Dave’s ¿Truths?

As noted with ¿Truths? Part 1, I am choosing to offer these thoughts simply to encourage growth. I submit them simply for self-study as an example of one person’s searching — such self-study is a very powerful way to come to know yourself. The list of these truths is long and I will submit it over a number of blogs, 25-30 brief statements per posting.

As previously noted, a comment on language: I am not an advocate of scientific materialism, the philosophic ontology that only science can address truth, and that energy-matter is the only domain of experience in the universe. I value scientific methodology highly, but the overall terminology of scientific materialism has many hidden presuppositions. As much as possible, I will identify them in these posts.

(247 — Continuing from previous) When I attempt to change the third limb, I am both willful and stuck, generally without love or play!

(248) Unhealthy functioning manifests as chronic anxiety within the system. Symptoms of such a system include:

• lack of well-differentiated leadership,
• herding (togetherness in competition with individuality),
• displacement of blame (decreasing personal responsibility),
• reactivity (deregulation), not available to experience and insight,
• sabotage proportional to poor leadership,
• hostility proportional to lack of self-regulations, and
• a quick-fix mentality.

(249) My reassurance is a way of telling the other that I have not heard them.

The other is likely telling me of their struggle with a human issue. How can I possibly predict the future outcome that will be experienced, especially by the other, let alone by myself?

(250) My stuckness is a measure of my trust: the more stuck, the less trust!

(251) Sulking and resenting are major forms of being willful and stuck!

(252) A useful summary that says much of how we create pain is:

Don’t bitch; don’t blame; Don’t panic; don’t shame.

(253) Every behavior has an appropriate context, a time and place when it is effective, or at least useful.

(254) A major part of the journey is dealing with the unfinished business of what I have been given in life: my natural talents, my family of origin, and the consequences of my past choices.

Especially, these impact my major relationships, my friendships and my marriage(s).

(255) The family is the fundamental context for the individual, for health and disease and growth.

It is from my family that I learn my cultural models and my unique intergenerational mythology, my modeling and imprinting of who I should be (and against which I define myself).

(256) Who taught you how to be in a family?

The obvious answer is the nuclear and extended family. Yet how healthy were they in their own lives?

And most of the learning seems to occur in the first few months or years of life, long before we have any choice as to what we learn.

(257) Given this, if the nuclear and extended family are unhealthy (witness the current divorce rate and the extent of family violations), how can the system be impacted so that children are exposed to healthy lessons.

I don’t know! The unhealthy aspects of our culture are so interconnected.

(258) I grow. My most obvious growth took place as a child, in the emotional field of my family of origin.

It is however a life-long process, one of becoming an individual, able to stand alone yet interdependent on others, living the rules that work for me, and rejecting those that do not.

(259) The child grows and learns many skills.

(260) The covert skills are:

• how to be crazy (learned by modeling the behavior of caretakers),
• how to avoid the pain of the craziness of others (learned by modeling the behavior of caretakers), and
• new ways of avoiding pain (learned from his/her coping with the pain of all this)!

(261) Growth requires that I risk change! Change is often painful!

(262) Life is painful, and we avoid pain.

Until we truly learn that pain is inevitable, and life is to be lived!

Then it doesn’t matter that life is painful.

(263) Life is not always, or even generally, painful, nor do we avoid pain always.

Life is in balance—however, in large measure, we attempt to grasp the positives, and avoid the negatives.

At least, until such time as we grow in maturity.

(264) Substance abuse (alcohol, drugs, caffeine, work, any avoidance) is just another avoidance.

Complicated, though, by the dangers and consequences of the substance itself!

(265) The primary role of the family is nurture and re-creation.

(266) Parenting is the process of giving a child roots (nurture and rules) and wings (risks and the re-creation of the next cycle of life).

It is impossible to parent correctly or perfectly. As the child grows, the rules must be tested, and frequently rejected. Life must be risked!

(267) The best parenting occurs when the parent does not violate the child, and yet the parent lives his or her own truth!

And allows the rules to be known and spoken — and broken so as to allow learning.

(268) Very few of us have had perfect parents, and very few of us have identified our own truths.

In our current society, most of us have been violated in some way, and we continue the cycle by violating others, especially our children.

(269) I want to end this cycle.

I believe that this is best done by identifying and living my own truths. And being honest about my mis-takes.

(270) I need to love my children for who they are, not who I think they should be!

And I have a responsibility to them to provide an adequate model for them, a mirror for them to seek their own growth.

(271) Children have a right to be heard; adults (especially parents) have a responsibility to be clear! and generally consistent!

However, the family is not a democracy. Although children have a right to be heard, their wants and desires must be evaluated within the parameters of safety and equitable distribution of resources.

(272) If I will listen, I will learn that children have an incredible wisdom; they are not yet stuck with the cultural models, especially the ‘shoulds’!

(273) Good health (emotional and physical) is an interactive process of living my truths within my emotional network.

When I define myself, and choose to live my truths, others are also able to do so.

(274) Despite genetic anomalies and biological predisposition and genuine accidents, most of us, most of the time, create the health and disease that we experience.

(275) To say “yes” to life means that I am authentically emotional (angry, sad, sexually excited, joyous, scared-excited), and authentically in action.

I need also hold rage, aloneness, ecstasy, and terror without being trapped.

(276) My emotions are the way in which my body experiences and expresses my beliefs—the outcome of the delay loop that is my mind.

When my beliefs do not match what life is presenting, my “negative” emotions surface. Some part of me has been lost, and I hurt.

Especially when my core beliefs are challenged, my emotions are very volatile! and very powerful!

This is simply information—often very unpleasant though!

(277) Some of my core beliefs are quite infantile!

These beliefs arose from how I experienced life in my family, when I was 1-2-3 years old! Frequently these beliefs are inconsistent and quite impractical to adult living.

Learning what these beliefs are, and making better choices, is a major task of living.

(278) What gets my attention gets me!

Focusing on others, blaming others, gets me pain.

Focusing on my own process of living, of making better choices, frequently gets me completeness.

To be continued.