Q: Depends on what she meant by Just do it.. I want to highly recommend The Road Less Travelled, by F. Scott Peck, if you havent read it yet. Yes, Campbell said Follow your bliss. Austin Correia Bob, I am probably realizing that M. Scott Peck was the first author Ive ever read. And the second was probably Nathaniel Branden. I first read The Road Less Traveled sometime in 1984-5 at the age of 20-21 from the Jesuit Rev. Philip Terrasa for the delaying gratification principle. The second time I read him after some ten years it was for the work of attention thesis that subliminally remained with me through the years. By then I had read Simone Weils writings (1986-7?) where she points out, as a believer that God (or for the secularist, the sense of the Whole) is the only proper object of our attention and then she writes that the right use of school studies is to train the attention. Recently when called upon to address an A.A. meeting in Nagpur for the first time in the Pioneer Group, I began with, Brothers, your attention is your wealth. Probably my best and most important theme of all. If you have any doubt, ask the advertisers. I was wondering whether you are giving me a message. Just a few months ago, a Hindu Maharashtrian Grandmother (shes 84) in whose house I dined, recounted to me how when her sons shone in the exams she would recommend to them that they tone down their exultation because there were neighbouring students who did not do too well. I come from a background, as I told priests of a deanery in Mumbai some seven years ago, where I mistook the vow of poverty for the vow of misery. I have had umpteen occasions on my timeline afore, to speak of hit-and-run-cowardice gurus. Sometime towards the end of 1997 when I had my first breakdown my hire-up came to the mission station in a remote rural setting in Maharashtra and without even wanting to listen to my side of the story - I had asked him - decided to send me to my psychiatrist, Dr. Trevour B. DNetto after making a vain attempt to change my psychiatrist saying that he was too old!! I asked him to look up a booklet on Total Healing written by the doctor, who had given me to read it in manuscript form. The next day, overnight, he handed the booklet back to me and told me I could go to him. He pointed out to a sentence that the doctor had written from his experiences in the introduction, To those who dont have faith, no explanation is possible, to those who have faith, no explanation is necessary. Wow! To my confusion and consternation years later, when in therapy with a clinical psychologist - I had asked Dr. DNetto, Doctor, I need a text book on psychology. When the time comes we will see, he had replied - she introduced me to Nathaniel Branden (and Anthony Robbins, You should be reading Anthony Robbins!) - I found that Nathaniel Branden takes exception PRECISELY TO THIS CLAIM. Since I was in a city away from the hire-up in the headquarters of the province, after about two to two and half-months of being in intense therapy for the neurosis - I had told a friend then, that when I take bath, I feel I am washing a dead body - I telephoned the hire-up for some of my needs and his first words in reply were, Oh! Youre still there! I have had more sophisticated hit and run cowardice gurus in my life. I am fortunate because I have had more true mentors and true womentors in my life than tormentors. They balance each other out. I once took exception to the way I was treated by a rather widely known-in-the-city [tor]mentor and was discussing the same with my psychologist. [In spite of seeing my sorry state during the total of forty days I had spent with him, he had failed to recommend me to a psychologist. That sorry state included this: Every time I went for a walk in the hills during my retreats with his guidance, and looked at a woman, it felt like meeting with an accident. I never told him that. I was more interested in finding out what the Germans felt and feel for having conceded to Hitler. What I am saying is that my eyes would probably have told the story of a dog receiving a hideous whacking to anyone who had really cared to look into them. All that this hit-and-run cowardice guru would do was - and I would readily kneel down for it - literally place his hands on me (my head) and pronounce, This is my well-beloved son, with whom I am well-pleased! Repeatedly. She simply asked me, Would you do the same? I replied, If I had to do it, I would ask my ward, Are you comfortable at every stage. She pointed out to me, that I had learned my lesson. I later went to this tormentor and reported to him that as someone known to be a spiritual guide, he (was professionally bound to,) should have recommended me to a psychologist. The next time I will do it, he replied. The kids in the by-now-famous experiment who postponed eating their marshmallows (?) had decided that delaying their gratification was worth it. And they were comfortable with what they were doing. It was NOT indefinite postponement. I have had occasion to distinguish between comfort and luxury. Luxury is the absence of difficulty. Comfort results from ethical ease with the difficulty one is facing and that includes the knowledge that one can if necessary stop the effort, take rest or wind up the adventure because of its now-obvious and current unreasonableness or ethical ease with the consequences of ones actions. One of the earliest and most prevalent definitions of theology in catholic circles is faith in search of understanding. It is important when guiding a ward through the torments that accrue to us in lifes journey to show how following a path that is indicated - authentic assertiveness - is worth it in the end precisely because it frees us from such tormentors and so results in a conscious awareness that is predisposed to bliss. Bob?
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 21:10:02 +0000
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