Dialectics of Age

We can at times face challenges in life that can be really hard. The teenage social scene is a good example of this. We need others, we need a sense of belonging and finding ones way in the rat race of the teen social scene can be not only hard, it can be down right traumatic.

Another challenge can be our families. Here we live with these people day in and day out and it is so important, but it can also be incredibly stressful. I know for myself, that even though my family was over all a decent and caring family, there were still dynamics going on that led me to being basically pretty messed up for years into my young adulthood.

There is this thing that can happen with these challenges where we get knocked off the “developmental track.” Life is going along alright but then, things are not going well, we are not happy, things are getting harder and harder and we may feel overwhelmed and incredibly confused.

Sometimes a person will be off the track, that steady forward progress in life, for years. Some people may grow in age, but they have become knocked off the track where they are stuck, on some level, at that age when it all came down. Do you ever notice someone acting like a 7 year old even though they are fully grown?  Tweeting out insults with language that many teens ultimately realize are just way too immature?

Getting back on track is important and often it has to do with working through disruptions in our relationships, such as with our parents. A young person’s voice is so important, and is often misunderstood or simply not heard by the adults who matter in their lives. This is not that a youth’s voice should automatically be seen as the gospel truth, but again, it is about relationship, about being heard, about having that adult tune into what that person is really saying, and why are they hurting.

When there is a breakthrough in communication, sometimes tears can flow, or that a relationship can get back on track, as well as that person who is hurting. Welcoming a young person’s voice is essential in so many ways. Indeed, sometimes I tune into what my teenage sensibility is saying, what creative idea did it come up with the other day, how I feel lonely or something, and I speak it, though it might be embarrassing, still, it is part of my developmental flow, my life force, the through line of my energy of desire, of a creative urge to be apart of life in a way where I can shine rather than be silent and resentful. In our student newspaper years ago, we printed a rewrite of a saying that was posted on the wall of my chemistry class.

“Tis better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

to

“Tis better to speak when taught be a fool, then to be silent and remain in doubt.”

Matrix Shift Development and How Learning and Growth best happens when you are curiously, enthusiastically and emotionally motivated to go there. 

My daughter walked hundreds of miles on the Pacific Crest Trail to reach Canada!

Last year, my daughter walked hundreds of miles on the PCT with a great spirit of adventure. This was such an awe inspiring example of how she is moving out into the world with curiosity and wonder.

Matrix Shift Development

When I was in my early 20’s it was the book Magical Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce, where I first learned about how basic it is to grow from a place of curious exploration, rather than from begrudging obligation.

Very simply, he presented a model for how growth happens in general, from a baby in the womb, to a newborn, to a kindergartener at his/her first day of school, to a full blown adult. First you establish what he calls the matrix, the home base, the place where you are comfortable, feel safe and supported, and you know the territory well. Then, as this gets too comfortable, you find a natural motivation to reach out beyond the boundaries of this “matrix.” As you explore, you may encounter things which are frightening, or too much to understand, and so you come back to the home base, where you regroup.

Gradually, you get enough familiarity with the territory beyond your home base, where you then make a shift, moving from the smaller matrix to a more expanded one. So in this way growth is less linear and predictable.

When I was 18 – 24 years old, I made three trips from Massachusetts to the west coast where it was like the Australian aborigine “walkabout”. A journey to find myself, and to find a greater meaning to what all this is about. After the first two trips, I come back to my home turf in western Mass, where I would enroll in a semester of college, or just get a simple job and live while I got my bearings again.  It was after the third time out there that I finally landed in Berkeley, where for the first time, on Ashby and Shattuck, I found a home base where I could plant my feet.

It is after the new larger matrix is established, and you become super comfortable with it, then, you begin the process anew, extending out into new turf to see what novelties and wonders might be out there.

It was this model that helped me enormously through these rocky years, and gave welcome support to this guiding principle; do what you want.

It was this that led me into the incredible field of depth psychology where Jung has captivated my attention. It is also where I have delved extensively into the early Christianity, trying to sort through what might have been spin and what were authentic downloads.

So given my last post, with the picture of both the spruce tree’s new growth and the challenge of the comfort zone, what I have just laid out helps me to understand just how my learning and growing process has been really fulfilling.

Instead of seeing the “comfort zone” as something that presents a strong gravitational pull that keeps sucking you back in every time you try to break out of it, rather, see this as home base, from which it provides safety, security and support from which there can be a naturally curious, playful, even childlike extending outwards.  Rather than being “hard”, it is actually really invigorating and challenging.

The key is holding onto the child like mindset of playful curiosity where, there is a dance between fear and excitement, and where adventure into an unknown is like coming through the birth canal into an exciting new world.

Of course, if there is trauma or a “matrix” home base where there is a lack of healthy attachments, where parents might be alcoholics or there is abuse, then this can lead a person to keep trying to find security and comfort within that matrix, where there are far less resources for extending outwards. At the same time, there are so many stories of how a person had ONE key person, a teacher, an uncle, a coach, who believed in them, and how this was crucial in helping them find their footing to that they were able then grow out into the world and flourish.

I would like to look into how the book, The Master and the Emissary, with its new view of the right and left hemispheres of the brain, ties into all this in a truly valuable way.

This whole discussion around the relationship between adulthood and childhood has been more active in me lately, and these posts are a way in which I can play with all of this. So please excuse my indulgences here.

There is an image that I have turned to that helps to better understand the relationship between the ever unfolding child self and the adult self. This is the spruce tree with its fresh new growth that extends out from its older branches.

This image is in such contrast to how we tend to see the relationship between our child self and our adult self. Typically we see the inner child as our inner most self who was there for us during our early years but as the years past, this childhood becomes more and more encased in layers of experience, thought structures, and a developing sense of identity.

The spruce tree image has helped me to see that this child aspect of our self is not something that is surrounded by the rings of annual growth, but rather the child’s self is what is springing forth in creative and exuberant reach out from beyond our usual personality.

One of the things that I have been grappling with for many years has been that at a key point in my early life when I was a teenager, I came to a certain fundamental conclusion that “I will only do what I really want to do”. This may sound a little spoiled, or that it interferes with me being able to complete tasks that are not fun, exciting, and reaching out from a more sedate self. And all of this is true. This operating philosophy has gotten me into so much trouble and has made it really hard for me to persist with tasks that are less appealing in the moment.

This brings me too a new and exciting development that is in the works around this line of thinking.

Have you ever taken a motivational workshop? Have you ever listened to a Tony Robbins tape? Have you ever spent money on a course that pumps you up but only resulted in the end with a smaller bank account? This is quite the familiar territory for me. So difficult has it been for me to stay with a course of commitment that can help build something that is valuable in my life such as regular exercise, meditation, or building a business.

So take a look at this image which crossed my path recently and it describes this struggle I have had, and likely so many others have had, with regards to what we would call the “comfort zone”. We naturally gravitate towards habits and patterns of behavior and lifestyle that are easier. Gym memberships depend on New Year’s resolutions to pay for the majority of costs for the year as so many people are unable to break out of the gravitational force of their comfort zone anywhere past January.

In a workshop I once took, they talked a lot about this idea of the comfort zone and how difficult but incredibly important it is to work towards getting out of there if you are wanting to build your right livelihood or just get out of stuckness.

So I look at this diagram and it strikes me at how similar it is to the image of the young spruce sprigs. The growth zone finding purpose living our dreams for filling our goals, this is arguably the outer reaches of ourselves that so many of us have a hard time following through with.

So if we are to envision the nature of our adult self as being the core from which new growth emerges than this could help with the problem of the comfort zone. It is as if the adult self, in all of its maturity, wisdom and steadfastness, that this is not the pinnacle of achievement, but rather it is the center from which ongoing development can happen.

However at the same time we may think of new development, or the “growth zone”, as being something that we have to force ourselves to do. No! our engagement in this way, if rooted in a sense of, “I am only going to do what I want to do”, where spontaneity, creativity, playfulness, not taking oneself to seriously, taking risks, all are factored in to what is happening outside of our comfort zone. To trust this approach, and to tap into this zone of our unformed extending self is so wonderful, as I think I have experienced, and where “education” is coming from not just filling up with information, but “drawing out” which according to Francis Weller, is the meaning of the root word Educare. So rather than seeing the growth zone as being a hardship, it is rather that which we are standing on with strength of our maturity, that seeks to thrive, in the spirit of pleasure, novelty and fulfillment. And as this reaches out, it begins to take shape as new growth.

Is Trump showing us just how intensely debilitating it is to carry deep unprocessed and unresolved shame? Is this what is happening on the big stage for us these days?

Reflections on Cohen testimony. I tuned into today’s testimony, and it is dawning on me, maybe it’s obvious, but that the profile of Trump, as brought into greater living color by Cohen, is that Trump is run by a profoundly debilitating obsession with escaping from deep levels of shame. He will do anything to look bigger, richer, greater and that he is absolutely driven to avoid his deep shame, by any means necessary. His wanting to build the biggest building in Europe, The Moscow Trump Hotel, that was more and more criminal as he pursues it even during the campaign. He sells a picture of himself that is the most expensive sale at the auction that day because he, through Cohen, set it up to pay the buyer back after the sale just so he can boast about how valuable his portrait was. “Narcissism” is rooted ultimately in deep shame. His obsession with the big wall as his legacy. His obsession that his inaugural audience was bigger than anybody else’s. Inflating his personal wealth by billions. He is fearful that he will look dumb or that he can’t read very well. It is like he is totally consumed with running in the other direction from his shame. It is like he is intensely hurting but he acts out (hates on everybody else) instead of working through it. His chronic lies he can’t help because it is so engrained in him to deflect any hint of his shame. As a therapist, I wonder how he survived a father who berated him to his core, where such a profound state of deep shame came to interfere with a normal standard of functioning as an adult. This man is so debilitated by this, affecting everything. This is why his psyche is the main thing going on in his presidency. He can’t do much else.

SO… what if Trump had a revelation that he was ok just the way he was, no matter the size, the accomplishments, the bank account? What if he had a catharsis of his shame, showing up to be felt, and expressed where true healing could occur? We are a forgiving loving people when it comes down to it. What if Trump had a metanoia, a turn around to where he was embraced with true love by others to where he could once again feel vulnerable and authentic. What if Cohen’s own catharsis of self reflection could help Trump do the same? What if his whole presidency then became one based on unconditional love towards each person for just how they are and policies oriented to helping each to flourish.

And may this happen to me as well.

Here we have how the dynamics of wounding, based on age difference (Trump’s fathers emotional brutality) is core to the perpetuation of the patriarchy. Trump was born not a patriarch, not a racist, not a misogynist, he was forged to be this in the crucible of his family system.

Radical healing and change occurs in this territory.

Good morning.

We live in a time of great risk and great possibility.

When elementary school kids go into Diane Feinstein’s office and put on a Sunrise Movement display about how this seasoned politician is unable to recognize just how serious this problem of climate change is. This is the power of the youth voice.

The underlying disfunction of our society has become so out of balance, threatening humanity on such a fundamental level. Our mainstream culture is like the frog in the pot that is getting hotter but we don’t have the capacity to jump out before we become frog soup.

It is the view through the eyes of a fresh new generation that has the clarity to call it out. They are not yet dissociated into an adult world view. The less acculturated outlook of young people is not caught in the confusion and fog of business as usual. Can you believe how this group of kids exposed Diane’s complacency in a way that it is headline news on all the major news outlets today?!  This youth movement is so powerful.

But this is not just about young people. This is about youthful consciousness.

Diane Feinstein, what would it be like if you had an awakening moment, when suddenly your heart opened to how you might have felt when you were a 5 year old, for example. On your first day of school, perhaps. Eyes filled with trepidation, wonder and the feeling of unlimited possibilities that come as your imagination makes play dolls come alive.

Yes Diane, you called out Kavanaugh for his egregious offenses, you have towed a quasi progressive line. But we live in a new era where this is just not going to cut it. The time is now for the natural resource of our youthful spirit to lead the way in imagining a viable future for humanity and this planet. Diane, please join us.