Journal of a Soul 62

Dealing with Evil 3

The crooked wood of humanity: Dublin Zoo

In my last several posts, I dealt with the problems of pain and suffering, both of which are graphic examples of evil.  On one level the problem of evil is just that a problem, a cerebral difficulty that presents itself as a philosophical conundrum that many erudite and astute minds attempted to solve intellectually over the years.  But  as I never cease to point out in these posts the cerebral or conceptual is just one (albeit great and important) aspect of the total reality that makes a human being.  Existentially, evil presents itself at a lived and experiential level in our lives as namely pain and suffering in all their various manifestations and incarnations.  

Outrage at Terrorism and Wanton Violence

As I sit here writing these words on this virtual page, one would want to have a heart of stone not to be moved at the outrage of all the various terrorist and and wanton acts of violence being perpetrated throughout the world.  The shooting out of the air of the Malaysian plane over eastern Ukraine, the conflict between Israel and Palestine, the on-going civil war in Syria where thousands of innocent people have been murdered and continue to be.  One of the reasons that Israel is smarting at the world's hostile criticism of its violent acts against the Palestinian people is the instant delivery of visual reports of its violence through smart phones and so on.  This is not to deny that there is no terrorism by the Palestinians as there quite obviously is.  It is just to point out that State terrorism also exists, and many nations have been guilty of this for years and some continue to do so.

Simplistic Divisions of Good and Evil

Dublin Zoo

Somehow or other we instinctively or intuitively believe that Good and Evil are separate and inimical elements, unmixed and unmixable.  But sound thinking and good psychology teach us otherwise.  In wars, we are quick to demonize the enemy, because in that way it is so much easier to maim and kill them.  All soldiers are taught that the enemy is evil.  In fact, in all conflicts language which diminishes the humanity of the enemy is always used. A sophisticated and canny reader will always be aware and conscious of the uses and abuses of language by journalists.  On the one hand, we demonize our enemies and canonize our friends.  Indeed, that means that we put these frail human beings up on a pedestal, while we sentence others to hell.  That is why, like many other commentators, I have problems with the Roman Catholic Church's propensity to canonize certain people as Saints (very much a medieval preoccupation, pretty much redundant in modern society).   Again, these two extremes show us our instinctive and intuitive or unconscious pigeonholing of people.

Lessons from more Informed Film Directors

We can learn much from wonderful authors of novels and brilliant makers of films who see the human person in a more balanced and rounded a way than the media would want us to have them.  There are those among their number that do not deal with issues in a black and white, right and wrong or judgmental way.  The first film that comes to my mind is Downfall (Der Untergang) which is a 2004 German war film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, depicting the final ten days of Adolf Hitler reign over Nazi Germany in 1945. This film caused much controversy in Germany when it first came out because of its not depicting Hitler as an absolute monster.  In the film he does have some few redeeming features (very few), and no doubt Hitler did have some.  The second is a TV series made for HBO, namely The Sopranos, created by David Chase where the protagonist, Tony Soprano is a struggling father and husband who attends a psychiatrist on the one hand in an attempt to get a handle of the meaning of his life and on the other is a vicious murderer.  As a viewer of this wonderful series, I like many other fans, found myself becoming quite sympathetic to Tony as a human being.  It is my argument here that the directors set out to present their protagonists as somewhat more human and less demonic or demonized than the protagonists in the run of the mill films or novels.

All Too Human

In the early twentieth century, humankind really came of age in a most horrific way, that is, through the bloodbath of the Great War where countless millions of soldiers were killed, giving the lie to the simplistic belief of their Victorian and Edwardian forefathers in the onward positive direction of progress that would continually improve humankind's lot. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Freud was already unmasking humankind's deep dark unconscious motivations.  The god of rationality that had so painstakingly been enthroned on the plinth of our worldly devotion instead of the God of religion was now in turn being unceremoniously debunked.  The deep dark cesspit of humankind's unconscious motivations was now being revealed in all its seediness and filth.  Carl Jung was to call this the shadow aspect of our nature.

I remember many years ago an astute and wise English teacher telling us during our reading of the text of Shakespeare's Hamlet that anyone of us was capable of murdering another human being, that we humans were an amorphous mix of good and evil and that's why we needed to educate our conscience.  

The Buddhist Understanding of Evil

Imprint of Gorilla hand: Dublin Zoo

As we have seen, good and evil are often looked upon as diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive. But in a reality, in a practical sense, such a simplistic way of thinking is unsatisfactory. Even the cruelest of criminals may possess a strong sense of love or compassion toward his parents and children as we have seen in case of Tony Soprano above. Is such a person fundamentally good or evil? Buddhism says that everyone is a mix of both. The Buddhist understanding is that good and evil are innate, inseparable aspects of life. This view makes it impossible to label a particular individual or group as "good" or "evil." Every single human being is capable of acts of the most noble good, or the basest evil.  This is how one Buddhist site puts the Buddhist take on evil:

A Buddha is someone who has the courage to acknowledge these two fundamental aspects of life. As Nichiren states, "One who is thoroughly awakened to the nature of good and evil from their roots to their branches and leaves is called a Buddha." Buddhas accept their innate goodness without arrogance because they know all people share the same Buddha nature. Buddhas also recognize their innate evil without despair because they know they have the strength to overcome and control their negativity. (See HERE )

So, every human is a mix of good and evil motivations.  The Buddhist is called upon to be equally aware of them and to practice meditation and compassion to conquer our base motivations and urges. Some religions teach that evil is a force outside ourselves that seduces us into sin. This force is sometimes thought to be generated by Satan or various demons. The faithful are encouraged to seek strength outside themselves to fight evil, by looking to God. The Buddha's teaching could not be more different:

"By oneself, indeed, is evil done; by oneself is one defiled. By oneself is evil left undone; by oneself, indeed, is one purified. Purity and impurity depend on oneself. No one purifies another." (Dhammapada, chapter 12, verse 165)

Buddhism teaches us that evil is something we create, not something we are or some outside force that infects us. As I have pointed out so many times, intellectual problems are just that - intellectual; and the cognitive is just one of the many dimensions that go to make up the totality of humankind in all its complexity.  Hence, the most astute theodicies and the most learned ruminations of our best philosophers and scientists fall far short of the mark on a human level.  Those who accompany people during their final days and nights on this earth know that human companionship, just the presence of significant others with those making their final journey, the use of appropriate meditation and visualization techniques are all of the utmost importance and are most beneficial.

On the level of existential mystery the basic lessons of Buddhism can hardly be bettered.   Traditionally, it is believed that the Buddha stated his basic precepts called The Four Noble Truths immediately after his enlightenment. I shan't rehearse these four truths here, but you may hit the following link if you wish to read about them more fully: Four Noble Truths.  What I wish to discuss here are the second and third noble truths viz.,  The Second Noble Truth states that the origin of suffering or dukkha lies in our cravings that occur on three existential levels - (a) craving for sensual pleasures, (b) craving to be that certainly encompasses all we Westerns construe as ego and (c) craving not to be - somewhat like Freud's Thanatos instinct, that is the desire for extinction and death. These cravings are just that, cravings and are really self-delusions on our part. The Third Noble Truth is the truth of the cessation of dukkha. The term cessation (Pali: nirodha) refers to the cessation of suffering and the causes of suffering, by realising that our sufferings are caused by our obsessions and cravings, by our unwarranted and unrealistic attachments to the things of this world.  Such a cessation of suffering can only happen after much spiritual work on oneself through meditation and works of compassion. 

Journal of a Soul 61

Dealing with Pain 2

As Robert Frost once answered to the question of what he had learnt from life - "It goes on!"
The ships still sail no matter how sad we are!

It is always so hard to write something new, and certainly more difficult still to write something insightful and profound about the subject of pain.  This particular post will only attempt to continue to flesh out what I said in my last post, and try to tease out this subject from some other angles.  Qoheleth of the Old Testament, being a good skeptic, doubted that there is very much new under the sun.  However, he did not take into account the fact that while a problem or a particular issue may seem to be the same old thing yet again that there is a myriad of new and different ways of tackling that problem or issue.  I have quoted one of my favourite poets many times here (T.S. Eliot) as saying that while he might have treated of the same themes over and over again in his poems that he assuredly always said what he had to say in a different way.  In short, a different angle or a different perspective on the same old problem is always enlightening and always enriching.

A little Wisdom from the Fourth and Fifth Centuries

St Augustine of Hippo by Antonio Rodriguez

St. Augustine of Hippo 354 – 430, who straddled these two centuries, was a most erudite philosopher and theologian and one of the greatest scholars of his era.  He had a lot to say on the mystery of pain and suffering.  He wrote much on the topic of evil in the world, and his logical and insightful mind left us with some interesting insights. One which I like is that good is at all times logically prior to evil.  For example, when a piece of fruit, say an apple or an orange, rots, the putrefaction or the rottenness occurs in and inheres in the logically prior goodness of the fruit.  The goodness of the fruit or vegetable is there first. Likewise, take for example that you break your leg playing football or some other sport, the brokenness of the bone only occurs in the logically prior good bone.  St Augustine put this beautifully and succinctly in his eloquent Latin thus: "Malum est privatio boni" which translates as "Evil is the privation of the good."  For a fourth century thinker, who had just converted to the Christian Church, this argument allowed him to posit the utter goodness of God while a previous religion to which he had belonged, the Manichean sect, had always asserted that the godhead contained both good and evil principles.  Evil vitiates the good and all evil is either brought about by the Devil or by the evil actions of human beings who have been given their free will to act in any manner they wish by a loving God. For Augustine, such a loving God will not force human beings to act correctly under any circumstances as He values human free will so much.   In all of this, remember we are dealing with fourth and fifth century thought.

In another attempt to square the existence of evil with a good God, St Augustine also alluded to the Principle of Plenitude which he had learnt from Plato.  In a nutshell this principle states that the universe by its nature must contain all possible forms of existence, and this by definition means that it must also contain evil. For an article on this theory see HERE.

Western Philosophy and its Flaws

The wind and sea has battered this tree: Calabria, January 2014

One can see here immediately the emergence of one of the main flaws of Western Philosophy, namely a preoccupation with the cognitive and cerebral nature of thinking, and this flawed perspective would reign right down to our own time, viz., the supremacy of reason or rationality or the cognitive - to express the issue in as many ways as possible. There is no great weight given to the native psychology or inner feelings of the human person.  The strength of Western Philosophy, namely its pursuit of cognitive thinking and rational thought, is also its striking weakness if it is not balanced more by the affective considerations  drawn from a more holistic perspective as to what the human being is or may be in its fullness.  Western philosophy and theology built upon the foundations laid by St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and they interwove Greek philosophy with Christian thought to a considerable extent.  However, as regards the question of evil, the contribution of the very early Christian thinker St Irenaeus can so easily be overlooked as the greats like St Augustine and St Thomas held so much sway for so many centuries.  Irenaeus showed a more lateral thinking process and allowed for development of the human person in a more holistic sense to use this term rather anachronistically.

The Thought of St Irenaeus, 130-202 A.D. : Wisdom from the Second century

The astute St Irenaeus of Lyons

I don't like introducing technical terms into what I describe here as a journal of a soul, but I feel for the sake of completion I will have to do so.  That term is Theodicy, and it basically means the attempt to answer the question of why a good God (Theos) permits the existence (or justice or Dike: hence Theodicy) of evil. Theodicy attempts to resolve the problem of evil by reconciling the traditional divine characteristics of  omniscience, benevolence and omnipotence with the occurrence of evil and suffering in the physical and human worlds.  Without getting into any complexities, this theodicy argued that human beings are born into a world in which they have to grow and develop.  The argument goes that we humans would never grow and develop unless there were problems (including pain and suffering) that would cause and help us to grow.  This second-century philosopher and theologian Irenaeus, after whom the theodicy is named, proposed a two-stage creation process in which humans require free will and the experience of evil to develop. Another early Christian theologian, Origen, presented a response to the problem of evil which cast the world as a schoolroom or hospital for the soul. It is interesting to note that the great Romantic poet John Keats saw the world as the "vale of soul-making" and his thoughts were very much in line with those of St Origen and St Irenaeus.*

Balances

Once again, as I have said in my opening paragraph, there is precious little insight that any of us can offer to this profound theme, but rehearsing the answers proposed by scholars and spiritual souls over the centuries of our civilization is a sine qua non for any thought on the subject.  T.S. Eliot, whom I am wont to quote and whom I quoted in my opening paragraph stated that he could not be a good poet, or even a poet at all, unless he could place himself within a tradition of poets writing over the long number of years our civilization has lasted.  Likewise, with any other study we care to embark upon.  

The most important lesson that I have learnt from my studies and from my reading over the years is that of the balance of opposites.  How would we know the good unless we knew its opposite, namely evil?  How would we know the light unless we experienced the dark? How would we know joy unless we knew sorrow? How would we know exultation unless we knew humility? How would we know happiness unless we knew its opposite? How would we know love unless we knew its absence?  How would we know hope unless we understood despair. These are all polar opposites that seem to exist in a healthy if strange tension.  The Romantics, especially Coleridge, spoke much about this phenomenon as the tension of opposites. Yeats called such a tension of opposites by the name "antinomies."  The Eastern Religions/Spiritualities often get around understanding, or at least accepting and appreciating, this balance of opposites a little better than the Western mind.  However, for an Eastern take on the mystery presented by the problems of pain and suffering we must wait for a later post and yet again some deeper reflection. Until then, dear reader, Peace, Shalom, Namaste, and may we be given the strength and courage to bear whatever pain and suffering is our lot!

End Note

* "(T)heologian Mark Scott has argued that Origen, rather than Irenaeus, ought to be considered the father of this kind of theodicy. In 1710, Gottfried Leibniz proposed that the world is the best of all possible worlds because it balances all the possible goods the world could contain. Friedrich Schleiermacher argued in the nineteenth century that God must necessarily create flawlessly, so this world must be the best possible world because it allows God's purposes to be naturally fulfilled. In 1966, philosopher John Hick discussed the similarities of the preceding theodicies, calling them all "Irenaean". He supported the view that creation is incomplete and argued that the world is best placed for the full moral development of humans, as it presents genuine moral choices. British philosopher Richard Swinburne proposed that, to make a free moral choice, humans must have experience of the consequences of their own actions and that natural evil must exist to provide such choices." (See WIKI for a more detailed account of this interesting Theodicy).

Journal of a Soul 60

Dealing with Pain

There are no easy answers to any of the big questions.  Indeed, as I have pointed out many times in these posts we engage in good philosophy when we set about questioning shallow solutions, indeed when we suspect easy answers as not alone being the easy way out but to be a simplistic twisting of and an undermining of the truth.  Life teaches us more than "is dreamt of in our philosophy," as Hamlet perspicaciously pointed out to his university friend Horatio.  In searching for meaning, life more often than not forces us away from neat cerebral and cognitive answers to our problems and throws us in at the deep end to either sink or swim in the murky waters of its mystery.

A Mystery to be Lived not a Problem to be Solved

Clontarf, Dublin, Sat 6 July, 2014

When I studied philosophy and theology back in the late 1970s the topic I chose for my 4th Year thesis was "The Mystery of Evil," and the title of this section of my post is one gem of insight I came up with from my reading.  Another gem of a quotation I vividly recall reading was one which goes, "a mystery is not a wall against which we bang our heads, but rather an ocean into which we plunge."  Life teaches us most assuredly, and bit by inevitable bit it knocks the corners off our initial egotistical take on life, chastens our hubris, challenges our certainties and sends us deep into our spiritual and cultural reserves as human beings simply to keep going.  If we are reasonably astute and wise human beings we will learn from our mistakes and from the problems and pains life throws our way so that when we reach twenty years at our job we will have twenty years experience, not one year multiplied 20 times.  Likewise with life - hopefully I have 56 years of cumulative wisdom and not just a few years multiplied by a fairly big factor.  Hopefully, we all will have grown and learnt and deepened and heightened our experience of life and reflected on its significance and meaning with the help of others by the time we age substantially.

When I was doing that thesis which straddled the border ground between philosophy and theology, a not-so-close friend of mine called Paulene O'Rourke was undertaking her thesis on a more personal take on the mystery of evil, namely the problem of suffering and pain. None of her classmates ever got to read Paulene's opus, which unfortunately never really saw the light of day as sadly she ended her own life at the age of 21, having gassed herself in her grandmother's home where she had lived.  This young student was one of the most intelligent girls I had ever met in life and was quite sophisticated and always appeared to me as being quite brave.  Unusual for women at the time, she even rode a small motorbike.  I was not close enough to Paulene to know that she suffered from clinical depression, compounded by the fact that her Doctor father had been killed tragically in Africa and that her mother had become an alcoholic as she had never gotten over the death of her partner.  Too many painful events in life apparently conspired to bring a very sensitive human being to the tragic conclusion of her life in a lonely kitchen, suffocating from gas poisoning.

I often wonder what exactly Paulene had written in her thesis.  I wonder did anyone dare look. That's probably a useless wonderment because presumably it was heavy with pain.  I remember one day Paulene stopped and got me to ride pillion on her motorbike into college.  I remember her being full of life that day.  And yet, and yet and yet? As the Irish songwriter and singer Paul Brady puts it in one of his songs, "Nobody Knows" the chorus of which runs:

Nobody knows why Elvis threw it all away
Nobody knows what Ruby had to hide
Nobody knows why some of us get broken hearts
And some of us find a world that’s clear and bright
You could be packed up and ready
Knowing exactly where to go
How come you miss the connection?
No use in asking…the answer is nobody knows
No use in asking…the answer is nobody knows

(Listen to the song: HERE )

Creativity

The real thing: Edvard Munch's The Scream

Creativity is just one possible doorway towards the assuage of pain and suffering. Once again, needless to say, it is no instant fix or panacea for pain or suffering.  Rather, it is one very valid coping mechanism that we can employ.  How many poems, paintings, pieces of music and sculptures have been created over the years of our civilization whose provenance have been the cruel crucible of pain and suffering?  We instinctively know that the answer must lie in the thousands if not multiples of that figure.  In the field  of music we might mention the suffering endured by Ludwig van Beethoven and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and in the field of art and painting Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch and in the field of writing and letters Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingway.    Anyway, these are just names that occur to me of persons who have suffered from severe mental suffering and pain. The reader can add his/her own.  An interesting article on creativity and mental illness can be found HERE.  

Beyond Creativity

Howth Village by night - from the Harbour.  June 2014

I find all types of writing therapeutic, just like an artist finds all types of drawing so.  However, such escape through creativity is just one doorway out of pain.  As a sufferer from clinical depression, I know writing or creativity is simply not enough.  Here is where we need the help from the professional medical people - be they nurses, doctors or psychiatrists.  For some people their depression may be of the reactive variety, that is a consequence of their failure to cope with life's stresses.  For most of these sufferers, talk therapy of various varieties and/or CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) will treat the mental suffering.  For those of us who suffer from clinical depression medical intervention in the form of psychopharmacology (antidepressants, and other psychiatric drugs in other words) will be the only answer.  And yet, I have found that I have needed both in my personal medical history.  I have a deep suspicion of many who, no matter what their professional qualifications push for a single answer to complex mental issues.  Either/Or has never worked for me personally.  Both/And I have found to be a more balanced position to take.  It's a fact that no depressive can write or draw their way out of depression or even illness.  Once other supports have been put in place, creative pursuits of all kinds will certainly help in one's recuperation, or in at least providing supports along the way.

Balance

Life is so much about balance, about not "going over the top" on any one simplistic solution. For me my mental health includes the following: a reasonably balanced and healthy diet (at which I work as hard as I can, but often fall so far short), good healthy physical exercise, liberal doses of meditation and visualization practices, good solid reading, working at my relationships and getting out and about doing various things to keep my mind busy.  I know how easy it is to fall into   "the slough of despond" as John Bunyan puts it so graphically in Pilgrim's Progress (1678), so I employ as many helps as possible: medical, therapeutic, mental and physical exercise as well as more creative pursuits to "keep my head above water," to use yet another cliché. I switch off immediately when I meet someone who has the perfect answer to everyone's problems.  Such people are indeed a "vexation of the spirit." Like the proverbial drunk at a party they are to be avoided "like the plague."  Apologies for the surfeit of hackneyed phrases and colloquialisms in this paragraph.

Perspective

Arguing about Justice - Dept of Law UCD

I have mentioned this quality many times before.  The other day I went into our National Gallery and viewed some of our wonderful paintings on display.  To view them properly one needs to stand back, and, of course, that's why galleries have to be places with great space, or at least have a great feeling of space about them. Perspective can only be achieved at a distance.  Is it not the same with all the problems of pain and suffering that life throws at us all too randomly?  The perspective of time often heals them.  I love visualization techniques as they are so powerful in helping us through or coping with problems.  One such visualization that I like is to do, and which I find very effective in lifting my spirits, is to sit in what I call my semi-demi-lotus position (as I am so dreadfully poor at crossing my legs!).  I then unwind by using the usual meditation techniques like relaxing the body through a body-scan or concentration on breathing etc. When I am suitably relaxed I envisage myself sitting in my little spot on the ground with my back propped against the wall, then in my library, then my house, my street, my locality, my city, my country and so on up through a bird's eye view of my ever diminishing self, and up further till I have an astronaut's view of the world. This I call my visualization of perspective. When we are depressed we are self-obsessed.  Our little world becomes the only world. Perspective is a way of zooming out of self-preoccupation and self-obsession. We are one little creature on a very small planet in a very big expanding universe, one of some 7 billion plus inhabitants.  It is often good to realize in a very counter-cultural way, at least for a while, that we may not be that important at all in the great scheme of things.*

The Great Spiritual Teachers

Reading and listening to what many of the great  teachers and indeed founders of the various Religions and spiritual traditions have had to say is also important.  I strongly believe that going back to what many of them said cannot be squared with what the so called Institutions or Churches that followed them promulgated.  On this, I recommend a good thoughtful reading of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, especially the wonderfully powerful and imaginative scene where Jesus visits the Grand Inquisitor to tell him how far the Roman Church has strayed from what he was about when he was on earth.  So going back to what Confucius, Jesus, the Buddha or Rumi said can be very inspiring.**  One can find a lot of similar profound thoughts in each of these named above, and one can only be amused that it is so hard to find proof of such teachings in the works of the churches or organizations that were built on their foundations.***

Returning to the Music of Life

Let me in conclusion return to music by way of some further clarification or elucidation of a mystery which is truly almost beyond our understanding.  Firstly, let me recall for you some of the lyrics of one of the songs, Anthem, by one of my favourite singers, Leonard Cohen:

The birds they sang 
at the break of day 
Start again 
I heard them say 
Don't dwell on what 
has passed away 
or what is yet to be. 
Ah the wars they will 
be fought again 
The holy dove 
She will be caught again 
bought and sold 
and bought again 
the dove is never free. 

Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. 

(my italicization: You can here Leonard sing this song HERE )

Perhaps a trace or an intimation of an answer lies somewhere in these lyrics.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps!

End Notes

* The great thing about philosophy is that it trains the mind to ask all the most difficult and awkward of questions.  Not alone is this no harm, but it serves to deepen or to heighten our understanding and appreciation of everything.  On the one hand, we can undervalue human life as is exemplified in all the most horrific of wars we poor humans have been engaged in since time immemorial.  On the other we can over-value human life at the expense of our fellow animals and at the expense of the very environment which, unfortunately, we have almost destroyed. What a legacy we moderns have left for our off-spring!  In other words philosophically we can ask the twin questions: How do we undervalue human life? and How do we overvalue that same life?  Both questions are equally valid.

** Going back to the thoughts and/or writings of these early founders can be both enlightening and often surprising, so much so that one begins to question how far removed institutional and organized Religions have come from the vision or charism of their founders.  Confucius said much that is also found in Jesus Christ, viz., “Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire” which corresponds very nicely to what Jesus said: " Do to others as you would have them do to you." (Lk. 6:31)  There is wisdom in many of their sayings which often should not be taken out of context and which should be balance by other quotations from the same spiritual leader.  Context and balance is very important if we are given to quotations.

*** As regards the foundation of Religions and Churches it is often a moot question as to whether a so-called founder actually founded a particular religion or Church because in certain cases these were established by their followers.  It is arguable that St Paul was the great founder of the Christian Religion while its Roman version could be seen as the child of the Emperor Constantine.  I have no great interest in many of these moot points, save that in questions of truth and spirituality we must progress by taking into account all the sides of a story, all the perspectives as it were.  For me no one Religion, Church or organization can have a manopoly on the Truth.

Journal of a Soul 59

Nothing New Under the Sun

Heron in Malahide Estuary recently

Sometimes, it's very hard to write something new, something vibrant, something with an edge.  It's so easy to write trite, hackneyed or banal things about anything, but possibly easier still to write such things about spirituality or about the soul, simply because they belong to a more nebulous and mysterious, if not mystical area of experience.  In my senior years in secondary (high) school, I was very much taken with the rather skeptical remarks from the Old Testament writer Qoheleth who opined just exactly what's stated in my above heading - that indeed most things were thought about or tried before, and so on. A lecturer I had at college many years ago - a brilliant theologian and indeed philosopher - always recommended that if we are to be good scholars we should always deploy a healthy skepticism about anything we read. Obviously we could also use the same tactic with regards to anything we encounter in life. Needless to say, we are quite liable to be duped if we don't employ such basic tactics.

The Spiritual Entrepreneurs: A Word of Warning

What would we do without the simple worker bee?

Recently, I have engaged in some on-line courses that promote spiritual development, and indeed, they have been good for the most part - life-enhancing, positive, and all promoting good sound mental health practices.  I have had no problems with them myself because I still employ that old healthy skepticism recommended by both Qoheleth and my erstwhile, sadly now departed, lecturer.  It seems to me that most of these organizations that are promoting these on-line seminars are very good. I will mention none of these by name as I feel they are providing a legitimate service, and also perhaps my own healthy skepticism may at times be somewhat unfounded, though I suspect not.  (In other words, the philosopher in me asks if I am ever skeptical about my own skepticism!)  What I have noticed is that while these organizations provide some authoritative sources for their claims, promote very good healthy practices - both physical and mental - and quote many recent scientific surveys, they can at times be somewhat prone to slip in rather unfounded promises in the midst of more obvious and scientifically based fact: the easy route to happiness, how to increase one's wealth almost without effort if only the listener or viewer will just sign up to this or that package of on-line courses that will give them the key to success.  Now, as I have stated, most of the courses that I have tasted are impressive for the most part, but then rather subtly insert some impossible promise like total personal transformation, gaining the potential to become a millionaire, or to increase the length of one's life rather substantially in one case.  I'm not against spiritual entrepreneurs and many of them are superb, but one has to be aware of the ones that get that little bit more woolly in their thinking and that little bit more hyperbolic and exaggerative in their claims as they hook and reel in their bait.  They will do this, I believe, slowly and subtly. All I can say is that I accept most of their stuff in good faith, but fall back on my friend "healthy skepticism" when money is involved.  Again, I'm not obviously against paying for downloads of conferences and good solid books, of which I have many.  Nor am I against paying high prices for attending good conferences on spirituality/psychology or for attending extended courses with good solid speakers.  I just feel we must not shut off our intellect when we put our spiritual senses into gear!  I believe in Head (Intellect) and Heart (Feelings and the non-cognitive) - both/and, and never either/or.  Either/Or alone is a human being flying on one wing who will crash to earth all too soon.

The Struggle that is Life

Having trod the soil of Mother Earth for some 56 years now, I have never yet met anyone who has easy solutions to the trials and tribulations either of their own life or that of their friends, colleagues or acquaintances.  Indeed, I shut off my listening apparatus immediately if I do encounter such individuals in my daily life.

The people I encounter in my life comprise real human beings with long lists of strengths and failings.  Just to go through some problems I encountered in others recently in my job as a teacher in an Autism Unit attached to a Secondary School and in colleagues, acquaintances and friends: lack of self-esteem, over-control, ego-tripping, micro-management, bullying, exaggeration, catastrophizing, depression, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, family breakdown, schizophrenia, stress, behavioural difficulties - ADD, ADHD, ODD - suicide, Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, gambling addiction and so on and on. Even people who appeared on the surface to be successful individuals all had one skeleton or other health-wise or problem-wise in their lives.  In my lived experience, there are no easy solutions that trip off the tongue.  There is the listening ear, the compassionate acceptance of others, the offer of practical help or where to get such help.  In my growing understanding of life, both personally and professionally, the solutions if they are there are ones that happen in a community  and family setting where the person can be helped to feel more wanted and more accepted and more belonging to that community.  There are no easy solutions, but gradual supports can be put in place to help the individual cope.

Metaphor of Plant   

Flowers: Marley Park

Metaphors and images speak more profoundly and clearly to the human psyche.  Let me use the metaphor of plant here, and I borrow it from my reading of the great twentieth century counsellor Carl Ransom Rogers.  He had started out with an interest in general science and horticulture and later moved into psychology and psychotherapy.  Hence, he opined once that his clients were like plants that needed all the supports (or nutrients to sustain the metaphor) the gardener (metaphor for counsellor or significant other) could provide: care, compassion, empathy, congruence or authenticity and so on.  Otherwise, the client simply would not grow - instead, like a badly watered plant, s/he will have stunted growth or will wilt and eventually die. 

Fragility

Fragility is another thought that comes to mind.  As a poem-maker I love reading poems and writing them.  One of my favourite poets is the late great Gaelic poet Seán Ó Ríordáin who wrote mostly philosophical/spiritual poems about the meaning and purpose of life as he saw it.  Many of them were reflections on the mental and physical pain he suffered as a person who had Tuberculosis for most of his life.  He spoke of "leochaileacht na beatha", that is "the fragility of life."  The other morning I knocked a shade from the spray of lights in my sitting room and that shade smashed into smithereens (a real Gaelic word that found its way into the English language by the way).  Life is like that: things break.  Worse than that: people break, too.  That's a horrible experience of which I have written much in this and other blogs. Hence, I have always found flowers placed on or before altars, or before statues, or at shrines, or simply in abundance at the place where someone tragically died to be most moving.  They are saying something very profound about our fragility.  In fact placing such flowers is an potent ritualistic act that acknowledges our own fragility and mortality.

Candle Light

The lights of Howth Village, June, 2014

Candle light is another image that comes to my mind.  I have always loved the old Chinese saying that it is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.  Likewise, I have often lit candles in churches (and still do, even though I am not a church-goer in the sense of attending mass at all) when someone is ill.  In our fragility such ritualistic acts are intra-psychically and inter-psychically potent.  It was always a custom in Gaelic Ireland to place a lighted candle in the window at Christmas time as a sign to all that the stranger is welcome within.  These days candles are replaced by stands of electric lights. Light can be at once fragile (easily blown out) and powerful beyond measure (can cause a tragic fire for example).  Perhaps the profound message here is one of fragility and potential power at one and the same time.  

Mindfulness

There is very little to be said here by way of conclusion except to issue the invitation to all, and also indeed to myself, to be mindful of the polarities of fragility and potential, the weakness and the power of life.  Let us cherish and protect it.  Let us light the candles of welcome and hope and smell the flowers of our small and big successes.  In all this let us shut our ears to false and easy promises that deny life rather than accept it in its sheer fragility and potential.

Journal of a Soul 58

So Many Colours in the Rainbow

Who can forget the lyrics of  the chorus of the late great Harry Chapin's song "Flowers are Red"?  Let me remind you of them:

But the little boy said
"There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one."

Howth Harbour by night, three days ago 

The song is a good one as its message is perennial, namely, that it reminds us that "variety is the spice of life," that differences are not alone to be acknowledges but to be celebrated. It is a timely reminder not alone for politicians, law makers and legislators but also for academics, teachers, and indeed preachers.  Who wants to live in a monochrome world where everything is boringly staid, monolithic and grey? These reflections were occasioned by reading about how changes are occurring for the better in certain churches in the world: "US Presbyterian Church Votes to Allow Same-Sex Marriages," see Here.

Many Narratives

Bronze statue, UCD

Another phrase that stays in my mind is one I heard just last week used by our former President (Uachtarán na hÉireann), Mary McAleece, viz., "there is not just one narrative, you know," in response to a question on the centralized power structures of the Church. In other words, why is there just one monolithic approach to every moral and dogmatic question?  Surely, there are many approaches to and many perspectives on one or other truth.  Is there one monolithic Truth with a capital 'T'? Oh for a broad-Church mentality, not a narrow straitjacket approach where the take of a certain period in history is petrified or set in stone for millennia?  

Likewise, we tire from the same old rants by the tabloids that sell through sensationalist stories, many often blown totally out of proportion.  The narratives they proclaim and sell are all of a certain unseemly nature.  Many years ago my now deceased mother used always say: "good news never sells: bad news does!"  It is so easy to sell certain narratives only.  There are so many other stories, and many of them good, that could be given more public space and acknowledgement.  One further thing that does annoy me considerably is the almost deliberate avoidance of good journalistic practices of investigation before going to print with the publication of the latest  exposure of X, Y or Z.  

I Fear the Man of One Book

An old friend of mine used always quote the Latin phrase (he was a teacher of a certain era) from the pen of St. Thomas Aquinas, viz., "hominem unius libri timeo" which means "I fear the man who quotes one book (all the time)." As an academic of many years standing, I have never read or written a paper that did not make allusions to and citations from as many learned sources as possible.  In that way, academics attempt to bring out as many sides of the truth as possible.  After all, there are many ways of approaching every problem.  Let's take the field of geometry within the subject area of mathematics.  When I was at school, it was thought that Euclid was the final word on geometry, but when I got to college I learned about many other geometries: analytical geometry, algebraic geometry, descriptive geometry, differential geometry, projective geometry and so on.

Colloquialisms and Old Sayings

How often have we all heard that old chestnut: "There is more than one way to skin a cat"? This is a dreadful thought, and as to why one might want to skin a cat, I'll never know. I could understand it better if instead of the word "cat" one substituted that of "rabbit" as the latter provided much needed food to many of our forebears in less fortunate times.  The following is an interesting and learned conjecture as to its provenance: 

To a lexicographer, all phrases are interesting, it’s just that some of them are more interesting than others ... There are many versions of this proverb, which suggests there are always several ways to do something. Charles Kingsley used one old British form in Westward Ho! in 1855: “there are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream”. Other versions include “there are more ways of killing a cat than by choking it with butter”, and “there are more ways of killing a dog than choking him with pudding”. The earliest version appears as far back as 1678, in the second edition of John Ray’s collection of English proverbs, in which he gives it as “there are more ways to kill a dog than hanging”. (see Here )

Celebrating Difference

Marley Park, April, 2014

Surely the celebration of difference is one of our greatest possibilities as educated and progressive humans?  You don't need to be a zoologist or a botanist to celebrate the wonderful variety which the flora and fauna of the world present us with on a daily basis or a physicist or a chemist to celebrate the mystery of the microscopic world and even the submicroscopic world of atomic structure.  Neither do we need to be astronomers to appreciate the vastness and mystery of our universe.  Nor do we need to be college professors to marvel at the sheer exponential growth of knowledge.  All of this adds to the wonder of difference and the importance of celebrating this variety that seems to have one underlying thrust that biologists and physicists chase after in their desire for one overall comprehensive theory of the universe.  Perhaps, even if we are believers, we might see this as a quest for the Creator God?

The Wonder of Children

As a little primary school boy I was fascinated with the following quotation from the great English scientist Isaac Newton that our teacher Mr. Murray made us learn off by heart.  I remember it to this day: “I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” This childlike wonder at mystery and truth celebrates life in its great diversity.  It was the same wonder and innocence that Jesus meant when he said to all the adults around him:And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." ' (Mat 18:13)

Journal of a Soul 57

Dealing with the Past

Irish flag at full mast in ALSAA recently

Dealing with the past is always a hard task both for an individual and for a nation.  In fact, in many cases dealing with events from the past will be most traumatic for both.  On the extreme level one might mention how Germany and its people have endeavoured to tackle their felt collective grief and shame after the horrors inflicted on many sectors of humankind by the Nazi murder machine.  The same must be a case for all other nations involved in genocidal activities, a list of which you may access here if you wish to depress yourself with the horrific statistics: Genocides. Scratch the surface on any nation's sense of identity and one may encounter anger, guilt, depression, grief, hysteria and so on.  Doubtless every nation needs to engage with its guilt over its sins of commission and omission from the past.  Now, this is no easy task, needless to say.  

These reflections here will deal with the problem of dealing with the past on (i) a personal level and (ii) a national level.

Healing one's Personal Past

Evening scene on the Ionian Sea, Calabria, December 2013

The word "healing" is very important in the above heading as it is hard to move on unless one acknowledges the hurt one has caused to others, hopefully having attempted to repair the situation in as far as possible by our admission of guilt, the asking for forgiveness from those hurt and the re-establishment of some kind of mutual respect.  Often many of us need to access help from our friends, from significant others, from trained counsellors and psychotherapists, and perhaps from our spiritual and religious guides in achieving this reconciliation.  Having travelled far through life, I readily acknowledge all the helps I have received in my own personal life story on many of those listed fronts.  Of course, it is also hard to move on when we are the ones who are hurt.  In that situation we may never receive any apology or act of sorrow on the part of those who have hurt us in whatever minor or even major way.  I'm thinking in this latter case, especially, of the poor victims of sex abuse as children and those who have had the most appalling crimes like rape and physical abuse committed against them.  There are, of course, other forms of abuse like mental or psychological abuse, bullying and so on. 

However, one thing's sure, each of us must engage in healing our past memories, especially the more serious ones.  Such will involve exercises in awareness in line with the good old Freudian/Jungian definition of all therapy, namely "making the unconscious conscious." * Unacknowledged hurts from the past will inevitably surface in our dreams as we age.  Indeed, they will often send a growing minority of us to take refuge in drink and drugs and, indeed, to often in engage in hurting others in the same way that we ourselves have been hurt.  

A partial answer (please note the adjective here "partial") to problems in these above mentioned areas may be summarised in one word, "awareness."  Dr Rollo May underscores this fact in many of his books where he insightfully states that awareness is a major part of the battle to conquering anxiety, anger, bitterness, regret, spite, jealousy, egocentricity, envy and so on.** Let us put this in more colloquial terms and state in a pithy fashion that "awareness is half of the battle."  It is only when the alcoholic, or drug addict, or whoever with whatever ill or problem, acknowledges that they have the problem, that is, when they authentically face the truth of their particular ill that they can begin to do anything to change their situation for the better and start out on the journey to healing and recovery.

(ii) Healing our Collective Past as a Nation 

At the excavations at Locri, south of Siderno, December 2014

These reflections were inspired, or more correctly provoked, by the recent highlighting of the mistreating of unmarried women and their babies here in Ireland since the foundation of the state. In the last twenty to thirty years, much concealed abuse has come to light in Ireland: child clerical abuse, the plight of unmarried mothers,  Magdalene Laundries, the abuse in Industrial schools, the burial of dead young children in grounds of Mother and Child homes since foundation of the State.  To add to the mixed repressed memories and emotions, some of those homes were badly renovated Poor Houses from Famine times.  In other words, excavations or archaeological digs on these graveyards in question would be quite intricate given the presence also of Famine graves on site.

I've heard historians, sociologists, psychologists and others suggest that as a nation we Irish suffer from repressed guilt as we are the survivors of the millions who starved in their hovels and on the roadsides and in the Poor Houses during the years 1845-1848.  Our high rates of alcoholism and mental breakdown may also be attributed to this repression.  How much festers in our personal and Collective Unconscious is undoubtedly there to be discovered in our cultural expression of our identity in history, plays, novels and art (from the past, the present and the future) of all types as well as in sessions on the couch.  Art in all its richness is surely one means of expiating our repressed demons.  This, therefore, is one area where the Arts outshine the contribution of the Sciences to our well-being.  As human beings we have to be helped to flourish as individuals in the mutuality of community.  Sciences help by improving our lifestyles and standards of living, but the Arts contribute to healing our souls.

There is much we can do in helping to heal ourselves in these issues.  I shall attempt a brainstorm of possibilities here, obviously in no specific order:

• Encourage radical questioning in all areas of life.
• Listen more to what people say.
• Defend the rights of minorities.
• Radically question all power structures.
• Ask ourselves what lies we sell to one another and why.
• Sharpen our moral and ethical questions.
• Learn to be suspicious of easy answers to difficult questions.
• Join in helping one cause or another.
• Read more widely and more critically.
• Question our public representatives and politicians.
• Stand up for our principles.
• Don't take the easy way out.
• Get involved in as much as possible.
• Join the debate.
• Make our voices heard.
• Don't blame others.
• Encourage debate and other opinions besides our own.
• Try to see things from another point of view.
• Why not? as a question is as good to ask as Why?