Okay, I am John Breeding, it's Tuesday, September 16. It's a beautiful day in Austin, Texas, the cold front coming through that is real good. With that I am going to give you some good news kind of balance some of the rants on various severe problems that we have in the world today. These little ideas that are guidelines for me in working with people are reason for optimism at least with working with people at individual level; reason for optimism in terms of dealing with people in severe states of mind, extreme states of mind or whatever level of disturbance. These are kind of guiding principles are that are helpful.
I have got four of them here okay and here is number one. I believe that human beings have an inborn urge toward wholeness and healing. It's like at every level, at a physical level it's called you imbibe a poison and you purge by vomiting or diarrhea whatever your body wants to get rid of it. The same thing is true in an analogous way with any kind of toxin, and an insult, a degradation, a trauma emotionally that's recorded it has an effect, but there is a natural urge to release that and heal from that. There is a natural urge to become more whole, more aware, more complete, and more conscious. So in that sense there is always stuff coming up, because there is always a greater possibility of awareness in expanding consciousness.
The challenge is just a trust that and to relax with it and now see everything that's coming up with an evidence of a symptom in a pathology and go to suppress it, which is what drugs do and that kind of frantic reassurance and stuff like that. It's like relax, trust, and allow that process to unfold, because it's ready to happen. That's number one.
Number two, and these all relate to each other and this is what I was taught as a first law of transformation or the first law of spirit. It's called acceptance. The law of acceptance is real simple, but it's fundamental to understand, because we just tend to fight against it and it feels counterintuitive to accept the things that we don't like about ourselves for example. Because the law is that in order for something to fully change or transform at a deep level, you have to first accept it for what it is. Like if you have a tendency towards greediness and you say that's bad, I shouldn't be greedy to yourself, you are bad person. So you reject that and you try to be totally generous and giving all the time alright. It doesn't work ultimately.
You have to accept and somehow learn to love yourself in that place and then, you can unfold towards being a more generous person. Or if there is a deep dark secret that you are ashamed of and you just can't look at it and whatever, you have to find a way to love and accept yourself even place. That is easy to love and accept yourself in the places that we love and accept ourselves, and that we are proud of right. But to love and accept yourself in a place that's hurt or embarrassed or whatever, that's why ultimately and some way shame is a feeling that is unbearable to be exposed and so you just want to hide it. The paradox or the counterintuitive ideas that you have to expose that, in order to heal you have to tell that secret. Be smart about who you tell you it to; find people who would love and accept and be supportive of you in your healing process. But it's the sharing of that secret is exposing of it and being accepted in that place. Sometimes that helps to get a little outer acceptance first, it makes it a little easier to love and accept ourselves, but ultimately it comes with that.
So again it's accepting whatever comes forward, because then it evolves and changes; that's just the way it works. Correlate that as a saying what you resist, persist. The first law of transformation is acceptance.
This third thing is a different direction, but it's related and it's from the realm of mythology, Joseph Campbell the famous mythologist guide, put a book together 60 some odd years ago, called the Hero's Journey, but it's basically sort of a description of this what you call monomyth, is this myth called the hero's journey that exist in all these different cultures and he just sort them put him together and said this is common motif called the hero's journey. It happens at a individual level and happens at a huge level, but that individual experience has his connection to the collective consciousness into the universal human experience, and it's basically a process of withdrawal, initiation, and return; real simple way of thinking about it.
The whole idea and this is why my book 'The Necessity of Madness' really points to is that you have to go through these period of madness where you are withdrawn from the world or from the normal means of production in world in order to work on yourself, in order to go through a transformational process, in order to go through a deep change, in order to -- you go through upheaval and it seems like chaos and it seems anxious, scaring, or kind of frustrating or tense or frightening or whatever. But you withdraw from the world. Depression is an urge towards withdrawal from the world.
What do we do in our society? Oh, you can't be depressed, take a Prozac and get back to work tomorrow. You mother dies you can have the weekend of grieve and get back to graduate school on Monday. There is a no space a lot of times for withdrawal, and sometimes that needs to be a deep withdrawal and that gets interpreted as mental illness. Instead it could be a transformational process if it's allowed, because during that withdrawal the mythological teaching is that you go through to initiation. You are initiated into experiences that you are unfamiliar with into ways of seeing that you couldn't see before, into ways of feeling that you couldn't see before, into possibilities.
Initiation is an ordeal, it hurt sometimes, it's scary sometimes, it's dangerous sometimes, and it's threatening sometimes. You go through emotional upheaval, you go through mental upheaval, you go through uncertainty about what's up with what, and sometimes you are not able to function fully while you go through that. So it's like giving space, that's what genuine asylum is. It's a safe sacred space that allows this process to happen, because the teaching is that at the other end of it, if you are fortunate, there is no guarantee, you come out with a new space and a new place and with gifts that you've received through this initiation. That you returned to the world into the community, that there is a real value to the community ultimately for allowing people to go through this transformational process, because they return with gifts and awareness and insights and possibilities and renewed energies and everything else.
So a lot of people say that depression is bad as it was. It was really a gift, because I've really realized that this work I was doing is X, being a manager didn't cut it. And now I am on my path to be a rock star, or whatever.
The last one is just real practical and some of you listened me before know that I kind of like the basic theory of Re-evaluation Counseling just because it's real simple, and it holds a lot of power. There is positive view of human nature that we were inherently intelligent and we can figure things out, we are intelligent, inherently energetic and zestful for life. We are inherently connected, we want to be connected, we want to be relational in a good way. But what happens is when we get hurt physically or emotionally, it causes distress, pain, distress, distortion; and when that happens, our true nature is obscured. We don't think as well, we don't relate as well, instead of intelligent thoughtful and loving, we kind of maybe get a little stupid, it mean-spirited and unkind or withdrawn.
But the good news is just like there is an inherent inborn urge towards wholeness in completion, there is also inherent inborn mechanism for recovery or reemergence from distress and it's real simple, it's just called emotional expression, emotional release, or RC calls it discharge. When you are hurt -- when a child hurts her knee, he needs to crawl in mamma's lap, or about their ally and they have cry, and then they hop up and feel better. When you have this frightening experience, you shake it and tremble, and you get that fear out of your system. Then you are able to see and think. When you lose something or someone you love, you cry, go through grief and you cry. When you are insulted or frustrated you storm and tense from anger, righteous indignation.
Now something about allowing that expression that tends to restore true nature and lead to a reevaluation of the situation in a way that's more expanded and more thoughtful. It's real simple all it translates into is relax and allow the expression and don't translate a lot, lot of tears, as clinical depression. Don't translate a lot, lot of anger as whatever disorder. Don't translate a lot of fear as a panic disorder, and a clinical problem in a mental illness. It's not a pathology, it maybe a challenging situation, there maybe neither some resource, and support brought to bear that kind of create to say space for people that they are going through an intense process, it takes a while. But you can trust that dynamic if you come from these principles of the idea of an inborn urge toward wholeness.
The idea of accepting and allowing, the idea of allowing a space for withdrawal, because that's the beginning of a hero's journey, and the idea of just allowing a free expression, keeping it safe, nobody gets hurt, but allowing that expression, because that's the beginning of reemergence and a restoration of true nature, which is really pretty wonderful in human beings. So hopefully I think those were some good thoughts.
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