Monthly Archives: October 2018

Culture, Life on earth, Psychology and Spirituality

LIFE: Seeing the bigger picture

Leave a comment

Our life’s journey starts with the moment of birth, but probably with the moment of conception or even before when we adhere to the respective beliefs. When it actually starts is not so important, but the events and experiences it is filled with are weaving our life story to a more or less complex net of moments and our response to them.

The impact of childhood

In the first years of life we are almost entirely dependent on somebody who cares for us, feeds us and teaches us what to think and to say and how to behave in our special environment. Growing up we slowly liberate ourselves from this dependance, hopefully. From the very first moments of our existence we experience the world with our senses. Our psychology forms accordingly. Who had good experiences in early life normally grows up more easily into an adult human being than those of us who were exposed to physical or emotional hardship or even intentional malevolence. But it is not always so. The question arises: Why do some people, who have suffered a lot, have so much difficulty in life and even destroy it and the life of others, while others who had experienced similar situations grow up and become wise and altruistic?

Despite the validity of the law of cause and effect, the answers are not so blatantly easy. Apart from the genetic material and the psychological fields of our ancestry which we bring into the world, there seem to be many other factors in play which people have tried to figure out for a long time. The question: What is LIFE and what makes it meaningful? What is our predisposition, what are our unconscious orientations and our conscious influences?

Typologies

The idea of looking for similarities and collect them into typologies is equally ancient, but only in the last few centuries, typologies have been studied more in depth. They provide a map where you can find the similarities and differences of people and make some good prediction for the thoughts and behaviours of those who belong to a determinate category.

They exist, if you like it or not

I know, some people will protest now, even vehemently, because they don’t like the idea of humans being categorized, because they believe in the absolute individuality of every single human on earth. Well, this is also true, but partial, as everything we talk about in our quest for truth and wisdom. We all are individual souls in individual bodies, but it is also true that you can make good distinctions and find a certain number of sufficiently different “boxes” where you can put yourself in and those around you, with a certain probability of getting it right.

Examples

I give you an example: Many years I did an experimental course of the Enneagram. For several years we came together, 10 days every time, hundreds of interested people, and by a variety of exercises we were encouraged to find out ourselves to which type we belong. When we then met in the subgroup of people who identified with the same type as you, the surprise was huge: What everyone of us thought to be a specific trait of our own personality revealed to be exactly the same among all of us. Good-bye my belief in the individuality of myself! There were people who behaved and felt exactly like myself! Wow!

Another example are the levels of personal development: As a child we think and behave different than in adult life. I think there is common agreement here. But how is that different? And did you think and believe the same things when you were 20, 40 or 60? Probably not. In my life I have observed so many changes in what I thought about life, about myself and about others, about society, politicians, doctors. The list is endless. There are people who never change their mind – and also that is an indicator for the level in which they live their lives in. We are growing through many levels, if our development is healthy. A good source to learn about that is Spiral Dynamics, and even better Integral Theory which includes Developmental Psychology.

Our life experience is impersonal

We still might think that is is just us who have the fortune – or misfortune – to change our attitude to life and to the world. But it is definitely not. We grow up in a predictable way, nothing really special about every single one of us – while we are totally special in HOW we grow up inside ourselves, in HOW we express our type in the world, how we act now and in the future and how we see and integrate our past.

Our personal life experience is rich in its actual expression, but it is totally impersonal as category of experience. Everybody experiences the same things in life, childhood, growing up, pain and frustration, sexuality, bonding, interests in something, joy and sadness, illness and death. We add our personal flavour to all that, we live these things in different settings and with different “colors”, but the experiences themselves are profoundly impersonal in the sense that they are the ingredients of human life, the consequence of our sensory equipment, of our ability to think and to desire, our innate urge to live the life we are given.

We are actors on the stage of LIFE

It really helps when you are aware that your personal drama has nothing really to do with you as an individual, but that it is playing out in your body, mind and spirit, as you are a player in the big game of life and you have to play that special role on the stage, where you are one of the innumerable actors.

Culture, development, Life on earth, Psychology and Spirituality

Getting emotional – what about and how?

Leave a comment

Humans are emotional beings. Although we know that, we do very little to increase our emotional competence, even today, after all the insights of the postmodern culture. So should we be more emotional and behave in emotional ways? Let’s think about it.

History

In early stages of cultural development, in feudal societies in the past and today, being emotional and impulsive is completely normal. If somebody doesn’t behave the right way, others, who are or believe to be more powerful or stronger, don’t think twice before the push a knife between your ribs or torture you to death. They can bring forth some rationalisations about why they do it: because you have offended someone, worldly powerful people, the representants of God on earth, or just a strong guy in the subway This is enough for an ego-centered human being to justify his attack on you, even if it kills you. No problem.

Humanity made huge efforts to contain this raw power and impulsiveness in humans by teaching them rules about the value of life and that nobody has the right to kill another human being. Well, although well embodied in Western cultures, people still find a work-around to passionately fight and kill others by declaring “the other” inferior, not a real human being. Thus in totalitarian regimes people with the inclination to act out their aggressiveness get a justification of doing “the right thing” by ways of their inhuman ideology.

Suppressing emotions

Certainly, the expression of the emotions channeled by rules of behaviour can also lead to their suppression. But at least people can live together relatively peaceful, without killing each other because of a wrong word or a unfortunate action. The rise of science and technology or the battle for success in direct competition wouldn’t have been possible with everyone expressing directly their anger or contempt. Only with the rise of the postmodern age, people realised their being cut off from their emotions and they claim them back. And that is good.

Handling emotions well

Now, how will we express our emotions today, after we have  -to our surprise-, re-discovered that we have them,? Shall we go back and fight against anybody who “hurts our feelings”? Or have we grown into something more sophisticated? Have we learned when to show our emotions, why and how? This is certainly a question where everyone has to find their own answers. Here is where “emotional intelligence” comes in: Learning to handle the own emotions wisely. Not suppressing them, realising that they are there, but remaining their master. With other words: having the decision power if we express them and, if we chose to do so, in what form.

Which emotions are culturally accepted

When a man is in tears in a public setting, there will still be those who consider that as weakness, but others recognize it as strength to be in contact with the feelings and express them even when the culture has different norms. When a woman is openly aggressive, well, that is not yet seen as desirable, and it probably isn’t. Not because she is a woman, but open aggressive behaviour is ugly in both men and women. When a woman gets angry, that can be the result of a long struggle to integrate anger and to unlock it from the substitute feeling of sadness, which culture had allowed for women in former times, but not anger.

The power of genuine emotions

In my life as a women brought up in a conservative world, anger and aggressiveness was not appreciated although it happened to me in my attempted defense against two older brothers. Later in life I discovered that genuine anger is a good tool to make myself understood. When  a hunter shot his bullets in a way that I heard them fall on my roof, I ran up the hill and shouted on him so that he never came back. I must have developed the quality of the Goddess Kali, I was glad of my success and knew there was a “secret weapon” in genuinely expressed anger.

Becoming passionate

I don’t use my anger very often, but sometimes I really get triggered and cannot allow that stupidity is declared as truth about the world – as happened to me a few days ago in a conversation circle. In these cases, I always have the choice to stay silent or to interfere. When I decide to speak up, my passion can be clearly understood, although the words might not be. Maybe that  I become so passionate about hearing things from the mouth of others which I believed time ago myself and of which I have now understood how ignorant, even stupid and dangerous they are?

The necessary learning

Well, there are still many things to learn: how to be passionate and clear at the same time? How to use the right words and not fall into old competitive behavior, how to measure the amount of emotion to express and when to stop. All things which virtually everybody of us has still to learn, independent if they are grown in a traditional household, or in a modern or a postmodern one. In all of these settings there are tabus around feelings, there is suppression of certain feelings and favorisation of others. Until we become masters in living our feelings without being lived by them, much water will still run down the river, as we say in Germany.

 

Culture, development, Interglobal, Life on earth

What world-changers should know if they want to find solutions instead of being part of the problem.

1 Comment

Good will and engagement is not enough

There are so many people in the world right now who are deeply concerned about our planetary future and who are willing to dedicate their energy into collaborating for change. They are working hard and often come up with some sort of solution, which might work, but often it doesn’t. Why?

Most people live in a preconceived idea of what reality is. Some are working on the material side of reality, others believe that spiritual work can resolve all problems, or psychological support, education, the never ending lists. We are deeply divided in our ideas what is needed, what values should be held high, in what areas we should invest energy and money. More often than not we ignore or even dismiss the attempts of others for change. The world is a mess, change makers too, unless…

The need to see more and better

What is needed is an overall view, a meta perspective, a framework where everyone can locate themselves and see and appreciate where the others are. Collaboration otherwise remains merely wishful thinking. This framework exists for more than 2 decades, but strangely remains widely unnoticed and unheard by otherwise well meaning people. They want to act their own way, they donÄt want to invest the necessary time to really understand reality in all its aspects. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know where you are and what tools you have before you blindly engage in actions of which you only BELIEVE that they are good and useful?

Beginning to understand the complexity

Whenever I talk about Ken Wilber and Integral Theory, most people listen politely but don’t get the importance of first getting involved in understanding it before acting blindly in the world. When I began to understand the map of reality provided by Ken, it felt like an enlightenment finally I could understand things which before I considered crazy, un-understandable, absurd and gave me the “right” to blame others for what they are and what they think. Today I might not like certain people or what they say and do, but I understand their way of seeing the world. I can understand that for them the are doing the right thing out of their limited way of understanding reality and I don’t need to blame them anymore – albeit I might chose to not collaborate with those whose worldview is incompatible with my values.

Will you begin?

Ken Wilber, for most of his life didn’t appear in Public very much, he was busy writing his many books and of fighting a severe autoimmune illness by which he almost died for several times. He is still alive and now is coming out to connect with the audiences. He has become more able than before to use “normal” language to explain his concepts and to be visible as a human being, not only as a very gifted philosopher who has clearly seen the complexity of the world and its problems and who has laid out a map for effectively meeting them.

You will be surprised when you begin to see the bigger picture

My message to you, all you well-meaning change-makers: Do take the time to learn about Wilber’s map of reality, learn that you cannot just consider a part and work there while ignoring the other parts. Learn what you are ignoring so far, because it won’t be obvious to you that you are missing out on some important aspects. Here is a conversation with Ken, quite down to earth and pretty understandable, if your personal journey has brought you to the edge of complex understanding. If it can lead you to explore more about the integral map then you certainly will be enabled to become part of the solution instead of perpetuating the problems by your ignorance.

Below an interview with Ken Wilber which allows you to get a glimpse of who he is and what he has created for the benefit of all who want to really live for a change towards a better world. It is long, but ever more pleasant to listen to the longer you stay!

development, Life on earth, Psychology and Spirituality

A sort of journaling

2 Comments

Is it journaling when you bring into words a story which revisits the past and puts it into perspective? Probably it is some sort of long-term journaling, if any, not the immediate testimony of what is going on today in the inside and outside world. Nonetheless, the memories form into text TODAY, I was writing today what went through my mind for a long time. So maybe it is already that what Tuyet mentioned in her comment on Facebook to my post yesterday. She wrote: “I would want my private inner experience to be like germinating seeds needing a safe nourishing environment to develop into the fullest potentials and then they are fully matured and sturdy enough to be shared in the world.”

Here what I wrote in preparation for my e-book as legacy for my husband Mark Davenport:

Mark and his daughters

I think it was Mark’s loving kindness which led him into the trap of a borderline personality as second wife with whom he had two daughters. If you know a little about borderline then you can understand how difficult it is to survive that as a psychologically not yet fully grown up person and even more difficult, or even impossible, to become a responsible parent in this kind of setting. The experience with a borderline partner connected me and Mark in a deep understanding of the danger we were in, the risk of accepting their projections, their attribution of their own craziness to us.

Anyways, I had a huge admiration for Marks daughter Lillian who reached out to him years after he had been kicked out of the family. She wanted to have her father back as an adult and both developed a fine and mutually respectful relationship. Mark was very happy about that, he traveled with Lillian and they were in constant contact even when far away. Lillian’s sister Claire had some contact with Mark when she was at University in the neighborhood of Mark and his third wife, but after that no deeper relationship developed. He was very sad about that, he observed her doing via Facebook, but he didn’t want to press her into something she obviously wasn’t willing to live with him at that moment.

When I got to know Mark, Lillian had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Whenever he spoke about her, a veil of sadness came over him. He knew what cancer means. He had survived a cancer on his vocal cords, but this illness is brutal. He should finally fall  prey of it himself.

In the summer of our marriage in San Diego, I did my Feminine Power Training in Los Angeles while Mark went to see Lilian. In autumn of that year she came to see us in Italy with her husband Mihai. Those were lovely two weeks together. The cancer was present, visible in her special diet and also in conversations, but she was hopeful and emanated positivity and joy to be with Mark and me. I had been given a daughter in her, I liked her very much.

Mark and Lillian But the cancer continued its cruel route, her years or even months seemed to be very limited. In spring Mark and I went to Chicago to be with her, to lend a hand for taking care of her. Now the effect of the cancer and the aggressive treatments and medications were blatantly visible. It was heartbreaking to see her body deform and her regressing into a little girl so often during these days. She had been such a vigorous, positive and courageous woman before!

To watch his daughter decay and finally die was very hard for Mark. She practically was the only one he had in his close family bonds, he loved her dearly and he couldn’t do anything for her, not even now as a conscious and really grown up adult. He had to surrender to her death. Maybe it started then, that his unconscious prepared for his own death and laid the seeds for his own illness and decay? Nobody knows, not even himself. But certainly it was a shock for him in the sense that he dived deeper and deeper into the research about life and death. His interest in conscious ageing was certainly a consequence of that.

Heidi and ClaireMark was about to fly back to Chicago a few weeks later. In the morning of his departure from Rome he got the notice that Lilian had died the night before. I can only imagine what that meant for him. At the funeral he met his daughter Claire after a long time and he was really happy about that. They had found a new way of relating and Mark hoped that their relationship would develop into something beautiful from then on. But it didn’t happen. Claire told me why, when she came to see me in July. Mark had passed shortly before and they didn’t have the chance to reconnect in love and friendship. The day of his passing we had scheduled a skype call with Claire, Mark had been very happy about that, but he died a few hours before the appointment.

Some things in life cannot be repaired, some things we can only let go and find our peace. I am sure that Mark had found a way to do that, and Claire, the only remaining offspring of that Davenport family, seems to have entered her way to peace and wisdom, too.

Exactly three months after Mark’s death, Claire and Mihai and myself came together to record a conversation for the Wisdom Factory series “Conscious Living, Conscious Dying”, where we shared our experience with accompanying a loved family member in their death process, in memoriam of Mark and his daughter Lillian.