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clivedurdle
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(Date Posted:08/14/2002 19:00:30)
I switch from feeling good to feeling very anxious very regularly! A silly comment about the negative thoughts that come into our heads I read was to say them out loud, but with a silly, cartoon character voice!
I have now been doing Tai chi for six weeks and am very interested at how well I feel sometimes and how easily I lose it. I am balancing and moving myself in ways I would not have thought possible. It might not actually be long before I can balance on a post like in the Kung Fu film!
Personaly, I have always picked on the optimistic verses in the Bible - it is like a bran tub you can pick bits out of as you wish!
I always take Emmanuel - God with us, and ideas like we are the sons and daughters of God to mean we are in an equal relationship, that our self esteem is not dependent on others because we are! We are better than gods because we are alive!
Is the difference only how much time we stay with our dark or bright sides? Is it really a matter of good posture, breathing, movement and allowing the good feelings to flow within ourselves more than the negative stuff? Is all the apocalyptic stuff a result of serious ill health?
I posted on Amazon a list of favourite books - do we want something similar here? Anyone want to help write a killer book about the issues we are discussing, and someone else make sure it is in every hotel in the world?
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Clive
The first tools on earth might have been developed by a loner sitting at the back of the cave, chipping at thousands of rocks to find the one that made the sharpest spear, while the neurotypicals chattered away in the firelight - unlikely - how did they work out how to light the fire!
Who understands does not preach;
Who preaches does not understand. Tao te ching
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Voltaire
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(Date Posted:08/18/2002 09:31:14)
clivedurdle:
Have you ever wondered where those negative feelings come from? I'm quite inclined to agree with Branden when he attributes these to self sabotage and self fulfilling prophecies. It's like I can look at my negative feelings and trace their origin back to some belief I have or used to have that is keeping me from being what I want to be.
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Zombies, Unicorns, Devils, Sea Monsters, Satyrs, Dragons, Six Winged Angels, Gods, Demons, Witches, Astrologers, A walking & talking snake, Magical fruit, Talking donkeys, human headed six-winged beasts, Ghosts. All that stuff is in the Bible and yet they tell me it"s not mythology?
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Voltaire
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(Date Posted:08/18/2002 09:53:36)
Well, I'm going to get back to this thread. I've allowed myself to be distracted by some other things, including the debate in The Lion's Den about the historicity of Jesus. Personally I think I've settled that issue for myself and now I want to get back to healing. Besides, if I we all have good self-esteem, we won't be bothered when the fundies come swaggering up to us waving their Bibles. Here's more from the Introduction:
When I first began struggling with questions concerning self-esteem forty years ago, I saw the subject as providing invaluable clues to understanding motivation.
I found this interesting because I long have felt that the real reason I have motivation problems is due to low self-esteem. He figured this out too.
When I went to the library in search of information about self-esteem, almost none was to be found.
Brandon goes on to tell about how little psychology had to say about self-esteem when he first started out. I found this quite puzzling because I would think psychologists would be very, very interested in how people value themselves. Quite amazing, but I guess every science has it's blind spots.
At the issue of self-esteem came more clearly into focus for me, I saw that it is a profound and powerful human need, essential to healthy adaptiveness, this, to optimal functioning and self-fulfillment. To the extent that need is frustrated, we suffer and are thwarted in our development.
I really think this is a profound statement. Like so many things Brandon says, it just so very obvious and sensible, yet I never heard this before. Where was this book all my life?
Of all the judgements we pass in life, none is as important as the one we pass on ourselves.
Again, so very profound, but I never really thought of it that way before.
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Zombies, Unicorns, Devils, Sea Monsters, Satyrs, Dragons, Six Winged Angels, Gods, Demons, Witches, Astrologers, A walking & talking snake, Magical fruit, Talking donkeys, human headed six-winged beasts, Ghosts. All that stuff is in the Bible and yet they tell me it"s not mythology?
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clivedurdle
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(Date Posted:08/19/2002 03:42:17)
Many years ago i did social work training and one of the key texts was a book "Joy - expanding human awareness" by william C Schutz Souvenir Press 1967 ( US Grove Press NY) isbn 285 62019 3.
I suppose it all started when Ethan was born. The idea of writing about joy had been rummaging around for some time, but he crystallized the feelings behind the rummaging.
As I looked at him, he was very quiet and very curious. He lay quite still, concentrating on the "blooming buzzing confusion".
What a way to begin, by giving joy to parents!
The joy continues. When Ethan smiles every cell of his body smiles, including his turned-up toes. When he is unhappy, he is thoroughly unhappy, all over.
But will something happen to Ethan as it does to all of us? Where will his joy go? In most of us it becomes depleted, distorted, contorted, guilt and fear begin to defile it.
Perhaps we can recapture some joy, regain some body pleasures, share again the joy with other people that once was possible.
I know it is very sixties and hippyish, but I think we were getting somewhere then! These ideas have survived in humanist psychotherapies.
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Clive
The first tools on earth might have been developed by a loner sitting at the back of the cave, chipping at thousands of rocks to find the one that made the sharpest spear, while the neurotypicals chattered away in the firelight - unlikely - how did they work out how to light the fire!
Who understands does not preach;
Who preaches does not understand. Tao te ching
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Voltaire
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(Date Posted:08/19/2002 06:57:51)
When Ethan smiles every cell of his body smiles, including his turned-up toes. When he is unhappy, he is thoroughly unhappy, all over.
But will something happen to Ethan as it does to all of us? Where will his joy go? In most of us it becomes depleted, distorted, contorted, guilt and fear begin to defile it.
I always wondered how a happy, eager, enthusiastic child gets transformed into an angry teenager who turns into a silent bitter adult. That's why Brandon's statement about giving up affected me so much. I can remember feeling as if I was surrounded by a circle of adults all telling me the same thing: in order to grow up you have to become like us. You can't do what you want, or even what you have talent for. No, you have to travel down the same rut we are. Walk with your head straight ahead like a zombie, walking toward a big black pit at the end. Don't ever turn your head to either side and try to look over the sides of the rut; even thinking about doing that is dangerous. Well, where in the hell was the enthusiasm in walking like a zombie through life? What kind of a life is to believe "life's a bitch and then you die?" No wonder teenagers get so frustrated and sullen. They can see the rut and don't want get stuck in it. Who would blame them? And who did the snow job on us to tell us we have to walk down that rut? I'll tell you: another #$%^@!* human being did. It wasn't God or any other bogeyman from beyond. No, it was just another person just like me up there in the pulpit waving his Bible around pretending he was speaking for God yapping something like "all ye like sheep have gone astray". Phooey! I wanna be a goat. I'm going to put my horns on and butt that stinker right in the butt. Sometimes I wish I was as wise as when I was born.
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Zombies, Unicorns, Devils, Sea Monsters, Satyrs, Dragons, Six Winged Angels, Gods, Demons, Witches, Astrologers, A walking & talking snake, Magical fruit, Talking donkeys, human headed six-winged beasts, Ghosts. All that stuff is in the Bible and yet they tell me it"s not mythology?
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katseye
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(Date Posted:10/08/2002 04:04:16)
Hey guys,
This is a great thread! I realize I'm a little behind the times, but I'm allowed. I just joined a few days ago.
Voltaire: Sometimes I wish I was as wise as when I was born.
... goose bumps for me.
YES YES YES YES.
Thanks for the quotes from the book on self esteem, Voltaire. And the observations about yourself when you read them. Amazingly simple, yet so completely hidden in that blind spot. I have the same blind spot.
I feel like a kid in a candy shop, with all these great threads to read.
Again, from Voltaire:
Personally I think I've settled that issue for myself and now I want to get back to healing. Besides, if I we all have good self-esteem, we won't be bothered when the fundies come swaggering up to us waving their Bibles.
So true. People will always have silly opinions. Some of them will even want to foist them upon others. I used to try to make sense of it all, but now I find it to be... well... boring. Because it's obvious to me that behind all the postulations and explanations and diagrams and lectures is a deep insecurity that can only be quenched from the inside. With self esteem.
I had a fundy try to convert me at work a while back. He saw in me a "great thinker" and decided there would be a good chance I would understand his own "great thinking". He had some brand new theories about a specific interpretation of the Bible that only he had been gifted enough to decipher... I didn't listen long. Told him he would find that I'm rather close-minded about these things. He didn't catch the irony in what I said, but the people who were watching did.
Back to the healing.
clivedurdle, I see that you have done some body work (tai chi), and you mentioned "body pleasures" and the joy in every cell of your son Ethan's body. Yes, I'm picking out something very specific. The body.
So much of the fundy teaching divorces us from our bodies and the pleasures they provide us. A large part of the healing process for me has been a rediscovery of my connection with my body. I like it so much that now I'm a dancer. Yes, in fact, I'm a free-spirited, athletic, sexy, expressive, joyful dancer. My body has taught me the wisdom in enjoying myself, and that has been revolutionary in my life.
This all ties back to the need for self esteem. Loving the person we are enough to advocate ourselves and give ourselves everything we need. Enjoying ourselves. Providing so well for ourselves that we can provide for others too.
So clearly obvious, and yet so evasive.
kat
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Chirpy
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(Date Posted:03/21/2003 00:17:22)
It seemed to me that what was asked was the surrender of my judgement and also my conviction that my life and what I made of it was of the highest possible value. I saw my contemporaries surrendering and losing their fire--and, sometimes in painful, lonely bewilderment, I wanted to understand why. Why was growing up equated with giving up.
I was told to grow up all the time by puppet/clones who wanted me to be submissive and think like them. This shows evidence that I must have been thinking for myself and acting according to my own judgement now and then.
I don't really think that any of us are fully deprogrammed whether we were brought up as fundies or came to it as young adults. I have found reading Dorothy Rowe's books on depression and fear quite helpful though.
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hojusaram
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(Date Posted:06/11/2003 20:35:39)
I went through the books mentioned on this forum and went hunting for the ones that took my fancy. One of them was The Six Pillars. I thought it would be a good one for me as I found myself pondering the whole self-esteem issue and my fundy experience some months ago.
It struck me a few months back at how much power the youth pastors and visiting speakers had over us as twenty-somethings in our Pentecostal church. I am not talking so much about power in the sense of them telling us what we could or couldn't do (they did that too BTW), but more about how we hung on their every word and willingly did whatever they told us. We looked up to them far more than Trekkies look up to the cast of Star Trek (is that even possible?  ). I recall friends who would volunteer to pick up the visiting speaker form the airport and then drive him around all day simply to get close to the speaker and get 'noticed' enough for the speaker to say nice things about him. It was as if our esteem was SO low. We really had our self-esteem beaten so low that we constantly sought affirmation form those higher up the chain than us. In retrospect, most of they guys we looked up to were serious morons. I am talking real dead-heads. And yet, we thought the sun shine out of their butts!
We were all striving to move up to their level as if being there was somehow 'making it'. Of course, they were looking up to the levels about themselves too. Truthfully, our self-esteem was completely fucked.
I don't know if I am communicating this too well, but I am going to work through The Six Pillars and seek some insight about the way it was and hopefully, now, the way it can be.
Thanks for bringing this book to my attention.
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Stay home Sundays and save 10%.
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