Few words have moved me more than the following written by poet and author Ellen Bass,
“to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.”
― Ellen Bass
I read those words and something inside of me opened up and whispered, “Yes. Yes! This is our most necessary practice, our deepest calling -to take our own ordinary/extraordinary lives into our arms and hold them close to our hearts. Even when they hurt. Especially when they hurt…
Krista Tippett interviewed neuroscientist Richard Davidson in an episode entitled, “Investigating Healthy Minds” on one of my favorite public broadcasting programs, Being
On the program Davidson spoke with Tippett about how discoveries in neuroscience are demonstrating how we can change our brains in ways that can not only improve the quality of our experiences, but can also significantly improve the quality of our lives.
I encourage you to listen to the broadcast and will include here Davidson’s comments on psychotherapy copied from the broadcast transcript.
“Ms. Tippett: So, you know, I know that you’ve been honored by the American Psychological Association, and I wonder how does your work inform the work of psychotherapy? You know, are you learning things about actually changing the brain, about influencing the mind and influencing ourselves biologically with behaviors that might, I don’t know, circumvent, transcend, or somehow enrich the ways we already know to work with, who we are and how healthy we are and how we live?
Dr. Davidson: Well, you know, I’d like to believe that some of the work that we do may have some implications or relevance for kind of on-the-ground, in-the-trenches psychotherapy or related strategies for behavior change in several ways. One is a kind of meta-level which helps a client or patient understand that, based upon everything we know about the brain in neuroscience, that change is not only possible, but change is actually the rule rather than the exception. It’s really just a question of which influences we’re going to choose for our brain. But our brain is wittingly or unwittingly being continuously shaped. Another thing is the idea of practice. The classical model of Western psychotherapy which is, you know, a client coming to a therapist for an hour a week for a 50-minute session without doing daily practice in between just flies in the face of everything we know about the brain and plasticity.
Ms. Tippett: That’s really interesting, isn’t it?
Dr. Davidson: It is. So if we want to make real change, that’s not a good prescription for doing it. If we want to make real change, more systematic practice is necessary, in my view. This is something that comes directly from neuroscience. And I think that certain kinds of psychological therapies are now understanding that, so certain kinds of cognitive therapies, for example, do assign specific kinds of homework or practice for people to engage in on a daily basis. So I think there’s growing recognition of that.”
As a therapist, I’m acutely aware of the limitations of psychotherapy without practice, and the growing body of knowledge that supports these findings provides challenges and hope to therapists and clients alike. May we embrace them both.
I think the following, written by Pema Chodron, is particularly relevant today.
“The whole globe is shook up, so what are you going to do when things are falling apart? You’re either going to become more fundamentalist and try to hold things together, or you’re going to forsake the old ambitions and goals and live life as an experiment, making it up as you go along.”
I am a risk averse planner who is working very hard to embrace Chodron’s wisdom. As more and more falls out of my control, I am learning to let go of old expectations, fears, and unspoken demands that things go a certain way in order for me to feel safe and secure. I am striving to keep my mind and heart open to new realities, new challenges, and new possibilities. And the more I am able to do this, the more it seems I’m able to feel a powerful “YES” rising up from a very deep place inside of myself, moving through and beyond my anxiety, my uncertainty and my fear….
I just learned that Theodore Roszack died this past July in his California home at the age of 77 from liver cancer.
I’ll miss him. I’ll miss his wisdom, his perspective, his call to therapists everywhere to respond to the “madness involved in urban industrial society that has to do with our lack of balance and integration with the natural environment…” He urged us to join those ecologists and environmentalists who warn that we’re on a path of self-destruction. He implored us not to remain so focused on our clients’ individual issues that we failed to confront the wounds inflicted by a “deeply toxic” culture. In an interview with Jeffrey Mishlove on Thinking Allowed, he encouraged us to find out why ordinary people are engaging in behaviors that are so destructive. To ask, “how did we lose our intimate connection to the natural world?” And “what drives us so fiercely towards material gain at the expense of community, spirituality, health, morality, and so very much more?” And he adviced us to listen very carefully to the answers as closely and as genuinely as we listen to the stories of our clients.
He pointed out that while our mental health system was focused on trauma, pathology and illness for so long, there have always been those who’ve maintained that, “the deeper you look inside, the more reason you find for joy, for celebration; that the foundations for human nature are clean and good and innocent and creative.” He asked us, as mental health professionals, to lead the way in helping people move away from the burdens of shame and guilt and original sin and towards what psychoanalyst Eric Fromme called, biophilia — the love of humanity and life. If we were to fall in love with the beauty that’s contained both within the natural world and within ourselves, we’d be far more proactive in caring for ourselves, our planet, and one another.
In an interview on PBS which focused on ideas from his first book, an examination of the revolutionary youth movement of the sixties entitled, “The Making of a Counter Culture,” Roszac suggested that if the ethos of the sixties had prevailed today, “it would be a world, where people lived gently on the planet without the sense that they have to exploit nature or make war upon nature in order to find basic security. It would be a simpler way of life, less urban, less consumption-oriented, and much more concerned about spiritual values, about companionship, friendship, community. Community was one of the great words of this period, getting together with other people, solving problems, enjoying one another’s company, sharing ideas, values, insights. And if that’s not what life is all about, if that’s not what the wealth is for, then we are definitely on the wrong path.”
He called on therapists such as myself in his book, “The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology,” and he called on boomers such as myself in his last book, “The Making of an Elder Culture: Reflections on the Future of America’s Most Audacious Generation,” to relaim the spirit that was very much alive in the sixties, the one that “questioned rather deeply the cultural standards of the time. He asked us now that we are becoming elders to revive the energy and commitment we had back when we were young to work to birth a better and more just world.
I will miss you Theodore. I took you for granted. I was too self absobed to fully hear your message. And now, as is all too often the case with we humans, you got my full attention only when I found out that you had left me. I’m listening now with both a sad and grateful heart….
I sat with a young woman recenlty who continues to suffer from events that occurred long ago. She shared with me that she longs to be happy, but doesn’t know how. Of course, there is no simple answer that I can offer her. There is a quote by Robert Holden that I shared with her on that achingly beautiful late summer morning, one in which there was no place that she needed to go, and nothing on the afternoon’s agenda that she needed to do. The rest of the day was hers to shape as she chose. The quote was, ““Suffering is a decision not to let go of the past yet. Happiness is a decision to step into the present now.”
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Theo quan niệm của một số tôn giáo và nền văn hóa, con người gồm thể xác (mang tính vật chất) và linh hồn (mang tính phi vật chất). Khi thể xác chết, linh hồn xuất khỏi thể xác. Nếu linh hồn đó không có cơ hội đầu thai hoặc nơi trú ngụ chung với các linh hồn khác mà tương tác với cõi thực có con người sẽ gọi là “ma”, “hồn ma”, “quỷ”; nhưng nếu các phần phi vật chất đó tương tác với cõi thực của con người theo tình cảm, theo trách nhiệm được giao của các tôn giáo thì lại gọi là “hồn”, “linh hồn”, “thánh”, “thần”, “thiên sứ” .
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Spirituality, Therapy, and the Good Life 