The real function of a spiritual friend is to insult you.
Quote:
Idiot compassion is the highly conceptualized idea that you want to do good….Of course, [according to the mahayana teachings of Buddhism] you should do everything for everybody; there is no selection involved at all. But that doesn’t mean to say that you have to be gentle all the time. Your gentleness should have heart, strength. In order that your compassion doesn’t become idiot compassion, you have to use your intelligence. Otherwise, there could be self-indulgence of thinking that you are creating a compassionate situation when in fact you are feeding the other person’s aggression. If you go to a shop and the shopkeeper cheats you and you go back and let him cheat you again, that doesn’t seem to be a very healthy thing to do for others.
Our story begins with the Grail castle, which is in serious trouble. The Fisher King, the king of the castle, has been wounded. His wounds are so severe that he cannot live, yet he is incapable of dying. he groans; he cries out; he suffers constantly. The whole land is in desolation, for a land mirrors the condition of its king, inwardly in a mythological dimension, as well as outwardly in the physical work. The cattle do not reproduce; the crops won’t grow; maidens weep; there is mourning everywhere – all because the Fisher King is wounded.
[...]
The whole Grail castle is in serious trouble because the Fisher King is wounded. The myth tells us that years before, early in his adolescence, when he was out wandering around in the woods doing his knight errantry, the Fisher King came to a camp. All the people of the camp were gone, but there was a salmon roasting on a spit. He was hungry, there was a salmon roasting over the fire, and he took a bit of it to eat. He found that the salmon was very hot. After burning his fingers on it he dropped the salmon and put his fingers into his mouth to assuage the burn. In so doing he got a bit of the salmon into his mouth. This is the Fisher King wound and gives its name to the ruler of much of our modern psychology. Modern suffering man is the heir to this psychological event which took place culturally some eight hundred years ago.
[...]
Much is to learned from the symbol of the wounded Fisher King. The salmon or, more generally, the fish, is one of the many symbols of Christ. As in the story of the Fisher King coming upon the roasting salmon, a boy in his early adolescence touches something of the Christ nature within himself but touches it too soon. He is unexpectedly wounded by it and drops it immediately as being too hot. But a bit of it gets into his mouth and he can never forget the experience. His first contact with what will be redemption for him later in his life is a wounding. This is what turns him into a wounded Fisher King. The first touch of consciousness in a youth appears as wound or as suffering. Parsifal finds his Garden of Eden experience by way of the bit of salmon. That suffering stays with him until his redemption or enlightenment many years later.
Most western men are Fisher Kings. Every boy has naively blundered into something that is too big for him. He proceeds halfway through his masculine development and then drops it as being too hot. Often a certain bitterness arises, because, like the Fisher King, he can neither live with the new consciousness he has touched nor can he entirely drop it.
Every adolescent receive his Fisher King wound. He would never proceed into consciousness if it were not so. The church speaks of this wounding as the felix culpathe happy fall which ushers one into the process of redemption. This is the fall from the Garden of Eden, the graduation from naive consciousness into self consciousness.
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I doubt if there is a woman in the world who has not had to mutely stand by as she watched a man agonize over his Fisher King aspect. She may be the one who notices, even before the man himself is aware of it, that there is suffering and a haunting sense of injury and incompleteness in him. A man suffering in this way is often driven to do idiotic things to cure the wound and ease the desperation he feels. Usually he seeks an unconscious solution outside of himself, complaining about this work, his marriage, or his place in the world.
The Fisher King is carried about in his litter, groaning, crying in his suffering. There is no respite for him – except when he is fishing. This is to say that the wound, which represents consciousness, is bearable only when the wounded is doing his inner work, proceeding with the task of consciousness which was inadvertently started with the wound in his youth. This close association with fishing will soon play a large part in our story.
I was taught TA and it has helped me decide my destiny and story.
Transactional analysis, commonly known as TA to its adherents, is an integrative approach to the theory of psychology and psychotherapy. It is described as integrative because it has elements of psychoanalytic, humanist and cognitive approaches. TA was first developed by Canadian-born US psychiatrist, Eric Berne, starting in the late 1950s.
Outline
According to the International Transactional Analysis Association, TA ‘is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change’.
As a theory of personality, TA describes how people are structured psychologically. It uses what is perhaps its best known model, the ego-state (Parent-Adult-Child) model, to do this. The same model helps explain how people function and express their personality in their behavior.
It is a theory of communication that can be extended to the analysis of systems and organisations.
It offers a theory for child development by explaining how our adult patterns of life originated in childhood. This explanation is based on the idea of a “Life (or Childhood) Script”: the assumption that we continue to re-play childhood strategies, even when this results in pain or defeat. Thus it claims to offer a theory of psychopathology.
In practical application, it can be used in the diagnosis and treatment of many types of psychological disorders and provides a method of therapy for individuals, couples, families and groups.
Outside the therapeutic field, it has been used in education to help teachers remain in clear communication at an appropriate level, in counselling and consultancy, in management and communications training and by other bodies.
Philosophy
People are OK; thus each person has validity, importance, equality of respect.
Everyone (with only few exceptions, such as the severely brain-damaged) has the capacity to think.
People decide their story and destiny, therefore these decisions can be changed.
Freedom from historical maladaptations embedded in the childhood script is required in order to become free of inappropriate, inauthentic and displaced emotions which are not a fair and honest reflection of here-and-now life (such as echoes of childhood suffering, pity-me and other mind games, compulsive behavior and repetitive dysfunctional life patterns).
The aim of change under TA is to move toward autonomy (freedom from childhood script), spontaneity, intimacy, problem solving as opposed to avoidance or passivity, cure as an ideal rather than merely making progress and learning new choices.
In traditional portrayals of the six realms of existence, the Buddha in the human realm is shown with a begging bowl. We may associate this with a mentality of poverty, which is the largest concern in the human realm. But by carrying a begging bowl, in fact, it is as though you always have something to put things into. In other words, the ultimate mentality of poverty is also the mentality of richness at the same time.
In that way, you are in command of the whole situation.
Rise again, rise again – though your heart it be broken and life about to end
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend.
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
Stan Rogers, Mary Ellen Carter from the album Between the Breaks ….Live
She went down last October in a pouring driving rain.
The skipper, he’d been drinking and the Mate, he felt no pain.
Too close to Three Mile Rock, and she was dealt her mortal blow,
And the Mary Ellen Carter settled low.
There were just us five aboard her when she finally was awash.
We’d worked like hell to save her, all heedless of the cost.
And the groan she gave as she went down, it caused us to proclaim
That the Mary Ellen Carter would rise again.
Well, the owners wrote her off; not a nickel would they spend.
“She gave twenty years of service, boys, then met her sorry end.
But insurance paid the loss to us, so let her rest below.”
Then they laughed at us and said we had to go.
But we talked of her all winter, some days around the clock,
For she’s worth a quarter million, afloat and at the dock.
And with every jar that hit the bar, we swore we would remain
And make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again.
All spring, now, we’ve been with her on a barge lent by a friend.
Three dives a day in hard hat suit and twice I’ve had the bends.
Thank God it’s only sixty feet and the currents here are slow
Or I’d never have the strength to go below.
But we’ve patched her rents, stopped her vents, dogged hatch and porthole down.
Put cables to her, ‘fore and aft and girded her around.
Tomorrow, noon, we hit the air and then take up the strain.
And watch the Mary Ellen Carter rise again.
Rise again, rise again, that her name not be lost
To the knowledge of men.
Those who loved her best and were with her till the end
Will make the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
For we couldn’t leave her there, you see, to crumble into scale.
She’d saved our lives so many times, living through the gales
And the laughing, drunken rats who left her to a sorry grave
They won’t be laughing in another day. . .
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
Rise again, rise again – though your heart it be broken
And life about to end
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend.
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
A death and a birth (both). It’s good to have a model once the inevitable pain arises.
Wikipedia: The repetitive lyrics are believed to have a connection with mythology. The song describes the ferryman as “the hooded old man at the rudder,” and seems to connect to the classic image of the Grim Reaper, a hooded being (usually a skeleton) who leads lost souls to “the other side,” also a lyric in the song.The ferryman demanding his payment is also similar to the Greek ferryman of the dead, Charon. He demanded an obolus (coin) to ferry dead souls across the River Styx. Those who did not pay were doomed to remain as ghosts, remaining on the plane of the mare, the restless dead. Therefore in former cultures coins were laid below the tongues of dead persons.
Psychopomp [guide of the souls]: In Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms. It is symbolically personified in dreams as a wise man or woman, or sometimes as a helpful animal. In many cultures, the shaman also fulfills the role of the psychopomp. This may include not only accompanying the soul of the dead, but also vice versa: to help at birth, to introduce the newborn child’s soul to the world (p. 36 of). This also accounts for the contemporary title of “midwife to the dying,” which is another form of psychopomp work.
Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave instructions for the battle.
The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?”
Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.”
Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?”
Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.”
In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.
And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.
Exaggerated sensitivity: I’ve met that in myself and a few franchisees over 14 years.
Quotes:
Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.
Every therapeutic cure, and still more, any awkward attempt to show the patient the truth, tears him from the cradle of his freedom from responsibility and must therefore reckon with the most vehement resistance.
My difficulties belong to me!
To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest. The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.
Franchising is a technology that borrows methods from totalitarian strategies.
The Womb State
Totalitarianism is a man’s escape form the fearful realities of life into the virtual womb of the leader. The individual’s actions are directed from this womb – from the inner sanctum. The mystic center is a control of everything man need no longer assume responsibility for his own life. The order and logic of the prenatal world reign. There is peace and silence, the peace of utter submission. The members of the womb state do not really communicate; between them there is silence, the silence of possible betrayal, not the mature silence of reticence and reservedness. Totalitaria increases the gap between the things one shows and communicates and the things one secretly dreams and thinks deep within oneself. It develops the artificial split-mindedness of political science. Whatever little remains of individual feeling and opinion is kept carefully enclosed. In the schizophrenic world of Totalitaria, there is no free mutual exchange, no conversation, no exclamation, no release from emotional tension. It is a world of silent conspirators. Indeed, the atmosphere of suspicion is the big attacker of mental freedom because it makes people cling together, conspiring against mysterious enemies – first from outside, then among themselves….
The deep hate the sick individual feels toward the parental figure cannot be expressed directly, and so it is displaced onto the self or onto scapegoats. Scapegoatism is also part of the totalitarian strategy. As we pointed out before, the scapegoat temporarily absorbs all the individual’s inner fury and rage. Kulaks, Negroes, Jews, Communists, capitalists, profiteers and warmongers – any or all of them can play the role. Perhaps the greatest dangers, to the totalitarian mind, is the use of intellect and awareness and the “egg-head’s” demand for free, verifying thinking. Aberration and perversion are chosen by the citizens of Totalitaria, as they are by the inhabitants of madhouses, over tiring, intellectual control.
Posted by Les Stewart 
