How Ignorant Are You? June 13, 2020
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Uncategorized.Tags: Anne Frank, Committee of Five, Dr. Irvin Yalom, existentialism, ignorance, Medgar Evers, Mildred Loving, Orlando Pulse, psychiatry, psychotherapy, Pulse nightclub, truth, yoga philosophy, Yoga Sutra 2.24
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Yoga Sutra 2.3: Avidyāsmitārāgadveşābhiniveśāh kleśāh
– “Ignorance (or lack of knowledge), false sense of self, attachment (rooted in pleasure), aversion (which is attachment rooted in pain), and fear of death of loss are the afflicted thoughts.”
Yoga Sutra 2.17: draşțŗdŗśyayoh samyogo heyahetuh
– “The union of the seer and the seeable is the cause of pain (that may be avoidable).”
Yoga Sutra 2.18: prakāśkriyāsthitiśīlam bhūtendriyāmakam bhogāpavargārtham dŗśyam
“The objective world (what is seen), consisted of a combination of elements and senses, and having a nature of illumination, activity, and stability, has two purposes: fulfillment and freedom.”
Prepare yourself for some information that may seem surprisingly harsh and brutal. (Fair warning, some of this may be difficult to read.)
Thursday (6/11) was the anniversary of formation of the Committee of Five. Consisting of John Adams (Massachusetts), Roger Sherman (Connecticut), Robert Livingston (New York), Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania), and Thomas Jefferson (Virginia), the committee was charged, back in 1776, with drafting a document which would be approved by the Second Continental Congress and presented to England as a Declaration of Independence. The committee worked from until July 5thand, contrary to what many believe, the approved document was signed over the next several months by the various delegates. There was no single day of signing. Both the fact that people believe there was a single day of signing, as well as the fact that the committee excluded their original language criticizing slavery, is a sign of ignorance. The fact that a declaration of independence stated “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….” but did not consider that these truths applied to women and people of color is a sign of ignorance.
Yesterday (6/12) was the anniversary of the birth of a young girl. Born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929, Anne Frank would die in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 14. Her death, as well as the deaths of her family, friends, community, and millions of others is a sign of ignorance.
“It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death. I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that this cruelty too shall end, and that peace & tranquility will return once again.”
— Anne Frank, written in her diary (“Kitty”) on July 15, 1944
Yesterday was also the anniversary of the assassination of Medgar Evers in 1963. Evers was an African American civil rights activist in Mississippi, who worked as the state’s field secretary for the NAACP, worked to overturn segregation, and worked to ensure voters’ rights. He was shot (in the back and clear through the heart) in his front yard by a member of the KKK and the White Citizens’ Council. The fact that Evers had to do the work he did, as well as the fact that he was killed for doing that work, is a sign of ignorance. The fact that two all-white juries failed to convict the person how killed Evers is a sign of ignorance. The fact Evers and his wife Myrlie Evers had to teach their young children (ages: 3, 7, and 9) how to tell the difference between firecrackers and gunshots, as well as how to hide when they heard gunshots, is a sign of ignorance. The fact that many people don’t know about the thousands who marched in protest after Medger Evers was killed is a sign of ignorance.
“Freedom has never been free… I love my children and I love my wife with all my heart. And I would die, die gladly, if that would make a better life for them.”
– Medger Evers, June 7, 1963 (just days before his death)
Yesterday was also the anniversary of the United States Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia in 1967. The court declared any state laws prohibiting interracial marriage to be unconstitutional. The fact that states like Virginia had considered people like Richard Loving (a white man) and his wife Mildred Loving (a black and Indigenous American woman) to be criminals – even sentencing them to prison – is a sign of ignorance. The fact that they faced hate from people in their community is a sign of ignorance.
“I understand it and I believe it.”
– Mildred Loving (in 2003) when asked if she understood she was “putting her name behind the idea that two men or two women should have the right to marry each other”
Yesterday, in 2016, a man walked into the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and started shooting. Pulse was a gay nightclub that often, as they were that night, held theme nights which attracted a wide variety of people. 49 people were killed and over 50 were wounded in what was the deadliest (single) incident of violence against GLBTQIA+ in the United States and the second deadliest terrorist attack on U. S. soil since 9/11. Until the Las Vegas shooting in October 2017, it was the deadliest single mass gunman shooting in U. S. history. The fact that the shooting happened, that people couldn’t just go out for an evening of dancing with family and friends, is a sign of ignorance. The fact that a little over a year later there would be another mass shooting, let alone the countless before and since, is a sign of ignorance.
“There is so much love out there. I want the legacy of these kids to be that. To show the world that [being LGBTQ] is more than a label – these are people that were loved, they were caring, they were human and these hate crimes are just totally uncalled for. Unnecessary. We are here because God created us and he created us all equal – and some people don’t seem to have this kind of vision. I don’t know what kind of world they want to live in.”
– Mayra Alvear, one year after her youngest daughter Amanda was killed in the Pulse Orlando shooting
Today is the 89th birthday of Dr. Irvin Yalom. Born today in 1931, he is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford and an author who pioneer of existentialist psychotherapy, who was featured in the 2003 documentary Flight from Death. His therapy and research are based on his belief that “we are here, through random events; that we are here alone…. that we are responsible for carving out own life pattern, our own meaning… we have no predestined fate…” Dr. Yalom outlines four givens: Isolation, Mortality, Meaninglessness, and Freedom (which comes with responsibility). He indicates that we are deal with inner conflict around the four givens and that our responses are either functional or dysfunctional.
“I am using the term [existential] in a very simple, straightforward way; simply to refer to existence. [As an adjective] Existential Psychotherapy means simply, a therapy focused on concerns emerging from the nature of existence.”
– Dr. Irvin Yalom, speaking at a 2009 Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference
Yoga Sutra 2.23: svasvāmiśaktyoh svarūpopalabdhihetuh samyoga
– “The union (yoga), alliance, or relationship between our power to see (and what we see) is the way to experiencing our own true nature.”
Yoga Sutra 2.24: tasya heturavidyā
– “The cause of that [union, alliance, or relationship] is ignorance.”
In the philosophy of yoga, we might describe what Dr. Yalom calls as “functional or dysfunctional” as klişțāklişțāh (“afflicted and not afflicted”), and we can see the correlation between dysfunctional or afflicted thoughts and actions and suffering. As indicated in earlier sutras (see above), the first afflicted thought pattern is the bedrock for all the others: ignorance. Today’s sutra goes deeper into the nature of ignorance. Going deeper may help you answer the question, “How ignorant are you?”
Please join me a 90-minute virtual yoga practice on Zoom today (Saturday, June 13th) at 12:00 PM. You can use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class.
Today’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. (Links are available during the Zoom call and I have updated this post.)
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Here Be The Wild Things June 10, 2020
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Uncategorized.Tags: addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous, Anne Smith, asana, Bill Wilson, disability, Dr. Bob Smith, Eugene Glenn, G. Alan Marlatt, Holocaust, In the Night Kitchen, Loss, Maurice Sendak, Mindfulness, Outside Over There, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, recovery, Richard Gottlieb, Stanton Peele, survivors, trauma, Where The Wild Things Are, yoga practice
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“And so we have…this critical problem as human beings of seeing to it that the mythology—the constellation of sign signals, affect images, energy-releasing and -directing signs—that we are communicating to our young will deliver directive messages qualified to relate them richly and vitally to the environment that is to be theirs for life, and not to some period of man already past, some piously desiderated future, or—what is worst of all—some querulous, freakish sect or momentary fad. And I call this problem critical because, when it is badly resolved, the result for the miseducated individual is what is known, in mythological terms, as a Waste Land situation. The world does not talk to him; he does not talk to the world. When that is the case, there is a cut-off, the individual is thrown back on himself, and he is in prime shape for that psychotic break-away that will turn him into either an essential schizophrenic in a padded cell, or a paranoid screaming slogans at large, in a bughouse without walls.”
– from A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living by Joseph Campbell
How do we keep from becoming, to paraphrase Joseph Campbell, a screaming paranoid person? How do we face trauma, loss, and disability with a smile on our face, as Wayman Tisdale did? Maybe we have to go all the way back to the womb to figure out why some people survive the challenging circumstances they face in life. Maybe we have to go back even farther than that to see why some people just inherently know how to stay connected to their “inside stuff” even when life throws them one curve ball after another fast ball. Whatever the reason some people rebound and some people don’t (or don’t as easily as others), trying to figure out that reason has fascinated people since the beginning of time.
Children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, born today in 1928, in Brooklyn, New York, once said, “I only have one subject. The question I am obsessed with is: How do children survive?” Like the poets mentioned during Sunday’s class (06/07/2020), Sendak wrote about what he saw – and what he saw was a family decimated by the Holocaust and trying to acclimate to a new country and a new culture. He saw kids being kids, being alive and full of so much life despite the overwhelming and pervasive feeling of perpetual mourning. The adults called the unruly children “vilde chaya,” which is Yiddish for “wild animal.” Sendak turned it into “wild things” and wrote a children’s book that become the center of a trilogy about (you guessed it) how children survive and thrive.
“I grew up in a house that was in a constant state of mourning.”
– Maurice Sendak in a 2002 interview with children’s book historian Leonard Marcus
“’And now,’ cried Max, ‘let the wild rumpus start!’”
– from Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Where The Wild Things Are, published in 1963, tells the story of preschool-age Max who, as adults would have said during my childhood, gets a little too big for his britches. He is sent to his room without his dinner because he can’t behave and, as children do, he lets his imagination take over. His bedroom becomes a magical land full of wild animals, beasts, monsters….
My amazing friend Julie K just sent me a recent essay in The New Yorker about metaphorical monsters. I found it problematic because the identity of the monsters is too vague. Sendak, however, was always very clear; the monsters in his first book were the perpetually mourning and stern adults in his family. He just exaggerated them into something endearingly grotesque. As Max manages his emotions, becoming “king of all wild things” (a. k. a. the “most wild thing of all”), he finds his way back to the regular world. Managing one’s emotions, it turns out, is the secret to making one’s way back to the regular world.
“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again. You really don’t have a sacred space, a rescue land, until you find somewhere to be that’s not a wasteland, some field of action where there is a spring of ambrosia—a joy that comes from inside, not something external that puts joy into you—a place that lets you experience your own will and your own intention and your own wish so that, in small, the Kingdom is there. I think everybody, whether they know it or not, is in need of such a place.”
– from A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living by Joseph Campbell
“There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen.”
– from Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
As I mentioned before, Where The Wild Things Are was the first of a three-part series to be published, but it is actually the centerpiece to the trilogy. In The Night Kitchen (published in 1970) follows toddler-age Mickey as he falls, naked, into the Night Kitchen, where he has to avoid getting baked into the cake batter and eaten up. Max, again, is preschool-age. Outside Over There (published in 1981) features pre-adolescent Ida, who shirks her responsibility and then has to face the consequences of making things right. It is interesting to note that while there is always a symbol of a mother and evidence of a mother’s love in all three books, Ida is the only real-live human girl featured prominently in the books and she is given (in the book) the mother’s role of caregiver – a role she initially fails to take seriously.
“When Papa was away at sea and Mama in the arbor, Ida played her wonder horn to rock the baby still – but never watched.”
– from Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak’s trilogy is recognized as a series which traces the psychological development of children. Each protagonist has age appropriate responsibilities, feelings, thoughts, and emotions. Each protagonist also has to navigate and find balance between the (age appropriate) expectations of the simultaneously present yet absent parent(s) and their feelings, thoughts, and emotions. One of the emotions that figures prominently, especially in Where The Wild Things Are, is rage and one of the themes that figures prominently in the books is how to manage emotions like rage. Because, as I sated before, managing one’s emotions is the secret to making one’s way back to the regular world. It is the boon, as it were, of this particular hero’s journey/cycle.
“But it is more than mere survival that Sendak aspires to, for his children and for himself. He asks the question of resilience: How do children surmount and transform in order to prosper and create? It is tempting to imagine that Sendak conceives of the trajectory of his own life and art as a model for the way he has handled these questions in his works.”
– from a 2009 The Psychologist article by psychoanalyst Richard Gottlieb
When Where The Wild Things Are was turned into a movie, therapists like Richard Gottlieb offered their clinical take on the book and the movie. Psychoanalyst and attorney Stanton Peele noted in a 2009 article for Psychology Today that Dr. G. Alan Marlatt, a psychologist who focused on addiction, “specifically developed mindfulness as a relapse prevention technique, one that assists addicted people to combat cravings. In brief, a user may imagine the urge to use again as a physical challenge – like a wave – that he or she rides out.” Then, Peele called Sendak’s work “a model of mindfulness.” For his part, Gottlieb did not think it was an accident that Sendaks’ work was so psychologically applicable. In fact, he specifically highlights various “psychological proddings and teachings” which influenced Sendak’s life – including the fact that his partner (for over 50 years) was psychoanalyst Eugene Glenn – and shares bits of conversations with colleagues who also see the value in the book.
“I’m not the milk and the milk’s not me. I’m Mickey!”
– Mickey in In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
Call it a coincidence, a coinkydink, God winking, or serendipity, but it is interesting to note that Maurice Sendak, whose seminal book has been hailed and praised by addiction experts, was born on the anniversary of Dr. Bob Smith’s last drink, which is also the anniversary of Alcoholics Anonymous. Today in 1935, Bill Wilson and Smith’s wife Anne gave a severely hung-over Smith (a. k. a. “Dr. Bob”) a beer so that he would be “steady enough” to go into surgery. Hours beyond when the surgery should have ended, Smith announced that yes, the surgery was successful and that he had spent the remaining time reaching out to creditors and others he had hurt when he was drinking. Founded by Smith and Wilson, with support from Smith’s wife Anne, Alcoholics Anonymous is a 12-step rehabilitation program that has helped some people cope with alcoholism. It is also the model for other 12-step programs. While I have not counted the steps as they apply to Maurice Sendak’s work, there are very definite parallels in the way the main characters acknowledge their problems, turn inward, and offer restitution and express remorse. There are also, in the books and in recovery, humongous amounts of love and forgiveness (in particular, self-love and self-forgiveness).
“Quiet down there!”
– Mickey In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
“If Ida backwards in the rain would only turn around again and catch those goblins with a tune, she’d spoil their kidnap honeymoon!”
– Papa’s song in Outside Over There
Please join me today (Wednesday, June 10th) at 4:30 PM or 7:15 PM for a practice inspired by the inner workings of a child’s heart and mind. Use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You will need to register for the 7:15 PM class if you have not already done so. Give yourself extra time to log in if you have not upgraded to Zoom 5.0. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below.
Since music soothes the wild beasts, the goblins, and the cooks, Wednesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. (NOTE: YouTube is the original playlist and includes the video below.)
My all time favorite rendition!
