Our Name for God

We can use Jesus as our model in our relationship with God and ponder his use of  “Abba” when referring to his father.  God wants to be the same kind of parent to us as he was to Jesus.  He invites us to use whatever name to call him that will evoke for us what  “Abba” did for Jesus.

Our task is to find that name, invent that name that represents what we need God to be to us.  Then use that name in periods of quiet when we are open to experiencing God in greater depth.  We are to embrace that name as our secret with God.  We are to allow ourselves to grow into the deeper relationship that the name affords

Temperament–Our Personal Wild Card

We all know about the influence that comes to us from both heredity and environment.  But nobody talks much about temperament–the personality’s wild card.

The Greeks spoke of  humours–various phenomena that affected certain organs of the body–lungs, kidneys, liver, heart–and enabled or prevented good health.  More recently psychologists have looked at those humours in terms of temperaments.  The general consensus is that one of these four psychic energy levels dominates in each of us.

Phlegmatic is the least energetic.  Fritz Kunkel calls him the Clinging Vine who has to depend on someone else for meaning in life.  Melancholic has more energy but not enough to dominate, so when he’s overwhelmed he retreats into his shell like a Turtle.  Choleric is the Nero, spitting fire and running the show (guess which one I was!).  And Sanguine shines with creativity like a Star.  The trouble is, unlike a celestial body which needs no audience, the Star temperament needs someone constantly applauding and supporting him.

Our temperament is not inherited and may not even correspond to that of either parent or any one of our grandparents.

We move around from one temperament position to another, depending on relationships and situations.  But rather early in life one predominates and influences our personality perhaps even more than heredity or environment.

These temperaments can be seen to correspond to Carl Jung’s personality traits–feeling, sensation, thinking, and intuition and also to Northrop Frye’s literary genres of romantic, tragic, ironic, and comic.  I found these temperaments to fit with the OK positions (Thomas Harris); Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development; the four basic elements–water, earth, fire, air–and others as well.  We can gain insight into our personalities from pondering these grids, just as we can from thinking about the mottos we have adopted and the games we play.

We may by sheer will power change our mottos and games, but our predominating temperament remains the same.  All temperaments circle the inner region of the psyche, but we are not able to touch the center of the Self (the Original Goodness) without a transformation.  When we freely decide to cooperate with the transformation process by giving permission to an inner power to make us whole, we become this Original Goodness and thereafter no temperament rules our lives.

Mottos We Adopt

From a great deal  of pondering over all my previous negative behavior, I began to see some mottos I had adopted early in my life.  It was easy to find the ‘Be Strong’ that I decided would protect me from punishments like that I received from the crying incident.  And my ‘Be Strong’ also kept me from shedding tears over much sadness that warranted them.

It took a while before I saw the other mottos. ‘Be Right’ was surely the one that had kept me from ever apologizing to my family.  ‘Be Powerful’ fed my need to be in control of everything possible.

I had no idea, however, that my mottos were so evident to others outside my family.  After my Humpty Dumpty transformation experience, I had an opportunity to visit with an elderly gentleman who had been a member of the Worship Committee at my church when I had been the chair.  When I told him I felt like I was a completely different person from the one I had been for decades, he replied, “Well, I hope so.  I decided in that committee that I didn’t want to be on your train or in the way of it!.”  We both laughed at his insight and I appreciated his revelation.

My conviction is that no matter how we are perceived to the contrary, the mottos we choose for ourselves are our best attempts to improve on ourselves–make ourselves into good people–the best we can be.

My mother gave me a motto at a  young age–‘Don’t Embarrass the Family.’  It is only just now obvious to me that her embarrassment at my three-year-old crying incident was the deciding factor.  Throughout my growing up, she often reminded me of this directive.  There must be something in my personality that continued to make my family fear I would do something that reflected badly on them because one of my sons seemed at an early age to give me the same motto.  Or maybe the mottos we give others are merely projections of facets of our personality we haven’t adequately dealt with.

Paradoxically, our mottos need to be given up in order for them to be authentically incorporated into our personality.  The ‘giving up’ manifests itself in the opposite of the motto.  In my three-day crisis, there was nothing strong or powerful about me.  I experienced just the opposite.  And in my Great Confession I admitted all the ‘not rightness’ (unrighteousness?!) about myself.  Only after the crisis did I emerge with a genuine strength and sense of power that I never had before.

My motto now is simply ‘Be.’  And I think the same is intended for everyone.  Out of the essence of our authentic Being emerges a wholeness that needs no other mottos.

Fertilization

Isn’t there something deep inside us that wonders if there is more to life than the best we have experienced? If we’re honest with ourselves, I think the answer for at least some of us is yes.

There is a spiritual fertilization that must take place if we are to be able to experience life in all its fullness. Both male and female parts of our personality are required. The egg resides in the unconscious and, like all eggs, contains the essence of life, the potential of a new being. It awaits the sperm of the conscious mind. The seed. The planting of permission.

Perhaps all the duality of the external world is trying to point us to the duality within ourselves. And perhaps all the tension we see between opposites externally is pointing us to the tension within that needs to be resolved.

Tension is resolved in the world when people of opposing views meet and agree on a peaceful, creative way of dealing with each other. The same is true within. All duality needs union where, as in the Hegelian dialectic, opposites come together in a synthesis that is greater than the sum of the two parts.

This is no more true than within the individual personality. The unconscious yearns to be unified with the conscious. Our conscious ego must want something more than it can provide for itself and be willing to give of itself so that union may be achieved.

Unlike most human biological yearnings, the feminine unconscious is the more wiling of the two. Eager. Obsessed, actually. So much so that it is constantly sending up invitations. Teasers.

But the conscious is a do-it-yourself kinda guy. A take-charge ruler, decision maker, multi-tasker and paramount achiever. It fails to recognize that its most authentic joy and creativity lies beyond its control.

For many of us a crisis must occur before our masculine conscious (rational control feature) becomes desperate enough to take paper and pencil and engage the inner feminine (a.k.a. Inner Wisdom). But the Inner Wisdom is available to us at all times. We do not need to wait for a crisis.

Humpty’s Hard Shell

Humpty’s arrogance and self-confidence seem to come from his belief that his shell is durable enough to adequately protect him. And what about us? What makes our shell grow thicker and stronger? What makes us think we are adequately protected?

Life situations, where we might have felt vulnerable, might have felt hurt by someone’s penetrating criticism but where we were able to ignore or counter the attack, contribute to a thickening and strengthening of our shell. Our accomplishments help as well. Also our ability to cope and control.

Humpty convinces himself that the King will not allow harm to come to him. We, however, come to believe we don’t need a King to protect us. We have learned how to protect ourselves. We are invincible. And besides, we’ve been perched on our wall so long we’re certain we can keep ourselves from falling.

Remember, Humpty, like all eggs, if they have been fertilized, should develop into a new creature. In order to emerge from his shell, the chicken must be strong enough to force his way out. If he is not able to peck through his shell, he simply dies inside. No one comes to his aid. Another case of survival of the fittest.

And what about us? We cannot imagine wanting out of what we have worked so hard to establish. We can’t imagine destroying what we’ve worked so hard to harden. And if we did feel a yearning to peck our way out, we doubt our beaks would be strong enough to penetrate the impenetrable.

Something must happen to make us want to emerge and that same something must be the enabler as well as the catalyst. That something is found through the deep desire for something more.

Being OK

I think Humpty Dumpty’s arrogance in the Lewis Carroll classic, and our own, must come from a sense of insecurity. If we felt genuinely OK about ourselves, wouldn’t we be inclined to believe that others are basically OK as well?

Thomas Harris, in his 1967 I’m OK—You’re OK , delineates four situations of OK-ness or the lack of. I agree. Early in life (for me, it was the punishment for crying at age three and a half), something happens to propel us out of our feeling of safety and security and into one of not OK-ness. As we grow, our attitude may morph from ‘I’m Not OK, You’re OK,’ into ‘I’m Not OK and you aren’t either; or I’m OK but you’re Not’—all thinly camouflaging the continuation of our deeply-rooted feeling of Not OK-ness.

Harris also talks of the Parent-Adult-Child alive within each of us, each of which is constantly interacting with the others. My interpretation of his explanation is that our inner Parent, originally nurturing, becomes a judging Tyrant, a constant source of criticism of the Child. And the Child, the source of authentic feelings in the psyche, begins to feel like an Orphan, deprived of the nurture and love it needs to thrive. The Adult, the part that functions effectively in the environment, begins to feel l like a Victim of both inner and outer forces.

Is it any wonder then that all these inner Not-OK feelings would erupt in arrogance, anger, and projection?

In the 1970s I read an explanation of projection in human relationships, how we identify and judge in others the very faults that we have not addressed in ourselves. The idea interested me greatly, but it took nine years before I could finally see the reality of it in myself!

Our Inner Wisdom seeks to transform all our manifestations of not-Ok-ness into an OK-ness that erases negative attitudes and behaviors and makes us genuinely OK. What is needed is our engagement with an Inner voice until we come to trust that it can do what we most desire and haven’t been able to do for ourselves.

Humpty’s Tall Wall

The Humpty Dumpty metaphor continues to intrigue me. In all the cartoons I’ve collected there is a wall. Either Humpty is sitting on top of it or he has fallen off and lies in pieces at its base.

In my research I find that Humpty Dumpty is the perennial favorite rhyme among pre-schoolers and older. Perhaps it is the rhythm of the rhyme or the rhyme itself—with its too-long last line. Perhaps it is the absurdity of an egg sitting on a wall—and the obvious understanding that eventually it will roll off. Perhaps it is the fact that the egg is always pictured as if it had human characteristics and could carry on a conversation. Whatever the appeal, we can ask any random child if he knows the rhyme and he’ll probably recite it.

In psychological terms, I argue that the wall represents the inevitable precipice that our psyche is forming all the time that we are establishing ourselves as competent humans in a world where competence is required

Competence and protection are our watchwords. We work to be able to function in the world and also harden our shell to protect ourselves. This shell-hardening begins early in childhood, at the moment we feel wounded by someone or something and subconsciously resolve to try to keep that from happening again.

Mine was the incident where I cried to keep my mother from leaving me when she took me to my Sunday School class right after my younger sister was born. I was three and a half. She stayed but was embarrassed, later told my father, and I was humiliated by the punishment. Something in my little psyche resolved at that moment not to cry, and for 40 years the hard shell I manufactured honored that resolve.

But the wall grows taller under us and the danger of falling increases. We’re so busy hardening our shell that we do not notice. Then one day perhaps we look down and are amazed. And the wall continues to grow taller.

This wall and the falling off it represents the crisis whereby the new being is hatched out.

 

Going Around in Circles

If we could change ourselves into the calm, creative, life loving persons we want to be, we would have already done just that. Who doesn’t want to feel peaceful, guilt-free, productive? Getting what we want is not so easy. No matter how often we bombard ourselves with affirmations. No matter how many good deeds we do to assuage our guilt. No matter how many craft classes we enroll in.

If we could consciously, with our own will power, change what we want to change in and around us, we would miss what is even better. We would think our rationality is the best thing we have going for us and never open ourselves to the full resources of the unconscious.

Joseph. C. Pearce says that all the creativity we individually and collectively manifest is but about 5% of what the unconscious can produce in us. Imagine! And feelings of guilt and low self-esteem are simply the garbage we have collected which keeps the unconscious from emerging into our consciousness with its power.

We need not fear that giving our Inner Wisdom permission to do what is necessary to eliminate the garbage is going to leave us unmotivated and without direction. (One Christian friend of mine told me he was convinced that without guilt he wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning.) On the contrary, with the garbage removed, our original self emerges—curious, creative, and able to be totally present in the moment so that life in its fullness can be experienced.

The collective confessions and petitions of a religious worship service will not serve, however, as the necessary engagement of our head and heart in genuine dialogue with our innermost self. Each must find his own way, initiate his own conversation. At least, that was my experience.

Testing Our Inner Wisdom

If there is any doubt that you have an Inner Wisdom dedicated to your well-being, consider the following:

–Think of an incident when a creative idea or humorous response erupted from your mouth without seeming to have passed through your mind’s judging facility.

–Remember an occasion when you felt the need to call someone only to hear the phone ringing as he called you.

–Recall some problem you tried to solve, working at it long and hard, only to find when you gave up that the problem seemed to solve itself.

All these are glimpses of the enormous inner resource at our disposal, ready to make our being playful, creative, compassionate. Inner Wisdom is part of the vast unconscious part of our personality. Its powers are benevolent. It does have, however, a mind of its own. It cannot be coerced into following the dictates of our will, but it is ready to serve us well when we are ready to cooperate.

Consider a test:
Tell your Inner Wisdom you want to want to do something. Something you have not been able to make yourself do or want to do. This is different from “Help me do___.” Wanting to want to do something is asking our Wisdom Energy to give us the impetus that makes us want to do some task that needs tackling.

Pick something you’ve put off—something you dreaded beginning, something you’ve not been able to make yourself finish, something you wish you had never committed to. Consciously say, if you can mean it, that you want to want to do that thing. And then let go of it. Chances are in the not too distant future you’ll have a surprise.

 

Having It All!

I pondered what might be needed to entice people into dialogue with their Inner Wisdom—a totally non-threatening conversation which could be ended by our conscious will at any time. A poem came to me, the last line of which stated, “…one of us must die so both of us can live.”

If I could only find a way to convince folks that they get two for one. The basic human duality engaging each of us is thinking we must choose between two options when the necessary cooperation with our Inner Wisdom will give us both.

What died in me—what needs to die in everyone—is the garbage I’d collected—the drivenness, the will to power, the anger, the need to win at another’s loss. Our original personality cannot re-emerge until all the negativity we’ve gathered (all in our attempts, by the way, to make ourselves into good people!) is incinerated.

My new interpretation of what Jesus was talking about when he spoke of losing one’s life in order to save it is not losing/giving up the life we cherish but rather that life that has become stale, dry, meaningless; the life that holds no joy and laughter; the life that is killing us. To ‘save’ the remnant of the ‘good life’—and uncover the hidden abundant life deep inside, we must surrender the old, what is no longer working, what is worn out.

In the Jesus narrative, his physical death produced a new being: one with heightened interpretative powers (look at his conversation with travelers to Emmaus); greater ability to be in the moment and create a festive occasion (cooking breakfast for the disciples on the seashore—a culinary first!); and with increased sense of compassion (he tells Peter and others to tend his flocks—not teach, preach, convert, but simply tend). Intellectual, physical, emotional faculties were all totally engaged. Ours become the same as our new being emerges.

My favorite story of all Scripture is called Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac. The truth is, Isaac was not sacrificed. God sent an angel to prevent the deed. God gave Abraham what he had long promised—a son, an heir to be the father of countless descendants. Then God asked for Abraham’s most precious possession, that same son. In being willing to give up what was more important to him than his own life, Abraham was given it back again, with a new understanding of who God is and what is necessary for the kind of relationship with God that God wants him to have.

God has given us a most prized possession—conscious willful control over our lives. Now if we will temporarily give that up, it will come back to us transformed into more than we can imagine,

Being in Control

I began to initiate in-depth conversations with friends who were very much interested in psychology, who read widely in the field and/or were pursuing degrees in counseling.  I wanted to know what they had discovered about themselves in their introspection.  I was eager to know if they had initiated dialogue with their Inner Wisdom.

One said he knew there was something inside that wanted his attention but he was determined not to engage it in conversation.  And he most certainly would not give it any part of his conscious control.  He describes himself, however, as the rich young ruler in Scripture (Matt 19:16-22)–full of sorrow at his own situation.

Another friend readily admitted that for her life was not worth living because she could not have what she yearns for.  She has closed her mind to the possibility that life can hold something even more valuable than what seems beyond her reach.  She rejects the possibility that an Inner Wisdom has a gift for her and teeters on the verge of suicide.

Still another will not allow himself to believe that new life is a possibility.  What he wants it to be is so far removed from where he is now that he can’t imagine getting there even if ‘there’ were a reality.  He refuses to engage in conversation with his Inner Wisdom.

A fourth intellectually understands that the process of wholeness requires a crisis where the old self is sloughed off and the new/real self emerges.  She is, however, unwilling to allow the crisis to come on its own schedule.  She is determined to effect the process by controlling the crisis and causing it to produce mini-crises.  She fears loss of family and friends if she risks letting her inner forces have their way with her.

All four are highly intelligent adults who have suffered greatly.  Most seem to know what is needed to achieve wholeness but will not let themselves experience the existential yearning for new life that lies deep within each of us—a yearning so strong that, once discovered, is willing to give up control (in the form of permission) in order to let a force beyond our control give us new life—in all its abundance.

Perhaps for some of us being in control is more important than being whole.

Important Dream Revelations

I continued eager to find ways to tell people of the miracle that awaited their permission.  But I was always cognizant of my family’s directive against forcing myself on folks.

Some dreams came during this time to help me see that I wasn’t yet ready to give people the good news that had come to me. Several had to do with teaching. The old inadequacy dreams: I had a teaching job but couldn’t find my room; I was employed at a new school but couldn’t get there on time; I was in my classroom but had not made adequate preparations.

One had me with a friend who has chronic back problems. I touched is back and he took my arm. We tried to help each other up a long flight of stairs to my classroom. I realized I needed a great deal more help that he did.

The most exhausting dream was one in which I was assisting a medical doctor with his patients, listening carefully to their complaints and advising the doctor on what should be done for them. Suddenly I became totally confused, unable to comprehend the patient or remember the complaint of think of a proper remedy. I knew I was in no way ready to help others.

Perhaps one of the most revealing dreams was the one where I was in the sanctuary of my church. Something exciting seemed about to happen. Suddenly I was catapulted out the roof and sat atop one of the walls to observe the festivities below. As I studied that dream the idea came to me that maybe I would not be able to use the church  as a vehicle for spreading the word of my transformation.

I pondered my dreams and wondered what would be my vehicle. Then I found myself thinking of people I knew who were in crisis. I decided rather than call or go to see them, I would write to them a summary of my experience and encourage them to dialogue with their Inner Wisdom. Some called or wrote to thank me for my concern. Some I never heard from. None asked me for more information. I decided at least I had planted a seed.

Haven House Came Calling

That same summer the director of a new residential treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction came to my church committee with a request. Would we participate with some others in providing an encouraging Sunday message for the residents of his facility? I was delighted with the opportunity.

My family would be satisfied that I had somewhere to tell my story where they would not feel embarrassed. And I would have a monthly opportunity to interact with people who wanted a new beginning. I was eager to see if they would respond positively to my ideas and my story.

And they did. For 32 years they have continued as I have been taking meditations to Haven House and telling my story as well.

My first message was entitled “Good Grief!” (summary follows)

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 says “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: . . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

Job 17:7 says “My eye has grown dim from grief, and all my members are like a shadow.”

II Corinthians 7:9-10 says “. . . I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting; for you felt a godly grief… For godly grief produced a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret. . . .”

Jesus wept over the death of his friend Lazarus, wept over his inability to win Jerusalem to the kingdom of God, and grieved over his own impending death. More than anything, the grief of Jesus points to our own basic need to grieve over ourselves. I invite you to consider using this time in your life to do some proper grieving over yourself—some Good Grief.

Grief may be the most important emotion in our lives. It certainly damages us if we do not pay attention to it.  Stages of grief can include anger, guilt, remorse, and feelings of loneliness, helplessness, and despair. Often we get stuck in the guilt. Guilt which produces tapes that keep playing over and over, telling what we did and didn’t do that we are ashamed of.

And the loneliness. And the despair. I urge you to allow yourselves to go beyond the guilt and loneliness to let your grief go even deeper than you have let it go until now. Our natural reaction to negative emotions is to try to ignore them or push them down or run away from them. You have already acknowledged that your response has been to try to escape.

My experience convinces me that the only way we can get through with our grief is to turn and face it—to actually give it permission to let it take whatever expression it chooses to take, whatever form it needs to take to work itself out in us and heal us. A written dialogue with what it eating away at us is what is needed to learn that something deep inside can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Grief is an emotion that cannot be denied if it ever is to disappear. The sadness must be permitted, experienced to the fullest. We must shed all the tears that have been bottled up inside of us in order for all the guilt to be washed away and joy emerge.

Someone has defined laughter as the soul’s most perfect prayer. After our painful, paralyzing time of mourning, authentic laughter will return and with it a special kind of joy. Look at what happened to Jesus as a result of his tears. He was able to raise Lazarus from the dead. In his death the old body died and a new personality was born. Not only the Jerusalem he wept over but people all over the world have followed him as disciples. The same kind of amazing power will happen in our own lives.

I urge you to get on with your grief work.

The Impetus to Dialogue with our Inner Wisdom

As I look back on my life-changing conversation with my Inner Wisdom, I think my pastor’s words to me were indeed inspired.  He did not say go pray, read Scripture, etc.  Instead, he said, “Listen to the message the pain has for you.”

The dialogue for any of us is not a courageous act, leap of faith, or surrender.  Our free will is never compromised.  It is simply a conversation–an interview with our Inner Wisdom.  Questions and answers.  Nothing more.

And yet so much more!  What we find is a force for good that wills us so much more than we can imagine.  it can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  Yet it will not coerce.  It invites our cooperation–our participation in our own miracle through our permission.

Being so convinced in my dialogue that the force beneath my pain willed me life and not death, I readily gave permission.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, let the process begin.”

No more questions, no hesitation.  The resolution was so satisfactory that I folded up the piece of paper, put it away, and forgot that the dialogue had taken place.

Some time later the miracle occurred.