We plainly pay attention, using the finite currency of time and energy issued in the 24-hour increments that add up to a life—well spent? We have choices and constraints about how we allocate our attention, and today’s world competes fiercely for it in unprecedented ways. No wonder, for power is the ability to command or hijack attention, even if it warps reality with untruths.
Should we hang in and hang on – or let go? When does perseverance become pointless, or hope turn rancid in refusal to accept disappointment, defeat, or depression?
Phallos, the central archetype of a man’s psyche, was once worshipped as sacred. Its urgent, dynamic, and fertilizing power was split off with the rise of ascetic monotheism and banished to the unconscious. Misplaced and maligned, it surfaces as resentful passivity, fear of passion, confusion of values, and reluctance to take action.
Fear of social rejection, workplace retaliation, or family conflict can erode our healthy no, leading to resentment, an uncertain sense of self, and inability to answer the call to life. We also need to be able to say no to our own bad habits, rigidities, and avoidance of challenges. No is robust and can open space for self-determination and authenticity. When we find our no, we also discover that yes has been waiting for us, and it is alive and inviting.
We can’t help knowing that something bad could happen if we do X…or Y…or maybe Z. Like Odysseus steering his ship between sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis, we must navigate between risk avoidance and recklessness. One keeps us out of life; the other jeopardizes wellbeing. In pre-modern times life in the external world was fraught with danger and risk; in the modern world, the consequences of risk are more often internal.
There is value in examining your values, the powerful emotional and cognitive attitudes that underlie large and small life choices. Although values are initially acquired through family and institutions, an essential task of adulthood is consciously embracing traditional or individual values.
Writing is an encounter like no other with oneself and inner others, light and dark. Whether we meet the page in a personal journal or as professional necessity, we discover that ego alone does not do this job. Some days words leap like dolphins; other days find us becalmed on a flat sea. To create through writing is to encounter self and depths, and Lisa shares experiences of writing her forthcoming book, Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself. Her words for the creative and challenging process of mothering map a path to soul and greater wholeness.
Like fire in a wood-burning stove, resentment burns long and hot: bitterness, frustration, and hostility. The fires of resentment are lit when we feel needy and vulnerable and feel wronged and rejected. This old human story is told in the biblical tale of brothers Cain and Abel.
The twenties are a period of emerging adulthood, a time to engage in the maturational tasks of finding one’s place in the wider world and forming intimate relationships. This stage of life calls for the ego strength necessary to make initial choices about work, intimacy, money, lifestyle and values. The protections and constraints of family, education, and culture are no longer unquestioned.
Centered in self, we can regard a decision, person, or situation at hand with internal integrity that is congruent with external reality: truth.
While we welcome “good” feelings, we often try to banish “bad” ones like sadness, fear, vulnerability and shame. We may deny them by trying to “think positive.” We may attribute them to political wrongs or even the barking dog next door. If emotions have nowhere else to go, they become symptoms, complexes, and even physical illnesses. Avoiding negative emotions simply causes them to go underground and express themselves in disguise.
The judgmental inner voice has volume, speed, pitch and range. It may appear as a perfectionistic critic, demanding taskmaster, or abusive bully. It also seeps in through the collective, with criteria for beauty, status, and wealth that are unrealistic and artificial. At its worst, this punitive, shaming complex incites self-destructive behavior, and has long been imaged by witches, warlocks, ogres and fiends.