this is for the seekers and learners everywhere, in their exact uniqueness in this eternal now. excuse the long post.- the egos pathology is inherently in sympathy with the psyches individuation- patricia berry -our emotional symptoms, neurotic habits, and life problems are precious sources of life and individuality. to be modern is to worship at the alter of health. we look forward to the day when we will be fully balanced and adjusted. we believe we will have arrived there when trouble vanishes and we feel chronically carefree. this reasonable assumption compels many to read self help books and to trust in psychotherapy. it accounts for our enshrinement of medicine and for the therapeutic philosophy that characterizes the modern mind. we are hellbent on being healthy and on fixing anything and everything that appears broken, including a broken life. behind this attitude lies a salvational fantasy, the hope that we may be saved from those aspects of human life that seem unfortunate and remain an obstacle to the carefree existence we see in our daydreams. the trouble with this attitude is that the healthier we feel, the less reflective we become, the more our sense of reality zooms into the ether and our humanity recedes. when i look back on my life, i see a long train of mistakes and failures. remembering them is painful, and i hope i dont have to endure many more of them. yet i can also see how each of those failures helped to shape me and my life, such as it is. late pleasures required earlier pain, and the creative, happy elements in my life now would not exist without the grace of former failures. i dont mean to criticize the desire for happiness, but only to point out that it has a companion-the necessity of suffering. put these two together and we have a complete view of life, one carved out of blissful desires and painful failures. i dont look for a midpoint where all is in order. such a delicate balance would be flat and pallid. i dont expect the pleasures to offset the sorrows. each independently, in unequal measure, offers vitality. patrica berrys specific contribution is to help us see that our symptoms point toward the future and promise a transformation of failure to form. i have always been shy and reserved-an embarrassing weakness i try to cover up. i have been criticized for it, and all of my life people have in encouraged me to be different. indeed, in recent years strangers have offered many suggestions for my improvement. but although i would enjoy a cure for this malady, i am attached to it. it helps me work. i seem able to absorb failures and have no need to provide answers for the many questions that appear before me. some may take this application of my personal shyness as a fault, but i see some positive outcomes. i remember once in a group discussion james hillman was celebrating the souls pathologies. i supported his stance by saying how important it is to safeguard our symptoms. a man in the group came up to me afterward and said, did i hear you right? did you speak in favor of preserving our symptoms? how could a therapist, of all people, make such an odd remark? our neuroses are the raw material out of which an interesting personality may be crafted. they are sometimes dangerous and debilitating but nontheless valuable. they are the basic stuff of the soul in need of lifelong refinement. working this annoying and embarrassing material for a lifetime is a realistic work compared with the search for psychological hygiene-ridding ourselves of failure and confusion. not wallowing in our limitations but creatively dealing with them as resources for a vital life- the prima materia of the alchemists- we arrive not at shallow self acceptance, but at profound love of the soul, which, with its rich mixture of good and bad, is the starting point of a creative life. -thomas moore
Posted on: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 15:03:40 +0000
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