Special others

Selfhood is not complete without special “others” who listen, accept, guide, support, or hurt us. If these relationships do not exist, the mind will imagine their existence, attaching them to whomever seems to fit the illusions – good or bad. We create the relations and dramas that confirm our current self-image.

Back to invisible

We’ve gone from the “many” being seen and heard for the first time, to being even less visible than before, against the huge mass of smart phones and competing voices in cyberspace. The online experience has moved us between both extremes in just twenty years time.

Autonomy

Gaining insight or autonomy of any kind involves breaking away from someone’s box of rules and protective embrace, and sometimes incurring their wrath. Each “breaking away” is another piece of us that transforms from child to adult – a painful but liberating process.

Shades of therapy

Following a decade of failed relationships and hostile confrontations, you begin wondering if something is wrong with you, or whether everyone you choose to associate with has a collective mental health issue. So, you go to a shrink – referred to you on Reddit – who blankets you with his, her, or their personal countertransference issues, while trying to determine whether your portrayal of the real you, or what you thought was the real you, is authentic or a subterfuge serving to hide some rather unsavory aspects of an “unconscious” real you, otherwise known as the shadow.

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Breakdown #1

The first confrontation with my mortality was at age 27, after the sudden death of my uncle. For the first time, I felt the universe to be a very cold and impersonal place. My faith was badly shaken, and I felt very alone and vulnerable. I experienced a breakdown as a result, one that lasted for several weeks, until the pain finally exhausted itself.

Eventually, I recovered a sense of spirituality in my life, as the idea of an impersonal universe was both incomprehensible and intolerable to me.