The Dalai Lama is noted for being baffled by the western concept of self loathing, and from a Buddhist perspective of the nature of ‘anatta’/no self, this is easy to grasp, but here in the West, and also in other Eastern spiritual doctrines that are dualistic eg a seperate soul/atman and a higher divine reslity eg Brahman, God etc, this isn’t as easy or clear cut. He suggests that self forgiveness or indeed self love is vital in order to be able to demonstrate and develop expanding and showing love to others. Of course, this is also understood in basic Western psychology too, as all fundamental truths find different cultural and intellectual outlets of expression. The thing is, it’s really not that easy, is it? I think most of us have dark corners of our inner self, where lurks our Shadow, and Jung was entirely correct about incorporating it in order to achieve self healing and wholeness, but again, not that easy on a consistent basis. Part and parcel of the human condition in order for us to evolve on an inner level? I can go with that. It really doesn’t matter if you have a spiritual path or not, or whether you’re a humanist or an atheist (Swami Vivekananda wisely valued an honest atheist far higher than a spiritual hypocrite, after all).
Anyway, not meaning to get too heavy, I just thought I’d toss it out there. The inner battle. The Bhagavad Gita is a constant source of personal inspiration (I am not proselytising here folks!). I don’t follow any religion per se, but have been deeply interested in Eastern/Western esotericism and mysticism all my adult life. It works for me. Whatever works for you too. I suppose in my waffling way I’m just trying to say that old Dalai Lama is right when you get down to it. Give yourself a hug today. You’re a good person who’s had to deal with a lot of crap. It’s the way it goes, but you get up again and keep on going. That way you help others to do the same. We’re all part of the web of life whether we accept it or not. As for psychic vampires, sociopaths and general shagnasties, keep them at arms length and don’t carry them in your head by focusing ill will on them. They’re not worth it. Have a good Sunday all. Love & Light. OM TAT SAT!
Here’s a tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsljYO5Ok_0
RobC says
(Bugger). Here’s the tune!
Kaisfatdad says
I found myself nodding in agreement at several points while reading this. You are very good at presenting the perils of the shagnasties To the non-initiated.
RobC says
There’s quite a lot of them about, but in a minority. I genuinely believe that most people are basically good at heart and well intentioned, but it’s those that are not that tend to stand out, as do their actions and the ramifications.
SteveT says
It’s a difficult one. By nature I am very much a glass half full character and I try wherever possible to avoid negativity. I try in my professional life to pass my positivity to my work colleagues and hope that it spreads. It helps that I haven’t had too many setbacks in my personal life. My wife on the other hand has lost two sisters and a brother which has shaped how she looks at things. She still has a sunny disposition but does have a tendency to think things could actually be much worse than they really are.
I do believe, as you allude to in your post, that you can’t be much use to anyone else if you are down in the dumps.
RobC says
I tend to be a glass half full type, but in a funny way because at certain times in my earlier life events have made it seem the opposite. More or less empty. The thing I’ve found with ageing is that I’m more able to view things in a wider perspective, step back, and focus on the positive, because it’s very important to keep your own blessings and good fortune in focus too.
SteveT says
I actually wonder if there is a chemical imbalance triggered by the weather. Generally those in Meditteranean climates have a sunnier disposition than us in the Northerm part of the continent. I would imagine that those living in Arctic Norway or Finland would find it hard to be cheerful every day in 2 months of perpetual darkness. I tried it for 4 days in Tromso in January – it was weird
retropath2 says
Well, there is this:
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/problems-disorders/seasonal-affective-disorder-(sad)
However, it seems that folk who actually live in the far north don’t seem to get it. Mind you, given the tendency to drink more and more potent spirits the further north you go, who would know?
Baron Harkonnen says
I found your post very enlightening and stimulating @RobC, thank you.
RobC says
Thank you Baron. My pleasure.
Barry Blue says
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, or at least come to strongly believe, after nearly 20 years as a psychotherapist, both with the worried well and the far from well, it’s that the notion of a solid self is built on shaky ground. It’s no accident that working with trauma has become the main focus of therapy: models such as psychodynamic, person-centred and CBT ‘worked’ up to a point, but so often clients would be able to logically see that their behaviour/feelings weren’t required, they could see how it had all come about, but that didn’t actually help. It made things worse, with a shame element coming in: ‘I know it no longer makes any sense reacting to these situations, but I can’t do anything about it. I’m worse than I thought!’
The problem was/is that that approach is all too prefrontal cortex based. The traumatised parts of the self aren’t located there, they’re younger, pre-verbal, sub-cortical, split-off. They don’t do ‘reason’. And so, via the likes of Bessel Van Der Kolk, Dan Siegel, Stephen Porges, and my particular favourite Janina Fisher, we’ve come to work with those ‘parts’, to integrate them.
A good analogy is that of Hiroo Onada, the Japanese soldier stationed on his own in the Philippines, who didn’t know WW2 was over until 1974. He’d killed several innocent people, and remained hyper vigilant all that time. That’s what traumatised parts in an individual can be like, primed to fight-flight-freeze-play dead at the slightest trigger because they don’t know ‘the war’ is over. And here’s the thing: I’ve come to believe that trauma is far from ‘just’ being the obvious appalling acute events that befall people. The chronic stuff, neglect and so on, impact, too.
So yes, I’m saying that the idea of a single self doesn’t do it for me; more the idea of an ‘observer self’ (the development of this part is central to trauma work) and a roomful of part selves, all of which need love (because they didn’t get it in the first place…).
RobC says
Excellent post Barry. What is this deepest self? It opens up a whole new age old and continuing horizon of interpretations. Are we indeed material expressions/manifestations of an unmanifest higher reality experiencing itself, or just mere selfish genes, (not in my philosophy).
Barry Blue says
Cheers Rob (and great to have you back). Ah, the deepest self. My experiences with Ayahuasca (not extensive, and indeed, a retreat I was due to go on has been cancelled due to lockdown) didn’t initially suggest the usual idea of a universal self/entity (I didn’t see Terence McKenna’s elves at the end of the universe, for instance, nor Jung’s archetypes), but I did have a real felt sense of what it is to totally embrace all those part-selves, the split off traumatised parts I mentioned earlier. It’s that sense of ‘coming home’, which we can certainly interpret as a return to the source, as spirituality, something bigger than ‘me’. In autonomic nervous system terms, it’s a ventral and dorsal vagal experience, a shift away from the excessive sympathetic nervous system activation which blights our lives so much of the time (particularly on the online world where we’re constantly, consciously and unconsciously, assessing our safety status with very little data to go on). And having the vagus nerve active means we’re so much better with other people, and the world’s a better place. I detect a shift towards this: the rise in popularity of the Wim Hof breathing method (TMFTL) is a case in point. It involves breath work that ‘teaches’ the nervous system to cope better with stress (by bringing the vagus nerve onboard) and is well worth checking out.
What I’m kind of saying is that I believe that physiological states determine psychological stories rather than the other way round, or at least they’re far more important than we’ve been allowed to reckon since Descartes, and so it’s a really good idea to work on those physiological states, via breath work and body work.
RobC says
Thanks Barry. Wim Hof technique. I don’t know this. Pranayama, I take it. ?
Barry Blue says
Yes, with the added twist of lengthy holding the breath when there’s no breath there (ie fully expelled). There was a v good Buddhist teacher of the vajryana stripe, called Reginald Ray, who took a similar tack. Marvellous. Hof suggests cold water swimming/immersion after the breath work, but I don’t see it as crucial, much as I like a dip in the cold briny.
RobC says
I haven’t heard of Reginald Ray. I’ll look him up. By the way, if you’re ever Glastonbury way, I can highly recommend Street open air swimming pool, once this has passed. Lovely setting, not too warm water, and not overly chlorinated either (at least not the last time I was there).
hedgepig says
This is a really interesting post, Barry. Is there any layperson-friendly reading around the integrated approach I could get my hands on?
Mrbellows says
mikethep says
I thought of giving myself a hug, but I’m afraid I’d catch something. So I’m giving myself a g&t instead.
RobC says
Good man.