Stephen Khamsi, Ph.D, May 11, 2005
Swords and Knives A review of Alice Miller's The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effect of Cruel Parenting.
There is an unwritten law, an unacknowledged commandment, that adults may exploit children in extreme ways and in accordance with their needs and neuroses. There is, moreover, a social taboo against recognizing any of this. Parents are protected while children are sacrificed.
Tragically, much of psychology is comprised of nonsense and noise...rats, statistics, medications. So we are fortunate to receive the rare and exceptional work of Alice Miller. Her most recent volume, The Body Never Lies, continues one of psychology's most important collections.
Dr. Miller's chief concern has always been childhood suffering, its denial, and the lasting effects on individuals and on societies. The focus of her current book? The denial of real emotions—the tension between what we really feel and what we "should" feel—and the enduring effects on the body. Real feelings are direct and visceral, and real feelings conflict with morality. The author's hope is to reduce personal suffering, isolation and tragedy.
Our bodies, according to Miller, keep an exact record of everything we experience. Literally. In our cells. Our unconscious minds, moreover, register our complete biography. If emotional nourishment was absent during childhood, for example, our bodies will forever crave it. "Negative" emotions, to take another corporal example, are important signals emitted by the body. If ignored, the body will emit new and stronger signs and signals in an attempt to make itself heard. Eventually there is a rebellion. At this point, illness often results. The body is tenacious as it fights our denial of reality.
Dr. Miller was moved to write this book after she heard about a mother who deliberately used medical preparations to provoke illness in her children, which ultimately resulted in death. This condition is known by the psychiatric community as Factitious Disorder by Proxy (FDP), and is more widely known as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MBP). Most commonly, MBP is a pattern in which caretakers—usually mothers—deliberately induce physical problems in their preschool children, present their ailing offspring for medical attention, and then deny knowing anything about the cause of the child's malady. This is, of course, a most egregious example of an all-too-common betrayal.
What betrayal? We know that child abuse and child neglect are pervasive and destructive. And we know that violence toward children is stored within them and, later in life, they will turn the violence on themselves—in depression, drug addiction, illness, suicide, or some other form of early death. And, according to Tears for Fears, "when life begins with needles and pins, it ends with swords and knives." Sometimes these swords and knives are directed at other people—sometimes at whole nations.
In The Body Never Lies, Miller pays particular attention to the Fourth Commandment—the edict that one must honor one's parents, no matter their conduct. For thousands of years, this commandment—in concert with our personal denial of early maltreatment—has led us toward repression, emotional detachment, illness and suicide. This Commandment, suggests the author, is a species of morality "that consigns our genuine feelings and our own personal truth to an unmarked grave." While many of the Ten Commandments remain valid, the Fourth Commandment is diametrically opposed to the laws of psychology.
To illustrate her ideas, Miller provides brief portrayals of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzche, Friedrich von Schiller, Virginia Woolf, Arthur Rimbaud, Yukio Mishima, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Saddam Hussein, and Adolf Hitler.
What do these writers, dictators, serial killers and others have in common? They all lived their lives in accord with the Fourth Commandment. They honored their parents, even though and even while their parents did them harm. Each individual sacrificed their truth in the unanswered hope that they would be loved, and each died in denial and isolation, tragically unable to admit to their own personal truths. These lives and these stories lend credence to Miller's argument that moral laws lead to repression and to emotional detachment.
And what about these unlived emotions? Emotions have a basis in reality—they are reactions to neglect, abuse, or a lack of nourishing communications. "Negative emotions" are important signals emitted by the body in attempts to make itself heard. The banished emotions reassert themselves—real needs and feelings make their return to the body.
Sadly, many of us were unloved, neglected and abused. The remedy? While there are no simple answers, we do know that the body is healed when one admits to personal truths and to real feelings. But how do we admit to such truths and to such feelings? We need to feel our pain and our powerlessness so that we can, paradoxically, become less pained and more powerful. We need to admit to our "negative" emotions and change them into meaningful feelings. And we need to see through poisonous pedagogy in order to embrace and to embody integrity, awareness, responsibility, and loyalty to oneself. Our greatest personal task is to learn the difference between love and attachment...to extend our love when it's right, but to break off attachments when they are destructive. Our greatest therapeutic task is to locate an enlightened witness—a mature and helpful individual, who can be fully present without judging, is indispensable in this process of psychological integration and personal liberation.
Techniques of converting "negative" emotions into "positive" emotions will fail. Why? Because these manipulations reinforce denial, rather than leading to honest confrontations with one's authentic emotions. And forgiveness, Miller reminds us, has never had a healing effect. Preaching forgiveness is hypocritical, futile, and actively harmful. Harmful because the body doesn't understand moral precepts. One may rightly forgive their parents if they realize what they've done, though, if they apologize for the pain they've caused.
Still, Miller retains a hopeful view of the future. While society at present always sides with the parents, individual bodies are fighting against the lies. It's possible that our collective body may rise up and lead to a future society built on conscious awareness. First, though, we must jettison our "fundamentalist faith" in genetics and, I would add, pharmaceutical "miracles." With the help of a witness, each damaged individual needs to move through infantile fears and reject the illusion that our parents will save us. When we finally experience our real truths of being unloved, neglected and beaten; when we internally separate from our parents; when we experience love for the worthy child we once were...only then our bodies can experience rest and relief, and only then can we get on with the important business of real life.
Stephen Khamsi, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist in private practice in San Francisco.
Father, you were wrong
Re: Father, you were wrong
'In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer' - Albert Camus
Re: Father, you were wrong
Empathy is defined by Merriam-Webster as "understanding and vicariously experiencing the feelings and thoughts of another".
The gift of empathy is that it integrates mind and heart in the very same act as it brings together self and other. When empathy is ignored, we pay a hefty price on an individual level, in the form of depression, apathy, victimization and anger. On a social level, the price of crime, neglect, alienation, bullying, even war is paid. If empathy can be justly cultivated, improvement towards our emotional health becomes evident and with it our sense of strife is calmed and perhaps over time, even appeased.
Ones greatest task then, is to locate an enlightened witness who is willing to work toward cultivating their individual capacity towards true empathy. A non-judgmental, mature individual, who will be fully, and wholly present in such a process of psychological integration and personal liberation. One who is committed to another, by means of a strong will, to help lead them to honest confrontations with their individual authentic self as they encounter, one-on-one, each and every uprooted childhood emotion including, to name a few: abhorrence, abomination, agony, alarm, animosity, animus, antagonism, antipathy, apprehension, aversion, awe, bereaved, bitter, blue, blues, bother, cheerless, consternation, dejected, depression, despairing, despondent, detestation, disconsolate, disgust, dislike, dismal, dismay, distressed, doleful, down, downcast, dread, enmity, forlorn, fright, gloomy, glum, grief-stricken, grievance, grieved, gripe, hate, hatred, heartbroken, heartsick, heavyhearted, horror, hostility, hurting, ill will, irritant, languishing, loathing, low-spirited, lugubrious, malevolence, malignity, melancholy, misgiving, mislike, monstrosity, moody, morbid, morose, mournful, nastiness, nervousness, objection, out of sorts, pain, panic, pensive, pessimistic, rancor, rankling, repugnance, resentment, revenge, revulsion, sad, scorn, sick at heart, somber, sorrowful, sorry, spite, terror, trepidation, troubled, uneasiness, weeping, wistful, woebegone.
And when one is able to recognize, to really feel that love for the first time, of the worthy child they once were, that Love is surely a grace.
Are emotions something we are? Are we our feelings? What are their functions and do we utilize each and every one of them properly/effectively? I think the answer is essential for self-understanding. I am myself and that must include my feelings, and I must take responsibility for myself. Either we can own our emotions, or they will own us.
Free will is our rite of passage. We have the right to be free, to be autonomous, to make our own decisions. We have the right to be assertive, to be different, to stand out. We have the right to be strong, to actively articulate who it is, we are, to take hold of and courageously express our feelings. We have the right to be creatively unique. And thankfully, some of us have the right to our own space and privacy.
Many of us live our lives saddled with "yes" and "no". Relationships with others are bound by an excessive sense of duty and obligation. As pleasure and spontaneity begin to elude us, we battle the crazy inner demons of guilt and shame. Some of us loathe the heavy burdens of self-imposed responsibility. An exaggerated concern with "doing the right thing" restricts our every move, our way of thinking, our creativity, and our willingness to take risks.
This smothering environment leaves us with a negative perspective, with pessimism in our mouths and an enormous lack of self-confidence in our being. When we are consumed by "authority", we live defensively, as if afraid, and so we suffer dearly. When our own natural exuberance is crushed and spat upon, we lay wounded as though deserted. And unfortunately, some of us can only find it in ourselves to whine and complain instead of expressing that pent up anger directly.
It is said that Critical thinking involves determining the meaning and significance of what is observed or expressed, or, concerning a given inference or argument, determining whether there is adequate justification to accept the conclusion as true. We are free to accept, reject, or suspend judgment about such a claim. Critical thinking gives due consideration to the evidence, the context of judgment, the relevant criteria for making the judgment well, the applicable methods or techniques for forming the judgment, and the applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the problem and the question at hand. Critical thinking employs not only logic but other criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance and fairness.
As quoted by Maurice Sendak: "Alice Miller makes chillingly clear to the many what has been recognized only by the few: the extraordinary pain and psychological suffering inflicted on children under the guise of conventional childrearing."
And so now, being the proud mom of two kids, I am going to get on with the important business of my life, which includes them. I will hug them both and let them know, as I always do, that they are loved all the way to infinity and beyond.
Thanks Boss, for your previous post.
The gift of empathy is that it integrates mind and heart in the very same act as it brings together self and other. When empathy is ignored, we pay a hefty price on an individual level, in the form of depression, apathy, victimization and anger. On a social level, the price of crime, neglect, alienation, bullying, even war is paid. If empathy can be justly cultivated, improvement towards our emotional health becomes evident and with it our sense of strife is calmed and perhaps over time, even appeased.
Ones greatest task then, is to locate an enlightened witness who is willing to work toward cultivating their individual capacity towards true empathy. A non-judgmental, mature individual, who will be fully, and wholly present in such a process of psychological integration and personal liberation. One who is committed to another, by means of a strong will, to help lead them to honest confrontations with their individual authentic self as they encounter, one-on-one, each and every uprooted childhood emotion including, to name a few: abhorrence, abomination, agony, alarm, animosity, animus, antagonism, antipathy, apprehension, aversion, awe, bereaved, bitter, blue, blues, bother, cheerless, consternation, dejected, depression, despairing, despondent, detestation, disconsolate, disgust, dislike, dismal, dismay, distressed, doleful, down, downcast, dread, enmity, forlorn, fright, gloomy, glum, grief-stricken, grievance, grieved, gripe, hate, hatred, heartbroken, heartsick, heavyhearted, horror, hostility, hurting, ill will, irritant, languishing, loathing, low-spirited, lugubrious, malevolence, malignity, melancholy, misgiving, mislike, monstrosity, moody, morbid, morose, mournful, nastiness, nervousness, objection, out of sorts, pain, panic, pensive, pessimistic, rancor, rankling, repugnance, resentment, revenge, revulsion, sad, scorn, sick at heart, somber, sorrowful, sorry, spite, terror, trepidation, troubled, uneasiness, weeping, wistful, woebegone.
And when one is able to recognize, to really feel that love for the first time, of the worthy child they once were, that Love is surely a grace.
Are emotions something we are? Are we our feelings? What are their functions and do we utilize each and every one of them properly/effectively? I think the answer is essential for self-understanding. I am myself and that must include my feelings, and I must take responsibility for myself. Either we can own our emotions, or they will own us.
Free will is our rite of passage. We have the right to be free, to be autonomous, to make our own decisions. We have the right to be assertive, to be different, to stand out. We have the right to be strong, to actively articulate who it is, we are, to take hold of and courageously express our feelings. We have the right to be creatively unique. And thankfully, some of us have the right to our own space and privacy.
Many of us live our lives saddled with "yes" and "no". Relationships with others are bound by an excessive sense of duty and obligation. As pleasure and spontaneity begin to elude us, we battle the crazy inner demons of guilt and shame. Some of us loathe the heavy burdens of self-imposed responsibility. An exaggerated concern with "doing the right thing" restricts our every move, our way of thinking, our creativity, and our willingness to take risks.
This smothering environment leaves us with a negative perspective, with pessimism in our mouths and an enormous lack of self-confidence in our being. When we are consumed by "authority", we live defensively, as if afraid, and so we suffer dearly. When our own natural exuberance is crushed and spat upon, we lay wounded as though deserted. And unfortunately, some of us can only find it in ourselves to whine and complain instead of expressing that pent up anger directly.
It is said that Critical thinking involves determining the meaning and significance of what is observed or expressed, or, concerning a given inference or argument, determining whether there is adequate justification to accept the conclusion as true. We are free to accept, reject, or suspend judgment about such a claim. Critical thinking gives due consideration to the evidence, the context of judgment, the relevant criteria for making the judgment well, the applicable methods or techniques for forming the judgment, and the applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the problem and the question at hand. Critical thinking employs not only logic but other criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance and fairness.
As quoted by Maurice Sendak: "Alice Miller makes chillingly clear to the many what has been recognized only by the few: the extraordinary pain and psychological suffering inflicted on children under the guise of conventional childrearing."
And so now, being the proud mom of two kids, I am going to get on with the important business of my life, which includes them. I will hug them both and let them know, as I always do, that they are loved all the way to infinity and beyond.
Thanks Boss, for your previous post.
Re: Father, you were wrong
Carm, 'forgiveness' and 'empathy' are nice morals.
But how does a child, and henceforth, an adult, how does
he 'feel/know' them if he was never allowed to be himself?
If he was never given the freedom to develop such morality.
You can't just teach it, you can't jam it in there with cognitive
repetitive thinking.
You have to meet, no embrace, the beautiful child within.
And you have to awaken the powerlessness, the wounded
sacrificed soul. And you need know the anger. And perhaps cry.
Only then can you accept. Only then will you feel integrated. And
only then will you 'legitimately' feel from your true self.
Such things as empathy and forgiveness are only truly available to
a soul who loves himself, who is aware of his history and who has
some 'connection' with the Source of all things.
But how does a child, and henceforth, an adult, how does
he 'feel/know' them if he was never allowed to be himself?
If he was never given the freedom to develop such morality.
You can't just teach it, you can't jam it in there with cognitive
repetitive thinking.
You have to meet, no embrace, the beautiful child within.
And you have to awaken the powerlessness, the wounded
sacrificed soul. And you need know the anger. And perhaps cry.
Only then can you accept. Only then will you feel integrated. And
only then will you 'legitimately' feel from your true self.
Such things as empathy and forgiveness are only truly available to
a soul who loves himself, who is aware of his history and who has
some 'connection' with the Source of all things.
'In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer' - Albert Camus
Re: Father, you were wrong
Well said, ThankyouBoss wrote:
Such things as empathy and forgiveness are only truly available to
a soul who loves himself, who is aware of his history and who has
some 'connection' with the Source of all things.
A
x
Weybridge MBW 11th July 2009
'All I know - and you must listen very carefully to this... All I know - is that I know absolutely nothing' - Frank
'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?' - Christopher Marlowe
Much misunderstood... was the 'Hippie' with a reality fixation...
'All I know - and you must listen very carefully to this... All I know - is that I know absolutely nothing' - Frank
'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?' - Christopher Marlowe
Much misunderstood... was the 'Hippie' with a reality fixation...
Re: Father, you were wrong
Adam, Your little brother sounds like he was quite a fighter and fought his battle well. What you wrote - what you dedicated to him was very powerful and I thank you for sharing that.
Re: Father, you were wrong
This has been such a thought provoking and emotional thread I must admit to have been in tears at one point.
Manchester 19th June/Cardiff 8th Nov
Re: Father, you were wrong
Boss writes:
Dry roots need to be refreshed. When ones parched heart longs for the delightful waters of compassion, empathy, faith, peace, joy, and forgiveness they should try to find their way out of whatever desolate, empty, dry landscape they find themselves locked into, due to neglect, desertion and abandonment, so the streams of life's living water can, as willed, flow in abundance, from within. And perhaps, that is where they will find, those necessary hints of justice, climbing out from under such a sad, tormented life.
If we send our roots rain, we become refreshed as life-giving nourishment works to sustain us, caught as some of us are in that wasteland of turmoil and doubt. For, underneath, aren’t many of us clamouring to escape something that has affected us at some point during the course of our life? Some of us can become the likes of those hardscrabble shrubs that plunge their roots deep through sandy soil in search of hints of moisture, while mutely testifying their emptiness and loss and eventually refreshment, regeneration and rebirth shines through. I think the physical desert works well as an appropriate metaphor for the desert places of the human heart?
We mustn't, locked in our anger, shut up our tender mercies and simply turn away from it all, saying nothing. Though our lives hold many capacious recesses, why let it all sit like a gigantic paradox and deem it all too utterly monstrous for solution? We must let the reasons for melancholy fail to conquer us. We can’t just shun the struggle, we have to attend to it with mindfulness, generosity and compassion, anger, sadness and all those other nouns and adjectives that might apply to all that is broken in our lives, and strive to live fully in each flawed moment. In doing so, we will indeed gain the greater victory.
We have to believe in ourselves that it is possible that such streams will eventually flow as they find release from within. The problem is that not everyone's needs are the same. We can throw buckets of water over rows upon rows of thirsty flowers. Some will receive the water and be nourished, while others will wilt, having received none.
The ebb and flow of our emotions, our moods and even our self-assurances are much like that of the season’s.
Remember Lord Byron, his madness was not of the head, but of the heart:
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others hath it ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!
In times of great sorrow we can learn profound freedom and live richly in the face of rage and loss. We have to allow ourselves to take that heroic journey in our search for peace. If we learn, through awareness, to shake the blessings out of our imperfect lives, surely our relationship with the mysteries that lie within our everyday can be enlightened with compassion and love as we take away whatever it is that we are ready to receive. Unfortunately, there is never a neat comfortable formula. We become, over time, grateful for insights and blessings, wherever we can find them. We have to learn to appreciate what we have instead of complaining about what we never had.
TS Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know for the first time
We know the bright moments only because of the darkness that surrounds them. The very fabric of our being glimmers for a while and then its gone. Our lives are as fleeting as shadows.
As he relentlessly examines the larger issues of life, Leonard Cohen is one whose poems and songs exhort to us bunch of lonesome heroes…compassion, empathy and Love.
Boogie Street
O Crown of Light, O Darkened One,
I never thought we’d meet.
You kiss my lips, and then it’s done:
I’m back on Boogie Street.
A sip of wine, a cigarette,
And then it’s time to go
I tidied up the kitchenette;
I tuned the old banjo.
I’m wanted at the traffic-jam.
They’re saving me a seat.
I’m what I am, and what I am,
Is back on Boogie Street.
And O my love, I still recall
The pleasures that we knew;
The rivers and the waterfall,
Wherein I bathed with you.
Bewildered by your beauty there,
I’d kneel to dry your feet.
By such instructions you prepare
A man for Boogie Street.
O Crown of Light, O Darkened One…
So come, my friends, be not afraid.
We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made;
In love we disappear.
Though all the maps of blood and flesh
Are posted on the door,
There’s no one who has told us yet
What Boogie Street is for.
O Crown of Light, O Darkened One,
I never thought we’d meet.
You kiss my lips, and then it’s done:
I’m back on Boogie Street.
A sip of wine, a cigarette,
And then it’s time to go…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc5TzguKogM
Boss, be yourself. Take the freedom you have now and embrace the beautiful (Adam) child within. Awaken that powerlessness, the wounded sacrificed soul. In knowing the anger, feel it, shout it, and cry it!
Boss, I will try to do my best to add something relevant towards your thoughts as I attempt to fashion a coherent something or other out of this chaotic jumble of words that follow.'Forgiveness' and 'empathy' are nice morals.
But how does a child, and henceforth, an adult, how does
he 'feel/know' them if he was never allowed to be himself?
If he was never given the freedom to develop such morality.
You can't just teach it, you can't jam it in there with cognitive
repetitive thinking.
You have to meet, no embrace, the beautiful child within.
And you have to awaken the powerlessness, the wounded
sacrificed soul. And you need know the anger. And perhaps cry.
Only then can you accept. Only then will you feel integrated. And
only then will you 'legitimately' feel from your true self.
Such things as empathy and forgiveness are only truly available to
a soul who loves himself, who is aware of his history and who has
some 'connection' with the Source of all things.
Dry roots need to be refreshed. When ones parched heart longs for the delightful waters of compassion, empathy, faith, peace, joy, and forgiveness they should try to find their way out of whatever desolate, empty, dry landscape they find themselves locked into, due to neglect, desertion and abandonment, so the streams of life's living water can, as willed, flow in abundance, from within. And perhaps, that is where they will find, those necessary hints of justice, climbing out from under such a sad, tormented life.
If we send our roots rain, we become refreshed as life-giving nourishment works to sustain us, caught as some of us are in that wasteland of turmoil and doubt. For, underneath, aren’t many of us clamouring to escape something that has affected us at some point during the course of our life? Some of us can become the likes of those hardscrabble shrubs that plunge their roots deep through sandy soil in search of hints of moisture, while mutely testifying their emptiness and loss and eventually refreshment, regeneration and rebirth shines through. I think the physical desert works well as an appropriate metaphor for the desert places of the human heart?
We mustn't, locked in our anger, shut up our tender mercies and simply turn away from it all, saying nothing. Though our lives hold many capacious recesses, why let it all sit like a gigantic paradox and deem it all too utterly monstrous for solution? We must let the reasons for melancholy fail to conquer us. We can’t just shun the struggle, we have to attend to it with mindfulness, generosity and compassion, anger, sadness and all those other nouns and adjectives that might apply to all that is broken in our lives, and strive to live fully in each flawed moment. In doing so, we will indeed gain the greater victory.
We have to believe in ourselves that it is possible that such streams will eventually flow as they find release from within. The problem is that not everyone's needs are the same. We can throw buckets of water over rows upon rows of thirsty flowers. Some will receive the water and be nourished, while others will wilt, having received none.
The ebb and flow of our emotions, our moods and even our self-assurances are much like that of the season’s.
Remember Lord Byron, his madness was not of the head, but of the heart:
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others hath it ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!
In times of great sorrow we can learn profound freedom and live richly in the face of rage and loss. We have to allow ourselves to take that heroic journey in our search for peace. If we learn, through awareness, to shake the blessings out of our imperfect lives, surely our relationship with the mysteries that lie within our everyday can be enlightened with compassion and love as we take away whatever it is that we are ready to receive. Unfortunately, there is never a neat comfortable formula. We become, over time, grateful for insights and blessings, wherever we can find them. We have to learn to appreciate what we have instead of complaining about what we never had.
TS Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know for the first time
We know the bright moments only because of the darkness that surrounds them. The very fabric of our being glimmers for a while and then its gone. Our lives are as fleeting as shadows.
As he relentlessly examines the larger issues of life, Leonard Cohen is one whose poems and songs exhort to us bunch of lonesome heroes…compassion, empathy and Love.
Boogie Street
O Crown of Light, O Darkened One,
I never thought we’d meet.
You kiss my lips, and then it’s done:
I’m back on Boogie Street.
A sip of wine, a cigarette,
And then it’s time to go
I tidied up the kitchenette;
I tuned the old banjo.
I’m wanted at the traffic-jam.
They’re saving me a seat.
I’m what I am, and what I am,
Is back on Boogie Street.
And O my love, I still recall
The pleasures that we knew;
The rivers and the waterfall,
Wherein I bathed with you.
Bewildered by your beauty there,
I’d kneel to dry your feet.
By such instructions you prepare
A man for Boogie Street.
O Crown of Light, O Darkened One…
So come, my friends, be not afraid.
We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made;
In love we disappear.
Though all the maps of blood and flesh
Are posted on the door,
There’s no one who has told us yet
What Boogie Street is for.
O Crown of Light, O Darkened One,
I never thought we’d meet.
You kiss my lips, and then it’s done:
I’m back on Boogie Street.
A sip of wine, a cigarette,
And then it’s time to go…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc5TzguKogM
Boss, be yourself. Take the freedom you have now and embrace the beautiful (Adam) child within. Awaken that powerlessness, the wounded sacrificed soul. In knowing the anger, feel it, shout it, and cry it!
Last edited by carm on Sat Jun 12, 2010 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Father, you were wrong
I don't agree with a lot of what you say.
This is for you, Jackie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1xiFRccd88
This is for you, Jackie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1xiFRccd88
'In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer' - Albert Camus
Re: Father, you were wrong
There is such a formula.Unfortunately, there is never a neat comfortable formula.
When an animal is in the womb, when it is born and during its formative years, it needs protection so it can grow.
If the parent abandons the infant, if it mistreats it, the infant will become ill. Such an infant may, in adulthood, be
admitted to asylums eleven times, may attempt suicide four times (twice being put in intensive care units on machines),
be administered electro convulsive therapy and take a concoction of psychotropic medications for some twenty years. He
may suffer 'bipolar disorder' and debilitating 'social anxiety' keeping him housebound for seventeen years. This is what
happens when you are just given way, way too much on your plate - especially in your early years. Sometimes, only
sometimes, you have a soul who allows you to grieve, to cry. That soul is my mother.
And one more thing, I haven't even fucken begun!
Boss
'In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer' - Albert Camus
Re: Father, you were wrong
Boss, I hear you loud and clear…
Children are the future and it is the responsibility of adults to protect them and ensure that they get the best footing in life, obviously for some, that footing was never there, and so to feel loved was a concept that was never clearly understood, and so, understandably they are mad as hell.
Your words do not numb me, but I feel their strength. And I would continue to listen as you let the tangents coincide at their points of intersection as every emotional thought is unfolded and laid bare. Give your words the immediacy they beg so the fusillade of every effervescent line pulls the listener in, even though you may feel raw, bare-skinned, and exposed.
Here is a piece of my story, just to let you know that at times, I too have ranted and raved about the injusticeness of it all.
“I will never forget my phone ringing
and her asking me to come visit her one evening,
almost pleading for me to make sure that I showed.
I did, and when I arrived I found the two oldest children
playing in their bedroom, a suicide note on the table.
As I enetered her bedroom I found the newborn
lying next to my sisters’ near dead body.”
(I was the newborn)
Anecdotal narratives of mother and daughter in conflict with one another. Mixed contestations aflame over tarnished identities and marked indifferences testing their souls in a myriad of ways, in their shared, yet solemn space.
“What are you doing?”, I inquire.
”You have no right to question me!”, she intones.
“Are you unhappy?”, I chance.
She nods, her voice says nothing.
“Good god, how dare you!”, I interject.
Mother, cradled in fetal position with a desirous able-bodied appetite to leave her hardened soul. To gain entrance to that strange place that belongs not in this world, but rather in the eternity of that distinct, divine moment. Eerie, this death of hope that lay at the bereft core of her loveless void, that sinister side flung at us, out of the dark.
Such relief, such wicked joy, pitched and proffered as a way out, an astute means to an end. But, it wasn’t meant to be, rallied from suicide, her life was spared. Forever after, there remained a fathomless, boundless deep, where she forever wandered, forever weeped. Occasionally I lament that same song, in all its immediacy, as the days unfold.
Depression, sad as it is, favours a relief of the soul’s desire to be both in time and in eternity. Love straddles these two dimensions, offering a means to live in both, simultaneously. We are held in the two contradictory states until anguish finds us, or until we are found out. I fully acknowledge that what is severed now, by means of psychical amputation, will surely sneak back to ambush and haunt me as other raw, blinding insights emerge.
There are chapters in our histories that carry us into nightmarish worlds of contempt, madness and abandonment. Much like that of a scream caught on a skipping record, needle stuck in the 1/8 of each second, oscillating over and over and over, and well, you get the idea. We want desperately to rid ourselves of the discordant, cacophonous onomatopoeia and therefore reject any pause that could butt up against it all.
In these chapters of my history, I’ve tried whittling down a distinguishable profile. Look how I sit, half on, half off and with such a heavy, insufferable hang. If you look a little deeper you’ll notice there’s yet another ambiguity in the sheer angst of finding my own name chissled here. But I am determined to press on, pushing my way through the immeasurable sting of the knowledge at hand. Regardless of it all, in the half-light of this journey, momentary rainbows are quietly acquiesced.
And so I go in circles for quarters of an hour or two. Six hours later I stumble, dazed, exhausted, apprehensive at such powerlessness. I’ve accomplished alot of travelling in an effort to track my own sense of place. Currents funnel in and around, over and under the semiotics of routine. I look for transcendances, conclusions, but feel disturbed by the obiquity of no connections, false connections. I hover between this heart and this spirit, this body and this mind, valliantly working its immense lineage. And then, something essential is disclosed within the seasick gravity of loss. Here I was, the subject, missing the story of my life, caught up in the semblances of who I thought I was and who I thought I had become.
And then I began my return.
How do we muster up the spontaneous and playful solutions to life’s exigencies when we unexpectedly step out over the edge? Do we simply scrawl our objections in scribbles of rage and chastise ourselves for not speaking up, not telling when we had reached our limit, when it had become simply too much! How do we explore the intense details of such psychological worlds, the ones we inevitably sometimes feel tethered to? How do we fight this lethargy of spirit. Can it be achieved by sketching phrases of the soul’s heavy ache, drawing on melancholy’s parade of hushed soliloquies?
Now older, as I sit and write about it, the details fill themselves in, with such force and certainty that I want to trust it, to put all faith in such moments. The phrases appear like apparitions. They come to me all at once, unbidden in their strangeness, their familiaity. And something is triggered in me, the narrator. A terrible, frightening longing, a nurturing and solace saught after, from within to express the nuances of our indomitable spirit. One must be curious and careful enough to decipher all meaning.
Step into the stillness and LOOK! True epiphanies exist.
To lament the past is a common disposition of mankind. This became my own personal struggle alone, a strong-willed refusal not to lament my past. I regularly fought with its habits and weaknesses, and still do. I never ever wanted to simply slink away overwhelmed, so as to depart forever into that contemptuous pit of anger. I wanted instead to reveal this awakening in me of a strong, passionate nature. Indignations and resentments burst forth with their unrestrained power and I felt sabotaged.
But, I became passionate in my temperament, indomitable in my will. Circumstances now seem propitious. I will win my freedom, resuming unflinchingly, unabashedly onward. In repairing those places of distraction, one is slowly healed and indolence is reproved, hope is encouraged and ones zeal for life is fired up. Be not cheated of your victory.
I will go now, leaving all not as I found it, and this is offered therefore as a conclusion.
Who are we? Why are we here? What is our purpose, our destiny? Do we arrive as a simple summation, an unconceptualized coincidence of creation. Are we born solely to survive within a wisp of time, to become no more? Everything that we are, evolved over an immenseness of time by living this life given. Out of each of life’s experiences we gather the wisdom that has helped formulate our uniqueness, our beauty. We are too priceless, too beautiful to have been created for only a moment's siege upon that four-dimensional measure of time – eternity, the totality of time, conceived of as having no beginning and no end.We create our life through a series of thought processes. If we ponder joy, we will have it. If we ponder genius it’s already there. Words express the originality of our thinking, the suggestive power within our soul, given birth through thought. Mere reflections observed in conclusion of this discourse.
Children are the future and it is the responsibility of adults to protect them and ensure that they get the best footing in life, obviously for some, that footing was never there, and so to feel loved was a concept that was never clearly understood, and so, understandably they are mad as hell.
Your words do not numb me, but I feel their strength. And I would continue to listen as you let the tangents coincide at their points of intersection as every emotional thought is unfolded and laid bare. Give your words the immediacy they beg so the fusillade of every effervescent line pulls the listener in, even though you may feel raw, bare-skinned, and exposed.
Here is a piece of my story, just to let you know that at times, I too have ranted and raved about the injusticeness of it all.
“I will never forget my phone ringing
and her asking me to come visit her one evening,
almost pleading for me to make sure that I showed.
I did, and when I arrived I found the two oldest children
playing in their bedroom, a suicide note on the table.
As I enetered her bedroom I found the newborn
lying next to my sisters’ near dead body.”
(I was the newborn)
Anecdotal narratives of mother and daughter in conflict with one another. Mixed contestations aflame over tarnished identities and marked indifferences testing their souls in a myriad of ways, in their shared, yet solemn space.
“What are you doing?”, I inquire.
”You have no right to question me!”, she intones.
“Are you unhappy?”, I chance.
She nods, her voice says nothing.
“Good god, how dare you!”, I interject.
Mother, cradled in fetal position with a desirous able-bodied appetite to leave her hardened soul. To gain entrance to that strange place that belongs not in this world, but rather in the eternity of that distinct, divine moment. Eerie, this death of hope that lay at the bereft core of her loveless void, that sinister side flung at us, out of the dark.
Such relief, such wicked joy, pitched and proffered as a way out, an astute means to an end. But, it wasn’t meant to be, rallied from suicide, her life was spared. Forever after, there remained a fathomless, boundless deep, where she forever wandered, forever weeped. Occasionally I lament that same song, in all its immediacy, as the days unfold.
Depression, sad as it is, favours a relief of the soul’s desire to be both in time and in eternity. Love straddles these two dimensions, offering a means to live in both, simultaneously. We are held in the two contradictory states until anguish finds us, or until we are found out. I fully acknowledge that what is severed now, by means of psychical amputation, will surely sneak back to ambush and haunt me as other raw, blinding insights emerge.
There are chapters in our histories that carry us into nightmarish worlds of contempt, madness and abandonment. Much like that of a scream caught on a skipping record, needle stuck in the 1/8 of each second, oscillating over and over and over, and well, you get the idea. We want desperately to rid ourselves of the discordant, cacophonous onomatopoeia and therefore reject any pause that could butt up against it all.
In these chapters of my history, I’ve tried whittling down a distinguishable profile. Look how I sit, half on, half off and with such a heavy, insufferable hang. If you look a little deeper you’ll notice there’s yet another ambiguity in the sheer angst of finding my own name chissled here. But I am determined to press on, pushing my way through the immeasurable sting of the knowledge at hand. Regardless of it all, in the half-light of this journey, momentary rainbows are quietly acquiesced.
And so I go in circles for quarters of an hour or two. Six hours later I stumble, dazed, exhausted, apprehensive at such powerlessness. I’ve accomplished alot of travelling in an effort to track my own sense of place. Currents funnel in and around, over and under the semiotics of routine. I look for transcendances, conclusions, but feel disturbed by the obiquity of no connections, false connections. I hover between this heart and this spirit, this body and this mind, valliantly working its immense lineage. And then, something essential is disclosed within the seasick gravity of loss. Here I was, the subject, missing the story of my life, caught up in the semblances of who I thought I was and who I thought I had become.
And then I began my return.
How do we muster up the spontaneous and playful solutions to life’s exigencies when we unexpectedly step out over the edge? Do we simply scrawl our objections in scribbles of rage and chastise ourselves for not speaking up, not telling when we had reached our limit, when it had become simply too much! How do we explore the intense details of such psychological worlds, the ones we inevitably sometimes feel tethered to? How do we fight this lethargy of spirit. Can it be achieved by sketching phrases of the soul’s heavy ache, drawing on melancholy’s parade of hushed soliloquies?
Now older, as I sit and write about it, the details fill themselves in, with such force and certainty that I want to trust it, to put all faith in such moments. The phrases appear like apparitions. They come to me all at once, unbidden in their strangeness, their familiaity. And something is triggered in me, the narrator. A terrible, frightening longing, a nurturing and solace saught after, from within to express the nuances of our indomitable spirit. One must be curious and careful enough to decipher all meaning.
Step into the stillness and LOOK! True epiphanies exist.
To lament the past is a common disposition of mankind. This became my own personal struggle alone, a strong-willed refusal not to lament my past. I regularly fought with its habits and weaknesses, and still do. I never ever wanted to simply slink away overwhelmed, so as to depart forever into that contemptuous pit of anger. I wanted instead to reveal this awakening in me of a strong, passionate nature. Indignations and resentments burst forth with their unrestrained power and I felt sabotaged.
But, I became passionate in my temperament, indomitable in my will. Circumstances now seem propitious. I will win my freedom, resuming unflinchingly, unabashedly onward. In repairing those places of distraction, one is slowly healed and indolence is reproved, hope is encouraged and ones zeal for life is fired up. Be not cheated of your victory.
I will go now, leaving all not as I found it, and this is offered therefore as a conclusion.
Who are we? Why are we here? What is our purpose, our destiny? Do we arrive as a simple summation, an unconceptualized coincidence of creation. Are we born solely to survive within a wisp of time, to become no more? Everything that we are, evolved over an immenseness of time by living this life given. Out of each of life’s experiences we gather the wisdom that has helped formulate our uniqueness, our beauty. We are too priceless, too beautiful to have been created for only a moment's siege upon that four-dimensional measure of time – eternity, the totality of time, conceived of as having no beginning and no end.We create our life through a series of thought processes. If we ponder joy, we will have it. If we ponder genius it’s already there. Words express the originality of our thinking, the suggestive power within our soul, given birth through thought. Mere reflections observed in conclusion of this discourse.
Last edited by carm on Sun Jun 13, 2010 6:04 am, edited 3 times in total.
Re: Father, you were wrong
Hi Adam, hi Carm,
Carm, that is quite a story you told, and, as you seem to be saying, it seems an imprint of so much you've had to deal with ever since.
Adam, I remember discovering Alice Miller, and having the same feeling you did: that she spoke the truth about these issues where so many others have failed. I think there's something to be said here about the difference between the sort of true psychological/emotional separation from one's parents, as per the Khamsi material you posted, and the idea of forgiveness. If one has done the work, mourned the losses, dealt with the rage, etc., and come to a place of true separation from the parent causing such pain, then.. well, I'm not even sure that forgiveness is any longer at issue. Or maybe it is. Maybe at that point one can look upon such parent with empathy and forgiveness, as one has truly moved on.. Anyway, I hesitate to say more, as I really don't know more. I don't claim to be "through" with my childhood in this sense, nor do I know if one lifetime is even enough to be done with it.. and I didn't even suffer from the physical sort of abandonment that you are describing.. so.. this is not easy stuff, that much I know. Oh, and I would agree that, especially for a very sensitive child, what largely passes as "normal parenting" can indeed be abusive.
anyway.. my best to you both, Adam and Carm,
v i o l e t
Carm, that is quite a story you told, and, as you seem to be saying, it seems an imprint of so much you've had to deal with ever since.
Adam, I remember discovering Alice Miller, and having the same feeling you did: that she spoke the truth about these issues where so many others have failed. I think there's something to be said here about the difference between the sort of true psychological/emotional separation from one's parents, as per the Khamsi material you posted, and the idea of forgiveness. If one has done the work, mourned the losses, dealt with the rage, etc., and come to a place of true separation from the parent causing such pain, then.. well, I'm not even sure that forgiveness is any longer at issue. Or maybe it is. Maybe at that point one can look upon such parent with empathy and forgiveness, as one has truly moved on.. Anyway, I hesitate to say more, as I really don't know more. I don't claim to be "through" with my childhood in this sense, nor do I know if one lifetime is even enough to be done with it.. and I didn't even suffer from the physical sort of abandonment that you are describing.. so.. this is not easy stuff, that much I know. Oh, and I would agree that, especially for a very sensitive child, what largely passes as "normal parenting" can indeed be abusive.
anyway.. my best to you both, Adam and Carm,
v i o l e t
Violet
Re: Father, you were wrong
v i o l e t
There is so much more to my story, but it is Adam who has spoken so that we might listen.
It is a simple blessing when somebody listens.
T h a n k Y o u
There is so much more to my story, but it is Adam who has spoken so that we might listen.
It is a simple blessing when somebody listens.
T h a n k Y o u
Re: Father, you were wrong
I like that, I really do, indeed. It is a breakthrough like meAnd one more thing, I haven't even fucken begun!
crying bitterly, so bitterly, for 10 minutes, for myself, on
my bed beside two lit Shabbat candles last Friday night.
It was the first time I cried for me since, I don't know,
even before Esta died - that was 1977.
Boss
'In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer' - Albert Camus
Re: Father, you were wrong
Boss,
If only there was something one might be able to say, from out here, some good thing that might help weather the atmospheres of all those difficult years.
ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE - Kahlil Gibran
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.
And it is well you should.
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;
And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.
Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.
If only there was something one might be able to say, from out here, some good thing that might help weather the atmospheres of all those difficult years.
ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE - Kahlil Gibran
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.
And it is well you should.
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;
And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.
Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.
- Attachments
-
Re: Father, you were wrong
Carm, you hardly know me.
I really need to talk with Jackie.
We need to talk about so much.
Carm, thank you.
To me I say, "let me thank you now."
I really need to talk with Jackie.
We need to talk about so much.
Carm, thank you.
To me I say, "let me thank you now."
Last edited by Boss on Wed Jun 16, 2010 11:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
'In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer' - Albert Camus