This morning, I found an email from Crista, the Bikram studio owner, who taught the class yesterday, saying, "I was so impressed with your practice today!! You really have been working hard in class, and it shows," asking me to write something about myself for the student spotlight and thanking me for being part of the studio community. It is a supportive community to me, besides the wonderful impact of the practice itself.
I rushed home because I had a telephone appointment with my therapist a 10 am, four pm her time. I showered and was ready to go. As usual, I asked myself, "What's is most annoying me?" I am having the voice of a friend coming to mind telling me what to do about any number of things. He is the type of person who loves to instruct but cannot tolerate having anyone give him advice. He's not an arrogant man. There is some trauma behind his behavior. Unfortunately, his information is frequently inappropriate. If it has any value, I make a point of acknowledging it. While I know what drives him to behave this way, it can still get on my nerves, having someone willing to correct me but never say anything positive.
As I started working on my reaction, I realized the problem is l that, like him, I feel that no one values what I have to offer. In my case, it is around my work as an educator and a healer. I think my work is good, but there aren't people beating down my door. I have always realized that there is something I am doing or not doing to cultivate this situation. My work isn't that off from the mainstream to be rejected.
The teachers I worked with last year at the elementary school contacted me when school started, telling me that they hoped I was returning. They had already identified some students who needed help. I worked with one child who had visual distortion and showed her how to correct that. The second time I worked with her, it was clear that she could use my processes to clear up the problem. The second child I worked with was a boy who was having trouble with phonics. When I checked what part of the brain he used for auditory processing, he pointed to the brain's visual section. I showed him how to engaged the auditory part of the brain. I haven't had a second session with him yet, so I don't know if he has shown any improvement. Both the students had some trouble with blending individual sounds to pronounce the word; I showed them the cross-body blending starting with the vowel sound, and I showed the girl the procedure I use for decoding multi-syllable words. In the second session with the girl, her reading accuracy was much improved, and she initiated utilizing the method I taught her for decoding multi-syllable words. How's that for two sessions with a child that is over a year behind in reading?
Yes, the teachers know I'm good, but they think it has something to do with me rather than the procedures I've developed. I try to tell people that the methods are straightforward; they can be taught in ten minutes to a student. But no one is interested in learning them. Yes, it took a particular person to develop them: my background in reading instruction, neuroscience, and linguistics, and my problem-solving mind put me in that unique position. But what I have developed is simple to apply.
Given how easy it is for me to produce improvement in students, the better the student, the more quickly the improvement, you would think that there would be people banging on my door. Ah, that's the problem I don't want people desperate for help banging at my door. When I think of being well-known, I fear I'll be attacked like Orpheus by the Thracian women, torn to shreds.
Even I know that I won't be physically attacked, but that is the image in my mind. Why can't I imagine a situation where I can protect myself from people's desperation? What I came up with is that I feel everyone's problem is my fault.
Why would I feel that I am responsible for all suffering in the world? My father taught me I was somehow responsible for all suffering in the world, even the suffering of those on the other side of the planet. This philosophical position is assumed by some, if not all, spiritual disciplines. There is also the effect of the butterflies in Madagascar. If they can cause weather changes on the other side of the world, it is not unreasonable to assume that everything we do has a ripple effect on the whole world. I believe this to this day, but the way I assume responsibility in my nonconscious mind is disproportional to my impact. I was introduced to this idea as a young child. Children take things very literally. My adult mind, my conscious mind, doesn't make these assumptions, but my nonconscious mind learned these ideas as a young child. They are buried in there.
Then I had my mother, who blamed the bad weather on me. She was using me as a whipping boy for her anxiety. I mentioned before that she made some cockeyed assumption that she wouldn't do damage to my sister or to me by using us that way.
When Mike was studying for the diaconate in the early 90s, another applicant made an observation about me. He said to me, "You're like me. You feel guilty about everything." He said that he was made to feel guilty about WWII, and he hadn't even been born when it started. I had never thought of myself that way. It was interesting to have someone see that in me. Having guilt inappropriately laid on you as a young child creates a pretty steep mountain to overcome to reclaim an appropriate concept of self.
I have mentioned before that I think Mike also carried a burden of terrible guilt for who he was. His guilt was laid on him by his mother, who always screamed and yelled when she didn't get what she wanted. Then there was that day in the late 40s when six or seven-years-old Mike came home from school and told his parents that he had announced that his parents were Communists in school. It was during the pre-McCarthy period. Mike remembered his parents tearing through the house, looking for every piece of incriminating paper. I knew Mike's mother as an older woman when some of her energy had been drained; she was still difficult. I can only imagine how she behaved toward that vulnerable young boy, accusing him of trying to harm his parents.
I found out about that story from my friend Judy; Mike had told it to her. When he was in the hospital, I was able to tell him how Jean's mother, his ex-mother in law, dealt with it when Jean did something comparable. Jean's mother (her parents were also active Communists) was gentle; she didn't scare jean; she just advised her not to say anything in school and asked if she could do that.
While Mike was in the hospital, unable to communicate, I told him I was going to tell him a story. I told him how Jean's mother dealt with the situation. I then told him he had done nothing wrong, despite his mother's ravings. That little boy had heard his teacher put down Communists. He was proud of his parents. He understood that they embraced the idea because they wanted equality for all people. (Many people confuse the 'how' of Communism, a dictatorship of the proletariat, with the economic 'why,' economic equality for all.) He was proud of his parents and stood up in their defense.
When I was finished with the story, I asked him if it helped to hear it. He nodded, yes. I suspect that if he had brought this trauma up with therapists long ago, a therapist who was prepared to deal with PTSD, he would haven't had high blood pressure which caused his kidney disease or anxiety, for which he took extremely high doses of antidepressants which may have been the cause of his pancreatitis. Ask me if I resent his mother for her unbelievably self-centered behavior?
I called NJ Benefits and Pension to find out when I would receive Mike's pension. First, they told me that I had already received three checks. The person who answered the phone excused herself and said she had to check with her supervisor. She came back to tell me that I had been receiving the wrong amount. They had already overpaid me by three thousand dollars. They said they I will receive less money until they recoup the money. Good thing I caught it now rather than later. I noticed that there were no taxes withheld. Mike claimed three deductions. So Mike. Money was always better in his pocket than someone else's. I had to change that. I would rather not have payments hanging over my head.
When living in Princeton, the town decided to install curbs on the edge of our property. If they were repairing the curb, it would have been on their dime. Since it was a new curb, we had to pay for it. When the job was finished, I called the country office asking for the bill. They told me that they would send it sometime in the future. I went down there and told them they had no right to place me in debt and demanded that they give me a bill now. Something like five years later, I got that bill. It was so long ago that I forgot that I had already given them money. Fortunately, they remembered. I still owed a small amount. I have little confidence in the stability of the economy. My parents went through the inflation in Germany and the Depression in the US.
I had some plans to go to school today, but I was too tired. I texted the teacher, telling her I needed to rest, and I hit my favorite napping couch. I set the alarm for 1 pm because I had a two pm chiropractic appointment.
Once there, I placed a call to the bank to see if they could give me exact information on the individual checks I had deposited so I could check if I deposited the New Jersey pension checks. They said yes, they could verify specific checks. Yeah.
I showed the chiropractor how the simple shift of my head, moving my chin slightly to the left, changed my posture. She continued working on my left foot and moved up to my calf and my neck.
Dorothy, my sister, called while I was in with the chiropractor I called her back after I got out and talked to her while I drove with the phone on my lap on speaker. I stopped off at Target. I decided I needed a Hersey's Milk Chocolate with whole almonds. I bought one instead a package of six. Unfortunately, I can't rely on myself to eat just one.
I stopped off at Island Naturals to pick up some progesterone cream to help with my hot flashes. They didn't have any. It's Hawaii. You cannot rely on products being in at any time. You have to grab things when they're on the shelf.
I went home and took another nap. I got up in time for dinner. Kathrin spent some time fishing around in the freezer. She found some salmon. She made it with veggies and rice. It was delicious. From her, I'm learning not to eat more than I want. According to Ayurvedic medicine, when you burp, you're finished.
After dinner, I watched some TV while I sorted and dumped that last of the papers Mike had saved. Here I found renovations plans for our house in Ohio, which we sold in 2014. The man threw nothing out. As long as it was orderly, he kept it.
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Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.
Brooks talks about the value of losing ourselves in something bigger than ourselves. That can go bad in no time. The KKK and its values are bigger than the individual. We have a thirst to be part of something bigger than ourselves, an institution worthy of such submission.
But that submission, like everything else, involves choices. We sacrifice A to achieve B.
I look at the human condition through the lens of evolutionary psychology. We are social animals. Like chickens, if we are raised in isolation, if our own kind does not value us, we fail to thrive. We can die of loneliness or go mad. We are designed to be part of something larger than ourselves.
The first institution was the family, the group, and the tribe. While groups may have varied in size, it was always a group, just like wolves. Our need to lose ourselves in something larger is morally neutral.
Worse than that, it can be used against us. Those early families, groups, and tribes were committed to the survival of the group for the survival of the individuals in the group. We have institutions now that set goals which are irrelevant to the welfare of the members of the group, see the members of the group as mere pawns to serve the interest of the organization.
With the Industrial Revolution, institutions arose that made production of commodity important, independent of the wellbeing of the individuals. This rendered humans comparable to slaves, perhaps even more dispensable since the institution wasn't even responsible for their maintenance. Workers became throw-away commodities used for some purpose that was of no benefit to them.
This is what Marx saw that inspired him to develop his solution to the problem. While his intention may have been honorable, he was painfully naïve as to the human condition. He assumed that once the oppressed rose to power, they would be kind to others having experienced oppression themselves. Boy, did he have another thing coming to him!
