I’m back in the blog saddle after a two-year absence. Early in 2020, D’Lane and I responded to the pandemic by switching our psychology practice to telehealth only. After debating retirement, we instead moved our telehealth practice into our home in late 2021, where we practice two or three days a week, balancing our enjoyment of psychotherapy with other pursuits. During the pandemic, our travel and live music/dancing evaporated, while landscaping, boating, cooking at home, and other less social activities accelerated. Max vaxed, we recently returned to our travelling ways with a three-week trip to Scandinavia. We heartily recommend Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen for every bucket list!

            Those “other pursuits” include the Amazon publication this week of The Finite Order, a novel I have been writing, shelving, and renewing for three decades. Let me set the stage. The year is 2050. Robotics, nanotech, and the digital transformation of society have advanced at warp speed. But their complexity breeds confusion even amongst the educated, yielding a resounding call for simplification. His Holiness Pope John XXIV meets with anxious papal statisticians. They note the sharp escalation of mortal and venial sins and crime in recent decades. Ominously, they predict critical mass, the imminent descent of human civilization into chaos. The pope prays to the Almighty Lord for less complexity in the universe. His prayers are immediately answered; God issues the Finite Order.

            In Milwaukee, Dylan is a misplaced atheist exploring spiritual alternatives at a Catholic university. He detests the big lies of religion, but feels a spiritual void, and is searching. On the Golden Eagle Hockey Team, he befriends Paul, a candidate for the priesthood, whose “One God, Many Faces” article in the Marquette Tribune is unintentionally provoking the archdiocese. Off the ice, Paul and Dylan joust over reality and religion, share their struggles with girlfriends, and seek common ground. Roxi is a 49Q Maxwell robot, created in the era in which robots are simulating human appearance and sexuality, while developing individual identity, self-determination, and group consciousness. Then she runs into Dylan.

            Elsewhere, on Justicia, the supernatural planet harboring both Heaven and Hell, God notices a decline in his mighty powers, dreadfully realizing the infinite implications of his Finite Order. Further south, at the sweltering equator, Satan has lost some speed off his fastball in the Hades Softball League, but he is excited by news that God’s omnipotence may have been compromised. Satan realizes that he has a few billion psychopaths in his camp, many with military experience and a fuse to light. A collision is imminent. Dylan, Paul, and Roxi each face choices, forging their own futures as the world turns upside down during the First Supernatural War.

Along the way, we find Sergeant Daniels of the Milwaukee Police Department hot on the trail of renegade, noncompliant robots. As an atheist alien, Dylan struggles to succeed with Catholic girls, and clashes with his dogmatic Catholic father. Paul attempts to reconcile his priestly aspirations with his romantic commitment, and he asks if religious wars could be ended if all faiths could agree on a single God with many cultural faces. How can women compete with the sexual allure being built into female robots, and how do the bots cope with tinkering by their male coders? What happens when fundamentalist Christians and Muslims unexpectedly unite to form the United Fundamentalist Church? What could Santa Claus have possibly done to be condemned to Hell? What happens to the suicide bomber when he comes to collect his 72 virgins in Paradise? Can Casanova possibly conquer the most powerful she-devil in the land, operating from his posh pad in Hell? Donning satanic black wings, can Hermann Goring teach his impulsive Fuhrer to fly, and what could Adolf do with nukes hijacked from the Putin Nuclear Facility in Siberia? Could Donald Trump build a bingo empire in Suburban Heaven? Can the Trinity cope with existential anxiety and diluted omnipotence? Does the end justify the means when Saint Peter and the Archangel Michael are trying to save the supernatural world? Will the deployment of robots make the difference for the Army from Hell? Can atheists be moral, or is morality anchored in God’s love and wisdom? Are there boundaries to be set on artificial intelligence? Can robots be spiritual? Questions abound as we transit the bridge connecting the natural and supernatural domains.

            D’Lane and I joke that my Rorschach Inkblot Test 50 years ago contained an unusually high number of “W” responses: “whole” responses that try to incorporate all portions of the inkblot. And here I am a half-century later, completing a novel that incorporates both the natural and supernatural worlds, while investigating the options for religious, secular, and even robotic spirituality. My head is truly in the clouds, but it’s a nice view. If you care to join me, check out Edward Chandler, The Finite Order, on Amazon.

The elbow has never competed with the brain, the heart, the stomach, or our gonads for favorite body part awards. But it has gained ground on its more popular rivals recently, on the strength of its newfound survival value. The recent battle between humans and viruses for control of the planet has left handshakes, hugs, and kisses sidelined, replaced by elbow bumps and other greetings. We have seen foot tapping, peace signs, thumbs up, waving, quasi-shakes (moving your unextended hand up and down as if shaking hands), and other awkward gestures. “Namaste,” the traditional Hindu greeting, with the hands pressed together accompanied by a slight bow, has escaped our local yoga studios. “La bise” (the traditional barely kiss-each-cheek greeting) is plunging into the deep freeze, perhaps to be replaced by air-kissing, sometimes without the kiss even being finger launched! Sacre Bleu! What has our world come to? In a word, survival, our most basic motive, fueled by death anxiety, our most basic fear. The coronavirus has invaded, an invisible alien, spreading from Area 51 in Wuhan, taking over our fellow humans, infecting invisibly, so we don’t even know who is who. Are thee friend or foe? It is safer to regard everyone outside of our tiniest circle as a threat, though we debate the cost, like insurance underwriters.

Our needs compete. Survival, health, and safety are more primal, and typically trump our needs for attachment, affiliation, and affection, though we seek compromises. We have largely divorced ourselves from nature in recent centuries, as we congregate in our concrete jungles, but now social congregation itself is a risk. How can we tolerate social distancing? On the other hand, how do we keep our amygdalas on leashes, so we control our anxiety, instead of letting the internal demons take over? How do we prevent a pandemic from escalating into pandemonium? The word “pandemonium” was coined by John Milton in his classic poem, Paradise Lost. He combined a pair of roots, “pan” (meaning: all) and “demonium” (evil spirits), to form a word that now describes all hell breaking loose. How apt.

A certain amount of anxiety is inevitable and beneficial in response to a survival threat such as COVID-19. We all want to minimize negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, sadness, frustration, anger, guilt, shame), though these emotions have positive functions as well. They alert us, like physical pain if we get too close to a fire, that our emotional welfare is endangered. Anxiety signals a threat, whether real, imagined, or exaggerated. Sadness is a response to loss, frustration invites us to question our expectations, and anger is a sign of injustice (again, either real or manufactured). But negative emotions can also multiply out of control, as sadness yields to depression, anger metastasizes into violence, constant worrying escalates anxiety toward panic, and group panic spurs pandemonium. Thus, each negative emotion has a healthy and an unhealthy version. We can get ourselves in trouble at either extreme, by suppressing healthy negative emotions, or by manufacturing extreme ones. With COVID-19, we can ignore the threat, be crushed by it, or cope with it.

Anxiety motivates fight-or-flight maneuvers (social distancing = flight) intended to guarantee survival or at least reduce an emotional threat. Loneliness motivates affiliation, the urge to connect. Particularly nowadays, feelings of anxiety and loneliness clash, as do their underlying motives, safety/survival and attachment.

Our anxiety motivates corrective action, to limit our exposure and risk. On the other hand, uncontrolled worrying escalates anxiety. Thoughts influence feelings. Thus, expectations set up frustration, blaming begets anger, and worrying (a thought process) drives anxiety. The Serenity Prayer is helpful here. It makes no sense to worry over something we can’t control, and it makes perfect sense to attack problems that we can control. If only we can muster the wisdom to distinguish between what can and cannot be controlled, the choice forks toward taking charge or letting go. Changing any habit requires two steps: creating a Plan B (e.g., the Serenity Prayer), and catching the lousy habit early, before it gains momentum. Catch yourself worrying, and transfer your energy into planning and action to reduce your threats, via social distancing, safe social contact, brainstorming income alternatives, developing sanitation strategies, etc. But tolerate, get used to, and even embrace the uncertainty, taking pride in your resilience. There is a large portion of our dilemma that is unpredictable, and beyond our control as individuals. We do much better when we accept that which we cannot control. Mindfulness techniques invite us to accept some anxiety as a normal response to threats. Notice the anxiety, accept it without judgment, and watch it float downstream, at least for now. When we try to suppress inevitable negative emotions, we sometimes find them multiplying instead (“What you resist persists” is shorthand for the Carl Jung quote). But idle worrying and catastrophic thinking are worse than a waste of time. Catch them, and move your mind toward something you can control. Limit your news watching to perhaps a half hour a night, to stay informed without becoming a captive of the media. Remember that stressors have two components: the external threat, which we often don’t control, and our internal response to that threat, which we can. Focusing on the uncontrollable leaves us feeling helpless and anxious, while taking action toward controllable goals is empowering. Our choice of responses can either minimize or multiply the stress. We can train ourselves to become more conscious of our passive or active role in responding to stressors, and more deliberate in our choices. Otherwise, mindless preoccupation with the external stressor, such as nonstop worrying or news watching, leaves us feeling more helpless and anxious.

What else can you do? Breathe. Breathing is your most primal interaction with the world. When you are anxious, or entering potentially dangerous environments out of necessity, breathe deliberately, slowly, deeply, and mindfully before entering. Exercise. Aerobic exercise is particularly helpful in reducing stress. Walk, run, bike, check out online yoga, nurture your body in ways that minimize your viral exposure. Upgrade your nutrition, and protect your sleep. Spend time outside; get some sun, safely. If you smoke, now might be a good time to quit, so your lungs are in better shape to fight the virus, though you will need other, healthier ways to soothe yourself. Take the time to review your lifestyle for self-nurturing upgrades. Start up that hobby you’ve been wanting to get off the ground.

Death anxiety is our most primal source of anxiety. William James, the prominent American psychologist, described death (in The Varieties of Religious Experience,1902) as “the worm at the core” of the human dilemma. Our civilization provides improved protection from predators, but we cannot eliminate the certainty of death itself. Our evolution has provided us with increasingly complex brains, which allow us to envision the future, including a future without us in it! Presto: existential death anxiety, our fear of eventual death. No one gets out of here alive. Death is the ultimate disconnection. As the death toll of COVID-19 mounts, our death anxiety rises, like a caboose on the virus train. We disconnect socially in order to reduce the risk of ultimate disconnection (death), but we end up lonely, seeking more attachment.

Mental health requires connectedness, both internally (it helps to like oneself and one’s body) and externally. Externally, we can connect socially, romantically, environmentally with nature, and spiritually (either with religious spirits or a more secular group consciousness, merging with life, love, humanity, etc.). Connect with nature. Tend to gardening in your back yard, nurturing the life force of plants, while creating a pleasant environment where you and your family can safely commune. Lay on your back and check out the night skies. Find Orion, and its bright blue binary star, Rigel, as well as its red giant, Betelgeuse (which would engulf Mars and perhaps Jupiter if it traded places with our Sun). Feel your place in the immensity of the universe. If you are religiously inclined, feel God’s presence, in everything. Connect to your loved ones, via random acts of love and kindness, and phone calls to whomever you hold dear. Engage your family in games and creative interactions. Get to know your lover better. Pick a year of his or her life, in childhood or the teens, and ask them to describe their experience, good and bad. Open yourself to emotional intimacy, to counteract disconnection. And practice gratitude. As we face threats and losses, count your blessings, for the gift of life, the presence of love and friendship. We tend to take things for granted until we are close to losing them, but the threat of death can invigorate our appreciation of life, and spur our loving behaviors. Resist divisive rhetoric that invites you to view the other as the enemy, even as you protect yourself. Review your self-chosen life purposes, and the sources of meaning in your life. What can you do to pursue them with more gusto? As we temporarily disconnect from friends and perhaps work, we can find creative ways to restore our attachments in other ways. We are all in this together. Thank you for listening, and for cooperating in our species-wide response to the viral threat.

To read more about anxiety management, check out Ed Chandler’s Psychomechanics – Tools for Self-Regulation of Emotions, available on Amazon. Or, if you are interested in secular approaches to spirituality, the chapters of Psychomechanics are also included as the third/final section of Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices, also available on Amazon. Or explore this website (edchandlerandbeyond.com) to see Ed’s photography and stained glass, in addition to his writings on psychology, spirituality, anthropocentrism and prejudice.

Why is Thanksgiving special? What makes it special for you? As a psychologist, the holidays are often difficult for my clients, because they stir up family issues that are more easily avoided at other times of the year. For some, it’s a felt obligation to visit family, requiring immersion in unresolved conflicts. For some it’s wet grief, intense sadness over the loss of a very special person. For others, it’s dry grief, the flat sadness that someone who should have been special wasn’t, and now that they’re gone; that dream is dead. Thanksgiving, like mental health, is about connectedness. It is a time of year when we remind ourselves to count our blessings for what we have, and have had. Which is why those whose attachments have been lost, or mired in conflict, fare more poorly during the holidays compared to those fortunate enough to have solid connectedness to loved ones in the present, or at least gratitude and wet grief over losing them in the past. There are several targets for our gratitude at Thanksgiving, but the gift of life, and the beauty of love (our attachments) are usually on the podium.

Like Christmas, Thanksgiving is one of the more spiritual holidays. In Beyond Atheism, I suggested that spirituality is about connectedness, both external and internal, and about consciousness, particularly the emotions we experience as we contemplate consciousness. We can deliberately access these spiritual emotions (they are also called virtues, because we aspire to feel them). The short list of spiritual virtues/emotions includes awe, gratitude, humility, and love. At Thanksgiving we focus on gratitude.

We experience gratitude when we count our blessings for these gifts of life, nature, and our connections with our mate and other loved ones, present and past. We access existential joy and dread when we contemplate our own life and eventual death, and serenity and gratitude when we move our minds toward accepting this precious but brief gift as it is, without greed for immortality. We count our blessings for what we have, rather than longing for, missing, or craving what we have not. Thus, gratitude can give life meaning, by venerating life itself as a gift. We can also contrast each of the spiritual virtues, or positive spiritual emotions, with their opposite. Gratitude allows us to move beyond negativity, entitlement, and greed. As an antidote to envy and greed, gratitude dampens our preoccupation with what others have that we do not, and our desire for more, more, more. Likewise, experiencing awe allows us to rise above the going-through-the-motions boredom associated with desensitization to our surroundings. Humility moves us beyond the narcissistic trap of pride, while love conquers alienation and anger.

Thanks-giving is our way of reminding ourselves of our good fortune in life, while tempering our frustration, disappointment, and unmet or runaway expectations. While we formally count our blessings at the Thanksgiving table on a day culturally designated for celebration of blessings, religious parents pursue a similar ritual when they teach their children to give thanks to God during their prayers. Sometimes we count our blessings when we see bad fortune befall others; other times we manage our own traumas by reminding ourselves of what we still have, and that we could be worse off. As we work through our grief, we gradually transition from a focus on who and what we lost, to gratitude for the presence of the deceased loved one in our life.

But what if we accessed our gratitude more frequently, and deliberately? Consider using the Three Blessings exercise each evening, as a component of meditation or prayer, to end the day. Allow yourself to think about three things that happened during the day that pleased you the most, and why you believe they happened. Emmons and McCullough (2003) found that doing this exercise on a daily basis for just one week resulted in increased joy and a sense of well-being, while also decreasing depression. Moreover, this improvement was still evident six months later. Try keeping a gratitude journal, in which you write down what you are grateful for, on a daily or at least weekly basis.

In a closely related vein, “savoring” is a term used to describe thought practices that increase our awareness and appreciation of positive experiences in our lives. It involves an application of mindfulness practices. We have the option to set aside time for savoring, for example, carving out time in our busy day to watch the sunset. But we also can learn to catch opportunities to savor experiences on the fly, being mindful rather than mindless. We can wolf our food down while watching television or while driving to our next appointment, thereby practicing time management via multitasking, and proving that we have mastered the English, German, American emphasis on goal-directed productivity. Or we can be mindful during our meals, and savor the flavors with each bite, while experiencing gratitude that such a meal comes so easily nowadays, without having to hunt, gather, or farm ourselves.

Which reminds us that spirituality is largely experienced in the present. Yes, we can appreciate those who have passed, or imagine a reunion in the future, and these connected moments are spiritual, but most spirituality is experienced in the present. It is also accessed by being rather than doing, by contemplating aspects of life, and our own consciousness of it, and the wonder of both, rather than mindlessly marching through our daily doings. We are more spiritual as a human being than as a human doing, contemplating the bigger picture, in the present, with awe, humility, existential joy, gratitude, and connectedness to the “All.” Gratitude dovetails nicely with these other spiritual emotions, of humility, awe, existential joy, and love.

As I approach this Thanksgiving, I am personally mindful of my gifts of life and health, that is, my mere presence within the “All,” and my 69-year-old, still active body. I’ll feel older later, when I can no longer dance or ski. But I’m more focused on my human gifts. In the present, these include my wife and three enthusiastic, competent daughters, and the grandsons they are nurturing and enjoying. I will spend Thanksgiving in West Virginia with Lauren, Mikaela, and Karyn, while Teddy and Lucas run about, and Marsden gathers oohs and ahhs with his winning smile. My human fortune also includes good friends and our shared experiences (watching LSU maul Bama, and tribute bands aplenty), and my camaraderie with staff as we help our clients struggle through the very holidays we are celebrating. In the rearview mirror, I celebrate my grandparents, Elsie and Ed (pictured up topside holding my oldest, Lauren, as an infant). If not for them, your humble narrator would be a mess (okay, I hear you - a bigger mess). Elsie was the embodiment of unconditional love; I will celebrate her legacy by making her tasty peach tarts for my grandsons next week. Gramp was the storyteller, whose humor, sociability, caring, and enthusiasm for life inspired us all. In their absence they continue to give to us everyday. We don’t just remember them, we channel them, and pass their love forward, seeing downstream generations through their eyes. May you do the same, next Thursday, and on all other days that you can muster the mindfulness to count your own blessings.

 References: 

Chandler, Edward. (2019). Beyond Atheism: A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices. Available on Amazon.

 Emmons, Robert, & McCullough, M. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: Experimental studies of gratitude and subjective well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 377-389. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.84.2.377.

As the dust settles from our visit to Prague and our cruise down the Danube, I bring you a visceral, not just an intellectual reaction to the bullies on the block of Central Europe. The mood was first captured in Nuremberg, with predictable nausea over Nazi atrocities. But less expected historical gems were found in two venues in the Czech capital of Prague: the Museum of Communism, and a photographic exhibit commemorating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain.

First, if you will, allow me to briefly digress down history lane. Czechoslovakia was born as a nation in 1918, following the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I. The Habsburg Monarchy had been formed way back in 1273, and the leader of the House of Habsburg was also empowered as the Holy Roman Emperor from 1438 until 1806. The Habsburg monarchy was formally unified as the Austrian Empire in 1804, and as the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. It comprised a huge swath of central and eastern Europe, including current day Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, many components of the former Yugoslavia, and portions of Romania, Poland, Italy and Ukraine. Prior to its demise, this empire had two main hubs, Vienna and Budapest. How magnificent it was near the end of our trip, cruising east on the Danube, from one to the other. They are just an overnight cruise apart, and encapsulate a dozen buckets of history.

My personal angle on this history dates back to high school, at Calasanctius in Buffalo, where I was taught by Piarist priests, who had escaped the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Thinking back, I rue my adolescent ignorance, for with the advantage of experience, I would surely have petitioned my Headmaster to organize a Hungarian 20th century history class, taught by the Piarists who were there. As a side note, if you like a good historical novel, check out The Bridge at Andau by Michener, detailing the ‘56 invasion, and the escape route into Austria.  We sampled Austria in Vienna, then curved around the Danube bend to the south, into Hungary. An hour past dawn, in perfect light for your photoholic narrator, we cruised between the resplendent architecture that lines both sides of the Danube, in Pest on the left bank, and sunlit Buda off starboard. 

The Hungarian government was complicit in its own demise, aligning with the Germans in World War I, and, hoping to regain lost territory, with the Nazis in World War II. 430,000 Hungarians constituted the largest nationality in Auschwitz, and only a quarter of Hungarian Jews survived the Holocaust. Mutual double-crossing amongst the Hungarians, Germans and Soviets left Hungary under control of the Germans in 1944, and the Soviets in 1945, and for 44 years thereafter. As for Czechoslovakia, it became a nation after its territorial boundaries were redrawn in 1918 following the defeat of the Germans, but its success was short lived. Just twenty years later, in 1938, the Nazis claimed the Sudetenland regions, and in 1939, overtook the Bohemian and Moravian regions of Czechoslovakia, while Slovakia became “independent” as a Nazi puppet state. Freed from the Germans by the Soviets in 1945, reunified Czechoslovakia was soon re-enslaved by the Soviets, after a Communist coup d’etat in 1948. Dubcek’s liberalization was crushed by a Soviet invasion in 1968, and the Czech/Slovak people remained under the communist yoke until the Velvet Revolution of 1989, when Gorbachev allowed Soviet satellite states to rebel and pursue their independence.

At the Prague photo exhibit celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain, the centerpiece was a large screenshot of Mikhail Gorbachev with George Bush the Wiser, proclaiming the end of the Cold War. Surrounding it were dozens of gigantic photo posters of 1989 police/protestor confrontations in Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria. We couldn’t help thinking of Trump and Putin, and how these aggressors pale in the shadows of their predecessors.

Soon thereafter, we visited the Museum of Communism, also in Prague. The opening scene is viewed from the bottom of a tall stairway, where the only visible sight above, beyond the mountain of stair steps, involves three words capturing the sequence of communism: Dream – Reality – Nightmare. To put it mildly, the Czechs are not fond of the Russians, while the Germans are an older enemy. Visiting Central Europe repeatedly struck me as a lesson in political bullying. It felt as if I was stuck in between two aggressive neighbors, one German, one Russian, who were constantly maneuvering to take over my house, and sometimes each other’s as well. I could easily identify with Poland. Under the heading of counting your blessings, a fortunate accident of birth deposited me in 1950 USA.

 Imagine instead that we were born in 1918 Germany, at the end of World War I, enduring the impact of reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The German version of the Great Depression follows, fueling escalating resentment toward democratic and socialist forces blamed for the loss of the war. The right wing is revived, radicalized, and vomits racist accusations of Jewish conspiracies. As a child you absorb this worldview, and are then conscripted into the German Army at age 18, in 1936. It’s easy to make choices in the rear-view mirror, but if you were at ground zero as an adolescent in 1936 Nuremberg, what would you have chosen? Your country has been devastated, and is rising from the ashes as a powerhouse once more. Your parents take you amongst the masses at the uplifting Nuremberg rallies at Zeppelin Field. Peer pressure commands you to take your place alongside your brethren in the German Army. Under these circumstances, would you have resisted? Our basic choices in response to danger are fight, flight, or freeze. You either chose flight and left Germany (unlikely as a late adolescent unless you were Jewish and following your parents), got destroyed by the Gestapo trying to fight the momentum of the Nazi war machine, merged your fighting spirit with the cause of German nationalistic revival, or reluctantly froze and took your place as a cog in the German war machine. How would you have reacted as an 18-year-old, without your current wisdom of experience, and without a glimpse of the coming atrocities leaving six million Jews in the ground?

We prefer to think of Nazis as a reflection of German character. Surely it couldn’t happen here. But a glance into the political mirror reveals that the Jew has become the Muslim or the Mexican, various newer versions of The Other, used to drive age-old, us-against-them divisive politics. A solid third of our populace embraces the racist, ultra-nationalistic, anti-democratic politics of our leader, eschewing rather than celebrating the diversity that formed and strengthened our nation. We have a choice: focus on the similarities that bind us together, as humans, or on the differences that divide us and fuel our persecution of The Other. The differences are seductive, allowing us the turn our fears into anger, and direct our animosity toward scapegoats. Yes, it could happen here, or anywhere. Is it? Try this sidebar.

Are political and military bullies much different from neighborhood and classroom bullies? What is a bully, and how do we allow ourselves to be led by them? What is the emotional currency of bullies? They prosecute anger, hatred and prejudice from on high, while inducing fear and shame in the scapegoat below, sometimes in a crowd, with hesitant bystanders aplenty. Otherwise they attack privately, where their extremes can be concealed. Bullying involves an imbalance of power. As children, bullies use their power, derived from some combination of physical strength, popularity, and embarrassing information. Bullying is verbal via meanness, physical via intimidation or assault, or social by intentionally damaging the target’s relationships or reputation. It goes beyond mere conflict and disagreement, as its purpose is to harm and humiliate.

Bullying peaks during middle school, though grade-school children are already adept at verbal aggression via name-calling. Trump’s verbal bullying involves habitual insults hurled at opponents, such as loser, baby, nothing, crazy, wacky, sleepy, crooked, slime ball, low I.Q., etc., as if he never graduated from a middle-school locker room. Bullying often involves three role players: perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Bullies are often victims in other contexts, for example, at home where abusive parents intimidate or humiliate them. Their fear and shame is bottled, and then exported onto vulnerable peers. Bullies are enabled by lack of intervention by bystanders, who may be quiet and fearful of abuse themselves, or may vicariously act out their own shame by egging on bullies. The failure of Republicans to stand up to Trump’s bullying allows him to remain safely insulated from consequences, confident in his support from his base. From this angle, the impeachment proceedings can be viewed as a referendum on dictatorship and bullying versus democracy. Political bullies often rely on the support of their military. We sit confident that a Hitler or Stalin could never take over here at home. But Trump has a penchant for loyal, corrupt cronies. In the nightmare scenario, a few well-placed generals and admirals could conceivably support his declaration that the 2020 election had been rigged, resulting in a coup or civil war between our polarized citizens. We prefer to believe that it could never happen here, but central Europeans will tell you otherwise.

It is natural to avoid pain, because it is, well, painful! When we experience emotional pain, it is natural to try to eliminate that pain from the mind so that we can feel happy and pain free. None of us enjoy feeling sad, guilty, ashamed, anxious, fearful, etc. Who wants to feel vulnerable? We typically seek out positive feelings, wanting to feel happy, excited, joyful, humorous, content, serene, and untroubled. In our zeal to create positive feelings while minimizing negative feelings, it is easy to perceive negative feelings as enemies to be neutralized as quickly as possible. By suppressing negative feelings, we can banish them from our conscious mind, and thereby regain a more positive or neutral emotional state, at least temporarily. But that’s the rub: the benefit is temporary. By suppressing negative feelings, we add to a natural divide in the mind, conscious versus subconscious. If the mind were simply a bottomless pit, we could discard negative feelings like garbage, dropping them far enough below consciousness that their stinking fumes never touched us again. Unfortunately, the mind is not a bottomless pit, feelings do not disappear forever, and the problems that generate such feelings are not resolved by suppressing them from consciousness. Feelings resurface when they are triggered, or when the problems that generated them reappear. Eventually they must be dealt with. Otherwise, the subconscious mind resembles a toxic waste dump whose fumes repeatedly poison our well-being. And the poisonous subconscious mound grows as we disown and discard more emotional “garbage,” creating an increasing emotional stench and threat below the surface, until these feelings are addressed and resolved, or we explode emotionally.

Examined from another angle, our minds want to resolve and eliminate pain, both at the moment, and permanently. The problem is that these two goals conflict, and often require opposite approaches. On the one hand, we want to eliminate pain at the moment, and suppression, as well as other numbing techniques (e.g., distraction, substance abuse), are often quite effective for immediate pain relief. However, permanent pain relief requires an understanding of the problem that creates the pain, and a strategy for resolving that problem, both of which require us to approach, experience and explore our painful feelings, as well as the thoughts, memories, and events associated with these feelings. In other words, temporary pain must often be tolerated in order to reduce and prevent more lasting pain.

Furthermore, emotional pain can even be considered our friend, in the sense that it provides abundant feedback regarding the nature of our problems, which can potentially lead to solutions for such problems. When you accidently touch a red-hot stove burner, the alarming, painful burning sensation alerts you to quickly pull your hand away to prevent more severe injury. Likewise, listening to our painful feelings helps us understand the nature of our emotional problems and the solutions needed to allow us to feel better in the long run. Feeling and exploring our sadness helps us understand the nature of our losses, inviting us to explore what needs to be done in order to grieve and/or replace these losses. Listening to our fear and anxiety allows us to understand external and internal dangers and threats, real and imagined, that need to be examined, as well as obstacles to be courageously overcome in our lives. As John Bradshaw noted in Homecoming (1990), “To put it very simply, our emotions are our most fundamental powers. We have them in order to guard our basic needs. When one of our needs is being threatened, our emotional energy signals us” (p. 68). Negative feelings are the source of useful feedback, as well as the source of significant pain in our lives. By mindfully approaching yet containing such emotional pain, we can achieve a healthy balance, minimizing both temporary and permanent pain, rather than sacrificing one for the other.

Thus, while emotional pain may often feel like an enemy, it is likewise our friend. In a way, it is our immediate enemy and our long-term friend, as negative emotions are painful at the moment, though an awareness and understanding of such emotions can lead to steps that reduce our pain in the future. There is wisdom to be found in vulnerability within relationships as well. One cannot be emotionally intimate without being vulnerable. Allowing oneself to love requires allowing oneself to risk being hurt. We all want safe love, but we must risk safety in order to obtain love, or risk lack of love and loneliness if we demand too much safety. Sharing uncomfortable feelings with a partner or friend helps develop emotional connectedness. Indeed, emotional intimacy could be defined as shared vulnerability. Without risking vulnerability, we remain armored, safe at the moment perhaps, but distant and disconnected. As with other psychological dimensions, it pays to develop skills at both ends and in the middle of the safety/vulnerability dimension, so we can adapt to any situation or relationship by choosing the right mix of safety and vulnerability at any given time. One would not want to be permanently vulnerable, nor irreversibly safe, armored and untouchable. There are times to be vulnerable, and times to protect yourself, and the ability to do each, at the time of your choosing, depending on your needs at the moment, is adaptive. But if we cannot safely share our more vulnerable “negative” feelings, our sadness, fears, guilt, shame, and frustrations, with a partner who understands, validates, and supports us, we cannot have true intimacy. And if we cannot take the risk of being rejected and hurt, we cannot open ourselves up to the love that magnetically attracts us all. Thus, we must balance our needs for safety and love by wisely determining which situations safely allow for vulnerability, and which ones require self-protection. Wisdom is essential in determining how much vulnerability is appropriate in particular situations and relationships.

 Thus, there is wisdom in selective vulnerability, both in our relationships, and when dealing with nonsocial issues involving strong feelings. We must learn to approach, experience and express uncomfortable feelings, and to control and manage them, both in good measure.

Bradshaw, John. (1990). Homecoming: Reclaiming and championing your inner child. New York, NY: Bantam.

To read more about emotional wisdom, control and expression, check out Ed Chandler’s Psychomechanics – Tools for Self-Regulation of Emotions, now available in Print and e-Book on Amazon. Or, if you are interested in secular approaches to spirituality, the chapters of Psychomechanics are also included as the third/final section of Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices, also available in Print and e-Book on Amazon. Or explore this website (edchandlerandbeyond.com) to see Ed’s photography and stained glass, in addition to his writings on psychology, spirituality, anthropocentrism and prejudice. Thanks for listening.

This is a loaded question if there ever was one. It is the provocative version of the question, “What is normal?” No one wants to be “crazy,” and most of us would prefer to be considered normal. On the other hand, most people want to be “unique,” not a cookie-cutter clone of some middle-gray cardboard portrait of normalcy. We all want to be competent, yet special and one of a kind, capable of managing our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and relationships, but not so common or standardized that we are boring and b-flat. But how do we determine what is psychologically normal? What is mental health? We can approach these questions from a variety of angles, some of which are quite subjective, involving obvious or subtle value judgments.

For starters, we can distinguish between statistical normal and healthy normal. Statistical normalcy requires a mathematical comparison between you and the masses. Healthy normalcy requires a judgment based on some criterion of mental health/illness, but how do we decide on these criteria? Statistically, do you do what other people do? If most Nazi soldiers followed orders and marched the Jews to the gas chambers, did that make it normal? What percentage of people are depressed? What about depression after the death of one of your parents? Is it normal then? How depressed? How commonly do people hear voices? Voices telling them to kill others, the voice of their recently deceased mother saying she's okay, or the soothing voice of God answering a prayer? Do most people have panic attacks? How about anxiety in a dark parking lot late at night? How about such anxiety in the aftermath of a parking lot assault last week? Is this statistically common? Is it healthy? As you can see, discussions of normalcy can quickly degenerate into controversy, whether we are comparing people statistically with each other, or deciding what is healthy. In a roughly sketched cultural portrait, we tend to share a notion as to what is psychologically healthy. However, both the statistical and the psychologically healthy criteria for normalcy can be criticized as being somewhat dependent upon subjective values, cultural and religious norms, and a relatively ordinary, nontraumatic set of childhood and adult experiences. Statistical comparisons simply tell us what is common, but we must decide what is psychologically healthy.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM, current version DSM 5) of the American Psychiatric Association (2013) is the professional standard for classification of mental illnesses, and is used by clinicians, insurance companies, and researchers. By this standard, you are mentally ill if you have any of the disorders listed in this compendium of psychopathology. From this perspective, your odds of being crazy are increasing, as the number of mental disorders in DSM increased from 106 to 297 between 1952 and 1994, raising the dark specter that our great grandchildren will all be crazy! That march toward madness was dialed back in DSM 5, but the previous steady increase in diagnoses says more about our perspective on mental illness than it does about the true statistical frequency of psychopathology. Critics have insisted that our concepts of psychological normalcy and abnormality, and our diagnostic labels, are less facts about people than social fabrications, with DSM being more a social than a scientific document. From this angle, mental illnesses are not discovered, but invented. They are social artifacts that serve the value system of those in power, designed to maintain the social order. Back in 1961, in The Myth of Mental Illness, Thomas Szasz shook up the psychiatric world with scathing criticism of such psychiatric bias, and controlling psychiatric interventions (e.g., involuntary hospitalization, lobotomies) based on such diagnostic inventions. Comparing modern day psychiatry to the Inquisition, he provocatively asserted, “In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.”

The most glaring example of a socially-biased mental “disorder” is homosexuality, which was deemed a psychiatric disorder by DSM in 1952, but then depathologized in 1973. In the same sexual vein, we might note Szasz’s criticism of psychiatry for its campaign against masturbation during the late 19th century, after centuries of religious condemnation of this common sexual behavior. But there are many examples outside of the sexual arena as well. Take antisocial personality disorder as another example. Many of the DSM 5 characteristics of APD, reflecting “a pervasive disregard for and violation of the rights of others,” particularly criterion #A1, “failure to conform to societal norms with respect to lawful behaviors …” are based on social values. But the antisocial individual may view these same behaviors as clever and effective strategies that provide a competitive advantage in the social jungle. APD is clearly a social construct, reflecting prevailing social values, norms, and rules, rather than a mere set of facts about individuals. It has social utility, but should not be seen as a solely internal condition, existing independently of its social context and prevailing social values. Furthermore, descriptions of behavior can be elevated, via circular reasoning, into causes for that behavior. Thus, “antisocial” describes antagonistic, exploitive, or selfish social behavior, but then a diagnosis of APD is used to explain the cause of that behavior.

Similar issues involving the psychiatric imposition of societal values arise for conditions such as schizoid personality disorder. If you have no interest in people, but are not bothered by this, are you abnormal? Yes, most people who consistently go against or away from other people are more distressed than people who successfully go toward and attach to other people. But not all of them. Some people are comfortable in the jungle or in their cave. To be fair, DSM does require “clinically significant distress” for most diagnoses. If you yourself are disturbed by a certain set of your thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, we are clearly on more solid ground when talking about a mental illness. But then again, some of us are so far into denial that the man in the moon knows we’re sick more than the man in the mirror. So are there any rough guidelines or criteria for mental health/illness that we can fairly apply?

One criterion for mental illness is loss of control. If I have lost control of my perceptual apparatus and hear voices or see people that no one else hears or sees, I am likely to be diagnosed as psychotic, which is large “C” crazy. Likewise, if my beliefs are out of control and I spout delusions (e.g., the rabid dogs that I hallucinate were sent by the CIA because my brilliance is a threat to national security), we can talk of a psychotic loss of control. And if my behavior is out of control, not just in your opinion, but in my own opinion, and I’m upset about it (e.g., I start fistfights during arguments, or get so drunk that I drive dangerously), we can diagnose a mental illness - crazy with a small “c” (out of control but not psychotic). So loss of control over perceptions, beliefs, and behavior, or even memory (dementia), or any function of the mind, is one yardstick for mental illness.

Emotions are another such element of the mind that requires control. Thus, one angle on what is psychologically healthy or normal is whether you experience primarily positive or negative emotions (the clinically significant distress noted above). Do you frequently experience sadness, guilt, anxiety, frustration, anger, etc., without much pleasure, joy, love, gratitude, etc.? This criterion of mental health is commonly applied, simply because feeling good, and not bad, at least most of the time, is important to all of us and drives much of our behavior. And it is not only the degree of positive versus negative emotion that is at issue here, but also our control over those emotions. Uncontrolled crying, severe panic attacks, and unbridled anger are problematic for most people who experience them. But if I am overwhelmed with grief and unrelenting tears when my beloved spouse suddenly dies, am I temporarily mentally ill, or crazy? What if I am emotionally numbed in the same tragic circumstance, and experience no negative emotions at all? Does this make me more normal or healthy? The context always matters.

A rather different, integrative view on normalcy is the notion that mental health involves combinations of opposites, and requires the ability to shift up and down any given dimension to find the behavior that is most adaptive to your situation. If we look at self-esteem as an initial example, healthy self-esteem involves a combination of opposites, specifically, valuing oneself coupled with humility. We are each unique and special, yet mere specks of dust in the vast universe. Without humility, we become narcissistic and self-aggrandizing, though if we cannot value ourselves, our low self-esteem may form the bedrock of a persistent depressive state. To be healthy, we need simultaneous complementary talents, in this case, self-esteem tempered by humility. Most of us have well developed skills on one end of any given dimension, but how are your skills on the opposite end of that dimension?

From yet another angle, normalcy may involve connectedness. Human beings are a very dependent species. We raise our young until age 18 or later, which is rare in the animal world. We are quite dependent upon our connections with others. Thus, our degree of romantic, social, and family connectedness, or our degree of satisfaction with such relationships, could be one criterion of mental health or normalcy. Spiritual connectedness, feeling connected with God, or a more secular connection with the universe as a whole, is important to most of us as well. Without it, we feel lacking. And then there is internal connectedness. Self-esteem is a crucial building block of personality. Liking oneself, i.e., being connected to oneself in a positive way, is essential to happiness. Thus, our ability to be positively connected both internally, to ourselves, and externally (romantically, socially and spiritually), might be considered an important criterion of psychological health. But who gets to decide? If I’m a schizoid hermit or an antisocial hellion, and I’m okay with that, despite a lack of spirituality or close relationships, am I abnormal?

Just feeling crazy can make you crazier. Crazy carries a stigma. Mental illness and sexual difficulties, that is, insanity and impotence, give rise to far more shame than most other problems. A broken mind, a limp penis, or a missing breast is far more disturbing than a broken arm or a gallbladder stone. Such shame can be poisonous to our self-esteem and identity, which each need to be solid for good mental health.

As a psychologist conducting psychotherapy, the context and origins of your negative feelings, behavior, and relationships is very important to me. Many clients feel “crazy” in the street sense of the term, and indeed, they are quite abnormal, both statistically, and in terms of most criteria of mental health, if you compare them to the general population. But if you compare such clients to other people who have been through a similar degree of trauma (e.g., growing up with alcoholic, violent, or sexually abusive parents), their level of emotional distress, relationship difficulties, and behavioral disturbance suddenly looks quite “normal,” at least statistically. An early part of recovery involves acceptance that such difficulties are “normal” consequences of such an abnormal or unfortunate past, thereby improving self-esteem by depathologizing behavior. By accepting such behaviors as normal consequences of abnormal environments, while working on altering these same behaviors, we become more normal. Our past trauma hopefully becomes something that happened to us, rather than something that defines us. Additionally, we need to support and nurture our core identity, even if we reject some of our behaviors.

Finally, there is the well-known lay definition of craziness, that is, repeatedly engaging in the same behavior despite the same old negative consequences. Or, perhaps you’d prefer to simply apply U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s threshold for obscenity (“I know it when I see it”) to mental illness. For practical purposes, most of us do have an internal sense of psychological health. But all of this is subjective, and what makes me feel crazy may be entirely different from your craziness. Thus, we might hesitate before we judge others as crazy. The stigma of mental illness itself is crazy-making, and can be counteracted by compassionate tolerance. Ultimately, we are remarkably fragile as human beings, and could benefit from more support and understanding from each other when we are troubled. If you haven’t personally experienced such fragility, you might take a moment to count your blessings.

For more on the criteria for mental health and illness, the complementary angle of positive psychology, and other topics in psychology, coping, and recovery check out Ed Chandler’s Psychomechanics – Tools for Self-Regulation of Emotions, now available in Print and E-Book on Amazon. Or, if you are interested in secular approaches to spirituality, the chapters of Psychomechanics are also included as the final section of Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices, also available in Print and e-Book on Amazon. Or explore this website (edchandlerandbeyond.com) to see Ed’s photography and stained glass, in addition to his writings on psychology, spirituality, anthropocentrism and prejudice. Thanks for listening.

Thank you for inviting me to share with you today. My main thesis today is that spirituality can be found at the intersection of consciousness and connectedness. So how did it come to pass that my consciousness is connecting with your consciousness on this sunny Sunday morning in June of 2019?

2019? Age 68? OMG! So right off the bat, here we have one of the primary spiritual emotions for you, perhaps the darkest one of all – death anxiety, the fear of annihilation of the self.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was sitting in St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, on Grand Island, New York, just upstream from Niagara Falls? I’d meet my teenage friends on Sunday nights for CYO, and bumper pool, in the basement of St. Stephen’s. The fellowship was good, but there was something else, earlier on Sundays. I was 13 years old, on the cusp of adolescence when the Beatles first came to the States. I loved music, so I was excited when guitars were introduced into one of our morning masses, especially when the Byrd’s Turn, Turn, Turn! was strummed and sung by my fellow teenagers. And then there was that special feeling in the midst of midnight mass on Christmas Eve, which I would later understand as spiritual connectedness.

But then I became too clever. I was always an amateur philosopher, and like most adolescents, I began wondering about the big picture, how we got here, and what our role and purpose is in the broad scheme of things. And I began finding holes in religious dogma. I went to Calasanctius, a Catholic middle/high prep school run by Piarist priests, who had escaped Russian domination in 1950s Hungary. Like the Jesuits that I admired at Marquette University a few years later, they taught you how to think, not what to think. My Headmaster spoke 8 languages, taught Philosophy of Religion, and reportedly practiced Buddhism on the side. I was introduced to epistemology, the study of what constitutes evidence for truth, and I began to contrast faith vs. science, as emotional versus rational approaches to truth. In the process, I found many more holes in religion.

I graduated from agnosticism to atheism as a freshman at Marquette. I eventually wrote my Master’s thesis on anthropocentrism, or man-centeredness, the supposition that mankind is the most important and central entity in the universe. I began to see the ways that death anxiety and anthropocentrism were primary motives for belief in religion, because they allow us to feel important in the grand scheme, and to deny the dreaded reality of mortality.

What I didn’t know was that I was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I was travelling headlong into a spiritual void. I was throwing spirituality out with religion, because I’d swallowed the Kool Aid, the Christian claim that they are identical. You’re either for ‘em or against ‘em, good or bad, divine or Satanic in the eyes of conservative religion. Spirituality was religion. Fast-forward a few decades, and something was vaguely but surely missing. It was only when I realized that religion is only one form of spirituality that I found the escape hatch from my spiritual malaise. Eventually, five years ago, I began to write. The result is Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices. The current result, since spirituality is ideally experienced in the present tense, is me connecting my consciousness with yours this morning. But enough about my path to this particular moment. What does the baby look like after the bathwater is drained?

If we’re going to discuss secular spirituality, aka, spiritual atheism, we might begin by asking two questions: Why secular? and why spirituality? Let’s start with the less provocative second question. Why is spirituality important to most human beings? This question requires us to define spirituality, which invites us to distinguish between spirituality and religion. The word “spiritual” has had shifting meanings down through the centuries. It was coined by Apostle Paul to describe any entity under the influence of the Holy Spirit. It was later used in the Middle Ages to distinguish the spiritual side of life from the material or corporeal. But in recent decades, it increasingly refers to a personal connection with an entity greater than oneself, whereas “religion” refers to the more institutional, organized aspects of faith. For fundamentalists, “spiritual atheism” is a laughable contradiction in terms. For them, religion and spirituality are synonymous, and atheists are lacking each, to the point of damnation. They note that the word “spirit” begins the term “spirituality,” and they insist that you cannot be spiritual unless you believe in spirits and are infused with the spirit of God. But spirituality is a much larger tent than religion, and one can be spiritual with or without religion.

If so, we must answer the question, “What is nonreligious spirituality?” Before I provide my response, please allow me a brief philosophical digression. What are the primary components of our universe? Physicists will suggest matter, and perhaps energy, while psychologists and philosophers will be quick to add consciousness to the discussion. Matter is the tangible stuff that we see and feel all around us, whereas consciousness is invisible, but no less real. The mind and the brain are parallel systems. The mind harbors consciousness, while the brain is composed of matter. We process our existence in both our minds and our brains, simultaneously. If matter and consciousness are the two primary components of the universe, how are they related to each other? We certainly see plenty of examples of matter without consciousness, such as rocks and other inanimate objects. But what about consciousness without matter?

Spirits, such as ghosts, souls, gods and demons, are proposed as real entities, involving disembodied consciousness, that is, consciousness in the absence of matter. But what evidence do we have that consciousness can exist in the absence of matter? When brains die, minds seem to die with them, always. Death is the ugly underbelly of life, and is frightening because consciousness seems to disappear upon death. When our friends or relatives die, we mourn our loss, as we can no longer share consciousness with them. The solid data suggest that a mind requires a brain, and that consciousness is dependent upon matter, and does not exist without it. We are frightened by death, as it involves the annihilation of our identity and consciousness. So we propose spirits, such as souls, and immortality, so we, as well as our loved ones, can live forever as spirits, beyond the demise of our bodies. And we propose gods, whose consciousness supposedly existed before the creation of the material universe.

But if we don’t believe in souls, ghosts, or gods, we are left to face our own mortality, and the mortality of our loved ones: real and final mortality, not temporary mortality. And we are left with the dilemma of how to be spiritual without spirits. But why bother? Why is spirituality important anyways? Some neo-atheists delight in their rational destruction of gods, but neglect the reality that religions developed in part to meet the innate human need for spirituality. Atheism by itself is a negative identity; it focuses on what we oppose and don’t believe in, not what we do believe in. It is just a starting point; we then need to move from “No” to “Yes,” to what we do believe in. But more importantly, like everyone else, we need to move from beliefs to practices. It is ironic that atheists and various theists, be they Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc., all agree for the most part on how to behave. But then we war over what to believe, and violate our own moral guidelines as we target heretics with hatred, bombs, and threats of eternal damnation. Atheism is just a starting point, an adolescent statement of opposition that begs for development of positive beliefs and practices, especially practices.

So what is spirituality? My take is that spirituality has two components: consciousness and connectedness. It can be about spirits, but it need not be. Spirituality is a quest to connect with something larger than ourselves, and it is a celebration of our consciousness of the world and our presence within it. From the moment we are born, and are separated from our mother, we seek to reconnect. Yes, we want autonomy, but we also want attachment. We don’t want to lose our self, or our selfhood, but we want to connect our self to something beyond ourselves, including friends, a lover, and larger entities. Spirituality involves a search for that connectedness, with something much greater than our self, whether it be a religious god, or more secularly, the “All” of the universe.

So if we reject invisible, unproven religious spirits and supernatural zones, such as souls, gods, and afterlives, how do we develop nonreligious spiritual connectedness? How does one become a spiritual atheist? We do not need to believe in creation or a god to appreciate our gifts of life, love, and consciousness. We can celebrate our existence, and experience existential joy, that we are, without having to know why we are, or how we got here. The German philosopher, Martin Heideger, distinguished between the everyday and the “ontological” modes of existence. In the everyday mode, we marvel at how things are in the world. The complexity of a snowflake or the veins on the underside of a leaf, the infinite expanse of the universe, and the joys of love and intimacy are amazing wonders. But in the ontological mode, we appreciate the miracle of being itself, and stand in awe that things are. We appreciate existence and beingness itself, and our consciousness of it. We thereby experience existential joy: joy in our existence, and our conscious awareness of this gift. Spiritual atheism is not a contradiction in terms. As secular humanists and others know, one can be spiritual without being religious. We can pursue connectedness with the universe, humanity, life, and the “All,” and celebrate our consciousness, without weighing in on the origins of the universe or believing in life after death.

And we can pursue various spiritual emotions. We already mentioned the primary negative spiritual emotion, death anxiety. We might also note loneliness and isolation, meaninglessness and purposelessness, and existential dread – the fear of living an unfulfilled life.  On the positive side of the coin, we can actively pursue positive spiritual emotions, particularly gratitude, humility, awe, love, and existential joy. Let’s briefly examine each of these positive spiritual emotions, and how our pursuit of them promotes spirituality.

We already touched on existential joy, which is closely connected to a second positive spiritual emotion: gratitude. We experience gratitude when we count our blessings for our gifts, particularly the major gifts, of life, consciousness, love, and the wonders of nature. We can take time to savor these gifts on a daily basis. And we can accept the limits of the gift, and have gratitude for our six or eight decades of life; or we can get greedy and insist on immortality, and a blissful one at that. The virtue of gratitude counteracts the sins of greed and envy. Acceptance of impermanence, of mortality, and gratitude for the gift of life, stands in stark contrast to the greedy demand for mortality.

Humility is a third positive spiritual emotion. Humility with self-esteem is the healthy middle ground between humiliation and narcissism. Think of a dimension, with humiliation at one extreme, and narcissism at the other. Humiliation is toxic shame. Shame and guilt are different; guilt is about behavior, while shame is about identity. Shame is more toxic than guilt, because it assaults our identity, which is far more threatening than mere guilt regarding a behavior. Narcissism reflects the sin of pride, and involves a lack of healthy shame, a delusion that our own behavior never stinks. In between these extremes of humiliation (toxic shame) and narcissism (lack of shame) we find the middle ground, the healthy combination of opposites, in self-esteem with humility. As individuals, it is best to see oneself as unique and special, yet at the same time, as a speck of sand in the vastness of the universe.

Moving from the individual to the species level, humans are clever and creative, but often clever by half, grandiose in our anthropocentric view of ourselves as the centerpiece of the universe, and as God’s pet species. As noted earlier, anthropocentrism, or man-centeredness, is a value judgment, a perspective on reality that positions man as the most important entity in the universe. As humans, we tend to narcissistically view ourselves at the center of the universe, second in importance only to God, who created us, or, from an atheistic perspective, we invented God to establish our own importance in the first place. By inventing a God who in turn views us at the center of creation, we cleverly assert our own importance, cloaked in a posture of humility at the foot of God. Indeed, from this perspective, it is ironic that the religious virtues of gratitude and humility are violated by the religions that promote them. Gratitude for the gift of life yields to greed for immortality, and humility yield to pride as the centerpiece of the universe.

Thus, anthropocentrism, along with death anxiety, are primary motives for religious belief, as we seek to be both important and everlasting. Humility, like gratitude, helps us appreciate our small but precious position amidst the expanse of the universe, which puts us on the doorstep of awe.

Awe is yet a fourth positive spiritual emotion. While awe can be inspired by various sources, including human creations, such as moving works of art and music, awe is more robust when inspired by nature. Nature is the focus of environmental spirituality. Eco-awe is connected to humility and gratitude, to our willingness to feel dwarfed by nature, and grateful for our short gift of life living within it: within, not over. Sometimes it helps to return to our early primal powers, as children. A childlike state of mind is more awestruck, curious, and filled with wonder than the adult mind, more present, less trapped in the future, more connected with the world in the moment. By necessity, we desensitize to familiar elements of our surroundings as we age, attending to the novel, the threatening, and the more demanding elements of our environments. Thus, it helps to periodically stand back, and recapture our ability to be amazed with the myriad wonders around us. Rachel Carson (1965) suggested an antidote to desensitization: “One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, ‘What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?’” (p. 59). We are more appreciative of the uniqueness of the world when it is novel to us. Phil Zuckerman (2014) searched for a label to describe his secular spirituality. He ultimately designated himself an “aweist.”

Spirituality is also an antidote to self-centeredness. It requires transcendence of the boundaries of self, attachment to something beyond and larger than oneself, humility regarding the small status of oneself amidst the awesome wonders of the All. Good reason why recovery programs for addicts include a strong spiritual emphasis. The path to addiction takes you into the depths of increasing self-centeredness, deceit, and manipulation of others. Embracing something larger than ourselves, whether it be God, the universe, life, humanity, family, or just the wisdom of the 12-step program, is an antidote to this poisonous self-focus.

 We likewise transcend ourselves in love, as we share our consciousness while connecting romantically. Secure attachments, both as young children and as adults, are crucial to our psychological welfare. For adults, romance is the primary target for such attachment. At its best, love (as well as sex) is a spiritual experience, as we share our consciousness with a partner, selflessly but without sacrificing our autonomy. Thus, to develop our spirituality, we can deliberately cultivate various spiritual emotions, including, existential joy, gratitude, humility, awe, and love.

Spirituality also intersects with morality. Both involve connected consciousness. This connection, whether it be spiritual or moral, involves valuing another entity, living or not. We might feel a spiritual connection to the universe on a clear, starry night, but feel a moral obligation to protect our corner of it. Our connection to living entities is more robust, particularly with humans and other animals, and adds empathy to the equation. More complex animals experience pleasure and pain, and our ability to empathize, to put ourselves in others’ shoes and vicariously feel their pain or pleasure, is both a measure of our connectedness, and the core of our moral fiber. The more we connect to the other, the more we experience a spiritual attachment, as well as a moral imperative to take care of the other.

When we debate how to construct morality without God, and his divinely-revealed objective ethics, we are in a quandary. If ethics are not objective, and are not dyed in the wool of objective reality, handed down by God, what are we to do? Make them up? Exactly. This is why you have a conscience. Turn the volume up a notch, get in touch with your capacity for empathy and compassion, and you’ll know what to do. Doesn’t this allow everyone to do whatever they want? Yes, but don’t they anyways? Right and wrong, like beauty, is a human concept, that doesn’t exist independent of the human (or perhaps primate) mind. But we do have consciences, and a capacity for subjective ethics. When we consider our options, humanists are quick to join the debate. Greg Epstein advanced the humanist agenda as well as anyone. In Good Without God (2009), he noted that the primary weakness of modern atheism is its focus on discrediting religious beliefs, rather than the development of moral practices. He concluded that in so doing, “we’ve often produced a very heady atheism. But I believe in the heart of Humanism” (p. 175). This echoes my own starting point, that while beliefs are important, a primary focus on the falsity of others beliefs is bankrupt, as it ignores the importance of what you do believe in, and more importantly, neglects the wisdom that spiritual and moral practices have far more impact on happiness than beliefs.

Thus, secular spirituality, or spiritual atheism, is indeed a combination of opposites. It seeks to discard the irrational beliefs and dogmatic excesses of religion, while preserving and expanding on religion’s beneficial moral and spiritual emphasis (without the hypocrisy). It pursues the spiritual emotions touted by religions, without degenerating into anthropocentric pride or greed for immortality. It seeks a connection to something larger than oneself, without claiming that consciousness exists in the absence of matter. It is a celebration of consciousness and connectedness, without creators or afterlives. One can indeed be non-religious, but fully spiritual!

References:

-Carson, Rachel. (1965). The sense of wonder. New York, NY: Harper and Row.

-Epstein, Greg. (2009). Good without God: What a billion nonreligious people do believe. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

-Zuckerman, Phil. (2014). Living the secular life: New answers to old questions. New York, NY: Penguin.

If you are interested in this and similar topics, check out Ed’s recent book, Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices, available on Amazon. Or explore his other offerings here at: edchandlerandbeyond.com  Thanks for listening.

Sadness and depression are two different entities. Sadness is an emotion, as are guilt, shame, loneliness, irritation, and feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and worthlessness. Such feelings are the most prominent emotions present during depression. Clinical depression goes well beyond mere feelings, however, and is better viewed as a syndrome that includes cognitive, behavioral, and physical ("vegetative") symptoms in addition to mood symptoms. Beyond the negative moods noted above, depressive symptoms also include a loss of capacity to experience pleasure during activities that have typically been enjoyable in the past. Thus, the mood symptoms of depression involve both the presence of negative feelings, and the absence of positive feelings. Physical symptoms of depression include loss of energy and loss of (or sometimes an increase in) appetite and sleep, while cognitive symptoms include loss of concentration and short-term memory, confusion and slowed thinking, and increased difficulty with decision-making. A common behavioral symptom of depression is withdrawal, which sometimes involves wholesale retreat from life, via reduced involvement in pleasurable, productive, and social activities, and retreat from consciousness by escaping into sleep. As feelings of hopelessness escalate, it is not unusual to experience at least fleeting suicidal thinking when depressed, though we can distinguish between passive suicidal ideation (e.g., wishing you were dead or wouldn’t wake up), and more active suicidal planning or consideration of methods. Suicidal risk is associated with hopelessness more that just depression. Withdrawal and suicidal thinking reflect the flight side of our fight-or-flight defensive maneuvers, while the fight shows up in the irritability that often accompanies depression.

             So how do we cope with depression, or for that matter, with persistent down moods that are not frequent or intense enough, or accompanied by enough additional symptoms, to meet the criteria for clinical depression? Antidepressant medication may be helpful, particularly if your depression is severe or even moderately severe, especially if you have a past history of pronounced depression. While medication may not be necessary for milder forms of depression, antidepressants are usually helpful in reducing the intensity of severe depressive symptoms, thereby making it easier to access your internal resources, and to take initiative to use external resources. Typically, medication is a temporary crutch, used to reduce symptoms for a number of months or perhaps a year, until you are able to access, activate, and further develop your skills to counteract depression. Medication does not address the sources of your depression, except in the atypical situation in which strong genetic or other permanent organic factors drive a primarily biologically-based depression. Most depression is associated with losses, rejection, failure experiences, or abuse and neglect, and is driven by our thoughts, self-criticisms, interpretations, behaviors, and preoccupation with these experiences. Psychotherapy is designed to address the psychological sources of your depression, and both the cognitive and behavioral habits that maintain depression.

From a behavioral standpoint, it is particularly important to counteract withdrawal tendencies. Such withdrawal is quite understandable. If we feel lousy, have little or no energy, no motivation, and a reduced ability to enjoy ourselves, we are unlikely to feel like doing anything. Accordingly, we are likely to withdraw into ourselves, stay within the safe cocoon of our homes, and avoid social contact or other outside activities. We may further withdraw to sleep, sleeping 12 or 14 hours per day as a means of avoiding conscious experience of our emotional pain. We may also abandon our responsibilities (e.g., housework, paying bills, going to work, or even caring for our children properly), because life sometimes feels too overwhelming to deal with when we are depressed. However, if we are determined to gradually reduce and overcome our depression, it is vitally important that we counteract our withdrawal, since withdrawal often increases depression in the long run, even if it is easier at the moment. Depression and withdrawal often become a vicious circle, in which depression invites withdrawal, while withdrawal further increases depression, etc. Why is this so? Even though we are less capable of pleasure when we are depressed, we are usually capable of at least some pleasure until our depression becomes severe. If we abandon these pleasurable pursuits, we further deprive ourselves of the experience of pleasure, resulting in an even lower mood. If we abandon our responsibilities, we lose our productivity and sense of accomplishment, which typically results in self-criticism and lower self-esteem, which in turn increase depression. And if we withdraw from social contact, we deprive ourselves of the emotional support and social connectedness that is otherwise available from our friends and loved ones, which leaves us feeling more alone, unsupported, and therefore more depressed.

Accordingly, it is imperative that we counteract the withdrawal that often accompanies depression, despite the fact that depression makes it particularly difficult to fight withdrawal. The solution is to be found in discipline, even though self-discipline is particularly difficult to muster when we are feeling low. We cannot afford to wait until we feel like becoming more active, or until we feel like reaching out to others. In life, we often wait for feelings (e.g., hunger, love) to drive our behavior, but sometimes we use discipline to behave in a certain way (e.g., chores or homework) to feel better. Feelings cannot be changed directly, but do change indirectly in response to changes in our thinking and behavior. Withdrawal and passivity are behaviors. Negative self-talk, cynical attitudes, and pessimistic/hopeless predictions are thoughts. We will need to change both, though it is often more productive and easier to change behaviors than thoughts initially. In particular, we need to get off the couch (or bed), out of the house, in touch with supportive friends, and active in exercise. You won’t feel like doing these things, but if you use a few minutes of discipline (e.g., get out of bed and get wet in the shower), the behavior will often flow from there. People seldom get back in bed after a shower, and seldom return home after the first five steps of jogging. So focus on a short burst of discipline to start a behavior. And don’t expect to enjoy yourself as much as you used to – that will take a while. Use a different expectations yardstick – did you feel better after your outing than you would have after staying home in bed? So start fighting depression by focusing on anti-depressant behaviors.

We mentioned both thoughts and behaviors as means of changing feelings, so what about thoughts? Aaron Beck's famous “cognitive triad” is a good starting point. You are more likely to become depressed, and stay depressed, if you harbor and dwell on negative thoughts about yourself, the world, and your future. If you think that you are worthless, that the world is cold and uncaring, and that your future is hopeless, you are likely to become depressed. Even if you don’t typically think these ways, depression (e.g., after a loss or failure experience) will often invite you to think negatively. If you want to think your way out of depression, you must become proactive in addressing the cognitive triad. That is, you must learn how to become self-nurturing and supportive to yourself, in your self-talk, while developing a more hopeful and optimistic, or at least a balanced view of the future. You must also think of the world, or at least your own social world, or perhaps a new social environment that you create, as a potential source of support and connectedness. Cynicism is poison to the mind. It alienates you from your environment, thereby disrupting your external connectedness. Likewise, expectations are thoughts, and we spoke above about new yardsticks when fighting depression. Expect yourself to get out of bed and to activate yourself, but don’t expect yourself to immediately feel better doing so, or to be as efficient as you used to be before your depression. Be patient with yourself, encourage yourself, and maintain hope that you will gradually become more joyful and effective, if you are self-supportive and engage in antidepressant behaviors.

From a different angle, the foundation of depression often includes a feeling of significant loss. This loss may be the loss of loved one, a job, the loss of friends and familiar surroundings after a geographical move, the loss of self-esteem after a failure experience, the loss of health, or some other type of important loss. It is important to address and grieve such losses, and to determine if and how such losses can be replaced as a means of filling the existing void. Grief and sadness must be expressed and worked through before such feelings can be significantly reduced. Time does not heal all wounds. It is what you do over time that heals. Despite the temporarily increased emotional distress experienced when we allow ourselves to cry, it is important to talk about sadness, allow tears to flow naturally, and to otherwise grieve, as such emotional expression and catharsis is necessary to gradually reduce our grief and regain our emotional equilibrium. Some losses can be replaced, though others need to be accepted, while pursuing new meaning in life from unaccustomed sources. Sometimes the problem is not so much immediate losses, but the enduring or residual impact of early losses, abuse or other traumatic childhood events. We typically try to suppress the emotional pain associated with such losses, but the disowned pain nonetheless influences us indirectly from the hidden confines of our subconscious mind. We thereby benefit from suppression in the short term, but continue to suffer in the long term. In these circumstances, we need to muster the courage to face our feelings, memories, and traumas, perhaps with professional help via trauma-focused therapy.

We have only scratched the surface and highlighted a few central themes in the management of depression. For more, check out the chapter on depression in Psychomechanics – Tools for Self-Regulation of Emotions, which I recently published on Amazon. Please note that Psychomechanics is also included in my lengthier book on Secular Spirituality: Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychchological Practices, also available on Amazon. But there are also hundreds of self-help books that are specifically and entirely targeted at depression. Sometimes it helps to just sit in a bookstore, or read passages online, to see which books speak to you. Or visit a therapist, to see if you can establish a safe relationship where you can work through your losses and other depressing issues. Thanks for listening.

During my past four decades in clinical psychology, I gradually developed an understanding of what produces personal change, and I began writing. In 2002, my wife, D’Lane, and I broke loose from our psychiatric colleagues and formed our Turning Point Center for Psychological and Family Growth (yes, I’ve been accused of being verbose). D’Lane used her cyber-talents to create a website (www.turningpoint4u.com) for our practice, dragging your narrator into the digital professional world. Adding to our website resources, I compiled my various writings on recovery, growth, trauma, relationships, etc. into an online compendium, Psychomechanics, for the benefit of my clients. As I entered the seventh decade of my life (7th! And now on the doorstep of my 8th? How did…), my spiritual void increasingly tugged at me. I began to explore the spiritual alternatives to organized religion, and as is my habit, I began to write. Four years later, this all coalesced into a book designed for those who check the box, “Spiritual but not religious.” Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual. Moral, and Psychological Practices, addresses beliefs, but prioritizes practices. Beliefs are cheap; practices are more difficult, and more rewarding. After addressing spiritual and moral practices from a secular angle in BA, it was right up my alley to address psychological practices, so I updated my online self-help writings, and included the revised version of Psychomechanics as the third and final section of BA.

But I also wanted to offer a freestanding, updated version of Psychomechanics to my clients and others seeking psychological growth, without the spiritual angle of BA. In this version, I have steered clear of religious and spiritual commentary, except for a chapter encouraging everyone to translate their chosen beliefs into day-to-day practices. My intent is to offer my clinical angle on psychological recovery, without the philosophical, religious, and spiritual meanderings of the far lengthier BA. Psychomechanics starts with global personality issues, presenting a simplified view of the structure of personality, the wisdom of selective vulnerability, and the subjectivity of normalcy and craziness. It then targets the concept of stress, as well as specific emotions and syndromes: guilt and shame, sadness and depression, anxiety and avoidance, frustration and anger. Subsequent chapters address the unique challenge of coping with trauma, our need for both internal and external attachment, and the benefits of positive psychology in tempering the traditional clinical focus on psychopathology. My hope is that these 11 chapters will help you understand the workings of the mind, and offer you techniques for managing your own mind, particularly your emotions. We’re all on the road to find out. Hopefully, I can add a few signposts to your road. Thanks for listening. Ed

Psychomechanics will be available on Amazon June 21, 2019.

View Ed’s Current Books - https://www.edchandlerandbeyond.com/books

Birth, and conception itself are miraculous, even if you don’t believe in miracles. Awesome on three counts: that males and females exist in the first place, are sexually attracted so irresistibly, and can produce new life. And when that new life is ready, the very process of birth is wondrous in itself. With less impactful events, we can get so used to the world around us, so desensitized, that we lose appreciation for the commonplace facets of our existence, the dandelions in the lawn. We need to step back, and ask: “What if X, Y, or Z never was, but suddenly became, manifesting itself in reality for the first time?” We thereby access awe and wonder, and a connection with the beauty of nature, even for the mundane. Awe comes easier with the biggies like birth, gazing into the depths of the Grand Canyon, or the cascading plunge of Niagara Falls just downstream from my childhood home. When we contemplate the intricacies of nature while examining the underside of a leaf or the uniqueness of snowflakes or fingerprints, we connect to the “All.” Existence itself, and the wonders of life, consciousness, and love, and the fact that they even exist in the first place, leaves us awestruck, and on the doorstep of gratitude. When the newborn is your grandson, and he sports all ten toes, you cry buckets of gratitude. Genetic and biologic roulette have smiled upon you, and the frightening hammer has not descended. You feel all the more connected to your daughter and her mate, thankful to be included in this awesome unfolding. And then you hold that tiny, fragile human being, and witness your daughter nursing him contentedly, and experience the connectedness we call love, and the full meaning of the big picture. And there they are, in one experience, three of the most basic spiritual emotions: awe, gratitude, and love.

Whether you are religious or not, awe is spiritual fuel. Spirituality is about connectedness, and consciousness, particularly the emotions we experience as we contemplate our awareness of the universe and our connectedness with it. We can deliberately access these emotions, or virtues (they can be viewed through either lens) typically associated with spirituality. We can begin with awe, gratitude, humility, and love. These are virtues because they are aspirational, i.e., something we value, but they are emotions as well, and spiritual, because they connect us to our surroundings. Experiencing awe allows us to rise above the boredom associated with our gradual desensitization to our surroundings. Gratitude allows us to move beyond negativity, entitlement, and greed. Humility moves us beyond the narcissistic confines of pride. And love conquers alienation and anger.

 Awe is perhaps the most basic spiritual emotion. It moves us beyond egotism, beyond the narrow confines of the self, as we experience the vastness and complexity of the universe. It invites humility, as we acknowledge our small place amidst the vastness of the “All.” And we experience wonder, over the complicated mechanics of the universe. As we age, and circle the drain of death, we see ourselves recreated in our offspring, and in their offspring, and marvel at the cycle of life. Unless we manufacture fantasies of immortality (with a side dish of bliss), we are limited to mortality with a consolation prize: genetic quasi-immortality via the generations that follow us. Life goes on, without and beyond us, but we have a role in fathering and furthering life.

Reproduction maintains life. Animals and plants are markedly different from inorganic matter: Life involves growth, change, and functional activities. And unlike the average rock, living things reproduce. Reproduction is the start of life, the regeneration of life, without which, species, and life itself, would cease. We can also stand in awe before the myriad variations of reproduction. I don’t know about you, but as a teenager, I never got a “Birds and Bees” talk, and as an oldest child, I had to figure it out on my own, with a censored library, no internet, and the limited help of my fellow uninformed friends. Girls changed, hormones got louder, new rules emerged, and the world turned upside down for a few years. Eventually it made sense, and I adapted. Becoming a professional psychologist, and an amateur philosopher, helped me put it in perspective, but that was much later. Early on, we studied reproduction in school, but it was a task, an academic chore, without the awe it holds when I revisit it now. But perhaps it’s worth a second peek, especially after the appearance of Teddy, Luke, and Marsden (you can call him Mars) in my life.

The sheer variation in reproductive strategies amongst plants and animals is astounding, even before we add the question of how these life-renewal techniques arose in the first place. To begin with, we have sexual versus asexual reproduction. The sexual version combines genetic material from two parents, whereas in asexual reproduction, a single organism produces a nearly exact copy of itself, without any genetic input/fertilization from another. Asexual reproduction has some clear advantages: it can be accomplished without a partner, and can be quite rapid, allowing a species to multiply quickly in a given environment. But sexual reproduction has an evolutionary advantage. It blends genetic material from two parents, producing unique individuals, and a genetically diversified species. This diversity provides more strategies for a species to adapt to a challenging environment, more possibilities for natural selection.

Sexual reproduction can involve either internal or external fertilization. Internal fertilization, usually via some type of sexual intercourse, results in a zygote being formed inside the female, where it is carried until a live birth in mammals, though birds and some lizards lay the fertilized egg and incubate it until it hatches. External fertilization is typical in species that live in the water, and amongst many plants. The female lays the eggs in the water, which keeps them from drying out, and the male sprays sperm over the eggs, though the resulting zygotes must fend for themselves without parental protection.

Many groups of animals, primarily invertebrates, do not have separate sexes, but nonetheless engage in sexual reproduction, in which either partner can act as a male or as a female. A hermaphrodite has both male and female sexual organs, and can thereby produce either male or female gametes to unite with complementary gametes to form a zygote. Many earthworms, slugs and snails, and most plants are hermaphroditic. Take a moment, and imagine how this would alter the human social scene! Simultaneous hermaphrodites have fully functional male as well as female genitalia, while sequential hermaphrodites are born as one sex, but can change into the opposite sex, without enrolling at a transsexual clinic. Clownfish, those colorful white-banded orange fish of cartoon fame, live in symbiosis with sea anemones. Typically, a given anemone contains a “harem” involving a large female, as well as smaller reproducing and non-reproducing males. If the female dies or departs the harem, one of the largest males will move up the hierarchy and become a female, and another male will fertilize her. Simultaneous hermaphrodites, such as banana slugs, can hook up, fertilize each other, and each lay fertilized eggs, but in the absence of a partner, they can resort to asexual reproduction, and self-fertilize. What a trump card if you are painfully shy, or find relationships unsafe!

In plants, sexual and asexual reproduction can occur, and hermaphrodism is common. The reproductive organs can be present on separate male and female plants (dioecious plants such as the kiwi or holly), or a single plant can have both male and female parts (monoecious). In the latter, the male and female structures can be located on separate flowers (e.g., pumpkins), or each individual flower can be hermaphroditic (e.g., tomatoes and hibiscus). Hermaphroditic plants bloom flowers containing both male, pollen-producing structures (stamens and anthers) and female parts (the pistil, with its stigma, style, and ovary). These plants can self-pollinate (though this reduces genetic diversity), or cross-pollinate, in each case producing a seed that recreates life. But cross-pollination requires a vector, such as the wind, or a pollinator. To increase genetic diversity, plants have evolved impressive sexual strategies to attract pollinators to spread pollen between species members, including variations in flower shape, color, and fragrance. In a win-win relationship, pollinators such as bees obtain nutritious nectar and pollen in the bargain. As a young teenager, who knew that sex and reproduction could be so varied and complicated? But then again, bees and colorful flowers create an apt analogy for teenage dating.

But the best is often saved for last. My favorite reproduction story, and the one that captivates most children, is the butterfly and caterpillar cycle. Butterflies display “metamorphosis,” a massive transformation of self, involving distinct, separate stages. In the first stage, butterflies lay fertilized eggs, usually on the leaves of plants. When the tiny caterpillar hatches from the egg, it is a voracious eater, gobbling up the leaves. Its exoskeleton (skin) cannot stretch, so the caterpillar must molt, developing new skin several times as it grows. At full size, the caterpillar creates a pupa, or chrysalis around itself. Its body undergoes remarkable changes, a metamorphosis into a butterfly. It eventually emerges from the chrysalis, with wet, soft, folded wings, exhausted, but after a few hours of rest, it learns to fly. It then learns to find food (feeding on and pollinating flowers along the way) and a mate (for sexual intercourse), and lays its fertilized eggs, completing the life cycle that fascinates us all.

So there it is, the 8th grade essay I should have been assigned. Hopefully there aren’t too many biology or botany majors in the crowd to rip up the details. But regardless, the issue is family connectedness, and the spiritual awe, gratitude, and love we experience when we add a new family member and grow the future. Welcome to Mars.

Marsden Patrick - May 15, 2019

“One Hour” - 2019

For more thoughts on spirituality, psychology, anthropocentrism, and even photography go to Amazon.com to obtain the print or e-Book version of Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices. Chapter Highlights of the book are found on the Beyond Atheism page of this website

Coming for Summer Solstice - June 21, 2019

Psychomechanics:

Tools for Self-Regulation of Emotions

by

Edward Chandler, Ph.D.

A freestanding self-help book.

My readers can obtain a free e-copy of

Psychomechanics – Tools for Self-Regulation of Emotions

during the first three days of its appearance on Amazon. A print version of Psychomechanics also will be sold on Amazon for $12.95.

The year was 1600. Both religion and astronomy were in a state of revolution, and in conflict with each other to boot. On October 31, 1517, the Protestant Reformation began. Martin Luther, angry that Pope Leo X was financing the building of St. Peter’s Basilica via another round of pay-for-salvation indulgences, nailed his 95 Theses to the chapel door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg. With the aid of the printing press, which Johannes Gutenberg had made commercially successful in the 1450s, Luther’s protest was widely disseminated. 300 years before the Internet revolutionized our communication of information, Gutenberg had a similar impact. Scientific views, literature, the Bible, and yes, heresy, were now readily available. The exchange of ideas multiplied exponentially. Luther was excommunicated a year later by the Catholic Church after refusing to recant, and convicted as a heretic by the Edict of Worms in 1521. The Reformation quickly expanded into new threats, spread by figures such as John Calvin in Geneva, and King Henry VII in England. The Catholic Church responded, as its own reform movement morphed into the Counter-Reformation. In 1540, Ignatius Loyola officially formed the Jesuits, who were intent on propagating and defending the Catholic faith, and reconverting Protestants. The Council of Trent, from 1545 to 1563, issued decrees to establish rules of church life and clarify doctrine, to counteract corruption and heresy.  The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Catholic list of forbidden books, was launched in 1559, banning and prohibiting the reading of over 500 heretical texts. And following the model of the Spanish Inquisition established in 1478, the Roman Inquisition was formed, to investigate and prosecute all forms of heresy and dissent. Relentless interrogation and torture were employed by local Inquisitors to compel confessions.

During these years, science had its own trajectory, and its own clashes with the religious order. Fearful of Catholic retaliation for his radical notion that the sun, not the earth, is the stationary center of the universe, Nicolaus Copernicus delayed his publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium until shortly before his death in 1543. In 1564, Galileo Galelei was born in Pisa, Italy (two months before William Shakespeare’s birth in Stratford-upon-Avon). Between the death of Copernicus and the birth of Galileo, Filippo Bruno was born in 1548 in Nola, Italy. Fifty-two years later, at the turn of the century, he was gagged and burned at the stake in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome. Why?

For starters, Bruno had repeatedly run afoul of religious authorities. In 1565, he joined the Dominican order in Naples, and took on the name, Giordano, later being ordained as a priest in 1572. He fled to Rome in 1576 to evade a trial for heresy, after openly discussing the Arian heresy questioning the divinity of Christ. He abandoned the Dominican order, moved to Geneva in 1578, and embraced Calvinism. But after publishing 20 errors his Calvinist professor had supposedly made in a single lecture, he was again in hot water, eventually being arrested, excommunicated, “rehabilitated,” and allowed to leave. He later became a royal lecturer under the protection of the French king, published books on mnemonics, and moved to London in 1583, where he lectured on Copernican theory at Oxford, insisting on the reality of the Earth’s movement in space. He began writing his six dialogues (in which his characters argue their philosophical positions), where he reaffirmed the Copernican view that the Earth circles the sun. But he went much further. He argued that the universe is infinite, composed of “innumerable worlds” similar to our own solar system, and that our sun is not the center of the universe. This view was in stark contrast to the Copernican view that the universe is finite, with the sun at its center, while other stars are located on a fixed sphere just beyond our solar system.

After frequent debates and many conflicts during his subsequent years in various European cities, Bruno returned to Italy to educate an aristocrat in mnemonics. But his pupil betrayed him, reporting him to the Roman Inquisition, where he was arrested in 1592, and interrogated for seven years (not months) regarding all aspects of his philosophical and religious views. The verdict of the Inquisition was finally delivered in 1600, when he was sentenced to death, after being branded an “impentinent and pertinacious heretic” by Pope Clement VIII. His books were to be “publicly destroyed and burned in the square of St. Peter,” and placed in the Index of Forbidden Books. Defiant to the end, Bruno reportedly responded to his death sentence by exclaiming, "Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it." Soon after, he was taken naked to the Campo de’ Fiori, where his tongue was bound in a gag, and he was burned alive.

Bruno was subsequently celebrated as a martyr of science, though debates ensued regarding the true reason for his death sentence. He was not condemned for believing in Copernicus, but his claim, that Earth moves, was censored as heresy by Inquisitors in 1597. His belief in many worlds was also heretical. Christian scholars claim that Bruno was convicted for his religious views, not his cosmology, but can the two be unlinked? There is an underlying issue here, involving the anthropocentric underpinnings of religion. I have previously argued that death anxiety and anthropocentrism are the primary motives for religious belief, accompanied by a handful of other motives. Humans want to escape the limits of our mortality, and we want to see ourselves as the central purpose of the universe. Eternal heavenly bliss, provided by a God who places mankind at the center of creation, abundantly meets both needs. We pose with false humility at the foot of a God, who we invented to establish our centrality in the universe, as well as our own immortality. We make Him invisible, and demand faith. But then those pesky intellectuals ask questions, and are eventually supported by scientists who provide facts that undermine faith in the Holy Bible.

Giordano Bruno did not yet have the benefits of Galileo’s or Hubble’s telescopes, and his objections to religious cosmology were more philosophical than scientific (based on evidence). But the problem is that his cosmology, and that of Galileo, Kepler, and their successors, undermines the anthropocentric underbelly of religion. If mankind is at the center of the universe, or just next to the God that we created at the center, it would be convenient if the Earth was the physical center of the universe. When Copernicus put our sun at the center of the universe, it required a small accommodation. But if the universe is infinite, and there is no center, we lose our significance, particularly if those other solar systems are inhabited (as Bruno suggested they may be). The only thing worse would be if we evolved from ancestors and were not even present at the dawn of creation. In positing an evolutionary link between man and “lower” animals, Darwin effectively bridged the chasm of dissimilarity that had previously separated man from other life forms. Man was now a mere animal. Astronomy and evolutionary theory challenge our narcissism as a species, removing us as a centerpiece in the grand scheme of things. This is Bruno’s real sin, his narcissistic blow to mankind, striking a crack in the anthropocentric mirror that religion creates and protects. Aside from inviting greed for immortality, this is religion’s primary sin, pride, creating the God mirror, that fun-house distortion that allows us to bask in the reflection of God’s glory at the center of the universe, as His favorite pet. Bruno’s cosmology invited us to adopt the intolerable virtue of humility. For this he had to be gagged, in death as in life.

For more on anthropocentrism, motives for religious belief, and secular alternatives, check out, Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices, available in print and eBook from Ed Chandler on Amazon. And if you are in Rome, go to Bruno’s statue, erected in 1889 on the very spot where he had been burned at the stake.

Humans are among the most vulnerable creatures on Earth at birth. We are totally helpless, dependent on a nurturing mother for survival. Our emotional vulnerability and dependency continue for well over a decade, and to a lesser extent, throughout our lives. Attachment is crucial to the welfare of mammals, and although it dances with the complementary skill, autonomy, throughout the lifespan, our emotional welfare plummets without healthy attachments. If we are lucky, we are blessed with loving, nurturing parents and grandparents, and become healthy enough to attract a healthy lifelong romantic partner. If not, we struggle.

Even if we do have parental, marital, and social connections to nurture us, we sometimes experience losses and insecurities that leave us feeling raw and needy. If we have developed religious faith, we have an ever-present divine source of nurturance available to soothe us in times of need. God, however we conceive of Him or Her, is a higher power whom we can turn to for love, wisdom and guidance at whatever hour, 24/7. All we need to do is maintain a close relationship, via frequent prayer, and proactive moral initiative, to have ready access to this incredible resource. But some of us are troubled by faith. We seek evidence before believing, and find it lacking. As a result, our ability to access God’s gifts is compromised. What are we to do?

Secular spirituality, otherwise known as spiritual atheism, is a sometimes poorly understood nonreligious approach to spirituality. Concisely articulated, it can be viewed as a celebration of consciousness and connectedness. It focuses on the spiritual emotions of awe, gratitude, humility, love, and existential joy. We count our blessings for the gifts of life, consciousness, love, and an awesome universe to unfold our life within. We connect with lovers, friends, and the “All,” without the need to connect with unproven spirits, or the belief in disembodied consciousness (spirits such as gods, ghosts, and souls).

Our mental health, and spiritual connectedness, both require solid attachments. We must attach both externally and internally. We benefit from nurturing external attachments to our parents, friends, and a healthy lover, and a feeling of connectedness to humanity, nature, and the universe as a whole. But internal attachment is crucial as well. Self-esteem is a fundamental building block for a healthy personality. If we were not nurtured by our parents sufficiently, or experience abuse or frequent rejection elsewhere, our downloading of this external negativity may leave us feeling adrift, disliking and disconnected from our self. Our religious friends, facing similar circumstances, can pray, and bathe in God’s love (unless they conclude that even God doesn’t love them). We must find an alternative route: self-nurturance.

 We can acknowledge that prayer works for our religious brethren, but question its supposedly theological mechanism, and suggest an alternative psychological explanation of its effectiveness. From a secular angle, prayer can be viewed as an export/import business, where the raw materials of self-love and internal wisdom are exported to the supernatural factory, where they are dressed up in infallible divine garb, and then re-imported with confidence. This is a divine end run around self-doubt, and a means of substituting an illusory external connection for a deficient internal connection. From this viewpoint, prayer is a confidence booster that provides an unwitting, indirect access to distrusted internal wisdom and untapped self-nurturance, cleverly disguised as infallible divine guidance and love. From this secular perspective, we have all that we need within us to soothe ourselves when distressed, or to access our intuitive and rational wisdom when facing difficult decisions or dilemmas.  The question is how to access these internal resources, or, stated differently, how to harness the power of prayer internally. Allow me to digress for a paragraph or two in the service of this question.

If you haven’t been sufficiently loved and nurtured by others, it is difficult to do so for yourself. It is hard for us to nurture people we dislike, and hard to internally self-nurture if we dislike our self. The task is to develop self-compassion. Notice that when we dislike someone’s behavior, we tend to become more tolerant when we discover their early injuries, and understand how their damage produced their objectionable behavior. We all produce objectionable behavior of our own, all the more so if our childhood injuries have been intense. If we can muster compassion for the injured child within us, we can become more understanding and nurturing to our self, and improve our internal attachment.

But we are all motivated to reduce internal pain, and therefore we tend to suppress those negative emotions, and the memories that drive them. It is not unusual to hear victims of childhood trauma tell me that they have little recall of events before their teens, and they sometimes do so in a monotone voice, having suppressed their memories and numbed their feelings from being abused and traumatized. Other times, their emotions are out of control, when unresolved issues get triggered and suppressed emotions surge up and flood consciousness. The need for self-soothing is obvious, but the ability to do so is compromised, especially if they have self-protectively cut themselves off from the trauma victim, their childhood self. Short-term benefits (e.g., numbing negative emotions via suppression) are often followed by long-term deficits (e.g., being disconnected from the part of yourself that most needs healing). This is where trauma survivors need courage, to face the feelings and memories associated from their trauma, and to re-own and love the child-self within. Those of us who have suffered only garden-variety trauma, without any major abuse, are more fortunate, but still may need to learn self-nurturance if we harbor low self-esteem or practice negative self-talk.

The inner-child route to self-healing is an ego-state approach that attends to three ego states or subpersonalities, and improves the interaction between them. We all like to feel that we are unified, though we all have different sides or parts of self. The inner child ego state contains our true feelings, needs, and desires, our childlike spontaneity and playfulness, and our childhood memories and injuries. Our codependent self includes our defenses against these injuries and vulnerabilities, and our recognition that others have feelings and needs as well. The higher parent is the internal equivalent of a higher power, containing wisdom, love, and understanding. The higher parent guides a healthy balance between the self-centered inner child and the other-centered codependent self, to avoid the extremes of narcissism or codependent negation of the self. The higher parent understands and nurtures the wounds of the child self, appreciates the efforts of the codependent self to deal with those wounds, but seeks healing strategies that are less defensive and less self-defeating.

Regardless of whether you are doing full-scale child within work in a therapeutic setting, this approach can be used for self-nurturance. The trick is to be aware of your ego-states, and to access your higher parent in times of distress, allowing this part of yourself to soothe your vulnerable feelings (child self), substituting this self-nurturance for any defensive acting out, compulsive behavior, or self-attack. But some of us are far better at nurturing others than our self. If so, the trick is to respond to our self as if we are someone else, someone we care about deeply. Maybe you are a parent, or can at least imagine yourself as a parent. Think about or imagine yourself at your best as a parent, very much on top of your game, exuding love and wisdom as you respond to your child’s distress. Now you are in your higher-parent ego state. Imagine now that your own child self is your actual child, that you have been separated from him or her years, and you are coming back to soothe wounds suffered in your absence. Feel the compassion you exude as you hold and soothe your child. Yes, he or she may have made mistakes while responding to distressing events, but you will guide him/her toward better choices, and toward self-acceptance, because we all make errors when reacting to abuse, rejection, and novel circumstances. You forgive him/her, and encourage self-forgiveness, while developing better skills for the future. If you can do this for your child, at least when you are at your best as a parent, then you can do so for yourself (even if you have to first pretend that your child self is your own beloved child). Gradually, you will learn how to identify and shift into this higher-parent role when needed, just as your religious friends learn to use prayer to shift into the flow of God’s love.

Thus, we have two ways to access nurturance and wisdom in times of emotional vulnerability and distress, religious and parental. In the absence of religious faith, we can use the parental route. After all, a higher power is simply a projection of the higher parent in the first place. Our own experience of parental love, or, our ability to soothe our own child, is the core skill to be accessed when we need self-soothing. If our religious brethren can take a different route, more power to them. We all have to get there, one way or the other.

For more on inner parenting, other self-nurturance skills, and a variety of spiritual and psychological subjects, check out Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices, available in print and e-Book on Amazon. Chapter Highlights of Beyond Atheism are found at edchandlerandbeyond.com.

Our departure point is the notion that spirituality is a celebration of consciousness and connectedness. Previous blogs have targeted important varieties of connectedness (e.g., romantic union and eco-spirituality), but here we’ll focus on the other honored guest of the celebration. What is consciousness? We all know, experientially, but describing it takes some thought. Perhaps the closest synonym is awareness. Awareness. What an amazing gift! We get so used to it that we often fail to appreciate it. Gratitude is one of the core emotions we want to practice if we are cultivating a spiritual life, along with awe, humility, and the connecting emotions such as compassion and love. When we take the time to count our blessings, for life, love, and consciousness of it all, we feel fortunate, and experience existential joy – joy regarding our existence.

Backing up a bit, what are the most basic elements of the universe? Before you flash a chart of the Periodic Table, I would reply that yes, matter itself, and its sidekick, energy, are the primary physical phenomena of the universe. But they are accompanied by a radically different entity: consciousness, which is far less tangible, but just as real. On a material level, consciousness is a product of the brain, but cannot be entirely explained by matter. Matter can exist without consciousness (e.g., a rock), but so far, we have no solid, empirical evidence that consciousness can exist independently of matter (in disembodied spirits, such as souls, ghosts, and gods).  Consciousness is the primary property of a parallel entity: the mind. The content and processes of the brain are tangible, and include neurons, lobes, and ventricles, as well as chemical, electrical and circulatory processes. The processes of the mind are every bit as fascinating. The basic elements of the mind include sensations, perceptions, thoughts, memories, feelings, fantasies and dreams, identity (which requires self-consciousness), etc.

We can also speak of types of consciousness. Conscious awareness is subjective, involving perception rather than reality or truth. Consciousness is seated in the mind of the individual, and is thereby subjective from the start. We may blindly assume, or arrogantly claim, that our perception of reality accurately reads objective reality, but this is folly. Sensations are organized into perceptions, which are influenced by our own expectations, desires, and experience. Moreover, whatever objective reality is, our brains automatically and unconsciously function as data reduction systems designed to filter out all but the most practical and meaningful information. There are large individual differences in such meaning. Imagine walking through a food court in a shopping mall, and the differences in the perceptions of an architect, a gourmet chef, a starved child, a pedophile, the overworked janitor, and someone who has not visited a bathroom for eight hours.

Besides the difference between what is actually out there and how we perceive it, there are other dichotomies and dimensions of consciousness worthy of analysis. Consciousness can be personal and private, or shared with others. How lonely would we be if we had consciousness but were unable to share it?  Beyond the gifts of life and consciousness, we have a capacity for connected consciousness and love, incredible gifts in themselves. Think of your state of mind, your shared values, and your feeling of shared consciousness with your brethren during a Christmas Eve mass, among a stadium full of sport fans as your team takes the lead late in a playoff game, or at a political rally amidst a group protesting a gross injustice. In a darker vein, the so-called “mob mentality” involves a loss of individual identity and responsibility, which can contribute to immoral behavior in an unrestrained group atmosphere ruled by collective consciousness.

Then we have external and internal targets of consciousness. Our capacity for awareness can be focused externally, toward aspects of our surroundings, or internally, i.e., via self-consciousness. Our survival has depended on our ability to focus externally on aspects of the environment that pose possible danger, or offer potential satisfaction of our basic internal needs. But humans, and some other animals to varying degrees, have a capacity for internal, or self-consciousness as well. Like extroverts, we all sometimes experience life focused entirely on the world around us, without self-reflection. Other times, we act as introverts, aware of our mental states at a given moment, as we observe and reflect on our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. We introspect, and in some cases, we are aware that we are aware, and are thus fully self-conscious, not just experiencing our self, but experiencing our experience of our self, for better or worse. Sometimes it feels better to just flow spontaneously, or mindlessly if you will. Other times it pays to be mindful and self-aware, because it facilitates change, and allows us to enter a more spiritual dimension, aware of consciousness, our self, and our connections beyond our self. When we are aware of our awareness of the “All,” we are on the doorstep of awe, existential gratitude, and other spiritual emotions.

Consciousness can also be unitary, or divided in various ways. The left and right hemispheres of the brain can be seen as parallel processors, each taking in data and processing it in a unique, often complimentary manner. Also on this physiological level, the inner core/limbic system of our brains processes information and produces reactions that are more primitive, emotional, reptilian, and compelling than those produced in the more rational arena of our outer layer of cerebral cortex. Another important variable of consciousness involves our degree of awareness or knowing, on a conscious to unconscious dimension. We can distinguish between unconscious processes and unconscious content. We protect ourselves by banishing threatening content from consciousness. We benefit from defenses such as repression, suppression, denial, and dissociation, which export disowned thoughts, feelings, and memories into the unconscious mind. Some memories and realities are too toxic, and threaten to emotionally crush us if we cannot eliminate them from awareness. Other times we have to face them, because the fumes from our accumulating, disowned toxic waste dump can still influence us, outside of our awareness, and stink up our behavior. Unconscious processes include automatically regulated bodily processes such as heartbeat and digestion (which, fortunately, we don’t have to deliberately control from moment to moment). Likewise, automatic psychological processes include expectations and perceptions. It is convenient to expect drivers to stop at perpendicular stop signs, without having to waste time vigilantly monitoring events that are largely predictable. Dreams are also largely unconscious, and can be contrasted with various types of conscious thinking, including daydreaming, intuition, and rational, goal-directed thinking.

We can distinguish between rational and intuitive thinking, and between future-oriented versus present-focused consciousness. The rational mind is the primary mode of operation in language, communication and science, with its emphasis on linear time, cause and effect, and logical, verbal analysis. It feeds the GNP, technology, military superiority (in an attempt to ensure the bottom line of survival), and is future oriented. The intuitive mind is less valued in our clock-driven tech society, though it gives us gut-level (more influenced by emotion and unconscious) perceptions that can be valuable socially and creatively, and should not be ignored when we are about to enter dark alleys or dangerous relationships. In a related vein, we can distinguish logical, goal-oriented thinking from associational thinking. The former gets us from A to B the quickest, and proceeds according to the rules of logic. Associational thinking is a more intuitive mode of consciousness. It is the thought process that characterizes daydreaming, when one thought or image stimulates another, digressing in the moment, with no particular goal or endpoint in mind.

The actual elimination of thinking can also be useful, via meditation, when attempting to relax the mind and body, or to move toward a more present-centered state of consciousness. Goal-oriented thinking allows us to plan for the future, but immersion in the moment is also valuable, and more spiritual: more focused on immediate consciousness. It is actively cultivated by adherents of eastern religions, via mindfulness and other meditation techniques, which start with an elementary focus on breathing (our most basic interaction with our environment). Such present-focused consciousness can move toward mindlessness or mindfulness, i.e., toward suspension of external awareness and immersion in the “void,” or toward full awareness of the “All” of both external and internal reality, and celebration of our gifts.

These modes of consciousness are not better or worse than each other, but are each valuable for different goals. Mental health, like truth, is best viewed as a combination of opposites. It is best to develop multiple skills, and then choose the skill that is most adaptive in the current situation. We all want control of consciousness, particularly our feelings, which are the Holy Grail of consciousness. It helps to fully develop multiple processes of consciousness, and to have a channel selector, an ability to change the process or content of consciousness readily, on the fly. In the absence of such control over consciousness, we may find ourselves more dependent on the use of chemicals to influence consciousness. Some chemicals relax us, other stimulate us, while others (hallucinogens) are known to be a potential gateway to spirituality (or madness). But if we go to the well too often, we fail to develop natural methods of altering consciousness, and risk the slippery slide into addiction. Using a Buddhist metaphor, we can begin to resemble drunken monkeys, running back and forth from one window of stimulation to another (alcohol, other drugs, or behavioral compulsions such as sex, shopping, work or stimulation itself). In the process, we become human doings rather than human beings, and divorce ourselves from the joy of just being, and celebrating beingness. We can take some direction from eastern wisdom, and learn to alter consciousness more directly, without over reliance on chemicals and compulsive pursuits. Fundamentally, spirituality is a celebration of both consciousness and connectedness, so it behooves us to understand and deliberately steer consciousness, in addition to pursuing various ways of connecting to the universe around us.

To explore additional consciousness-building skills, read Part II “Building Secular Spirituality,” in Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices, which is available in print and e-Book on Amazon. Part II is divided into three Sections, “Celebrating Consciousness,” “Connecting Inside and Out,” and “Morality Revisited”. Chapter Highlights for Beyond Atheism can be found at edchandlerandbeyond.com.

If you care to, please share your perspective on consciousness in the comments section below.

Mommy, does God have a penis?

Why on Earth would you ask such a question, Molly?

Does He?

Who have you been talking to, Molly?

Johnny says He does.

And who is Johnny?

Just a boy in my class. He says boys have penises, girls don’t, and God is big boy, so He obviously has a penis, a really big one. Does He?

Well, I don’t know Molly. I never asked Him.

Is He a he?

Well, yes Molly. He’s our Heavenly Father.

Mommy, is there a Heavenly Mother?

No Molly, but there’s the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus.

What’s a virgin, Mommy?

Do we have to talk about this now, Molly?

Why can’t we, Mommy. Is there something wrong with a virgin?

No, honey. I just didn’t expect to have this discussion with you in 4th grade.

Is it bad to ask questions, Mommy?

No, honey. They say that if you’re old enough to ask, you’re old enough to know. So where do we start? You already know what sex is, right?

I think so. It’s when a boy puts his penis in your vagina. Johnny told me.

It’s your choice what you do with your body, Molly. Boys don’t get to decide that.

But what’s a virgin?

Does Johnny keep his penis in his pants, Molly?

Yes, Mommy. He’s not an idiot. So what’s a virgin?

It’s a girl who hasn’t had sex yet.

Johnny’s oldest sister isn’t a virgin. Johnny says she’s a whore. What’s a whore, Mommy?

It’s a girl who has too much sex, with too many boys, or get’s paid to have sex.

You mean whores have too much sex, and virgins don’t get any?

Something like that. I’ve got to go do the laundry, Molly. Maybe we can talk more later.

I can help! Mommy, do you have to have sex to have a baby?

Yes, Molly. That’s why it’s good to wait until you get married to have sex, so you don’t have babies until you’re ready.

Did you and daddy wait until you were married?

Hold this blue cup, Molly, while I pour the detergent in. Do you see how we pour it until it’s above the first line, and even with the second line?

Yes, Mommy. I like helping you. Was Mary a virgin, Mommy?

Mary who?

The Virgin Mary, Mommy.

Yes, Molly. That’s why they call her the Virgin Mary.

Then how did she get the Baby Jesus in her belly, Mommy?

It was a miracle, Molly.

Who makes miracles, Mommy?

Only God has the power to make miracles, Molly.

With His really big penis?

Molly!! Take these clothes to your room.

Seven years later…

Mom, are you a feminist?

Yes, I guess so, Molly.

You’re not sure?

No, I’m sure. Women need to be strong, and equal to men.

So Mom, Why do feminists believe God is male?

Because the Bible tells us so, Molly.

But Mom, wasn’t the Bible written by men?

Yes, Molly. But God inspired the men, so they knew how to write His word.

How do you know that, Mom?

It’s a matter of faith, Molly. Don’t you remember your Catechism?

Yes, but I’m starting to wonder whether faith is a good reason to believe in anything. Like how did Noah get T-Rex, a brontosaurus, and microscopic species into his Ark?

Only God knows, Molly. We’ll find out when we get to Heaven.

Wouldn’t it be funny, Mom, if we got to Heaven and it turned out that God had a vagina?

Molly!

But really, Mom. If God is female, it changes everything.

I suppose it would, Molly. And your father would probably be pretty upset!

What if there is no Heaven, and God is like Santa Claus, too good to be true?

That’s not what we’ve been taught, Molly.

Is it okay for me to ask these questions?

Yes, Molly. It’s just that you have many more questions than I did. And I was taught to have faith. Your questions threaten everything I believe in.

I’m sorry.

Don’t be. This is how you learn, honey. You’ve always had more questions than I’ve had answers. But you’ll figure it out for yourself.

I’m not sure there is a God, Mom. But I’m pretty sure that if there is a God, He doesn’t have a penis. I think men made a lot of stuff up, for their own benefit. Like that story about Eve tempting them. How come men start all the wars, but we’re the evil ones?

Good question, Molly.

Later that night, in dreamland…

Here, here! All rise for the Honorable God the Father!

Be seated. We are assembled for the trial of Mrs. Eve. The charges include blasphemy, and inciting a riot, specifically, a feminist riot. How dost thou plead, Mrs. Eve?

Ms. Eve, if you please.

Are you not married to Adam? How dost thou plead, Mrs. Eve?

I am represented by my attorney, Ms. Molly.

Taking her cue, attorney Molly confirmed, She pleads Not Guilty.

You mean, Not Guilty, Sir!

No, I certainly do not. We intend to question your credentials to even convene this court, and your right to charge my client.

How dare you?! Watch your words, lest you damn yourself to Hell, and your client with you.

You’ve been using that shtick for centuries, Your Impostorship.

You’ll soon sing a different song, my dear, on a much hotter stage. Prosecutor, present your first witness.

Your Holiness, Heavenly Father and Omnipotent Creator, who bequeathed us all with the gifts of life and free will, we maintain that Eve, she who tempted mankind into sin in the first place, has not only challenged biblical truth, but has incited all womankind to rebel against divine patriarchy. We have only one witness, Your Holiness. Mr. Archie Blunder, from Bayonne, New Jersey.

The witness will take the stand.

Mr. Blunder, do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

Would you please describe for the court, Mr. Blunder, the events of this past 6th of June on the steps of the Church of the Blessed Virgin in Bayonne.

Yes, it was a beautiful God-given Sunday morning. The missus and I were on our way to the 10 a.m. service, but when we arrived, there was a large group of women on the steps, in rapt attention, listening to a woman in white robes and sandals, preaching with a bullhorn.

Is that woman in this courtroom, Mr. Blunder, and if you see her, would you please point her out?

Let the court reporter note that the witness has pointed to the defendant, Mrs. Eve. Go on Mr. Blunder.

She was blaspheming, right in front of the Blessed Virgin herself, with underage girls in attendance. She was challenging Genesis itself, claiming that she never touched an apple, never tempted Adam with one, and claimed that the apples were rotten anyways, at their core. She insisted that death anxiety is at the core of the human dilemma. She claimed that men invented religious delusions, including a male God to subjugate women, and an afterlife to deny death and promise immortality to the masses.

And did she incite these women and impressionable girls any further, Mr Blunder?

Yes, she did. She challenged them, accused them of trading their equal rights for immortality, of swallowing religious nonsense while damning their sisters to second fiddle. She accused them of being phony feminists, of catering to the Man.

Thank you, Mr. Blunder. Your witness, counselor.

Mr. Blunder. You said your wife was with you?

Yes, she was. She heard the blaspheming heretic as well. In the old days, the witch would’ve been burned at the stake!

Is your wife here with you today?

No she is not.

And why not?

She chose to stay home.

She chose to stay home, or you asked her to stay home? I remind you that you are still under oath, under the scrutiny of your Creator at this very moment.

I asked her to stay home.

Because?

She doesn’t need to hear any more of the garbage coming from that bitch’s mouth – I’m sorry – from the heretic.

What could happen if she and the other women fell under the influence of the supposed heretic, Mr. Blunder?

All hell could break loose. Women are already grabbing too much power, rebelling against the biblical mandate. It’s our job to wisely protect women. God says so.

Thank you Mr. Blunder. I have no further questions, Your Impostorship.

Do you have any witnesses of your own to call, Mrs. Molly?

Ms. Molly, if you would.

I would not. And if you have no witnesses to call, we will move toward My Judgment.

I do have one witness, Your Impostorship.

Please proceed.

I call God Himself to the stand.

This is preposterous. How dare you?

Are you beyond questioning, Your Evasiveness? Are we to rely solely on faith here? If so, why even convene this court. Why even listen to evidence? What are you afraid of? Do you feel naked now that you’ve relinquished your convenient power of invisibility?

So be it, Mrs. Molly. You’ll serve your eternal sentence for contempt later. In the meantime, earn it.

Thank you, Your Impostorship. Let us begin. Among other accolades, you are known as the Heavenly Father, are you not?

Yes, I am.

So you present yourself to the faithful as a male, do you not?

Yes, I do.

And are you indeed male?

That is a matter of interpretation, but most people prefer to think so.

Do you find that most women prefer to view God as male?

That’s a mixed bag, and it’s changing, but in the beginning, yes, women preferred a divine father to protect them from danger, and to run the show.

So is your gender of your own making? As the First Cause, did you choose to be masculine?

Your Honor, The prosecution objects to this line of questioning as immaterial.

I sustain the objection. Move on, Mrs. Molly.

So be it, Your Evasiveness. Would you please raise the right sleeve of your robe above your shoulder?

Objection, Your Honor!

Where are you going with this, counselor?

A mere examination of your muscularity and masculinity, Your Worship.

For the sake of full transparency, so be it, Mrs. Molly. But you are treading on thin ice.

He revealed His divine biceps.

Would you please turn around now, Your Worship?

And would the court reporter please read aloud the tattoo on His Impostorship’s back right shoulder.

Objection!

Sustained!

Your Honor. Our central thesis is that you are an impostor, created by humans to place themselves as your pet species at the center of the universe, and to quench their greed for immortality. Men had the pen, and added their own patriarchal twist to creation. Unless this is a kangaroo court, it is only fair for us to be given the opportunity to present our evidence. Rumor has it that there is a tattoo on your right shoulder, left by your manufacturer.

Busted, God turned His back to the court reporter, who recoiled in horror.

The court reporter will please perform her requested duties.

Yes, Ma’am. It says, “Made by Menontop Enterprises, Ltd.”

Perhaps we are a step closer to solving the eternal riddle of the first cause, but if it would please the court, let’s take this one final step. Heavenly Father, would you please raise your robes and reveal your Holy Genitals for the court?

It would not please the court!

You have already proven that you are an impostor: created, not Creator. I am simply following through on the logical conclusions of your revelation. You are said to be male, and you have dodged but not contested this presupposition. You have set in motion the subjugation of women by men, for millennia, endorsed by Your Word. We find it reasonable to ask you to prove that Word, now that you have consented to visibility. We ask the court to direct the witness to lift up His robes.

God looked back and forth at Himself, engaged in an instantaneous divine debate, and reluctantly lifted his robes above His waist.

Almost in unison, the courtroom gasped aloud, voicing a single word.

Molly Awakens … 

Molly awoke, startled, and puzzled by a three-letter word echoing back and forth between the walls of her skull. “Ken!” She felt strangely compelled to retrieve her old set of Barbie dolls from the back of her closet. Then sat with them and her dream. As she did so, her dilemma regarding her upcoming term paper in Humanities resolved itself. She pulled out her computer, and began to type. She titled the paper Feminism and Religion: Breaking the Divine Glass Ceiling, and began to write…

Feminists remain chained to an implicit Faustian bargain, imposed upon us centuries ago, but left unchallenged. We traded mortality for patriarchy. We have unwittingly sacrificed our power and equality on Earth for immortality in the supposed afterlife. We refuse to actively challenge God’s gender, out loud. Only by overthrowing God, and his biblical male inventors, can we assume our rightful role…

Read more about theology, prejudice, feminism, and anthropocentrism in Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices, available in print and e-Book on Amazon. And if you care to do so, leave your own perspective on gender and religion in the comments section below. Thanks for playing.

Just in case your left brain is overheating after our first dozen blogs, let’s activate your right hemisphere with a little visual stimulation, and crank up the weird quotient while we’re at it. I started photography with a prehistoric Kodak camera, late in my first decade of life.  My early photo albums are populated with standard issue shots of family, friends, and travels. I was told I had “an eye” for interesting shots, and enjoyed creating rectangles, but it wasn’t until my first digital camera a dozen years ago that I pushed experimentation over the edge. More recently I’ve graduated to “Zoomers,” but more about that later.

As a psychologist, I’m a student of emotion. I try to listen, understand, and communicate my understanding of clients’ feelings. My favorite response is “Exactly.” As a photographer, I try to induce emotions, positive as well as negative. It might be a heart-warming shot of a child or a puppy, the humor of two of my daughters, nose-to-nose sticking their tongues out at each other, the majesty of a landscape in the golden hour before sunset, or the sad sight of a stooped-over elderly Peruvian woman slowly making her way up some stone steps with a cane in her hand. But a decade ago, I found a way to induce two other emotions, in sequence: perplexity, followed by surprise. With closer friends, I’ve often enjoyed being a bit obscure, playful, mysterious, dark, and loosely associated in my humor, making you stop to think a second before you get my gist. Then I found a way to play the same game in photography.

If you don’t mind, open a second screen on your computer by going to edchandlerandbeyond.com; click on Photography, then scroll down to Galleries and click on The ?AHA! Experience. Take a look at each of the nine featured photos, and try to figure out what they are, before checking the Key down below them. How many did you figure out? What the hell am I doing here? In most cases, I’m zooming inside of the outer boundaries of objects, so you don’t have enough visual cues to immediately identify what you are looking at. “Ready, Set, Go” was my first Aha! shot, back in 1982, when my wife was oh so pregnant and ready to pop out our first daughter, Lauren. The only decent clues are the stitching of her bathing suit (which was useless after birth!), and the tiny little triangle of thigh flesh at the bottom. Or meander down to the tuba shot, “Geaux Tigers”. Yes, there are some guys in uniforms, perhaps identifiable as LSU band members, and some trees, but what’s the weird golden abyss in the middle? It takes a bit to figure out that it’s the throat of a tuba, because I deliberately zoomed in close enough to deprive you of cues: the outer edges of the tuba. Niagara Bound is a bit different, as a landscape version of Aha! The floating ice is clear enough, as are the smokestacks, kind of, but they’re upside down, because the factory is reflected. If I’d included a bit, or the entirety of the factory itself, above the waterline, the shot would have been a no-brainer. But that takes the fun out of the shot. By stealing your visual cues, I create a puzzle for you to solve. The goal is to perplex you, but only for five or ten seconds, until perplexity yields to surprise, the gift of the Aha! experience.

The ?Aha! Experience

More recently, I got out of the photographic box in a different way: zoomers. Creativity involves loose thinking with just the right dose of conventionality. Too loose and you’re crazy; too conventional and you’re b-flat boring. I used joke with my daughters: “Get out of the box, but keep it on the horizon.” If you lose the box (reality) completely, you’re in deep shit, but if you’re too anchored to the box, you can find yourself snoring through life. Sometimes my daughters tell me I’m weird. I take it as a compliment and thank them. Mental health and maximum adaptation require a combination of opposites. Sometimes it pays to be extremely conventional and predictable. Other times it’s fun to be off the wall. It helps to know which is appropriate when, and to have a rheostat to dial up and down the dimension, any dimension.

Zoom lenses are very handy. You can zoom in and fill the frame with an object in the distance, or you can zoom out for a wide-angle shot that includes the bulk of your visual field. You can also adjust the length of your exposure. For example, with a waterfall, you can freeze it at 1/4000ths of a second, or get a silky flow by shooting from a tripod for two full seconds. One day, I was struck by an impulse to zoom in AND out during a long exposure shot. It took a while to figure out how to do it right, and how to find the right light sources to create worthy shots. Last Christmas, I hit the jackpot at the Denver Botanical Gardens (Thanks Loree!), where they lit up all their foliage with Christmas lights. I’d zoom in and out, and sometimes move the camera north and south, or east and west, for two, five, or ten seconds. Most of the shots were worthless, but I got a handful of arresting rectangles. Within the hour, I fancied myself as an abstract artist, using my camera as a paintbrush. Check out the three zoomers below. And remember: take time to play outside the box!

Zoomers

View more ?Aha! Experience photos, Zoomers, other “Weird” Photos and Cool Things, and check out the Reflections Galleries at:

www.ahaphotoandglass.com

and Purchase Your Copy of ?AHA!: A Photographic Journey with Ed Chandler through blurb.com (type Ed Chandler in search)

You Are Invited

If photography turns you on,

join us at the Arts and Design Society in Fort Walton Beach (17 First St. SE)

this Friday night, April 12, from 6-8 p.m. for

The 20th Annual ADSO Photography Show (bring an appetizer).

Or drop in during ADSO’s gallery hours later this month to see FWB’s photographers show their stuff. (artsdesignsociety.org)

Many religious leaders talk as if religion has a monopoly on morality, and that one cannot act morally in the absence of religious belief. In Good Without God (2009), Epstein cited several advocates of the presumed religious monopoly on morality.  For example, Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, stated (2004), “Without God there are no moral absolutes. Without moral absolutes, there is no authentic knowledge of right and wrong” (par. 4). Dostoevsky’s (1880/1993) character, Ivan Karamazov famously exclaimed, “If God is dead, all is permitted.” Likewise, in The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren (2002) asserted, “If your time on earth were all there is to your life, I would suggest you start living it up immediately… You could indulge yourself in total self-centeredness because your actions would have no long-term repercussions” (p. 38). Yes, you could, but would you? This stance reflects what I call the criminal level of moral behavior. How would you act if you had a policeman on your shoulder? Would your behavior be much different from what you do when you’re sure that no one is watching? This distinction, between criminal morality and moral integrity, is quite relevant when we are trying to compute an individual’s moral quotient. Warren implied that without consequences, we are naturally immoral. But nature equips us with a conscience, and a capacity for empathy, not just an ability to anticipate likely consequences. It comes from within, regardless of whether it initially comes from above (from God), or from around us (socially). And it starts out emotionally, not cognitively. In the words of the primatologist, Frans de Wall (2013), who studied morality in other mammals, morality is “bottom up, not top down.”

Yes, it’s true. Without God-given ethics, humans are theoretically free to act like amoral, self-centered heathens. But it is also true that even with religiously-inspired morality, many humans act quite selfishly much of the time, and some are quite adept at killing each other, especially in the name of their various gods. It is also evident that despite religious press to the contrary, most atheists, and even some nonhuman animals, are capable of acting quite morally. Zuckerman (2014) cited research concluding that religious Americans tend to be more racist than secular Americans, more supportive of military aggression and the use of torture, the death penalty, and corporal punishment of children, while being less supportive of women’s and gay rights, and protection of the environment, than secular individuals. He also noted that atheists are grossly underrepresented in the prison population.  Atheists are not immoral; they accept ownership of moral capabilities rather than exporting and re-importing them. Humans originally discovered virtues and vices in our interactions with each other. Religions objectified these virtues, attributed them to God, and claimed a moral monopoly. A secular approach to morality reaffirms such virtues, but not their alleged divine source. Certain virtues work, by promoting cooperation and connectedness with our brethren, which satisfies us at our moral and social core, not because someone in a temple or a courtroom says so. But if morality is subjective, do we have a right to judge others’ behaviors? Sure, we have a right to gather together and write laws to codify intersubjective morality and consequences. And we all have gut responses to others’ actions. But to borrow an AA phrase, we sometimes “should all over” ourselves when applying our moral principles, and our expectations, to others.

The illusion of objective ethics is a source of security for the masses, particularly if compliance is seen as being monitored, and rewarded or punished, by a divine overseer. Objective morality, monitored by an eye in the sky, may be seductive as a means of inducing social compliance, but is compliance really morality? As John Bradshaw (2009) wrote, “Obedience and respect for authority are a necessary part of the process of growing up morally, but if we stop there, we become arrested at a developmental stage that predisposes us toward the rigid polarization of rightdoing (good) and wrongdoing (evil)” (p. 33). He went on to note that such a focus promotes “moral totalism” and a “culture of obedience” characteristic of totalitarian regimes, rather than fostering moral intelligence. Morality is an internal affair. It operates within the mind, and specifically, within the conscience of an individual person. We can abdicate moral responsibility in two ways, via an atheistic, nihilistic devaluing of morality, or by outsourcing morality to a higher power, religious or political/legal.

We can make a case that moral choices predate cognitive instruction and discussions of morality, both phylogenetically and developmentally. De Wall provided convincing evidence for the presence of ethical behavior among primates, and a biological, evolutionary component to morality. He cited examples of empathy, compassion, fairness, altruism, gratitude, and community concern among primates, and underscored the role of attachment in morality, noting that we expect empathy only among animals that display parental attachment, which includes only a few reptiles. He added, “Mammalian maternal care is the costliest, longest-lasting investment in other beings known in nature” (p.49). Citing another source of primate morality, he added, “Hunting and meat sharing are at the root of chimpanzee sociality in the same way that they are thought to have catalyzed human evolution” (p. 124). Moral behavior is abundantly evident in our evolutionary backyard, and is clearly not a unique capacity in human beings. The mammalian need to belong, coupled with our capacity for empathy with the feelings, needs and anguish of others (which is originally promoted by secure and loving attachments in childhood), drives moral behavior far more than rules or intellectual considerations. Likewise, Jonathan Haidt (2012) emphasized that moral choices are intuited before they are reasoned, stating, “Moral intuitions arise automatically and almost instantaneously, long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and those first intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning” (p. xx). Developmentally, moral behavior in children is evident long before their development of religious understanding or advanced cognitive skills. Likewise, one can argue that morality predates, and led to the appearance of religion, rather than viewing religion as the source of morality. De Wall noted that religions were invented to bolster morality, via an eye in the sky, once our communities became too large for everyone to know everyone else.

What people say (and are taught to believe) about morality, and what they do morally or immorally, are not as consistent as one might think, nor is an individual’s moral behavior from one situation to the next. Moral development is not primarily a result of moral instruction, though we have mistakenly prioritized this approach for centuries. If morality is more an emotional/intuitive than a cognitive operation, it should not be surprising that verbal instruction has its limits in developing moral character. Bradshaw (2009) proposed “a radical change in our approach to moral education,” involving an emphasis on the development of emotional and social intelligence. Emotional intelligence refers to intrapsychic awareness and skill in the management of our internal emotional life, which contributes to social intelligence - the skillful handling of our social relationships. Cognitive factors are far from irrelevant, but again, emotional and social factors are emphasized. In particular, we must approach our own traumas and emotional injuries, and work through those radioactive emotions, rather than suppressing them, erecting a false self, and then acting out or numbing our disowned feelings. Bradshaw explained (2009), “We cannot fully develop our inborn capacity for moral intelligence without taking the feared journey of self-confrontation” (p. 261). With this self-awareness and self-soothing, we are better equipped to empathize and compassionately respond to others. Thus, the view of humans as essentially selfish has given way to a portrait of a species neurologically wired for empathy, and then primed via early attachment bonds to activate such empathy. Krznarik (2012) identified six habits of highly empathic people, including an “insatiable curiosity about strangers.”

It is ironic that atheists and religious individuals substantially agree on what constitutes moral behavior, but both often prefer to focus on the stark differences in their beliefs. We are all part-time hypocrites, sometimes violating our beliefs and values via contrary behavior. And we often find ourselves too critical and judgmental. We do better when we apply our subjective values to ourselves, while limiting our judgment of others. In addition to emphasizing practices over beliefs, and actions over thoughts, moral behavior is optimally active not passive. As Bradshaw (2009) noted, “One of the most important recovery rules I learned stated, ‘We have to act ourselves into the right way of feeling and thinking rather than trying to think or feel ourselves into the right way of acting’” (p. 60). Good deeds beget good feelings, which spur further moral action. Guilt (Bradshaw’s “guardian of the conscience”) is blatantly produced by our immoral actions, but also creeps in when we are too passive to step up and seize opportunities to act in situations calling for justice and compassion. Robust moral behavior is proactive rather than just passive or reactive, and it is positive rather than simply non-negative. Morality involves far more than the guilt-driven avoidance of immoral behavior. It also involves virtue and initiative, deliberately seeking opportunities to act upon your positive values. Morality may be subjective, and optional, but it is inherently rewarding. All this is well and good, but let’s see what my actual behavior looks like tonight.

The above passages come from Chapter 18, “Debunking Objective Morality and the Religious Monopoly on Morality,” and Chapter 19, “Ungodly Morality: Listening to Your Own Conscience,” in Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices, now available in print and e-Book on Amazon. Chapter Highlights from the Beyond Atheism are available at edchandlerandbeyond.com.

Thank you for listening, and for adding your own take on morality in your comments below, if you so choose.

References:

Bradshaw, John. (2009). Reclaiming virtue: How we can develop the moral intelligence to do the right thing at the right time for the right reason. New York, NY: Bantam.

De Wall, Frans. (2013). The bonobo and the atheist: In search of humanism among the primates. New York, NY: Norton.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. (1993). The brothers Karamazov. (D. McDuff, Trans.). London, England: Penguin. (Original work published 1880).  

Epstein, Greg. (2009). Good without God: What a billion nonreligious people do believe. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Haidt, Jonathan (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York, NY: Random House.

Mohler, Albert. (2004, November 7). Can We be Good Without God? Retrieved from: https://www.albertmohler.com/2004/11/08/can-we-be-good-without-god-2

Krznaric, Roman. (2012, November 27). Six habits of highly empathic people. Greater Good Magazine. Berkeley, CA: UC Berkeley. Retrieved from: https:/www.greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_habits_of_highly_empathic_people1

Warren, Rick. (2002). The purpose driven life: What on Earth am I here for?  Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 

Zuckerman, Phil. (2014). Living the secular life: New answers to old questions. New York, NY: Penguin.

Let’s follow up on our earlier blog on death anxiety by addressing anxiety in general. To understand and manage anxiety, we must also pursue its relationship with avoidance. As with other emotions, there are healthy and unhealthy versions of anxiety. The healthy version of anxiety alerts us to potential real threats, dangers, and issues, allowing us to plan and to alter our behavior to manage such threats. Likewise, there are healthy versions of avoidance (e.g., avoiding a man with a gun; taking time out to calm down during a marital dispute). But we can also manufacture threats and anxiety, and resort to chronic, self-sabotaging avoidance behavior.  Avoidance is a defense against anxiety, which provides short-term relief from anxiety. But a basic rule in learning psychology is that a reward increases the strength of the behavior preceding the reward. Thus, the reward, anxiety reduction, reinforces and strengthens the avoidance habit. And by avoiding the source of the anxiety, we lose opportunities to learn how to directly deal with and conquer the anxiety. Thereby, we often end up with long-term maintenance or escalation of both the avoidance and the anxiety. Defenses (such as avoidance) yield a short-term plus but a long-term minus, whereas coping skills (approaching difficult situations and feelings) increase immediate negative feelings (especially anxiety), but if handled well, yield long-term benefits, growth, and reduced anxiety.

Anxiety is often misunderstood, and is sometimes confused with depression or frustration. Anxiety is a feeling whose meaning is similar to fear, tension and nervousness. It is a tense feeling that arises when we fear something negative will happen in the near future. The anticipated crisis may be external, such as being ridiculed for a lousy presentation in front of coworkers later today, or internal, such as the danger of a suppressed memory of abuse surfacing, or fear that our anger will get out of control. Anxiety is different from depression, but often coexists alongside depression. Anxiety is a feeling, which can develop into various anxiety syndromes (Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Social Phobia, OCD, PTSD, etc.). Depression is a syndrome rather than a feeling, but often involves sadness as a primary feeling. Sadness typically involves a significant loss (e.g., loss of a loved one, rejection by a lover, loss of health, our job, etc.), and is often focused on the past, whereas anxiety is focused more on real or imagined threats in the future. Anxiety and depression commonly coexist, particularly as the consequences of anxiety and avoidance escalate into losses (e.g., social anxiety > avoidance > loneliness). Anxiety and frustration both involve tension, but anxiety typically involves worrying about what could happen in the near future, whereas frustration is about blocked expectations or desires during events that have already occurred.

Anxiety and fear live in the same neighborhood, but are not identical. Fear, and its extreme version, panic, are innate, automatic and adaptive survival responses to immediate danger. They precipitate a fight-or-flight response mediated by our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS, which controls automatic physical processes such as breathing and heart rate), and propel us toward immediate self-protection before it is too late. If your genetic ancestors were too mellow in their reactions to threats, you probably would not be reading this paragraph. Compared to panic, anxiety is a less intense but sometimes more chronic state of mind. It includes anticipation of, and worry regarding potential threats in the future, not just reactions to an immediate threat in the present. It involves a state of tension and apprehension, rather than a surge of panic. Some of us find ourselves in a relentless, self-defeating habit of constantly anticipating and preparing for a variety of future threats, both real and imagined.

Thus, on a cognitive level, constant preoccupation with potential threats will manufacture and multiply anxiety. For example, constant worrying can produce a generalized anxiety disorder. Negative thinking typically contributes to anxiety, and it is therefore important to monitor our thoughts to see if we engage in excessive worry, catastrophic "What if?" thinking, or obsessing. Worrying is simply a milder version of catastrophic thinking. It is not a feeling, but rather a type of thinking which produces the feeling of anxiety. Just as excessive expectations produce frustration, and blaming creates anger, worrying is a cognitive process which predictably produces its own feeling, anxiety. So what are the options if you are a worrywart? If we want to control our feelings, specifically our anxiety in this case, we need to learn how to control our thinking. One method for controlling worry involves utilization of a core resource in 12-step programs, the Serenity Prayer (“God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference"). The profitable use of the Serenity Prayer first requires its third component, wisdom, followed by either acceptance or courage. The wisdom to determine what we can control or change, and what we cannot, is essential. It tells us which fork in the road to take, the path toward acceptance, or toward courageous, committed action. Reliance on the Serenity Prayer can markedly reduce frustration as well as worrying, because it directs us to let go of the unrealistic expectations that often fuel frustration.

Our behavior and lifestyle can also create anxiety. For example, anxiety can be created by relentlessly rushing around, during the time-managed lifestyles we are invited to lead in our modern industrialized society. If we can just cram five pegs into four holes during our three-hour outing, we can declare today a victory, and take our blood pressure meds later tonight. Physical factors, such as excessive caffeine, and poor nutrition or sleep, can also contribute to anxiety. Internally, unresolved issues, both past and present, can create or maintain anxiety. The anxiety becomes a signal, helpful feedback from inside, that something is wrong and should be attended to.

Sometimes our anxiety is more social in origin. Persons with a social phobia, the term sometimes used to describe social anxiety, typically function fairly comfortably and spontaneously in one-on-one situations with friends, since they typically know how their friends feel about them. However, with strangers, and particularly groups of strangers, especially if stuck in the spotlight of the group's attention, severe anxiety and even panic attacks may paralyze them. Fighting is obviously inappropriate, and therefore the fight-or-flight options associated with panic are reduced to flight (or freezing, which is also problematic in social situations). The problem in these situations is evaluation apprehension, that is, excessive concern and negative thinking regarding the impression one is making on other persons. In my view, there are four dominoes involved in social anxiety. Social phobics typically harbor low self-esteem, and engage in very negative internal self-talk about themselves. Then, they project their negative self-appraisals, and imagine (typically without evidence) that others are thinking negatively about them. This causes anxiety, which is then reduced by avoiding the people that are supposedly judging you so negatively. But the reduced anxiety is a reward that reinforces the avoidance behavior, which deprives us of the opportunity to interact with people and learn social skills, leaving us alone, lonely, and perhaps depressed. The healthy solution is to target our negative self-talk and projections rather than avoiding. To reduce social anxiety, we need to learn how to esteem ourselves, assess evidence rather than assuming others are judging us, and gradually approach rather than avoid people.

Anxiety is a broad topic, and we have only scratched the surface, delving mostly into generalized and social anxiety. For more, check out Chapter 27: “Anxiety and Avoidance Behavior,” in my recently published book, Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices. Available in print or e-Book on Amazon. Chapter Highlights for Beyond Atheism may be found at www.edchandlerandbeyond.com. And if you’d like, share your own perspective on anxiety and avoidance in the comments section below. Thanks for listening.

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Not quite unanimous, but nearly so. The response to Ed Chandler’s Beyond Atheism has been enthusiastic beyond expectations. We have surveyed all corners of the planet, and found none (because it’s round, silly). But in the process of looking, we have been able to document only one person on the surface of earth who has been bored by BA (though those that were bored to death are subterranean, and perhaps underrepresented in our scientific survey). That one heretic is homegrown, from our own United States of America, specifically Lafayette, Louisiana. His picture is above, though we have chosen to omit his name, in part to protect him from any backlash from the fervent supporters of BA.

To those supporters, thank you! Many of you were able to take advantage of the free offering of BA. Extra thanks to those who have bought the print version. For my friends who are religious, I hope that you have been able to benefit from the spiritual and psychological approaches of BA without being too bothered by our differences over theistic issues. For those who are secularly inclined, thank you for the feedback; it has been rewarding to stimulate your thinking further. If any of you have the time to leave a customer review on Amazon, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks for your input and support, but please, if you recognize the infidel in the picture, please don’t call him. He’s sleeping quite comfortably.

A picture tells a thousand words, in this case, six million and counting. The horror it evokes stems from our shame as a species, that we are capable of such an atrocity. We are so loving and clever at our best, and prefer this image, though we can be so cruel and moronic at our worst. How many Christchurchs will we endure before we see the oven in the mirror? How do we manufacture such ovens?

My first crossing of the intersection of politics and religion was at age 10, in 1960. As a young Catholic boy, I was very excited that Jack Kennedy was running for president. Then I discovered that both of my parents were voting for Richard Nixon. I had not yet developed the antipathy toward The Dick that moved me in college, but Jack versus Dick was a no-brainer, and the prospect of the first Catholic president was just the right chaser to the catechismic Kool-Aid I’d been drinking. What was wrong with my parents?

             Fast-forward eight years. Entering college in 1968 was an exciting but mixed blessing. I was at the front lines of a cultural revolution, confronted with issues of war and peace, and love versus prejudice. The early 1968 wounds of the Tet Offensive, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, were still bleeding. Adolescents are quick to smell hypocrisy, and I carried a bagful of question marks. If the religious message was “Love thy brothers and sisters,” why did Blacks and gays have to fight so hard for their rights? Why were we poisoning the homestead God had bequeathed us? Why were so many religious leaders supporting the war in Viet Nam? What was wrong with my priests? And if I couldn’t rely on my parents’ or priests’ judgment, where was I to turn?

             Like many late adolescents, I learned to look within. And I began to research prejudice, which led me to my own research project: anthropocentrism. Understanding prejudice seemed like a moral imperative after World War II. As a species, we could not let the Nazi slaughter of the Jews pass us by without understanding it, and preventing a recurrence. It was all too easy to blame the inhuman Germans, the Nazi enemy, the despicable “other.” But was there something in the general human condition that fermented this atrocity?

             The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al.) captured my interest. They spoke of ingroup/outgroup relations, and the ethnocentrists’ need to value and protect the ingroup, while segregating, scapegoating, and minimizing the influence of outgroups. Imagining my post-caveman roots, this made sense. Small marauding bands of hunter-gatherers had to protect themselves while competing with other groups for food and other scarce resources. But in a few short millennia, our weapons have graduated from clubs to guns to nukes. When everyone has the power to destroy each other and our common home, does it still make sense to glorify our ingroups and vilify our outgroups?

             Ingroup/outgroup thinking imposes dichotomies upon diversity, reducing the broader multicolored palette of humanity into a two-category subject/object split, to some narrower version of “us,” pitted against “them.” At the racial level, outgroups include all races other than your own. At an international level, the outgroups involve the evil empires opposed by our own political club. On a domestic political level, the outgroup is the opposing political party. Never mind the fact that  each party has half the loaf of wisdom, but we create gridlock by arguing over which half-loaf is true. On a religious level, the outgroups are the infidels, the imposters, the enemies of the one true faith. At an environmental level, the ingroup is our own species, while the outgroup is the rest of the environment, which can then be exploited to meet the needs of the human ingroup.

Adorno at al. described ethnocentrism as a broader term than prejudice, a frame of mind toward “aliens” in general, noting, “A primary characteristic of ethnocentric ideology is the generality of outgroup rejection… if he cannot identify, he must oppose; if a group is not ‘acceptable,’ it is ‘alien.’“ More recently, Adams (1994) has framed this issue as “a discourse of otherness” that has been “used to maintain dominance.” Discussing the politics of otherness, she noted, “Otherness unites those with power who can declare their similarities to be decisive” (p. 72), while devaluing other groups, thereby justifying discrimination, domination, and exploitation.

Digressing briefly into my own research, otherness and prejudice operate at the species level as well. Even the broad category, humanity, can be contrasted with a suitable outgroup. Anthropocentrism (man-centeredness) views mankind as the most important entity in the universe, with the exception of God, who we created in the first place to cement our grandiose pose at the center of the universe. God over man over animal; the “Chosen” over the “other.” Devaluation justifies exploitation and persecution, of animals, slaves, infidels, etc. Thus, anthropocentrism fuels theism, and is a form of prejudice at the species level, valuing humans over other life forms, which justifies exploitation, in this case, of the environment. But God created and favors us, and will certainly protect all of us, or at least most of us, and our planet from demise. Not to worry; He’ll bail us out. Values are subjective – we get to choose – but often, might makes right, and the most powerful ingroup rules.

             The political right wing and the religious right are bedfellows, just as the bedroom next door is shared by political and religious lefties. One difference between the two is that the righties are quicker to emphasize ingroup/outgroup distinctions. On the left, there is more emphasis on our similarities than our differences, more tolerance of “otherness,” more embracing diversity, more identification with larger, more inclusive groups, such as humanity or life. On the negative side of the ledger, the left is prone to confuse equality of opportunity with equality of outcome, inviting excessive socialist redistribution, which negates incentives for initiative and responsibility (dooming Marxist economies). But the right tends to ignore the stultifying impact of poverty and prejudice, as if everyone starts on an equal playing field. It’s the old philosophical argument between free will (on the right) and determinism (on the left), acted out comically by Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places. Again, it’s half loaves. In our darker moments, the left blows the budget and rewards laziness, while the right fans the flames of prejudice and pursues outgroups via militarism.

             As Jonathan Haidt explained so well in his The Righteous Mind, liberals prioritize care/harm and fairness, over additional values that are more likely to attract conservatives, such as loyalty, authority, and sanctity. So we end up with the left protecting the individual rights of members of outgroups, and espousing a broader human consciousness, while the right protects the purity and safety of the ingroup. In our country, the entrenched ingroup is white, Christian, heterosexual, and largely male. Now that ingroups and outgroups of many political/religious persuasions have learned how to manufacture nuclear weapons, our planet has become a tinderbox. Have we not outgrown our need for the ingroup/outgroup focus that protected us in the days of old?

On a political level, a coup by the far right has recently overrun the sensibilities of the Republican Party, fueling a revival of prejudice. The same process has occurred in the Muslim world, where Whabbists have outmaneuvered moderate Muslims, fanning the flames leading to 9/11 and its variants. While they are religious enemies, the Christian far right and the Muslim far right are remarkably similar psychologically. Outgroups are vilified as threats, enemies, and immoral heathens, who are invading and polluting the homeland. For them, America is the Great Satan. Our own list of enemy outgroups is lengthy, recently targeting Muslims, Mexicans, queers, liberals, and atheists, with Jews and blacks slipping down the list, but still firmly anchored there. The far right is nazifying America, at least one-quarter of us, and the world as well. Just this week, Muslims were massacred in the sacred confines of their own mosques in Christchurch. We are seeing an echo of the Crusades, using terrorists rather than Holy armies.

What justifies comparisons to the swastika? After all, we are not sending outgroups to the ovens. But we are witnessing repeated massacres, whose intent is terror and promotion of white supremacy. And there are abundant lesser injustices perpetrated against outgroups. Increasing vilification of “them” and their “otherness” is tacitly encouraged by passivity, denial, covert approval and even outright racism at the top of our political chain. An emphasis on ingroups versus outgroups sets the stage for prejudice, which in turn sets the stage for persecution and terrorism against outgroups. We are far from the abhorrent “Final Solution,” but the foundation that led to it is being rebuilt before our eyes, while our melting pot suffers. We have seen this before. The defeat of Germany in World War I was a narcissistic injury that escalated into fascism and ingroup retaliation promoted by a narcissistic leader in the 1930’s. Here at home, 9/11 has had a similar impact, though we’d like to think that our institutions are strong enough to hold the fort.

             On the religious far right, hypocrisy operates in plain sight, though its practitioners are blinded by a selective interpretation of the Bible (e.g., gays are immoral, Muslims are infidels). Are mere beliefs sustenance enough? Do we not have to practice them in our behavior? “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is an attractive sounding moral value, until it morphs into “Love thy ingroup.” It can easily devolve further, into “Destroy your enemy.” Some of our outgroups do the same thing, putting us on a war footing, which is increasingly dangerous as the nuclear club grows. At this rate, somebody (most likely with God on their side) is going to become sufficiently dogmatic or impulsive to invite the dawn of nuclear winter. Instead of a single-minded focus on keeping nukes out of the hands of the infidels, we might want to put more energy into not just tolerating, but embracing diversity. We all bleed, and we all love our children. Our similarities dwarf our differences, and our differences can be viewed as charming variations of a central theme: humanity. We must respect “otherness.” Look in the mirror, where the conclusion is obvious. The enemy is us.

Read more about prejudice, morality, politico-religious values, and anthropocentrism in Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices, available now on Amazon (www.amazon.com/author/edwardchandler -link to the book and Ed’s author page where The Blog’s also now are being posted). And if you care to participate in this provocative subject, give us your take on morality, politics and religion in the comments section below.

References:

 Adorno, Theodor, Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D., & Sanford, N. (1950). The Authoritarian Personality. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

 Adams, Carol. (1994). Neither man nor beast: Feminism and the defense of animals. New York, NY: Continuum.

 Haidt, Jonathan (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York, NY: Random House.

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Our western world has succeeded in creating scientific reasoning and amazing technology. We organize and plan for the future, and pursue our goals with a determined work ethic, but often at the cost of diminished joy, wonder, satisfaction and playfulness in the moment. Without reason, planning and technology, we risk getting outgunned and taken over by other nations or cultures. We have done much of this taking over ourselves, and we tout our muscularity and superiority. But then we wonder about meaning and purpose, spirituality and values, and whether we have our eye on the proper ball. One could make a case that our technology quotient far outstrips our spiritual quotient, and that this discrepancy fuels much of our modern malaise.

Spirituality involves a celebration of our consciousness, gratitude for the gift of life, and immersion in our connectedness to the “All.” We all need to belong, to attach, to connect to something beyond and larger than ourselves, something “trans” personal. We can connect to a lover romantically, to friends socially, and to broader tangible entities such as humanity, the environment, or the universe. We can also connect to invisible spirits, such as God or the souls of deceased loved ones. But we must connect somehow, lest we feel alienated from our surroundings, lonely, isolated, and adrift. We can become so preoccupied with the self and our hedonistic pursuits, as well as our day-to-day mundane tasks, that we lose sight of our core spiritual needs. How can we re-center ourselves spiritually? From one angle, we can pursue various spiritual emotions, such as gratitude, humility, love, existential joy, and awe. Why is there something, rather than a void of pure nothingness? Yes, we can marvel at how things are, but we can also access existential joy and awe, celebrating that things are, that we are, and that we have the gift of consciousness to appreciate the All of existence. Searching for a label to describe his secular spirituality, Zuckerman (2014) ultimately designated himself an “aweist.” Spirituality requires transcendence of the boundaries of self, attachment to something beyond and larger than oneself, and humility regarding the small status of oneself amidst the All. Environmental spirituality, or eco-spirituality, requires these same virtues vis-à-vis nature, and an awestruck attachment to the universe, to the whole of nature.

Einstein (1930), maintained, “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed” (p. 194). While awe can be inspired by various sources, including human creations, such as moving works of art and music, awe is more robust when inspired by nature, the focus of environmental spirituality. Eco-awe is connected to humility and gratitude, to our willingness to feel dwarfed by nature, and grateful for our short gift of life living within it: within, not over. We typically stand in awe of our superiors, not our subordinates or victims. Yes we are bright and clever, and we have figured out how to control some facets of nature, for better and for worse, but are we really all that superior and powerful? A stray asteroid, a fourth down toss of the nuclear football, or another few decades of ozone depletion could reduce mankind to an instructive footnote on the ash heap of history. A little (actually a lot) more humility would contribute to both our spirituality and our survival. It behooves us to temper our anthropocentrism (our tendency to see ourselves as the most important and superior component of nature, and perhaps indestructible given our supposed creation by a protective God), and to stand in awe of the power as well as the wonder of nature.

In contrast to many indigenous peoples, we “civilized” folks are far more divorced from nature, and thereby spiritually malnourished. How has this come to pass? With the growth of civilization and culture, we are more prone to live amidst concrete than nature. We have learned to farm and domesticate, and we now delegate our food production to conglomerates, safely distancing ourselves from the emotional impact of the kill, the harshest reality of nature. Thus, hunting can be a spiritual endeavor, reconnecting us to our primal and competitive interaction with nature. Sometimes it helps to return to our early primal powers, as children. A childlike state of mind is more awestruck, curious, and filled with wonder than the adult mind, more present, less trapped in the future, more connected with the world in the moment. Eco-heroine Rachel Carson (1965) lamented, “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood” (p. 44). By necessity, we desensitize to familiar elements of our surroundings as we age, attending to the novel, the threatening, and the more demanding elements of our environments. We build habits to improve our coping, behavioral habits, but also habits in our perception, so we aren’t distracted by the commonplace, and don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day. Habits are helpful overall, but carry a hidden cost: decreased fascination with our surroundings. Thus, it helps to periodically stand back, and recapture our ability to be amazed with the myriad wonders around us. Thus, Carson suggested an antidote to desensitization: “One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, ‘What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?’” (p. 59). We are more appreciative of the uniqueness of the world when it is novel to us.

Stargazing is another avenue to eco-awe. Lying on our backs at night, gazing into the immensity of the universe, we surrender to the puzzle of infinity in time and space. Our egos become lost in space. Earlier, just before nightfall, what do you experience? The sun sets. It descends from the sky and drops below the horizon, right? Now try a different, more accurate mode of perception that grounds you in the three-dimensional space of the universe. Feel the spin of the Earth as it, and you, rotate away from the sun. Feel the massive distance, the 93,000,000 miles between you and the atomic furnace that somehow, incredibly, warms us from this massive distance. Immerse yourself in this awesome reality, and feel yourself on this Earth, rotating, while circling this single star, moving in tandem with it through the Milky Way galaxy. Feel the immense space of the universe, and the presence of billions of stars comprising countless galaxies, as the billions of neurons in your brain allow you to perceive and appreciate the vastness of the universe. Take time to examine the veins of a leaf, to appreciate the complexity of the human body, and the other myriad wonders of our existence. Put time aside to celebrate your connection with nature, and the gifts of life and consciousness. The trials of daily life must be attended to, but are often dwarfed by higher wonders, if we take time for existential awe and joy. Carry out your plans and objectives, but stay present in the here, in the now, in the presence of your gift, and your connection with the All. Your state of consciousness is an ongoing, ever-present choice.

If you care to read more about environmental spirituality, check out Chapter 16, “Ecospirituality: A Question of Balance,” in Beyond Atheism – A Secular Approach to Spiritual, Moral, and Psychological Practices (See Chapter Highlights on this website), now available in a print version and as an e-Book on Amazon. And if you wish, please leave a little of your own eco-awe in the comments section below. Thanks for listening.

References:

Carson, Rachel. (1965). The sense of wonder. New York, NY: Harper and Row.

Einstein, Albert. (1930, October). What I believe. Living philosophies XIII. The Forum, LXXXIV, 193-194.

Zuckerman, Phil. (2014). Living the secular life: New answers to old questions. New York, NY: Penguin.

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