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| Anatomy of the Tony Walsh, in English, by Ties van Brussel / http://www.tiesworks.nl (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The human heart cuts both ways. It's spontaneous... but also very
obligated and loyal to tradition - both simultaneously. These are the
traditions our habits have built into our life as we grew up, forming
our particular perceptions, attitudes and beliefs. The impetuous heart's
first impressions make it the most reliable of truth-verifiers - a
quick read. And yet those very truth-impressions are bound partly to
secret promises built, to a greater or lesser extent, upon censorship
and concealment (explained below).
The heart's spontaneity gives it the impression that it's free of all obligations and encumbrances. Yet its quick responses to experience are possible because the heart's judgment obeys well-established attitudes, anchoring it to the bedrock of our beliefs about what things mean when we interact with life.
For most of us our common assumption is that our life has been built upon positive emotional experiences, which we try and reinforce and repeat every day. When in fact all human life is built upon a relatively even mixture of positive and negative occurrence - though some people's negatives are much bigger than others. Yet until very recently in human history we have not been able to manage negative incidents that conflict with our deeply yearned-for participation in happiness. We have fundamentally denied and projected the authorship of negative events upon other forces, entities and other people, making of our world a profoundly dangerous and violent place - which is only now being modified in a very significant way.
These psychic strategies of denial and projection are normally discussed as "mental illness", meaning only the wackiest do it, when their use is universal. No completely sane person, for instance, would ever wage war, except to put an ethnic-annihilating tyrant out of business, a very recent motivation for war. For centuries, well into the 20th century, we've spent well over 90% of our time killing for profit - rape pillage, spoils and the acquisition of conquered land.
So what do censorship and concealment have to do with the evolution of our habitual attitudes of experience-perception? We like to pretend in this modern age that children are capable of being emotionally independent of their parents, so, among other things, they can teach us their wisdom. Nothing could be farther than the truth. If we suffer, so will they suffer, and be unable to do anything about it - except perhaps with other very involved adults who offer them a viable and intimate alternative model. But even with this help, children can't mess with the basic model of life their families have provided, or failed to... for better or worse.
The reason is very simple. To begin with only children can love unconditionally, though we pretend otherwise. To love unconditionally is a pretty good imitation of slavery; meaning the sacrifice of personal needs to render our responses perfectly suited to another person. Children know that; they consider it normal to be enslaved to the limitations of their families, unless as adults they choose to sort out and change their life on their own terms. Contrary to popular opinion character-change, the only kind that really does much is very difficult to achieve because it's very fearful and disruptive to the very habits and attitudes in which we have believed all our life. To change significantly means to break basic taboos.
So what do children do instead of what we pretend is possible? They enslave themselves to what their families can see, admit and believe in, willing to sacrifice all of themselves if necessary in order to protect their basic connection to those who ensure their survival. They adapt themselves to believe only what their families believe. Nothing less would make them capable of comfort. If family attitudes and perceptions defy what they, in their innocence, perceive, they censor their contradictory perceptions, concealing them even from themselves behind attitudes and beliefs about their life that prevent any awareness of this dissonance from ever surfacing in their conscious mind. As the prayer says, sinning can occur not just in "deed", but also in "thought" and "word".
These attitudes about their life usually produce negative beliefs about themselves that may prevent them from ever contradicting anyone important in life. If children have been significantly hurt by their parents they will subsequently their whole life suffer great hurt on the unconscious premise they don't deserve to be protected from it. They may complain about it; but they will still suffer it. Shame and guilt are always funded by this kind of undeserved and concealed self-censure.
When the human heart is reacting mostly out of spontaneous perceptions with no serious encumbrances of self-censure, or accusation of others, it deserves our delighted support. But when it runs into negative implications - for either the feeling person or their companion - instead of support it needs to be carefully explored with whatever thoroughness frees the emotion from its bonds of loyalty to false premises of shame, guilt and their repetitive daily accusations.
The heart's spontaneity gives it the impression that it's free of all obligations and encumbrances. Yet its quick responses to experience are possible because the heart's judgment obeys well-established attitudes, anchoring it to the bedrock of our beliefs about what things mean when we interact with life.
For most of us our common assumption is that our life has been built upon positive emotional experiences, which we try and reinforce and repeat every day. When in fact all human life is built upon a relatively even mixture of positive and negative occurrence - though some people's negatives are much bigger than others. Yet until very recently in human history we have not been able to manage negative incidents that conflict with our deeply yearned-for participation in happiness. We have fundamentally denied and projected the authorship of negative events upon other forces, entities and other people, making of our world a profoundly dangerous and violent place - which is only now being modified in a very significant way.
These psychic strategies of denial and projection are normally discussed as "mental illness", meaning only the wackiest do it, when their use is universal. No completely sane person, for instance, would ever wage war, except to put an ethnic-annihilating tyrant out of business, a very recent motivation for war. For centuries, well into the 20th century, we've spent well over 90% of our time killing for profit - rape pillage, spoils and the acquisition of conquered land.
So what do censorship and concealment have to do with the evolution of our habitual attitudes of experience-perception? We like to pretend in this modern age that children are capable of being emotionally independent of their parents, so, among other things, they can teach us their wisdom. Nothing could be farther than the truth. If we suffer, so will they suffer, and be unable to do anything about it - except perhaps with other very involved adults who offer them a viable and intimate alternative model. But even with this help, children can't mess with the basic model of life their families have provided, or failed to... for better or worse.
The reason is very simple. To begin with only children can love unconditionally, though we pretend otherwise. To love unconditionally is a pretty good imitation of slavery; meaning the sacrifice of personal needs to render our responses perfectly suited to another person. Children know that; they consider it normal to be enslaved to the limitations of their families, unless as adults they choose to sort out and change their life on their own terms. Contrary to popular opinion character-change, the only kind that really does much is very difficult to achieve because it's very fearful and disruptive to the very habits and attitudes in which we have believed all our life. To change significantly means to break basic taboos.
So what do children do instead of what we pretend is possible? They enslave themselves to what their families can see, admit and believe in, willing to sacrifice all of themselves if necessary in order to protect their basic connection to those who ensure their survival. They adapt themselves to believe only what their families believe. Nothing less would make them capable of comfort. If family attitudes and perceptions defy what they, in their innocence, perceive, they censor their contradictory perceptions, concealing them even from themselves behind attitudes and beliefs about their life that prevent any awareness of this dissonance from ever surfacing in their conscious mind. As the prayer says, sinning can occur not just in "deed", but also in "thought" and "word".
These attitudes about their life usually produce negative beliefs about themselves that may prevent them from ever contradicting anyone important in life. If children have been significantly hurt by their parents they will subsequently their whole life suffer great hurt on the unconscious premise they don't deserve to be protected from it. They may complain about it; but they will still suffer it. Shame and guilt are always funded by this kind of undeserved and concealed self-censure.
When the human heart is reacting mostly out of spontaneous perceptions with no serious encumbrances of self-censure, or accusation of others, it deserves our delighted support. But when it runs into negative implications - for either the feeling person or their companion - instead of support it needs to be carefully explored with whatever thoroughness frees the emotion from its bonds of loyalty to false premises of shame, guilt and their repetitive daily accusations.
My additional works can be seen at this website: http://donfenn.com
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