The theme of the week seems to be family dynamics. I went to see The Kids are All Right and thoroughly enjoyed it. I laughed, I cried and mostly, I enjoyed watching a movie with more emphasis on character and relationships than pyrotechnics.

Watching the family dynamics in this modern alternative family situation reaffirmed the notion that – people are people. No matter what the family situation, we can’t seem to escape the trials and tribulations of parenting and growing up. I’m giving The Kids are All Right a thumbs up for entertainment, a heart for heart, a star for intellectual stimulation and a snort for comedic relief.

A day later, I watched Biography on A&E. The segment was on Rodney Dangerfield. To learn about Rodney Dangerfield’s childhood is a real heartbreak. Amazing that with all that baggage, he didn’t suicide. The biography is a real insight into how a traumatic childhood continues to play itself out over time and the difficulty involved in resolving deep emotional scars.

Watching The Kids are All Right and Rodney Dangerfield make me aware of the challenges presented to each and everyone of us when it comes to experiencing what is truly real in us.

Great Characters

Links of Interest

Psychodynamics are at the root of family dynamics.

The other night I watched The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. I thought this movie did a pretty good job of reflecting how emotional baggage and issues can be passed down from one generation to the next. I’m sure the book was much better at fleshing out the characters and issues, but given the time constraints, the movie gives a good taste of how family dynamics can drive us a little psycho.

As they say, we don’t get to choose our family – unless you subscribe to the notion that the soul initiates some sort of choice in incarnating – a notion that seems particularly anthropomorphic to me in the ways it is generally related.

As I observe and work with myself and others, psychodynamics and family dynamics account for a great deal of the content presented to explore and work with. Many people fail to appreciate the depth and subtlety of how psychodynamics and family dynamics bind the soul and occlude awareness of our deeper nature.

Intellectual understanding alone will do little to free our psyche from the patterns and conditioning formulated in our early experience. The roots of these patterns exist at a pre-verbal level of development and the only way to free the consciousness of the pattern is through re-experiencing the affective state in a manner that allows a process of disidentification to occur.

An understanding of the self which would include perspectives from depth psychology, object relations psychology and the spiritual perspective (true self, soul, being) is a great help in supporting the process of disidentification.

Psycho Family Dynamics

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It is better to remain ignorant than to pretend knowledge. If you know that you are ignorant and don’t pretend otherwise, there is a question that stays alive and continues to burn in you, a deep hunger for the truth. A. H. Almaas – Diamond Heart Book III: Being and the Meaning of Life

Every once in a while, I like to pick a random image and see what it inspires me to write. I found this image of a flame at (where else) RandomImages.com.

Human beings are curious, we have an innate curiosity and our behavior is certainly curious to observe. Many believe that curiosity is an aspect of the mind – to some degree it is, but it’s deeper nature resides in the heart and deeper still in the soul.

One of the mysterious elements of THE MYSTERY is knowing. Awareness and consciousness beget knowing – and it appears that deep in the nature of consciousness is a desire, or at least a natural dynamism to know. And, fundamentally, what is there to know but the manifested side of reality.

So, we can say that God, True Nature, The Mystery seeks to know itself or it is constantly revealing itself to itself via awareness and consciousness.

All of this gets reflected in us human beings as desire, longing, passion, curiosity, etc. to know. Of course there are many who have issues and resistance to knowing and curiosity due to childhood conditioning.

The Flame of the Search is fuel for the soul for the journey home. This fuel is not external, it is of the soul – it’s very dynamic nature. The journey home can be very difficult, with much pain and suffering. A bright flame is needed to meet and move through the obstacles and inertia of ego structure and misplaced identity.

The Mystery has another dynamic quality that serves the soul – magnetism. The soul longs to know, the Mystery draws it home and True Nature reveals, reveals, reveals.

And this is what the image inspires today.

Curiosities

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One day while in a downcast mood

I walked in mountain solitude

Absorbed within deep heartache

Particular paths I did not take

Late the hour on that day

Recalling not footstep’s way

When open eyes I could not keep

Dreamlessly did I sleep

Awakened by morning’s light

Untold beauty awed my sight

Alpine meadow sweet and fair

Surely God’s very lair

On every blade dew did glisten

Choral birds bade me listen

Such majesty in that place

Heart’s response flushed my face

Deep inner rhythms stirred my soul

I lived complete within a whole

The sun climbed high upon the sky

Before my tears began to dry

And as I rose to take my leave

Once again, did I grieve

To leave such beauty far behind

Made no sense to the mind

It begged a flower me to take

Wanting one such small keepsake

Gently from within my breast

Loving words from the Guest

To cast a ripple on this pool

Would be the act of a fool

True contact won’t fit a sack

To be carried on your back

Mind’s desire for history

Is the living death of me

Tomorrow today will be the past

Your memory can’t make it last

This moment holds a choice for you

The options are only two

Going back from whence you came

Or heart’s desire if you’re game

Though walking now on unknown ground

A joyful magic I have found

The mystery of that lair

Heart reveals everywhere

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I was at Esin Restaurant in Danville, CA last night having a glass of wine when Esin joined my dad and me. We got to sharing history and stories. I mentioned Rumi to Esin (she is from Turkey) and she said her mother read Rumi. Esin remembers her mother reciting these lines:

Come, come, whoever you are.

Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.

It doesn’t matter.

Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Come, even if you have broken your vow

a thousand times

Come, yet again, come, come.

I asked Esin if she knew of Yunus Emre. She did and wanted to know how I knew of him.

Don’t all lovers of the divine know of Yunus, Rumi, Hafiz, Rabia?

Mystical Poets

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In the blink of an eye it can all be gone – our sight, our friends or children, our homes or health, our life. Even so, it is all grace, magic and miraculous – and some of it gets posted on YouTube.

The longest and one of the most complex poems I have written is titled – The Mountain. The mountain is used to help describe my relationship to my self, the world and my superego (inner critic). The poem has three sections – The Day Face, The Night Face and The Crucible of the Heart. Each section has two parts. The first part describes my relationship to the mountain from a certain perspective and the second part describes a journey of revelation and growth that opens up the perspective.

The Mountain

always the mountain
soaring up from earth
stretching far beyond eagle’s reach
noble aristocrat, Olympian presence
empyrean sovereign bows to none
head high in tempest or tranquility
inspires, reassures
prodigious seduction from afar
and I
pretender to the throne
emulate such grandiosity
rock solid, I stand aloof
with pretentious dignity
one cool remove away
from the world and its ailment
man – humankind
me

Read the entire poem – The Mountain

Mountain Interests

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I’m working my way through Women, Food & God by Geneen Roth. Geneen has written a best-seller in my opinion. Her knowledge, experience and wisdom of what drives us to eat is exceptional. Her insights and stories are humorous and challenging.

As I was walking thorough the Detroit airport the other day, I saw this book stand facing the concourse. I loved the fact that Geneen’s book is sitting right next to Laura Bush’s. Geneen  deserves a best-seller, not only because what she has to offer is so valuable and needed by so many, but she is also on the rebound from being victimized by the Bernie Madoff scam.

A day after returning to California, I was in Borders Books in San Ramon and there, too, Women, Food, & God is sitting next to Laura Bush. I guess it may be part of the marketing plan. I notice that these two books are also at eye-level – giving them even greater exposure to passing eyes.

Being the number one recommend book in Oprah’s newsletter a couple of months ago, probably helped to propel Women, Food and God into the stratosphere as well.

I am on a wellness journey myself and have started a blog AgeLESSing – Anti-Aging to serve as my accountability partner. So far, I’m down 12 pounds and three belt notches. Instead of dieting, I am changing my lifestyle – focusing more on health & wellness.

Satisfy Your Hunger for Knowledge

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I had a great conversation with my sister the other day around integrity. She has a couple of integrity issues and questions up with other people in her life. Integrity is important to her and she does not want someone’s lack of integrity to reflect on hers.

I had sent her one of my favorite books on integrity – Integrity by Dr. Henry Cloud – a couple of months ago. She is still working her way through it and I think this was also part of what prompted the conversation. Henry Cloud talks a lot about character when he talks about integrity. He defines character as: the ability to meet the demand of reality. It’s not the talk, it’s the walk. How you live reveals your integrity.

6 Aspects of Character

1. The ability to connect authentically (which leads to trust)
2. The ability to be oriented toward the truth which leads to finding and operating in reality)
3. The ability to work in a way that gets results and finishes well (which leads to reaching goals, profits, or the mission)
4. The ability to embrace, engage, and deal with the negative (which leads to ending problems, resolving them, or transforming them)
5. The ability to be oriented toward growth (which leads to increase)
6. The ability to be transcendent (which leads to enlargement of the bigger picture and oneself)

Last night, I was in a conversation with a good friend and the topics of integrity and impeccability also came up. One thing I realized is that most people associate integrity and impeccability with a self-image or an ego ideal – we have our ideas about how to live with integrity and impeccability and these ideas are related to how we see ourselves or how we wish to be seen by others.

Integrity comes from the Latin root integr which refers to “entire” or “whole.”

From the perspective of true nature or soul or wholeness, having integrity would mean being whole, not divided. Integrity would not involve trying to live up to a self-image, ego ideal or expectation. Integrity would be the natural expression of the “whole” person. integrity and impeccability would be natural expressions of  “whole” person’s life – no doing needed. The walk and the talk would be integrated.

Integrity & Impeccability

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I used to work with a bunch of guys who were raised to believe that men were meant to be strong and unemotional – unless they were cussing and angry, which were acceptable expressions of male superiority. In fact, I was one of those guys. It’s hard not be with all of the conditioning thrown at us.

I guess growing up in the 50’s & 60’s we had two choices depending on our sex – macho or Barbie. I never met a guy in my youth that wanted to grow up and be Ken. The thing with conditioning is that we rarely question it in a deep way. The deeper the conditioning, the more it feels like an unquestionable part of us. It can be hard to imagine a life outside of our norms. In fact, a large part of our mental activity is always being spent in maintaining the status quo.

I started taking yoga classes this week as part of my new direction toward health & fitness. At 60, I decided I would commit myself to actualizing some goals I have been paying lip service to for too many years. One goal being more flexibility for this aging body.

Yoga is interesting. There’s a constant reminder from the instructor for strength and relaxation at the same time – yin & yang. Unlike my conditioning which mostly emphasized the yang and diminished the yin.

Of course, that created a lot of problems that are still being sorted out. As I watch young boys and girls interact, I see the conditioning is still as active as ever. I was observing some high school students interact the other day in a couple of different situations. The boys were being inconsiderate and callous towards the girls and the girls were all a giggle and accepting of it.

All human beings are born with a range of emotional ground that far exceeds where most of us find ourselves as adults. We move, emotionally, in a very constricted range of experience – like a 60-year old body that hasn’t been stretched regularly through the years.

Laying on the yoga mat and moving through the poses brings many opportunities to me:

• Working on increasing flexibility
• Developing focus and concentration
• Attending to the moment and letting the daily mind go
• Embodying strength and relaxation in the same moment
• Allowing the superego to take a 90-minute break

Men seem to be greatly outnumbered by women in yoga classes – which also seems to be the case in personal growth work. I think that says a lot about male conditioning.

Cowboy Up Your Curiosity

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