the overt and covert patriarchal threats; we have internalized them and are many times made to live in fear of our lives and survival. And yet, instead of becoming madonnas, women are in even more open radicalized rebellion. If there was a response to this infantile legislation, it would be: “Grow up, Peter Pans, and learn to relate with us. We have given enough, thank you very much, and we refuse your definitions of us.”

Uh. Oh.

Politically, this is probably not going to go too terribly smoothly. For anyone. Women are not going to give back their bodily autonomy, even if it is legally mandated. Personally, there will be many friendships and relationships lost in the divide. Intra-psychically, we all have a great deal of housecleaning to do, beginning with refusing the internal madonna/whore chasm in one’s Self (or anima).

The fearsome goddess Kali will certainly redefine the feminine—but not everyone is comfortable with a wholesale jettisoning of the Judeo-Christian framework. However, any re-framing is better than none at all.

Punctuation (At Last!)

Madonna/whore, madonna-virgule-whore. The virgule is an utterly unique punctuation mark, it is a contra-mark, it can mean the word or; and, albeit much less frequently, the virgule can mean and.

Like the contranym, cleave, which can mean either to separate or to join together, the virgule can express both a separation from and a joining with. Slashes can join lines of poetry and combine ideas. The humble slash does something that no other mark does: it indicates two opposite forces. No period means anything other than the completion of an idea; to present a partial idea requires a different mark entirely. No question mark signifies both certainty and inquiry. Not so with the bi-directional slash.

A Note:

From here on out, when I say ‘woman’ I mean the anima in men and the woman herself in women. Make whatever meaning you want of the preceding text.

Disobedience

Disobedient women live bloody, messy, emotional and full-bodied and-type lives. The make the virgule a mark of union in utter delight of crafting a full-circled feminine life—even if the patriarchy labels that defiant and brands them as whores.

Disobedient women refuse over-socialization and have keen discernment. They seek definitions of their own makings and disregard all imposed definitions. They know that what has been done to the feminine has been done to the planet itself. And that the feminine, our psyches and the earth are near tipping points.

They know that the patriarchy despises disobedient women. Of course, this hurts them deeply, but they are not deterred. They dig deep within themselves and recover their sexuality from the splitting virgule and mend their whore to madonna or madonna to whore. You see, to disobedient women, it doesn’t matter. Their bodies remember being burned as witches, tried as blasphemers and being violently beaten and raped. They can still hear the contempt of being called whore. And they remember the hollowness of the false adoration as madonnas.

Disobedient women know that women are prostituted because they have no other choices in the patriarchy. They know that the prostituted suffer torture for all women and they feel a deep sisterhood with them.

They know the agony of being left and they know the necessity of leaving. No matter which side of the virgule she came from, disobedient women endeavor to make the virgule a union, and are both amused and outraged by patriarchal divisiveness.

Yes, that means she wants access to birth control. Oh, and abortion, also. She wants all women to have bodily integrity without overt and covert threats, repressive laws, religious structures, fawning promises of adoration if only women will embrace the role of madonna. No more manipulations. No more either/or.

A Caveat to the Dalai Lama’s Pronouncement:

Only if we are very, very disobedient.

I am pretty certain that the Dalai Lama knows full well that women have to defy the patriarchy to save the world—and that Western women are the most likely of all women to disobey.

Why Disobedience?

Why refuse the madonna/whore division? Because we cannot enjoy the feminine’s protective, life-giving powers if she is cleaved. Because our psyches and the world itself now depends upon re-uniting the contradictory powers of the feminine. Meet you at the virgule; we have a world to save.

“In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see.” —Elie Wiesel

A Showing of Guilt: The Movie

In the entire panoply of emotions, I cannot think of even one emotional pairing less engaging than guilt and shame. There are other emotions held in disrepute, even disdain, but only guilt and shame can evoke this scenario: a friend otherwise interested in the topics I write about suddenly recalled a heretofore forgotten appointment and took an immediate leave—mid-conversation. A conversation that he initiated.

We are, as a culture, that uncomfortable with guilt and shame, we leave our own conversations when shame rears its hideous head. Furious hatred is a more pleasant topic, at least promising a smidgen of righteous gossip. Even suicidal despair is more easily understood and diffused. Really.

Fear not, this article is a description of the mechanics of these states, not an inducement into to either state. The movie reveals the purpose of guilt. Yet, the very words guilt and shame have such inchoate meanings that definitions are necessary to have a meaningful discussion. It seems that we would rather argue about the undefined rather than to stay with the discussion of exactly what guilt and shame really are. What are we even discussing?

Believed to be extremely unpleasant amorphous feeling states, guilt/shame are experiences we seek to avoid. Even if we are uncertain of the meanings of guilt/shame, we can know precisely who instilled such misery upon us.

To further complicate the issue, there are ideologies and individuals who condemn guilt/shame as useless or negative feelings. This, in turn, increases the shame of the person feeling shame. This phenomenon is known as a shame spiral—feeling bad and then feeling bad about feeling bad which makes one feel worse, for which one feels worse for feeling worse, ad infinitum. Our cultural ignorance about these two feeling states can too often entrap us into such shame spirals.

Addictions, depressions and other shame-based disorders seem epidemic in this shame-shaming, shame-denying culture. Years ago, I heard this definition: guilt is feeling bad for what one does and shame is feeling bad about what one is.

That seemed an acceptable, if unsatisfying, definition, and a start perhaps, yet I just had to dig deeper. Surely, that alone would not be the reason that my friend bolted from a conversation that he initiated. Surely, there was much more? The topic of guilt/shame causes such predictable reactions that I simply had to get the shovel and go psyche-digging.

Fair warning: this material is not comfortable in places. Some may not find it simple. I am making a leap of faith that there exists an audience for truly adult psychological material. Anyone can take off clothing and rub body parts—delving into guilt and shame requires a modicum of maturity.

Let’s go to the movie theater now. To see the movie that no one wants to attend.

Guilt: The Movie is Showing at a Theater Near You

So, imagine that Guilt: The Movie is showing at a local multiplex. Theatergoers are uncomfortably making their ways into the theater before the movie starts. Some have slipped into another movie or out the side door. Inside the theater, nervous chatter and the occasional giggle punctuate the preview trailers. No one wants to be here, for certs.

The theater audience is comprised of the following character types: (and I limit myself to the masculine pronoun here)

Mr. Happy-Talk-Pop-Psychology (Denial)

Mr. Rage-Against-the-Guilters (Power over)

Mr. I-Gotta-Go-Now (Dissociative avoidance)

Mr. My-Addiction-is-Calling-Me (Numbing)

Mr. My-Mother/My-Ex-Stars-in-This (Blaming)

The first to attempt to pierce the tension is usually Mr. Happy-Talk-Pop-Psychology who will state loudly enough for all to hear that guilt is a useless/negative emotion. His pronouncement commands everyone in the theater to feel better. Right now. If you note Mr. Happy-Talk-Pop-Psychology’s has no genuinely intimate relationships, you might want to consider his blanket denial of guilt as something more than acausal to his extreme emotional isolation. Take note, also, of his moderate to extreme exploitation of others. Notice that he kills his popcorn instead of chewing it. You just have to wonder.

Sometimes shame and guilt invoke a barely-contained seething rage. Which makes sense if one understands that guilt and anger are both very connected sentry emotions; each has information regarding our interactions with others. They are both social justice emotions if you will. I will return to the function of the feelings following a primer on the structure of the human psyche.

Mr. Rage-Against-the-Guilters takes this a wee bit further. He wants to frighten/control/dominate anyone who would ever again stir the feelings of shame in him. An otherwise nice fellow can be downright scary if Guilt: The Movie is playing.

Mr. I-Gotta-Go-Now is long gone by now. He did not even finish his popcorn.

Mr. My-Addiction-is-Calling-Me breaks open the hip flask of his drug-of-choice. He cannot be bothered with anything to do with guilt. Bottoms up.

Mr. My-Mother/My-Ex-Stars-in-This will regale everyone with the crimes against his noble spirit. Notice I said spirit, not integrity. His integrity left him long ago, probably no longer able to inhabit being so profoundly unwelcome.

None of these audience members even like each other. Just before the theater breaks into an all-out brawl, the previews suddenly stop. The projector light flickers a bit, and, for a moment, the theater is quiet. Everyone feels worse than ever. What gives?

A Primer of the Human Psyche

Because I find the Jungian concept of the psyche and its dynamics the most complete, I have created this diagram from several Jungian sources, primarily from Joseph Campbell’s Mythos I series. Everything above the horizontal line is conscious material: memories, reality, learning, thinking, anything that you know and that which you know that you know.

Think of each of us floating around—partially above the surface and partially below the surface of the collective unconscious. The diagram depicts one psyche, but it is actually quite crowded in there. Floating about in the unconscious are all other psyches.

All things below the horizontal line are unconscious—one cannot identify the contents of the unconscious, yet, from time to time, those contents can be felt as an amorphous mood that one cannot identify. Everything within the partial circle beneath the line is the personal unconscious; that is, the contents are or were real enough, but are not available to the conscious mind. Repressed, denied, minimized events and feelings are in the personal unconscious along with events that occurred prior to one’s being able to comprehend, both traumatic and mundane.

Within the personal unconscious is the personal shadow—that repository of all things that we have not claimed as our own, that which we both despise and that which we admire. The shadow is made of two parts: the things we have done that do not jive with our concept of ourselves, our morality—the dark shadow; and things that we admire in others, yet doubt we can ever be—the golden shadow.

On the diagram, the upper crest—the persona (or mask) one shows the world—is the place that one meets the others consciously (both other individuals and the collective consciousness), through the porous persona. A healthy persona has about the porosity of a jellyfish. It takes in from others and the collective and breathes out from the deeper self when appropriate.

That intersection with the world, the persona, is the place being monitored by both sentry emotions: anger—which looks outward for boundary violations; and guilt—which looks inward for relational violations against others and the self. If another transgresses unfairly or predates upon one’s psyche, anger is aroused to restore justice. Conversely, if one’s actions or inactions violate another, guilt is the means of alerting us to make amends, to behave in a fairer manner.

Guilt is a Social Sentry Emotion Looking In at Our Own Behavior

Anger, necessarily, makes us feel larger, more capable and powerful. Guilt reminds us that we need to contract, to consider others, that our own actions are threatening valued connections with others. Guilt, consciously knowing that we have caused offense to others, allows us to remain in integrity. Without guilt, there is can be no integrity. Guilt is our personal assessment that we did something wrong or that we failed to do something that was right.

The thought of shrinking in deference to others is often most unwelcome information that is promptly shoved into the personal unconscious. Guilt is conscious until it is too painful and then it is deposited with other information that one cannot process into the unconscious and/or personal shadow.

The overarching patterns of guilt-inducing behaviors are hidden in our personal shadows while the actual shame floats around freely in the unconscious untethered from the behavior from which it originated.

At this point, I would like to include that no one consciously chooses to make guilt into shame. When guilt’s information is too threatening or painful for the psyche, it is deposited in into the unconscious, this is not a choice, it is survival. At that point, guilt becomes shame.

Shame is Unconscious Guilt
When guilt is made unconscious it becomes personal shame. The collective unconscious also contains shame. The specific behavior(s)—that which would make it conscious—is removed from the emotional content when it falls into the unconscious and it remains an intense feeling of leaden unworthiness which periodically connects with a specific guilt/anger or undeniable shame and surfaces as an overwhelming sense of shame. The helplessness one feels around these upcroppings is usually close to overwhelming.

Sometimes the guilt assessment is skewed by incorrect information or immaturity. The accuracy of the assessment does not change the emotional response of guilt. A four-year-old child may decide that if he were a good enough boy his alcoholic father would sober up, stop beating his mother, be a good father and love him as his beloved son. The assessment is incorrect, but the intensity of the resultant guilt and shame remains in spite of the accuracy of the assessment. When his father continues to drink and things only get worse, the child almost necessarily slips into shame. Even though the child lacked the ability to accurately assess his familial issues, he is entreated to the guilt as if it were his fault.

You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide

Occasionally, shame can pierce the veil of consciousness with great intensity. Usually, only the horrid feelings are conscious with little or no information available. The usual Western response at this point to push the shame back into the unconscious with active addictions, depression, acting out, rage, compartmentalization, denial, intellectualization and a variety of other defenses, strategies and combinations of strategies. We believe that by making shame unconscious again that we have banished it from our lives. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Shame is drawn from the collective unconscious traveling through the personal unconscious before cresting onto our emotional radars. In the unconscious, we are all surely one.

We invariably project the contents of our own personal shadows onto others. By seeing “out there” what we most despise and admire, we can begin to learn to relate to those characteristics without being overwhelmed by them. Projection is the primary way that we know the contents of our personal unconsciousnesses. It is perfectly normal, in other words.
Sometimes the contents of the unconscious make themselves known through other means, a mood that will not go away, and another unwelcome repeating pattern.

It is impossible to be alive, to interact with others, without feeling both guilt and anger. Why? Because they are the sentries of our interactions with others, sentries of our integrity, if you will. If one accepts exploitation by others, anger is aroused. If one exploits others, guilt is aroused.

Sure, one can numb one or both feelings and therefore be forever careening from exploitation to exploitation. Numb anger only and one will experience being exploited. Numb guilt and one will exploit others ruthlessly. Numb both and every interaction becomes a duel: the winner exploits the loser. All scenarios are unattractive and all lack integrity.

Stepping off the exploitation roller coaster and developing integrity is the most difficult adult undertaking. It is a lifetime process.

Mr. Happy-Talk-Pop-Psychology is at the concession stand trying to con the attendant into a free popcorn refill.

Mr. Rage-Against-the-Guilters is fuming onto the hairdo in front of him that is partially blocking his view. Of course, moving to Mr. I-Gotta-Go-Now’s empty seat has not occurred to him. Actually, the public has stayed away in droves from this movie. There are plenty of empty seats.

And Mr. My-Mother/My-Ex-Stars-in-This is still nattering on about the wrongs done to him. Oh, the guilt he has borne, year after year…um, does he remember a grocery list as well as he remembers the wrongs he has endured?

The theater lights dim.

Guilt: The Movie

The curtain opens.

Two old rivals, Anger and Guilt, learn to exist together and then discover how much they really need each other, finally uniting to fight exploitation together, Anger dealing with outside influences and Guilt with internal ones. Discernment played a supportive role in advising how and when pugnacious Anger should make itself known and how to mediate Guilt’s sometimes heavy-handedness.

Full of action, tension and reclaimed shame, Guilt: The Movie has character depth and action galore.

When Anger thought he could throw his weight around, Guilt promptly took him into a dark alley and Anger emerged with a two black eyes and a limp. Not a terribly quick study, Anger tried it again. Guilt took him to the same alley. The result was two more black eyes and a worse limp. The third time Anger got too big for his britches, he just walked to the alley without Guilt’s help and waited for the inevitable.

However, this time, Outside Danger lurked in the alley and Anger got them both out safely. Guilt discovered that he needed Anger as much as Anger needed him. After that, they were inseparable comrades-in-arms.

They reached in and unburied lots of shame while fighting evildoers. An action flick all the way around.

Spoiler alert: What was most astonishing was the surprise appearance of Integrity accompanied by Intimacy at the very end. Clearly, neither Anger nor Guilt was expecting that, although both knew that if they did not continue to cooperate with each other, Integrity would be leave and take Intimacy with him.

The curtain closes.

The End…

The lights come back on.

Wait, Mr. Happy-Talk-Pop-Psychology, Mr. Rage-Against-the-Guilters and Mr. My-Mother/My-Ex-Stars-in-This are long gone.

Oh, the men that are in the theater as the lights come on? They are men with integrity. Did they sneak into this movie? Are they men transformed? Men who stepped aside from their former defense mechanisms? I cannot know. They certainly do not seem to be anything at all like the men who entered this theater.

They look like they enjoyed the movie. They got it. They seem to be calling some of their guilt back from the depths…something sacred is occurring.

I would volunteer to be an usher at this movie. It would be such an honor.

The Beginning of Integrity

So how does one work with guilt and shame? Well, first, it is not easy. It is not simple, there are no Seven Habits of Highly Effective Guilt-Handlers. It is not fast, it takes a lifetime.

This is no job for ninnies. It takes full-on adulthood. If your definition of adult material is nude sexual posturing in front of a camera, you probably are still enjoying your adolescence.

If you are prepared, I suggest starting Robert A. Johnson’s Inner Work (plus anything else Johnson ever wrote) and Karla McLaren’s The Language of Emotions. A wise therapist can be very helpful. Being accountable to a group of some sort seems to help sustain emerging integrity. From there, trust your guilt to oversee your interactions (with others and intrapersonally), ever asking, “Who has been hurt/dishonored? What needs to be made right?”

(Questions courtesy, The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren)

Terre Spencer

10/2011

Where My Prayers Went

A friend asked me to pray for her.

She does not know

my most awful secret—

I do not know where my prayers went.

 

 

Maybe my prayers are aloft in winds

that were never scooped up for review.

Prayers decades old—each launched with

anticipation’s faint acrid film upon my tongue.

 

 

“Prayer can move mountains,”

Sister Pauline told our second grade class.

So I spent my recesses and lunches praying

for almost an entire school year.

 

 

Well, nothing changed.

And those were my very best prayers,

I said them exactly as I was taught.

I do not know where those prayers went.

 

 

I kept praying. Later, I tried

new gods, old gods and made-up genderless gods.

In Latin, Sanscrit, Hebrew…

Alas, I do not know where those prayers went.

 

 

I prayed fervently for love

for decades. On pillows, onto sleeves and

into every blackness that that my desperate hope

led me. Faithfully, without question.

 

 

Maybe I was facing the wrong direction

or did not have the appropriate attire.

Finally, I stopped praying—because no god that I knew of

knew where my prayers went either.

 

 

Even if a deity relented, it would take an eternity

to hear all my tearful requests.

Even if they all arrived today, sorted by topic

and arranged by urgency.

 

 

So, when someone asks me to pray for them,

I don’t.

It is the kindest thing that I can do.

Because I do not know where my prayers go.

 

 

Even now, I am always looking, looking

for their sounds, the taste of tears that would identify them.

Surely, they are still somewhere,

wherever my prayers went.

 

 

I hope that one day

I’ll find all my prayers

caught in some trees or maybe

strewn on a beach like starfish after a storm.

 

 

 

When I find them, I will gather them up

and hold onto them forever

Because everyone wants to know

where their prayers went.

Sex-Positives: The New Puritans

It struck me the second time I was called a conservative in a matter of a few months. Well, after I stopped hysterically laughing, that is. There was something familiar, well trodden about the accusations. Yet, me, a conservative? About anything? Twice? Seriously?

Before I identified that nebulous familiarity, memories of my late father-in-law Wally Laird, came to mind. Yes, he was the person with whom I would most enjoy discussing this, were he still alive to do so. In the nearly 25 years since Wally has been gone, I have never been compelled to actually speak aloud to him. Being called a conservative was impossible enough to attempt to speak to Wally, why not after all? Things had suddenly become surreal enough to have a conversation with dead people.

“Wally, I was called a conservative!” I laughed aloud, hoping to invoke my first contact with a spirit world if there is indeed such a thing. “Hey, Wally, you there?”

No spirit came, but long-ago memories of ongoing verbal jousting with Wally came back with fondness. Wally, a lifelong Republican, called me “a pinko, commie, heart-on my-sleeve bohemian. There might have been more descriptors in the string that he used for me, but that was the essence of his nickname for me. We adored each other although we were as politically different as any two people could have been.

Me, a conservative? Barry Goldwater, Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh would be horrified at the thought of incorporating any my political ideas into their ideologies. Maybe worse than horrified. Likewise, no religious conservative would welcome one iota of my theology. Wally, were he alive, would rail at anyone calling me a conservative of any stripe and then we would laugh over such a preposterous event over an after-dinner scotch. Damn, I miss him.

The memories of Wally faded into the current circumstances that brought me to be called a conservative, although I was still chuckling about these peculiar accusations. That I had been called conservative twice in such a short time gave me pause, what on earth was going one, what was that unidentified, and distantly familiar sense about this?

For failing to embrace the exact sexual mores of the two accusers, I was practically spat upon as an anachronistic conservative. Yep, that was it. For failing to embrace free love and porn-saturated imagery for myself, I was dismissed as a conservative, by two persons who claimed to be sex-positives.

Sex-positives? So if I somewhat disagree, I am, by inference, a sex-not-so-positive? And if I really disagree, I am a what? A sex-negative? Tricky devils. That was it—the familiarity—just like the danged Puritans. The sex-positives were behaving just as the Puritans did. Right down to accusing me of being conservative.

The Puritans—Radical Reformers

First a brief history refresher: Who were the Puritans? What were the characteristics of Puritanism? Let us look at the Puritans within the historical context from which they emerged as Protestant reformers. After failing to bring England to their way of practicing Christianity, this group later largely emigrated en masse to the English colonies, now the United States.

Continental Europe experienced a wrenching political, social and religious separation from Roman Catholic power upon the advent of Martin Luther’s defection from the Vatican. From 1560 to 1715, a period of 145 years, there only thirty years of peace. During the remainder of that time, there was a minimum of one and up to five religious wars occurring concurrently all over the continent. 1500 years of Roman Catholic religious and political domination required 150 years of religious strife and open warfare to release its grip upon the Western world.

France, for instance, was ravaged by 35 years of religious war bracketed by fifty years of strife both before and after the actual war itself. The region currently known as Germany fared worse, being pretty much in open warfare from 1562 to 1700. Known then as the Holy Roman Empire, the area lost 25 percent of its inhabitants to repeated generations of religious wars. Ultimately, the Holy Roman Empire (which was neither Roman nor an empire) fractured into hundreds of petty fiefdoms, primarily because of nearly 150 years of religious warfare.

Brutal religious wars occurred in every other country in Europe as well, not one country was spared violent reform. Wars, burnings, sieges, beheadings, executions, murder, theft, famine, forced emigrations, forced conversions, decrees of banishment and kidnapping are a mere fraction of the legacy of Europe’s attempted religious reform and the resisting of such reforms.

England’s Reformation occurred at the level of the monarchy long before there was a sizable Protestant populace. Henry VIII defected from the Vatican in 1534 in order to divorce his aging Catholic wife, Katherine of Aragon, and to marry Anne Boleyn in the hopes of having a male heir. This set England apart from continental Europe that primarily had Catholic rulers and a burgeoning Protestant populace. England had a suddenly Protestant monarchy and a largely Catholic populace when Henry broke from Rome. The English Reformation was from the top down; the Church of England was created by Henry VIII and became England’s official religion.

Although England did revert to Catholicism briefly under the rule of Henry’s eldest—and Catholic—daughter Mary; her early death brought the Protestant Elizabeth I to the throne. Pragmatic and determined to hold the middle ground in religious matters, Elizabeth reveled in resplendent pomp for both court and religious ceremonies at the same time she reinstated the Church of England as the state religion. Although not as openly violent as the rest of Europe, the change from Catholic England to Protestant England resulted in reformers killing other reformers nearly as often as the Protestant/Catholic violence erupted.

Upon Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, a previously exiled group of English Protestants returned to England. This group was determined to enforce very strictly the Calvinist code they believed to be correct. They also believed that the English Reformation had not gone far enough. Elizabeth’s retention of lavish trappings for herself and her court were considered “popish” by these extremist reformers. In reaction, this particular group of reformers dictated black and white only garb for their members, because ornamentation was conservative, a remnant of the Roman Church that they strove diligently to eliminate from all of England.

For their efforts to purify English doctrine along Calvinism dogmatic lines, they were named Puritans by their detractors. They never gained political power in England and became increasing shrill and separatist. By the mid-1700s, the Puritans were no longer a political consideration in English politics at all—doctrinal infighting and several generations of emigration reduced their effectiveness, their numbers and their ardor.

In the New World, however, they had quite an influence. In the colonies, they practiced their doctrines that were considered radically extreme in England, and as a result, the Puritans’ beliefs shaped the emerging United States’ culture.

Remember, if you will, that the Puritans believed that the English Protestant Reformation had not gone far enough. They were fighting against the established doctrines of the Roman Church, convinced that their interpretation of Christian scripture the only possible correct one. All others were in error from their viewpoint. An interesting aside: the Puritan declaration of doctrinal infallibility foreshadows the Vatican’s 1870 papal infallibility declaration.

So, in the Puritans we see a group of reformers who insisted that their doctrines must become the social norm with no latitude or questioning/discussion from either practitioners or others.

The Sex-Positive Movement

Fast-forward to 1999 and the founding of the Seattle Sex Positive Community Center, frequented by a group of reformers who believed that the sexual reformations of the 20^th century had not gone far enough. Is this starting to sound familiar? By calling themselves sex-positives, the implication is that if one does not agree 100% with their every doctrine, one is sex-negative.

Conversely, the Puritans referred to themselves as “the godly.” Adopting this moniker certainly was a sly means of condemning those who disagree with their reformations as the presumably ungodly.

Now turning the same techniques (rigid fundamentalism, all-or-nothing insistence upon doctrinal agreement and judgments delivered to dissenters with rabid contempt), onto Protestant sexual mores, the sex-positive movement is taking a Puritan-like tack in its approach to sexual matters. Could anything be more ironic, really?

If one chooses monogamy and no porn in one’s relationship, the new “godly” call this conservative with great vehemence. Again, judgment delivered with a Puritanical intolerance with the intention to to dismiss them entirely or to shame the recipient into agreement/acceptance of their doctrines.

Shame? From a movement that calls itself sex-positive? How perfectly Puritanical!

Ah, it is still possible to be unbearably self-righteous and quite sly all in the same breath. The sex-positives invite no discussion with the likes of people like me and have no interest in exploring why someone would chose anything but a sexual free-for-all for himself or herself. The message is clear from this camp: “Agree to everything we endorse or we will attack and dismiss you as a sex-negative conservative.”

Somehow, I find this as quaint as the very Puritans against whom the sex-positives claim that they are rebelling. Will the sex-positives soon become marginalized by internal disagreements after they discover that the “yes” to everything sexual is just as ridiculous as the “just say no” approach is to drug use—oversimplified non-discernment? Surely, someday they will recognize that discernment is necessary, both personally and socially? That both individuals and the culture at large have to make ongoing determinations for sexual behavior? That to naively insist that any and all sexual behavior is good for everyone is as fundamentally puritanical as to insist that only highly proscribed sexuality is utterly necessary?

I would like to hear members of this movement explain their personal and collective discernment process in dealing with sexual matters. At this venture, I cannot see discernment of any sort from the sex-positive movement other than the extollation of safe-sex practices.

My call for monogamy and no porn is met with scorn and labels that really do not fit. If I want to have a life free of porn and mutually exclusive relationship, how is this threatening to sex-positives? Surely, the sex positives are not in favor of sex slavery that is the result of the flourishing porn industry? Surely, the sex-positives do not want children sexualized and women objectified and dehumanized? Surely there are some grounds for agreement and many more for discussion? Maybe my assumptions are incorrect. At present, I cannot know, as the only contacts I have with sex-positives are the times they call me conservative for my choices. I would really like a discussion with members of the sex-positive movement about a number of issues and hope that one day that is possible.

Are we doomed to 150 years of strife over this essential refusal to discuss our differences without absolutes being thrust upon us all one way or the other? To understand that choices are not always free and simple? My sense of history and the familiar gives me a sobering shudder.

In the meantime, two sex-positives have labeled me a conservative, which provided me hours of entertainment and brought back fond memories of Wally. My only regret is that Wally is no longer alive to guffaw about all this. We would have had a great discussion, probably never agreeing on much of anything other than that the sex-positive movement is as narrowly pinched as the Puritans were. After a belly laugh, we would have moved onto politics and other social issues, disagreeing and questioning each other, and then finally joining the rest of the family in great spirits afterwards.

Wally, did you get that? I’ve been called a conservative! Wally, I miss you way too much to enjoy this last laugh alone. In addition, I am not going to let these rigid fundamentalists, these new Puritans, shut down the questioning discussions that we so enjoyed. Nope, I am pointing out the narrowness and self-righteous inferences of any (no matter how attractively they might name themselves) who refuse to engage in discussions. Because when discussions are halted, a horrid extremism sets in. Wally, what I want is what we had. Affectionate, mostly respectful disagreement. Yes, we volleyed names back and forth and at the same time, the mutual admiration we held for each other was clear to all.

Is Civil Discussion About Sexual Mores Possible?

Although I am not seeing any indications that there is even a hint of an invitation to have sane public discussions with either the religious right and/or the sex-positives about sexual mores, I still hope against all reason that culturally and individually we can craft a mostly respectful means to have this conversation because so much depends upon us being able to do so.

Call me conservative; call me a pinko, although neither is accurate. So although I prefer to call myself discerning rather than conservative (or liberal, for that matter), I am not going to be deterred by labels lobbed at me from any camp, nor will I surreptitiously eradicate their use of porn. Conversely, others assume that I share their religious injunctions against porn. Neither is correct. Ditto with monogamy, which is neither a moral nor a political statement for me. It is what works for my psyche.

I have worked out what works for me, I am looking at human behavior and the humans behind the behavior. That is the place from which I would like to have the discussions. Is that at all possible?

Zeno’s Paradox and Addiction

It’s Hard to Get Enough of What Almost Works

I just finished Dr. Gabor Maté’s In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, the most humane, scientific and, dare I say, Jungian-without-Jungian-terminology foray into addiction I’ve read. This is high praise from someone who has read more than 200 books on addiction, listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts and audiobooks, read maybe another one hundred research papers on the topic. Several times since the 2008 publication, I’ve heard the author interviewed, and made a mental note to read the book.

Yet, Dr. Maté’s earlier interviews had never addressed the damage that addicts do to those around them, which I felt deeply ambivalent about. He seemed so okay with active addicts being, well, active addicts. Yet, I remembered that I’d left an utterly unrepentant addict and was in no frame of mind to issue get-out-of-jail-free cards to addicts. Nope, I was holding addicts accountable as I was struggling to identify and process what I had been dealt. Wondering Why didn’t he just bloody stop? haunted me.

Early this summer I heard a podcast interview with Dr. Maté, coincidentally, while in a bookstore, and left the store with the book. Hungry ghosts is a Buddhist notion for intensely unconscious and instinctually driven beings, no longer fully alive due to their compulsive behavior. Ghosts may crave intensely and seek incessantly, but their ability to be nourished is long absent.

The Jungian therapist David Schoen depicted addiction as an archetype in The War of the Gods in Addiction. Anyone who has observed an addict over time probably sees the addict’s behavior very much like an archetypal possession. Attempted communion with the archetypical destroys mere humans, overwhelming the ego with too-potent energies. But we humans persist. Sometimes we so desperately want to transcend distress that no risk—psychic, spiritual or physical—seems too great. Maté calls all addiction “a flight from distress.”

While reading Maté’s patients’ evocative stories, one senses their addictions as an archetypical presence. This well-written volume weaves the reality of addiction with the vanguard of science. Peppered with the neuroscience of our brains’ dual cravings—both the opiate attachment-reward and the dopamine incentive-reward systems that dictate some of our behavior with nary a frontal cortex neuron’s involvement—Hungry Ghosts goes onto explain that our earliest experiences “set” these two systems.

An imbalance created early in life in one or both reward systems foreshadows our future cravings/compulsions and, perhaps, addictions. Early trauma, abuse, neglect and injury can affect how our brains function for the whole of our lives. Although brains can recover to surprising degrees upon cessation of active addictions (both substance and process addictions), the addicted brain is ever-susceptible to its pre-established imbalances.

Without knowing the powerful dictates of maladapted brain chemistry and its resultant cravings, Jung posited that it would take either a spiritual transformation or a strong human community to overcome addiction. Writing of one his former patients, Roland H., who had shared Jung’s adumbrations about addiction with Bill Wilson (co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous), just before Wilson became sober and started AA in this now-famous letter, Jung stated:

“…his (Roland W.’s) craving for alcohol was the low-level equivalent of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God.

…you might be led to that goal (of sobriety) by an act of grace or through a personal and honest contact with friends…

…the evil principle prevailing in this world, leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition, if it is not counteracted either by a real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community. An ordinary man, not protected by an action from above and isolated in society cannot resist the power of evil…you see, alcohol in Latin is spiritus and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.”

Jung also realized that both substances and processes were addictive:

“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.”

Maté writes of his own work addiction. And his compulsion to own classical music CDs, most of which he admits are never played once purchased. He writes plainly that he has lied to his wife about compulsive  CD purchases. On many occasions. That he has hid purchases, or parts of purchases, to manage his wife’s reactions to his latest music acquisitions. Just like an addict. He describes dulling the painful, empty place inside of him by planning and obsessing about owning various recordings and the ultimate high and release of his inner anxieties when he succumbs to the purchases. Followed by shame and deception. Oh, addiction, you are predictable.

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and addiction are interrelated. These bilateral structures of the brain are rich in opiate and dopamine receptors and have an a plenitude of connections to the limbic (emotional) system. Additionally, the OFCs receive sensory inputs from all five senses while maintaining vast connections with both the implicit and explicit memory systems. Both substance and process addicts’ OFCs do not function normally.

Why does that matter? The OFC’s purpose is to evaluate diverse stimuli and make a story for the frontal cortex. To tell a story to the frontal cortex for final decision-making. According to PET scans, the OFC has made decisions up to ten seconds before subjects report that a thought has occurred, with muscles already taking action well before the moment that the decision had been made. Although sometimes overridden by the frontal cortex, the OFC determines much of our behavior, emotional lives and decisions by acting as a hub for many portions of the brain to cohere into a story.

I am awed that Jung seemed to know that senses, feelings, imagery and story-making were connected decades before there was a shard of evidence. The OFC findings point to a wiring and chemical connection.

Addicts of all stripes report a nearly identical addictive process: a fantasy/preoccupation, intense craving, using, anxiety reduction followed by shame and increasing anxieties, which loops back to preoccupation. The short biochemical description of addiction is that all addicts are addicted to their own brain’s chemical surges. The variety of ways that addicts jolt their brains into overproducing shows a remarkable and telling creativity on the part of the addicts. So that begs the question of why one person is drawn to a work addiction and another to alcohol? Why heroin? Or sex? Or methamphetamine? Or collecting classical CDs? Or information avarice?

To address that, Maté quotes Dr. Vincent Felitti: “It is hard to get enough of something that almost works.”

It was music that soothed Maté during a traumatic infancy in a Nazi-controlled Budapest ghetto. His father had been taken to a concentration camp, leaving his mother with the baby Gabor. Sometimes she spent 18 hours a day outside the home getting subsistence-level food for herself and her baby. When Gabor cried, no one came to soothe him. Both parents were utterly non-responsive to his crying. His mother left music playing while she was away obtaining food. Music was not the closeness to his mother that he really wanted, but it almost soothed him. Now, Dr. Maté finds that he will employ identical behaviors that he sees in his substance abuse patients to own yet another recording of Don Giovanni.

And his wife inquires: “Gabor, don’t you already have eight of that one already?”

Reading of Maté’s curious compulsion, it occurs to me: information almost works for me. Copious information almost makes the the world make sense. It almost bolsters me to face life courageously. Almost. My history offered knowledge-gathering as a substitute for parental bonding. Doesn’t the word almost conjure the image of hungry ghosts? Always grasping, yet ever empty?

Any particular addiction (or combination of addictions) almost works for that addict. Whatever combination each particular addict crafts is indicative of whatever it is that s/he is trying to resolve/staunch/sooth and what is available to relieve that. Again, Jung’s reach into patients’ histories for personal narrative in cultural context seems like current neuroscience.

Would a PET scan of my brain taken after a research binge reveal similarities to an alcoholic after a drinking binge? I do not know. I only know that I crave information. There I said it. If I could, I would inject sentences, thoughts and concepts into my veins to keep the information coming in. Information almost works for me.

Yes, clearly an addiction to information lives within me. Books are my first choice, followed by podcasts, audiobooks, lectures, workshops, classes, documentaries, research papers…and ad infinitum. Even though I have read piles of wonderful books, an identical anxiety looms in the last paragraphs of every one of them. An understood world is not a safe world, just a less anxious one for me. Hungry ghosts, indeed.

Like many addicts, I have been rather self-justified about my addiction, smug rather than ashamed of my imbalances. Because isn’t being uninformed just the worst of all possible fates? Isn’t not knowing like being an slack-jawed imbecile? I’ve certainly thought so. Years ago, I remember my son watching the DVD, Gladiator, and perhaps, in passing, I muttered something about conflating Roman emperors and movies with poor historical foundations. Perhaps.

“Oh stop, Mom, go argue with the History Channel.” my son protested, annoyed that I was questioning the veracity of the movie he found enthralling.

I am sure I shot something right back at him, which I am equally certain he ignored.

Now my son’s words sound uncannily like“Gabor, don’t you already have eight of that one already?” and Why didn’t he just bloody stop?

Why didn’t he just bloody stop? Because it almost works, that’s why. Was that the gem I have long been reading and listening for? Maybe, just maybe. Addiction is the repetition of what almost works, including my own.

And where does this take me, this new realization? I simply do not know and that is finally and incredibly satisfying.

Pursuit: The Creative Process

I awoke this morning and
a poem began speaking
itself to me. Softly at first.
Of course, I ignored it, silly poem.

I-do-not-have-time-to-write-a-poem-on-work-mornings.
I have things to do, a schedule to keep.
I brewed my coffee with the
danged poem murmuring into my ears.

Coffee made, I escape to answer email.
Surely, the poem will not follow me.
It should get the hint and give up.
I have things to do.

While answering emails,
the poem became, yes, louder.
Louder! The words more distinct.
“Look,” I say to the air around me—

“I do not have time to jot you down.
You goofy poems take hours to write.
I have to go to work.
No, I will not take notes. Go away, you pesky poem. Scram.”

I answered emails with the poem getting louder
And even typing itself into my emails.
Luckily, I was able to delete those
crazy words it was making me type.

It was not even in sentences, now,
what if my emails were sent out like that?
The email would be senseless responses to
very serious questions. A narrow escape.

But then the poem resorted to
also becoming a holograph hanging
between my thoughts and the outside world
As if I invited it in that place.

I am bemused that this poem is so brazen.
Uninvited entity that it is.
But it simply does not stop.
Now I am getting annoyed.

I can see the verse, hear the words
demanding that I write it down.
I defy the poem—
Who does it think it is?

Commandeering my morning like this?
From the time I awoke, it has been haranguing me
I listened to a podcast while I was taking my walk
or at least I tried—

But the damned poem was louder!
It even blocked my view of the sunrise,
putting its ascenders and descenders all over.
In a font I do not particularly care for.

I tried to shower, and dry my hair,
get dressed because I have a schedule to keep.
But the poem was so insistent that
I was forced to stop and jot the damned thing down.

Are you happy now?
I am running late for work.
Look what you have gotten me into, you creepy poem.
I hate you.

Do you suppose I can just call in
and tell my manager
that I am running late
because a poem hounded me this morning?

That I was trying to get dressed and
all I could see or hear was this stupid poem?
Poem, do you know how crazy that sounds?
Do you have any idea what my boss will say to that one?

Oh, you will have me in the human resource
hall of shame, you bratty-ass poem.
I am going to write you in prose format
to punish you for this disruption.

How dare you. I will paragraph your sorry ass
into common courtesy, I will.
And justify your ragged lines,
finish your incomplete sentences.

Do I look like a poet? No, I do not.
So what are you bothering me for?
Did you get lost on your way to
a real poet? Get a GPS.

You poor-grammar poem,
you will be so sorry you came
to bother me this morning, I have things to do.
Oh, what was I doing when I began telling off a poem?

Okay, I wrote you down, just to stop you
from shouting even louder, do you hear?
Are you happy now? Now there is no way at all
I can get to work on time.

I call in with allergies.
That should cover us, poem.
So here I am spending
the morning with a rude poem.

Miffed, then you retreat for
exactly as long as I called you a blinking pest.
But I am going to wait you out, poem.
Yoo-hoo, poem, I am here waiting for you—

Hmm, I am beginning to miss hearing
you whisper and your holographic verse
all over my morning.
Are you there, poem?

I really have nothing better to do
this morning than
write down exactly what you tell me
I should write. Not really.

Oh, poem, I have written down
everything you asked me to write.
Are you going to return like now
and help me make sense of this?

I have a bunch of crazy scribbling on this
notepad in my bathroom, the birds have
not been fed and I called in with sinuses
or something like that, I forgot.

I am waiting for you, poem.
Are you aware that I’d be called a lunatic for
saying that a poem spoke itself
into my ears this morning?

And that I would be accused
of having hallucinations for
confessing that you displayed your verses
all over my reality this morning?

Can I coax you back by saying how much
I liked the way that you
read to me while I was having coffee
and answering emails?

Before I realized that I have nothing
better at all to do than
spend the morning with a poem?
Way back when I thought I had things to do?

Terre Spencer
June 2011

Change Your Metaphor—

How tragic that so many men treat their own precious sexuality like it were a sports statistic, something to be documented on the front page of the Sports section of their favorite newspaper. To wit: keeping score, always wanting something better, keeping mental, and sometimes actual, statistics, turbo-charging it with porn, taking Viagra as if it were a chemical cast for a sprained member (or perhaps, a fix for a flat tire), etc., all competitive, linear, sports metaphors for one of the greatest mysteries of life.

Therein lies the problem. Such men are applying a one-dimensional metaphor (sports statistics) to their sexuality. Genuine sexuality cannot be flattened, captured, bought, sold, possessed, understood, measured, quantified, dominated, enhanced or diminished—none of those things, not at all. Poetry alludes to sexuality, great music dances with it, literature and art express our yearnings, our joys and frustrations, but such things are the closest we humans are allowed to “document” sexuality. The metaphor for sexuality is Mystery itself.

Genuine sexuality requires full-on masculinity. That means a fully-developed man—including his heart. A man’s penis is invited to participate by his own heart and his partners’ heart. Taking Viagra is a complete misunderstanding of where and what the dysfunction really is. Given that many men do not bring their hearts to their sexual experiences, it is especially poignant that Viagra is dangerous to the heart. These men continue having “experiences” and try to make quantity the cover for the vague emptiness they feel somewhere in the vicinity of their chests.

Change the metaphor for sexuality, guys. Forgo the Viagra and read Robert A. Johnson’s We, (and everything else that man ever wrote). Read Robert A. Masters’ work. Allow Mystery to be your sexual metaphor and the Viagra will be exposed as the marketing ploy to flatten your sexuality that it really is.

Resign, Weiner

I work with spouses of sex addicts/narcissists. The incredible stupidity that any compulsive behavior demands of its subject seems exponentially multiplied when the addiction is sex/porn. When sex addiction is compounded with narcissism (a very common co-morbidity), we get men who do exactly the things Weiner, Edwards, Scwartzenegger, and the ilk have done.

Yes, he endangered progressive politics. What he has done to his wife is just as lethal to her precious trust and affections. That matters as much in the world—lest we forget that increasing the quantity of pain felt by others makes this world horrid in the micro, which is played out in the larger world.

Weiner’s actions have created a torrent of disappointment and pain on at least several levels.

Many years ago, I would have said that a politician’s personal life did not affect their ability to be a decent public servant. Now I know that we humans‚ try as we might—cannot successfully compartmentalize ourselves. A narcissist cannot be a good politician if he is destroying trust and hearts in his inner realms.

C.G. Jung best described the effects of such attempts: a shadow counter-side that acts out atrocities upon others, usually leaving less powerful individuals (wives, children and subordinates) to take on the shame, pain, despair and rage of the offender. That matters to me now. I do not want a seemingly great representative who is causing his wife, children, employees and volunteers to take on his shadow material. That is not making this world one iota better, no matter how many “good” pieces of legislation get passed while he is engaging in personal atrocities. Such sociopaths create so much pain in their closest realms that it is not worth it in the bigger picture.

Resign, Weiner.

Dear Maria Shriver,

I am not writing to ask anything of you. I am writing to assure you that I am not going to give your narcissistic, estranged husband the attention he so badly craves. He is not getting one iota of my attention on TV, the internet or any media. None. If I hear his name or see his face, off goes the media. 

We have a lot in common, you and I: we are both from Catholic families with philandering men that have been especially cruel to women and we have both wasted way too many years with a narcissist/sex addict. NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder and sex addiction are frequently co-morbid). And both of us eventually left the unrepentant narcissist.

I respect your privacy and will not follow your process in the media unless you choose to speak on your own terms. I am pretty sure I know how betrayed, angry, disgusted, lost and hurt you are feeling. I have been there. It is traumatizing to live with a sex addict/NPD. Please take care of yourself and I will keep you and the children in my thoughts. 

Because he treated you and the children as pawns in his sick game, his narcissism is all too evident. He abused his power as an elected official and an employer. That is predatory behavior. Now he is trying to show the world he is a good guy, stating that he deserves the frenzied media attention and criticism—which is intended to appear to be protective but is a cheap political ploy for garnering attention. If his intentions were to be protective of his family, he would not have had unprotected sex with an employee. Nah, he just wants our attention. You know that and we know it also. But I am not going to give him that. I am giving him the “Delete” button. Starving a narcissist of the attention he craves (and they do not care if the attention is good or bad) is the most punishing thing I can do to him. I am asking my friends to join me in ignoring him and asking them to ask their friends to do so as well.

Friends: will you ignore the narcissistic former California governor? Will you ask your friends to ignore him as well? Politics do not matter. How one relates to others matters, and I am asking you to refuse to be a consumer of this kind of behavior. Turn it off. Tell the media that you will not listen/read/view news that props up narcissists anymore. We will no longer feed their monstrous appetite for adoration/attention.

Maria, I cannot make your heart heal, but I can do this one thing and I am so hoping that my friends and their friends and their friends’ friends will join me in ignoring narcissistic predators in the news.

Thanks, 

Terre

Another Huckster Movie—I Am

Oh, yawn. Another movie pitching “positive thinking.” Will anyone actually watch this thing? Yes, sadly. 

I like PsychCentral’s Marla Estes’ review: http://blogs.psychcentral.com/movies/2011/05/i-am/ Her penetrating assessment will not be read by a tenth as many people as those who will watch the movie and swallow its message. Ms. Estes’ core message is:

The director emphasizes being good and having positive feelings, the implication being that “negative” feelings are the cause of our social problems. On the contrary: in and of themselves, emotions aren’t a problem. It’s what we do (or don’t do) with them that causes trouble. If we decide that we must get rid of or overcome  “negative” emotions, they then go into our Shadow, which contains anything repressed, hidden, or unconscious in our psyches. This reflects the operation of splitting, a psychological defense mechanism.

Sadly the “just change your beliefs/thoughts and you change your feelings and your life is bright and shiny and positive” canard is still with us. This falsehood is with us even though brain science proved it dead wrong more than twelve years ago. What really happens is that we experience feelings in the limbic portion of the brain and and later wrap explanatory thoughts around the feelings in the neo-cortex. The process does not work in reverse. Thoughts do not change feelings. Thoughts are the result of feelings.

Since real change, that is, getting in and becoming familiar with ALL of our feelings is a long, long process that takes an enormous amount of courage—no huckster can make money selling it. So they make up the “quick-and-easy-positivity” for those who faintly aspire to transformation vis-a-vis forcing a few thoughts out of their mind and the denial of “negative” feelings. Ascribing to these hucksters’ simplistic nonsense is like dining at McDonalds exclusively and expecting to be well-nourished and healthy as a result. You might leave full, but not sustained or well-fed. The place for positive thinking and thought-control is very similar to eating at McDonald’s—to be used as a stop-gap measure until real sustenance can be obtained. It is not nourishing although it might prevent you from crashing in an emergency. 

Spiritualizing one’s genuine feelings is called spiritual bypassing. No one writes better on the topic than Robert A. Masters: http://www.robertmasters.com/newsletter/February2010.pdf   (see page 9 of the newsletter). Robert  A. Johnson, that beloved Jungian psychologist, calls this “addressing the problem on the wrong level.” Feelings need to be handled on the human feeling level, not bludgeoned with thoughts or wishful spirituality.

Most tragically, these aspirers never get what they paid for (yet, they are blamed by the hucksters for not being positive enough/not doing enough affirmations or whatever) and as a result, they aspirants do a lot of damage with their disowned/denied/dissociated “negative” feelings leaking out covertly all over their lives.

So here is a movie that plays right into the hucksters’ hands. This is more fundamentalist New-Agism which is as full of shame and “shoulds’ as any traditional fundamentalist system.

A creed’s conspicuous shadow absence usually indicates fundamentalism, as surely as does an identified bogey-man. So if you are being promised all shiny and new if you just (fill in the blank), run! Run far, far, away. You have ben offered “drive-through transformation” and you are being gypped. And it is critically important that you actually feel how cheated you really have been. Start there. If you get lost or mired, there are guides along the way, seek out a therapist, read Jungian psychology books, enter into group therapy,  journal, do body work, but let the truth about how you feel be the starting point.

Can’t figure out what your feelings are or how to work with them? Try Karla McLarens’ The Language of Emotions:
http://tiny.cc/ztmah
 the best singular volume on feelings/emotions and how to approach them.

If you fail to sit with your real feelings you will spend an enormous amount of energy trying to work from a place that you do not really reside in. A super-sized self-fraud if you will.