I’ve often wondered what it would be like to have to write. On one hand, it would be nice to enjoy an income from my work, but, on the other hand, it’s somewhat frightening to think of what life would be like if my livelihood depended on inspiration showing up on a regular basis every week or — perish the thought — every day. But it doesn’t, so, when inspiration decides to take a brief vacation, so do I! In fact, I’ve only published one article for the whole of last month.

But now, inspiration has returned, and it’s time to make sure that it sees the light of day. I was thinking this morning about what an incredible wuss I was was I was a boy. I remember once running out of the doctor’s office and locking myself in my mother’s car when they told me I was due for a booster shot. I wouldn’t let her back in until she promised not to let that happen to me. Pain (or the mere prospect of pain) scared the hell out of me. Telling a kid like me to “buck up” or “be a man” would not have helped: I would still have locked you out of the car. So what happened that took me from that terrified little boy to a guy who can walk barefoot over gravel?

For me, it all started with my allergies. In order to be able to breathe in the open air, I needed desensitizing shots. It was amazing that, after the first couple of weekly injections, I quickly became familiarized with the sensation and it lost its capacity to scare me. Once I was no longer afraid of it, I realized that the mild discomfort that I experienced from the needle was really not much of anything at all. I changed my mind about the experience, reinterpreted the sensation, and now, when I have to get a shot or have some blood drawn, I no longer think of it as pain, but as just a momentary discomfort. The experience was transformed by how I thought about it.

Could this transformation have happened by force from the outside: for example, being told not to be such a baby or being called a wuss or a coward? No, that sort of ‘encouragement’ would only have made things worse and driven the fear up to the level of terror or panic. Using the ‘boot camp’ approach might yield some results with some kids, but God knows what results it would have hielded for me: it would only have made things worse. Could I have benefited from some outside help or encouragement? You bet! What most likely would have worked for me as a child would have been coaching: being encouraged to change my mind about what I was experiencing.

As an adult, we gain the potential for self-coaching. We’re able to acquire the capacity to change our world by changing how we think about our world. We get to ask ourselves the critical question (that I was not yet capable of asking myself as a boy): “Is what I’m experiencing really physical, mental, emotional or spiritual pain, or is it fear? To be honest, I was just tempted to write “just fear” a second ago, but, fear is never just fear. It always has the potential to hurt and to cause unbearable panic (what we call an “emotional hijacking”). We must never underestimate the immeasurable power of fear, even while we’re creating measures to deal with it.

Here’s what I learned as an adult in midlife transition: it’s all about how you define your experiences. At around age 50, I realized that what other people thought of me was none of my business. Years before, I had spent almost an entire year shoeless — something I never got enough of as a shy, over-protected boy. The positive effects of going barefoot are only now getting some general acceptance (more and more people are running barefoot even in marathons: something I’ve been doing for over a decade), but these benefits were just icing on the cake for me. It gave me physical, mental, emotional and spiritual pleasure: something that I had lived much of my life trying to avoid. There was one issue, though: what about walking on hot surfaces, cold surfaces and gravel?

First of all, let me say that it makes no sense to do anything that would certainly cause physical harm. Blisters, frostbite and cuts are always a possibility. However, after many, many years of walking and running barefoot in all kinds of weather and on all sorts of surfaces, I have not (yet) experienced any of those things. I take care of myself, even though I wear shoes only about as often as I wear a tie. Staying aware is the key. Certainly getting acclimatized to different environments is important, but not neraly so important as your mental attitude.

I read a book by a full-time, long-term barefooter who introduced me to the idea of sensation as texture. Reinterpreting my sense of hot, cold, and sharp allowed me to set aside the fear (the same kind of fear I had of needles as a boy) and sense only what was really there: texture and, at the extremes, some discomfort. This means using my awareness to avoid letting discomfort turn to damage. I was then able to translate those lessons into the rest of my life. I have learned to discern the difference between discomfort and fear and I’ve learned to experience my life at a much deeper level than ever before and to see what I experience as it really is, rather than through a fearful lens. Should you become a full-time barefooter? Of course, I think that would be wonderful. However, you don’t have to do that to learn a very important life lesson that will serve you exceptionally well at midlife: You can change you world by changing your mind.

Reactive decisions get us into trouble. We make reactive decisions out of fear. Fear comes from a mental confusion between discomfort and disaster. Regardless of what we may face in this life be it illness, joblessness, financial ruin, unendurable relationships, loss of loved ones, even death itself — all of it is just another texture of life. We want to use our awareness and discernment to make the wisest choices possible and avoid real harm, yet pain is unavoidable. It comes to us as an invitation to make changes and to do things differently. Or, in the guise of death, it comes to invite us into the next phase of our personal adventure.

What are the “textures” that you’re facing in your own life right now? Do you trust yourself and the love of your Higher Power that, regardless of what happens, you’ll be OK? If so, what are you afraid of? What are you doing right now that’s like locking yourself in the car to avoid a shot in the arm? What are you avoiding that a simple change of attitude could transform into a moment of grace? I know of people who get out of bed into slippers and then sit down on a chair, take off their slippers and immediately put on their shoes; only to reverse the process at night. Their feet never touch the ground. They never get to experience the texture (and the self-awareness) that comes from full-contact walking. How about you? Wanna get your feet dirty?

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

I believe that is one of the great lessons that comes with the midlife transition: the gift of perspective and the recognition that it’s not ‘all about me.’ On the one hand, my fears of imaginary consequences are overblown. I can put my concerns in my back pocket and walk through situations that used to terrify me, knowing that I’ll either survive or not and, either way, it’s OK. On the other hand, the world is not responsible for living up to my expectations of it. I can be satisfied with “progress not perfection.” As I look at myself, starting to heal from several days of feeling (as my grandmother used to say) “lousy!” and look at the ongoing journey I’m engaged in post-midlife and, at the same time, consider the midlife trials that our country is going through on this, it’s official birthday, I see some parallels and some interesting take-aways.

My life (like that of those around me whom I know well) has not turned out as I had ever imagined it would. If it had, I’d be celebrating over thirty-four years of active ministry somewhere in Florida along with the 234th anniversary of the republic instead of nursing a bacterial throat infection in Rehoboth Beach, DE along with my partner of 15 years (next month) and getting ready for a dinner party and trip to see the fireworks this evening. Needless to say, there have been a lot of false starts, a lot of pain, and a lot of missteps between there and here. Yet, I’m confident that, as mundane and ordinary as my life has turned out, it’s exactly where my Higher Power wanted me to be (based on the choices that I made, for good or ill). It’s certainly not a perfect life, but it’s a pretty good one, all in all, and an excellent reminder of how “the perfect is the enemy of the good enough.” It’s a lesson I’ve needed to learn in life, and a lesson that we might all benefit from reviewing from time to time.

This country — like life itself — is going through turmoil. It’s never been any different (and will never be different) no matter how many patriotic stories we tell ourselves. There’s an exhibit currently showing at the Museum of American Art in DC of paintings by Normal Rockwell. The art critic in today’s Washington Post analyzed those works very wisely: they don’t depict our country the way it used to be so much as the way we wish it had been. We’ve never actually been “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” People are currently yelling very loudly (and sometimes violently) about “taking back” our country, without really considering what they might be taking it back to. Only an historic perspective will bring to light the political, social and economic sins that besmirched our political past, and continue to challenge our political future.

Our childhood was never the idyllic place we imagined it to be. Time scours away the experience of the pain we endured, leaving us to imagine, in most cases, that it wasn’t so bad. Yet, for nearly all of us, it was that bad. Growing pains hurt. And what we experience in the midlife transition — that ripping away of our cherished hopes and dreams to be replaced with a more realistic but sometimes starker reality — is hardly an illusion, either. Whether it’s facing an evening of social entertaining with a nasty and energy-sapping sore throat or walking through the fears and disappointments of midlife or dealing with a social and political system that falls far from any ideal, we’re always faced with the same dilemma: what to do when it hurts.

What I love most about my chosen Christian faith is the belief in the incarnation: that the God of my understanding is no deistic watchmaker who simply wound up the universe and disinterestedly set it to unwind on its own. Rather, the incarnation suggests to me that God chose from the outset to assume the for him/herself the limitations that the very act of creation imposes on reality. Faith brings with it the stark and unavoidable comprehension that God hurts. The lesson I take from this is that, as God did not shrink back from creation because it involved suffering, that neither should we. The only way to get beyond suffering is to go through it. We can’t solve any of the problems of our personal or political life by trying to go back to an imagined earlier, more ‘serene’ time. The only way forward is . . . well . . . forward!

Neither form of escapism will work for us as individuals or as a collective: neither hiding ourselves in an angry, fearful, self-interested protectionism, nor simply whining and complaining that things aren’t going our way. Like our Creator, the challenges of each day summon us to get our hands dirty with the work of creation: becoming involved with the process of progress, and never allowing ourselves to become complacent or discouraged by our lack of perfection. When it hurts, we take our medicine, share our pain with those who care about us, and do whatever we need to do to keep moving forward. It works when we’re sick; it works when we’re in personal transition; it works as a body politic. It’s called ‘courage‘, plain and simple: nothing grand, just bucking up, trusting God, and doing the next right thing.

And . . . have a glorious 4th of July!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

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Why do dreams turn into nightmares, and even your ‘dreams come true’ have morphed into situations that you wish you could escape from, if only you knew how? How did Cinderella suddenly change into the wicked stepmother, and the handsome prince one day show up as the troll under the bridge? The answer to that question lies in the nature of dreams, in human nature, and in the difficulty we all have in changing our minds. Midlife is simply that moment on our journey when the rose-colored glasses are ripped off our faces and we’re forced to look reality in the face without the gauze and soft-focus we’ve become accustomed to seeing it all through. How you navigate the midlife transition is all about how well you’re able to sustain yourself through a big dose of harsh reality. Today, I’d lke to offer a spoonful of sugar to help that medicine go down (thank you, Mary Poppins).

First, the nature of dreams. Your dreams are simultaneously the product of your imagination and a creative stimulus. “I see things that have never been,” says your imagination, “and ask, ‘Why not?’” Life would be incredibly boring and stale if you had no dreams of something different and better. The greatest tragedy that could befall a human would be to live a life of such despair that s/he lost the ability to dream. Dreams are truly God’s gift to you, allowing you to see fresh, creative possibilities where you had never seen them before. Rich dreams bring with them an adrenaline rush that surges within you when you suddenly realize an exciting possibility you may never have seen before. Adrenaline rushes are amazing, but they lead us head-first into a collision with our human nature.

To a certain extent, our human existence is infused with the ‘disease of more.’ Without adequate self-knowledge and self-control, your first impulse after having a delightful experience is to ask yourself, “How can I do more of this? When can I do this again?” Without proper training, we humans tend never to be able to enjoy fully a pleasurable experience and to experience satisfaction. “I can’t get no satisfaction” isn’t about a lack of anything outside of yourself; it’s all about your capacity to live in — and to enjoy — the moment without being concern with what came before or what’s coming afterward. Satisfaction, contentment, and serenity are gifts that only you are able to give yourself by learning to accept that the trials and joys of the moment are enough in and by themselves.

Human nature — our old nemesis the ‘ego’ — wants to spoil the experience by getting you to focus on making the experience last, or recreating it, or even surpassing it as quickly as possible. People tell us that, if you’ve got one foot in the past, and one foot in the future, you’re pooping on the present. If your experience of the present is poop, it’s no wonder you want out of this dream!

As time passes, I come to appreciate more and more the incredible truth that Buddhist monks teach through the practice of the mandala. Creating a mandala takes incredible planning, design, cooperative teamwork, and an attention to detail beyond what most of us can achieve. The incredible colors and patterns, laid out almost one brilliantly-colored grain of sand at a time, take your breath away. Untold hours are spent in creating detailed imaginings, which are then brought to life in a vision-blurring, muscle-cramping execution. And, when it is completed, and every grain of sand is in perfect alignment, one monk sweeps his arm across the whole and, together, they carry the remains down to a stream and pour the formless streaks of colored sand into a flowing stream. Why? What’s the lession?

These monks are teaching us about our dreams. They are beautiful. They are exciting. The stimulate and motivate, and then they are gone! The lesson that you and I must learn on a daily basis consists in this: dreams and their execution are ephemeral. When you’re in the throes of a dream, it can seem to be the most wonderful and most exciting experience imaginable. You get into trouble only when you confuse the dream (the invitation) with the reality. So long as you remain locked in the dream, you deprive yourself of the capacity to see the reality in its fullness: an experience that always surpasses expectations. In terms of the mandala, the gift is discovered in the experience of creation, destruction, and recreation, not in the product.

What, then: should you give up living your dream? Not at all! Your dreams bring you the opportunities that provide life with its motivation, richness, and direction. Your job, however, like the Buddhist monks’, is to learn to let go of the dream and embrace the reality. Sure, you will experience pain as your experiences grow, arise, and depart again. There’s a sadness as what once was a brilliant pattern floats away in the stream. But the pain that you experience as you embrace the ebb and flow of life will be far less than that you will bring upon yourself by clinging stubbornly to a worn-out dream. You don’t need heaven’s help to “Get me out of this dream!” . . . you need only change your mind and accept that the dreams that you’re so tempted to cling to are holding you back from the dreams that are yet to come.

The only skill you need to bring you contentment is to look at whatever is before you — be it a dream or a reality — and to be able to say to yourself with full appreciation: “This, too, shall pass.” Of all the lessons that midlife has to teach you, that one, perhaps, hold the key to your unimaginable future. Embrace it, if you are wise!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

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H. Les Brown

From its very conception, the Spirit in Crisis Journal has been a labor of love for those of us involved with it. As your editor, I’ve done my best to remain conscious of our initial inspiration: to make it a vehicle where women and men could offer and likewise find spiritual expressions that touched on some of the critical turning-points in life. This e-Zine owed its very existence to the willingness of spiritually-motivated thinkers to share their insights in a medium that was free from the ubiquitous marketing that so characterizes the web.

Beyond my role as contributor, I was delighted to serve as your editor, providing our contributors with a medium that welcomed their message. Sadly, over the past few months, our contributors have, for many reasons, not been able to maintain a regular input of new material: material that I depend on to maintain the magazine-quality of our publication. As a result, instead of a commitment of a few hours each week to our e-Zine, it has come to take up at least an entire day: a commitment I would gladly maintain if the regular content were there.

So, for the time being, I’ve decided to suspend our publication. I’ll continue to publish my weekly insights as I have been in the Midlife Mastery Journal, and would be happy to post occasional contributions from others. I’ll keep our Spirit in Crisis Journal archives available indefinitely, and I’m not closing the door on restoring the publication, should there be a pool of thinkers, writers, and pray-ers who desire an effective outlet for their creative efforts.

I want to thank each of you who has contributed to the Spirit in Crisis Journal in either capacity: as contributor or faithful reader. Without your dedication, we could never have existed at all!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

As has been written before in these pages, this is not a difficult thing to absorb. Love for God, Jesus, for any one, will neither grow nor last if we do not practice loving. It begins sometimes all too easily; we fall in love. Then comes the harsh reality. I love you, I know you are the one, but I have a poker game with the boys. I love you as I have loved no other, but you have to understand that if I don’t give priority to my job, what will we have. You are my love, trust me, but….

Saint John of the Cross, however, holds out no less emphatic understanding of this struggle both to surrender and at the same time make good on the need to be for and with the Beloved. It is as though his experience comes not just in mystical reflection but also in very simple, day to day coming to terms with things that we pick up “living life on life’s terms.” Among the Johannine treasures that have come down through the centuries, poems, letters, books, one of the greatest and simplest is a sketch of Christ on the cross. (attached) The design and perspective caught the attention of Salvador Dali, causing him to do his own incredibly provocative version “Christ of Saint John of the Cross” [Glasgow museum].

As one reads St. John’s words about love and its intensity, it helps the spiritual sojourner to keep in mind St. John‘s primitive sketch. John writes a powerful explanation of the demands of love in the Spiritual Canticle where he cites the work of the Divine Artist sketching with faith in the soul of the beloved. It is not a struggle on one with the other. It is the absolute reality of what true love accomplishes just by being recognized and allowed to take hold.

“Over this sketch of faith is drawn in the will of the lover the sketch of love. When there is union of love, the image of the Beloved is so sketched in the will and drawn so intimately and vividly, that it is true to say that the Beloved lives in the lover and the lover in the Beloved. Love produces such likeness in this transformation of lovers that one can say each is the other and both are one. The reason is, that in the union and transformation of love each gives possession of self to the other, and each leaves and exchanges self for the other. Thus each one lives in the other and is the other, and both are one in the transformation of love. [The Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 12, 7; see Galatians 2:20]
Another bit of Johanine writing based on experience left for us to ponder. An acquaintance of this writer was reminded by a local Episcopal priest that he had been told in seminary that it was not necessary for him to dump more suffering on his own self than he was already getting from life itself. Maybe this text of St. John will be a help for us! If that fails, maybe going back to Galatians will help.

Butch Hovis, LCSW
Red Mill Center
16529 Coastal Highway
Lewes, DE 19958

Remember that our characterizations of evil personified (the ‘devil’ and ‘Satan’) are symbolic names, which refer to a ‘tearing apart’ (diabolein) and to a ‘prosecuting attorney’ (ha satan). Prior to the midlife transition, the destructive negativity that we identify as ‘evil’ appears outside us. Our prospects for ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ seem threatened by the external world: natural ‘disasters’, ‘enemies’ (foreign and domestic), bad ‘luck’, and, perhaps most powerfully of all, the judgments and opinions of others. Our collective unconscious has internalized these ‘gaps’ or ‘lacunae’ in our experience of the world into what Sigmund Freud called the ‘superego’. He described it as a scolding, parental ‘voice’ constantly critiquing our thoughts and actions. Others have described that voice in different terms: the ‘gremlin‘ (Richard David Carson, Taming Your Gremlin) or ‘Self 1‘ (W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Work), what A Course in Miracles calls the ‘ego’ or, what one of my mentors (Alphonse Wright) called ‘The Stopper‘. What we learn at midlife is that, as Walt Kelly once wrote in his comic strip, Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

At midlife, what prevents us from becoming the woman or man we so ardently desire to be reveals itself as our own fear. The older I get, the more I realize how nothing but my own lack of trust in myself and my Higher Power has held me back (and it has held me back!). So long as you continue to experience that existential threat as external to yourself, you will continue to find it threatening your present and your future. So long as you seek the remedy to that threat within your own knowledge, experience, and skill set, you will remain powerless before it. You see, the “devil that you know” is your own fearful ego that tells you that you’re not good enough, you’re not smart enough, you’re not capable enough, you’re not lovable enough, and, at the bottom line, you’re a failure and a fraud. Your devil, your ‘posecuting attorney’ is that part of you that secretly believes, “If you really knew me, you could never love me.” It’s that part of you that is afraid that, at any moment, you’ll be “found out.”  Is this the “devil that you know”? Of course it is!

Furthermore, there’s a reason why the devil has been called “the father of lies”: it’s because your self-absorbed, people-pleasing self has forgotten who you really are: a child of God who is perfect and inviolable and lovable just exactly as you are. And that, my dear friends, is the one Great Lesson that midlife has to teach us, and that opens the great doorway into full Maturity. Our fears are groundless. Failure is an illusion. The Grace of God both guides and protects us regardless of the circumstances.

The only failure that we are able to experience derives from a lesson not learned. You can be a failure only if you pretend that you are someone who you are not, that wrong is right, and that you are capable of running your own life absolutely independently of God or your fellows. Listening to the voice of your fearful ego is the only path that will take you to perdition, because your Higher Power will never force you to grow, force you to love, or force you to do what is best. Free will is essentially the freedom to deny your own identity and refuse whatever is in your best self-interest. You can always say ‘No’ to God.

Here’s what I’ve learned in the midlife passage and beyond: “Go for it!” The only stupid question is the one that’s not asked. The only useless proposal is the one that’s not proposed. The only missed opportunity is the one that’s not considered. The only failed plan is the one that’s never tried. The only tragedy is the one from which nothing is learned.

You need not worry about “the devil made me do it” — your worry should be “the devil stopped me from doing it!” Here’s a chance to look back at your life and examine your supposed ‘failures.’ If you can consider any area of your life today a success, can you see how it would never have come about without the “hard knock” lessons? Whatever good that you may have in your life today came through the Grace of God, and seldom without your making some scary, hard decisions. An acient theological truth says, “Grace builds upon nature.” That simply means that the Grace of God cannot reach you unless and until you’re willing and able to make the scary decisions that make that possible.

After only less then three months with my current agency, I saw a position opening up that suited me far better than the one I was hired for. I decided that nothing was gained by wishful thinking, so I actively pursued.  Just last week, I transitioned to my new position. It’s new for me and new for the organization. I’m their first hire in the realm of strategic workforce planning. As soon as I came on board, I jumped into learning all about what this position would entail, and my mind quickly filled with new ideas.  Prudence suggested that I should keep quiet and listen tuntil I was certain that I had learned all I needed to know. Yet ‘prudence’ means taking care to do the best work, not the safest. It was my fearful ego that urged me to hang back and not take a chance. Midlife grace, however, gave me the courage to speak up, to risk being wrong, to take a chance on not being accepted by my supervisors. Yet, I asked myself, what could they do to me? Shoot me? Fire me? No! The worst that could happen would be that I would learn something. So I took the chance, spoke up, and, at least for today, my efforts helped move me and the program forward.

How about you? What are you waiting for? What reserves are you holding back because you believe that you are weak and vulnerable, rather than powerful in the Grace of your God? What in your history can you point at as proof that God has abandoned you and fails to guide and protect you? What’s the “devil that you know” trying to tell you? More importantly, what strategies do you have in place to confront its nagging voice with a strong, “begone, Satan!” You stand beofre the Mystery of life innocent and beloved, and the challenge to that understanding comes, not from the outside world, but from within. To silence the ‘Stopper’, you need only remind yourself of one thing: “I am a beloved child of God in whom God is well-pleased. There is nothing to fear.”

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

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Do you know it’s time to make a big change but are hesitating? Theresa said, “I live more in touch with the Divine and have had a tremendous shift yet my family cannot understand that I see life from a different point of view. They go back to memories and I want to go forward. I want to serve the higher good. When and what do I need to know to move on?”
That’s the dilemma. We come to the place within us where it becomes clear that it is time to move on, but we still cling to the old job, the old marriage, the old life because the way forward has not fully revealed itself.

I had trouble letting go. I lingered in relationships and jobs way beyond the point when it became clear it was time to leave. It was only by staying too long that I learned to recognize the inner promptings to change. It was through unpleasant experiences that I learned how to trust and receive the guidance that was being given to me.

This may seem dark and scary, but to give you encouragement, as I learned to recognize the guidance and signs that were coming to me, as I learned to have the courage to say “yes” regardless of what it looked like, the most remarkable things have happened. We suffer when we cling to the past. When I had the courage to say yes to create The Angel Ministry, all of sudden my life turned around in ways I never could have imagined. The more I have the courage to say yes to the guidance I receive, the more incredible, wonderful and loving my life becomes.

Are you at a crossroads? I encourage you to listen to that inner voice of guidance and your soul’s deepest calling. Trust and say “yes” with discernment and wisdom. That is an important key!

I would like to suggest there are two more equally compelling systems affected by movement: our emotional and spirituality systems.

It’s not a coincidence that motion is an essential component of emotion as the two words imply. This is  as true of a prostate cancer survivor and author like myself or anybody else, regardless of his or her illness.  If you want to feel better, you  just have to move!

Motion also deeply affects our spiritual disposition.  If you are stationery during quiet moments of contemplation, you may feel more rested and peaceful, but perhaps a bit more pensive. On the other hand, if you move actively while praying, you have a greater chance of restoring your vitality, as you’re literally “moved by the Spirit”!

Each of us responds differently to motion in the form of slow or more vigorous movement, including physical exercise. But none of us should readily dismiss motion as integral to our lives. Without question, motion is essential for our physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.

Ed Weinsberg
Rabbi Edgar Weinsberg, Ed.D., D.D.
Author of CONQUER PROSTATE CANCER:
How Medicine, Faith, Love and Sex Can Renew Your Life
www.ConquerProstateCancer.com

By “resignation,” he proposes negatively as a form of detachment which he describes as living “in the monastery as though no one else were in it. More positively, he saw this as a way of guarding “the tranquility and quietude of…soul.”

His second counsel on “mortification” he states that one “should engrave this truth upon your heart” for he saw it as the acceptance of the continued interactions of others as they work us or help us become worthy of heaven. He writes that by doing this, we will “find genuine humility, inward quietude, and joy of the Holy Spirit. John saw such value in this counsel that he suggested if one did not want to live this way, they should not bother coming to religious life otherwise they would be “confused and frustrated.”

In the third counsel, “which concerns the practice of virtue,” John directs the religious to “undertake all things, agreeable or disagreeable, for the sole purpose of pleasing God through them.” Relating this to carrying the cross of Jesus, John writes “This you should do wholeheartedly for it is the way of becoming greater in spiritual things….”

Finally, he holds out the fourth counsel as “solitude” by which one deems “everything in the world as finished” and as “if it did not exist.” He continues “Pay no heed to the things of the world, for God has already withdrawn and released you from them.”

For persons who do not live in a monastery, these counsels might be considered as so “otherworldly” as to absolve them from even thinking about them. On the other hand, as Saint John sums up in the second to the last paragraph, these counsels hold out activities that have become quite appealing to many lay persons, not just Catholics or Christians, but many of more simple, spiritual oriented mind: “be incessant in prayer,…do so with the desire for God and with your heart fixed on Him. This is very necessary for inner solitude.”

To help the reader gain some perspective, it might be helpful to cite a couple of real world instances that illustrate contemporary applications of these counsels. Recently there was a lot of interest concerning the plight of Abby Sunderland, a 16 year old, who was attempting to sail around the earth alone. She met some rough seas and lost both the boat’s mast and the ability to communicate with possible sources of help. Her parents pointed out that they had always encouraged their children to “follow their heart”. They were certain that it was that kind of drive that would and did bring her through. Likewise, in interviews with hostages freed after years of captivity by Colombian rebels, one described how he delved deep inside himself to that “essence” which gave him strength to endure both the length of his captivity as well as its harshness. Another said that it was by using what she knew and what had always worked for her, the simplicity of the repetitive and meditative prayer of the Rosary. John of the Cross would understand it as holding on to the practice that maintains both our commitment to the source and the object of our faith.

One might consider a person’s ability to maintain a program of recovery that lasts 24 hours, 90 days, and almost a quarter of a century as another example of John’s Counsels, the steadfast seeking through prayer and meditation of conscious contact with a higher power!

Butch Hovis, LCSW
Red Mill Center
16529 Coastal Highway
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I usually spend my Saturday mornings with a community of recovering people, and yesterday was no exception. As always happens, I came away from our discussions with new insights and perspectives. I don’t know about you, but my ‘forgetter’ works much more effectively than my ‘rememberer,’ so I need regular doses of reality to keep me from floating away mentally, emotionally, and spiritually into La-la Land. Somebody yesterday mentioned ‘evil’ and it got me to thinking.  I have a particular approach to the topic of evil that I’ve developed over many years and many experiences, and I thought that my readers might gain some fresh insights if I were to take this opportunity to explore it a little: What is ‘evil’ and why do we seem to be battling it so fiercely, particularly as we transition to full maturity?

Any student of moral philosophy worth her/his salt should be able to explain to you that there are two types of evil: physical evil and moral evil. Looking at physical evil first will help us to put moral evil into much better perspective. Although we use the same word (‘evil’) to refer to physical and moral failure, the two are only analogous. In fact, physical ‘evil’ is not evil at all: it is simply a set of natural phenomena that cause us humans pain and suffering. Things like natural disasters, disease, and even death itself are only considered really ‘evil’ when they affect human lives. What distinguishes Hurricane Katrina from a similar nameless storm in the mid-Pacific Ocean is only its effect on humanity. But, neither of them in themselves are really ‘evil.’ They’re both just storms.

What we call ‘physical evil’ is simply a characteristic of the natural universe. If we could possibly imagine the universe before the Big Bang, we’d have to conjure up an undifferentiated flyspeck of matter/energy/space/time/consciousness with absolutely no distinction between ‘this’ and ‘that’, ‘here’ and ‘there’, ‘now’ and ‘then’. What creation, expressed in the Big Bang, set in motion was a process of separation and distinction based on limitations. Follow me now: ‘this’ is limited because it’s not ‘that’; ‘here’ is limited because it’s not ‘there’; ‘now’ is limited because it’s not ‘then’; and, ultimately, ‘I’ am limited because I am not ‘you’. In spiritual terms, creation happened when a Higher Power allowed the ‘not’ — the limitation and separation of one entity from another — to intrude into the undifferentiated fabric of all that is.

What we call ‘physical evil’ is simply our human experience of the limitations inherent in the fabric of the universe of creation. No limitations: no universe! Yet, as soon as limitations and boundaries are introduced, simultaneously the reality of destruction and loss appears. Yet, (as far as we are aware) only human consciousness experiences physical limitations and boundaries that way. Only humanity sees limitation and judges it to be disaster and tragedy. From a purely physical (creational) perspective, Katrina was a very, very good hurricane! It expressed the functioning of the laws of the natural world perfectly.

What we call ‘physical evil’ intrudes into our human existence in a particularly emphatic way at midlife. It’s in grappling with the whole spectrum of our own limitations that we come, at long last, to a deeper and much more realistic appraisal of who we are in the context of our world than we had ever had before during our adult lives. We become aware of what happens when our personal beliefs meet life’s limitations head-on. Midlife is our time to grapple spiritually with our human limitations, and to overcome them not by denying them, nor by trying to conquer them, but by coming to terms with them. In the same way that we could never appreciate a red rose by wishing it was any other color, we are given the opportunity to find our own personal destiny by discovering the beauty and magnificence that is revealed only in and through our limitations. We learn (though hard experience) to love who we are, rather than who we wish we were.

When we are able to remember that ‘physical evil’ is simply our experience of the very warp and woof of creation, we can learn that our difficulties are not tragedies or disasters at all; they are opportunities for transcendence. They are invitations to correct our course, to rise to each new challenge, and to go beyond, not our limitations, but our beliefs about our limitations. The challenges of midlife force us to confront and either overcome or succumb to the unreality of our belief system. That is what happened to me 24 years ago. I did not realize that of which I was capable until I was forced by necessity to let go of my own limited worldview and adapt to the one that brought me to my knees (literally and figuratively). It began (but has not yet completed) my transition to full maturity as a “spiritual being having a human experience.”*

What about moral evil, then? How does that relate to the limitations inherent in the universe? Moral evil is simply our recognition that we as human beings are ultimately free. If we are free, then we have real, fundamental choices. At any juncture, we can choose to accept and live within the limitations of the physical world, or not. If we choose the latter, we choose to live in an insane world where our beliefs bear no resemblance to facts. We can choose to ignore our commitments, to disvalue ourselves and others, to deny our spiritual (or physical, for that matter) nature. We can run from and avoid life’s lessons and refuse to grow. We can jam our distorted and dysfunctional worldview into others’ reality by demanding our own way, by perpetrating injustice, by causing sadness, suffering and even death in our world. Moral evil is nothing more or less than our exercising our choice to say ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’ to our world and to our God.

What about moral evil in our world? What about the “inhumanity of man against man”? We human beings must confront the limitations of our universe on a daily, hourly, even minute-by-minute basis. We are never free from our responsibility to live life on life’s terms. A very real, although unfortunate, aspect of those terms is the fact that some of those limitations come at the hands of other humans. Yet, from our perspective, there is no more ‘blame’ to be placed on another human than there is on the limitations in the physical universe. Responsibility for moral evil (refusal to grow and mature) falls on the heads of the perpetrators. It falls on our own heads when we find ourselves as the perpetrators, and we need to go through the process of apology. Yet, our responsibility as the receivers of injustice is simply to grow beyond it. We are never ‘victims’ of injustice, any more than we are ‘victims’ of a hurricane or earthquake.

“Father,” Jesus prayed from his crucifixion, “forgive them. They know not what they do.” Our job as students of life’s lessons rests in asking, “What is my lesson in this?” and responding appropriately to our nature as spiritual beings. It is not to blame, punish, or exact retribution. Even those, like Viktor Frankl, who endured the Nazi death camps, had the choice to allow the holocaust to destroy their essential humanity or to rise to an incredible level of spiritual maturity. We’ll never know the heights and depths of spiritual experience that literally millions of people encountered during that war.

Was Nazi inhumanity therefore a good thing, because it deepened our spiritual awareness as individuals and as a human family? Of course not. War is always moral evil on stark and pointed display. Yet every time one woman or man confronts moral evil and accepts that experience as an opportunity to rise above it, s/he takes that opportunity to transform it into a moment of spiritual growth for our entire human family — and sadly, we have yet so far to grow.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Because we’re human and we live in a universe defined by its limitations. Without confronting the limitations imposed on us by the universe at large, we would never learn to cope with our own human limitations. We would never discover how powerfully we are led and guided by a Power Greater than ourselves. We would be incapable of ever fulfilling our destiny either as individuals or as a human species. Am I happy that my own limitations brought me down and laid me low 24 years ago today? Happy? No. Grateful? Yes. I had the opportunity to see where my dysfunctional beliefs were threatening me, and I had the opportunity to change my mind and, by the grace of God, I took the chance, rose to the occasion, and did what I had to do. Like the poet, Robert Frost, exclaimed,

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

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