Wednesday, August 4, 2010

All of the major ideas author and Jungian analyst James Hollis features in the thirteen chapters of his book WHAT MATTERS MOST:  LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED LIFE have challenged me to look at my own life, analyze where I'm needing to shift or change a way of being in the world and take some risks to live more fully what really does matter most.  Of all the chapters thus far, however, this seventh one, "that we live verbs not nouns" has challenged me the most.   It has challenged me because it has revealed a place where I'm most stuck and a tendency I have to box people and myself in to narrow definitions and roles.

It has been difficult for me to see where this principle most applies because my ways of thinking and perceiving are fixed, and my ego wants me to think that I am right.  Though I readily admit that the nature of life is change and that life itself is constantly in motion, it's been a bit threatening to me to take a look at just where it is that I'm insisting on nouns instead of verbs.  I've been appalled at how open-minded I can be in some areas and how close-minded I am in others.  It's not been easy to look at that at all!!!

Once I've come out of the fog of denial and been willing to look at just where it is I'm boxing life into my own self-constructed molds, I've had a strange follow-up reaction to those recognitions, a reaction that isn't quite panic but is certainly uneasiness.  To look at where I am binding people, relationships, situations to my own narrow definitions is threatening to me, especially when I want to see myself as being accepting, tolerant and open-hearted, moving with the flow of life, capable of bending like bamboo against the winds of change, flexible, grace-full (full of grace, in other words).

It was an early morning epiphany that brought me face-to-face with this tendency to think in repetitive patterns,  Just as I was waking up I was presented with the truth of the ways I hold others to my expectations and cling to my ideas of how things should be.  

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

A greeting card I bought in North Carolina last month has a sassy caption written over the picture of a little girl:  "You may walk the line, but I've always been a little hazy on where exactly the line is."

No kidding.  I know the feeling.

When I was a child and an adolescent, I knew pretty much where the line was and it was, for the most part, the same line that my peers and my parents' peers walked.  I don't know about the rest of you, but my experience of the world today is not only that I'm not so sure where the line is any more, but about the time I think I have it figured out, it moves.

When I was a child I also believed that my parents and the other adults in my world knew what the rules were for living in the world.  When I was an adolescent I thought that everyone else knew the rules for engagement with each other and if I could just get close enough to the ones who seemed most confident I, too, could learn the rules and figure out how to get along in a world that I didn't fully understand.   I was convinced that everyone else knew the steps in the line dances of life, and I was the one who was out-of-step.

Chapter 7 of James Hollis' book, WHAT MATTERS MOST: LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED LIFE, urges us to "live verbs not nouns,"  a concept that flies in the face of what my ego wants or what I have been taught to do. 

(From the perspective of this book, ego is "who I think I am".  It is necessary for getting around in the world; it is what gets me dressed, takes me to the places I need to go, and act as I think I'm supposed to act in any given situation.  Ego, according to Carl Jung, is the central organ of consciousness.  When someone says, "He has an ego," he's talking about ego-centricity, and the ego does love to believe it is the whole enchilada.  However, according to Carl Jung, there is another vital part of the human being and that is the authentic True Self, the part of us that is often unconscious to us but working, nevertheless, all the time.)

But -- back to walking the line. 

It is my ego-self that wants to figure out where the line is.   It's the ego that is concerned with getting in line, standing in line and staying in line, and when you're at the movie theatre, waiting in line to get in to the weekend's hot new show you don't like it when someone breaks in line, do you?

It's my ego that wants stability, permanence, predictability.  By golly, if the line formed here last week, I want it to be in the same place this week!  If what I thought about (whatever) worked for me last year, I want that (thought, opinion, prejudice, bias) to work this year.  If you have behaved a certain way for all of these years, please keep me comfortable and continue to behave in the same patterns.   I like variety, but only if I can choose it.   Surprise, what's new and different, change and chaos throw me off.

It's amazing to me, as well, to think about how I feel when I hear the words, "Line up!" from someone, even if I'm not the one being told to get in line. Sometimes that command brings order to a situation and I feel relief; at other times, I want to bolt and run.  Some people always want for an external authority to show them where the line forms and tell them when to line up; others of us resist and rebel at coercion.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

In this seventh chapter of Jim Holllis' book, WHAT MATTERS MOST:  LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED LIFE, we are asked to "live verbs, not nouns."

There are about a zillion ways I want to go with Chapter Seven, but before I write anything else about this verb-ness, I must confess that the idea of God as a Verb instead of a noun is of primary importance to me and on my mind almost constantly right now.  I'm completing a book which will come out in 2011, JOINT VENTURE: PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY FOR EVERYDAY PILGRIMS, and at the very beginning of the book, I posit the idea that in this "joint venture" of life, the concept of God we carry around in our heads and in our hearts is the most important concept of all. 

How we think about God shapes the way we think and feel about ourselves and our place in the world.   Our God-concept shapes the decisions we make and it informs the way we act at any given moment, and yet that God-concept we carry is often not really conscious to us.

Many years ago I found a book entitled GOD IS A VERB, by dancer and choreographer Marge Champion and Marilee Zdenek.  Before I had even opened the book or read one word of it I was energized simply by the title.  Intuitively, I recognized that that concept of the moving, changing, active, dynamic energy of God made so much more sense than my childhood image of God that was fixed or stuck, even, in one place.  In the words of J. B Phillips, my God was 'way too small.

Later, I took for myself two ideas about God that were liberating, as well.  One, "I would not believe in a God I could define," seemed to unlock my mind from an image of God as the Judge, Santa Claus, Old Man in the Sky or Stern Father so that I could see/know/experience God as the Mystery I had come to know in the wonders of nature, the complexities of daily life and the agony and splendor of human relationships.

Another quotation is my favorite, however.  "I would not believe in a God who does not dance," a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Perhaps I loved the idea of a God who dances because as a child I was not allowed to dance.  Or go to movies.   Or swim.  

And those were all things I really, really wanted to do. 

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

In Chapter Seven of WHAT MATTERS MOST:  LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED LIFE, Jungian analyst and author James Hollis suggests that "we live verbs not nouns,"  and he begins the chapter by identifying that the ego is the central complex of consciousness; it is who we think we are at any given moment.  (p. 95)

So what does that have to do with living as a verb and not a noun?

The truth is that no matter how I think about who it is that I am at any given moment or how I identify myself, no one word, concept or image contains all of who I am, and I am constantly changing, evolving, aging, growing or adapting, even when I'm sitting still. 

When I think about who I am, I think about the various roles I play in a given day: wife, mother, grandmother, friend, mother-in-law, writer, teacher, retreat leader, spiritual director are just the big ones.  (I won't go into the others that include shopper, chauffeur, etc.)

Sometimes when I'm introduced by someone I consider a "friend" as "my Bible study teacher", I"m always a little surprised.  I do fulfill that role, but I want to say, "There's more to me than that one role," or "I thought we were friends!"  At other times when I'm introduced by one of my roles I get all ego-inflated because I'm proud of that role or because the role gives me a feeling of security.

When I think about the various images or personas I present to the world I am often caught by surprise by the times when what I think I am presenting to the world is not what is perceived, which always makes me wonder if the gap is about the other person's projections or perceptions about me or does what I present to the world come across in a way I don't know?

And when I think of the various labels others have placed on me or the names I've called myself, I squirm, for any label is diminishing or even demeaning.

I've learned from Jim's lectures that any time a person gets overly identified with one role, an image, a label or a wound and gets stuck in that position, life begins to diminish, and yet it is perhaps common to all of us to get attached to "who we think we are at any given moment."  However, life is always inviting us into the flow and flux of experiences that challenge our ego positions, shake the foundations of our self-concept and rattle the cages of our comfort zones because movement and change are the very nature of life.   It is the ego that tries to fix things in one place, put a frame around life, control the universe or hold God still in a man-made doctrine.

How do you respond to change?  Do you embrace it or resist it, or does it depend on what the change is as to how you respond?

Do you like change if you are the one initiating the change and dislike it if change is imposed on you by another?

Do you like change if you can control it and resist it if you feel overwhelmed or if it comes to you in a form that creates dis-ease, discomfort or disorientation?

Do you like change as long as it is leading you forward, but resist it if you feel that it is entrapping you in a situation you did not choose and one which feels regressive?

On the first page of this chapter Jim writes, "...the ego naturally has a preference for certainty over uncertainty, predictability over surprise, clarity over ambiguity, control over anarchy, decision over ambivalence, and so on."

And I want to ask, stomping my foot, "What's wrong with that?"

It's no secret that our culture has experienced one change after another over the last ten-twenty years.  As a woman said to me a few years ago, "Honey, everything that you thought was nailed down has come undone." 

In addition to all of the cultural changes, every one of us lives in a sea of changes, whether we recognize them or not. Some of them happen slowly, almost imperceptibly and others come roaring out of somewhere, slapping us to the concrete, and we cannot help but feel anxious, afraid, terrified, angry or resentful that we cannot control, manage, anticipate, repair or understand the complexity of life.

And so it is that a major learning task is that of figuring out how in the world to go with the flow.  How do we learn when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em in daily life?  How do we manage our anxieties and live with the incessant, unending fact of verbness?

Today, I'd really like some certainty about the future and what it's going to hold for me and my husband as we anticipate a new phase of life, and I'm uncomfortable with the uncertainty.  I wonder if I can get comfortable going with the flow of things and relaxing into a whole new experience of life?

Today, I want predictability when it comes to finances, health and relationships.   I want things to go along in a way that doesn't throw me off-balance, but what if life surprises me with events or happenings that keep me growing, changing, flexing, adapting?   How far can I stretch and still not lose my balance?  How much of this crazy new world can I conform to without losing my sense of equilibrium?

Today, I want clarity about some Very Important Things in my life, but today, that clarity isn't available for me.  Am I mature enough to tolerate ambiguity?  Can I manage the stress of both/and, or am I going to insist on either/or?  Will I be able to manage my feelings of anxiety when the dots don't connect, the answers don't come and things don't turn out my way?   How will I react when people I love disagree with me and even reject a part of me that cannot conform like they want me to conform?

Today, I really want to control some things in my life over which I have absolutely no control, and I'm really ticked off about that.  It's not just that I need the control in order to have my way, but it is that others' having control over things that affect me profoundly scares me because I don't know if they will value what I value, respect what I respect or preserve what is precious to me.  How will I respond when others' choices make me feel the discomfort of loss of control?

Today, I want to be decisive and I often want decisions to be made 'way ahead of the time in which it is even possible for them to be made.  I don't like living in ambivalence, pulled between two choices.  I don't like living with competing priorities or needs and I certainly don't like being pulled between the needs of two people I love.  How do I handle the multiplicity of pulls that dwell within me?  Do I sometimes choose the easy way just to avoid the discomfort of ambivalance?  Do I rush to a decision about something just because I don't like living in limbo?  In what ways do I gravitate toward a rigid view of things to avoid the queasy feelings I have when life is churrning and turning in ambivalence?

Jim completes his introductory paragraph of this chapter by saying, "Thus, this Nervous Nellie ego flits about trying to make everything work, slapping her head, boxing her neighbors, obsessed with staying in charge.  As part of her agitated agenda, Nellie seeks to live in a world of nouns, comforting nouns, that is, fixed identities, counters on a table to be moved at will, predictable entities that can be controlled, maneuvered, and contained.  And all the while, Nellie really swims in a sea of verbs.  That is, no things fixed, but things happening.  And Nellie, tripping over this fact from time to time, grows all the more unsettled, anxious, kerfluffed, and flits about even more."

Who in your life is changing?  How do you respond to that change?

What changes are going on in your life that you need to stop resisting?

In what areas do you need to make peace with what is and what is happening?

What might you gain from embracing an inevitable change that scares you?

What roles are you playing now that you'd like to stop playing?

What images of yourself have grown too confining? 

What labels do you want to shed?  What changes would you have to make in order to do that?

And when was the last time your ego was kerfluffed? 

Love is a verb, isn't it?

So is grace.

May you live in the wild, life-giving energy, flux and flow of extravagant love and  uncommon grace....

Jeanie

(This is the first in a four week series of reflections based on Chapter Seven of the book WHAT MATTERS MOST:  LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED LIFE,  by James Hollis.   You can order Jim's books from here -- http://www.junghouston.org or from http://www.amazon.com.     You can also order CDs of his lecture from this course from the Jung Center in Houston.      Previous posts from this series can be found by clicking "What Matters" on the home page of this website.   I welcome and enjoy your comments, posted here on this website or sent to me by e-mail.)