When I returned from my Thanksgiving retreat, my spirits flew high. So much positive feedback had come my way during that weekend, it seemed to confirm my suspicion that my past has given me an outlook I should broadcast to the world. That grandiose intuition first ignited during my religious ‘visions’ ten years ago, and has waxed and waned ever since. Soon after the retreat I dove into a heartfelt poem, followed by a string of rambling essays about spirituality. In the throes of feeling ‘called’ to speak out, I envisioned myself becoming a bit of a celebrity, offering wisdom to the world. I did not see this coming notoriety as something my efforts had earned, or my ego devised, but as something handed to me by fate. Or ‘God’ if you want to look at things that way.
Would anyone be surprised to learn that the response to my spirituality posts has been underwhelming? Or that my rosy optimism has been replaced by a more jaded perspective?
The cold waters of reality have doused the flames of grandiosity. For one thing, I read the book ‘How to Write a Book Proposal’ by Michael Larsen. Browsing in the library, I wanted input about how to deliver my message to a large audience. The book offered lots of advice in that regard. Problem is, much of it sounds like it’s beyond my grasp. If one wants to be a messenger in today’s world, it takes more than sitting at a computer and writing. You start by joining Toastmasters, work to build your presentation skills, scramble for every opportunity to speak, network widely, join societies, offer workshops, etc. I have a friend who is doing all these things, and has done so for years. It is finally paying off, but it has been a mammoth effort, and in my most sober moments I have to admit it does not look like something I could accomplish.
To start, the basic necessity of hard work daunts me. Back when I slogged through medical school and residency, strenuous labor and long hours were second nature. But that was long ago. Nowadays a productive day sees me writing for four hours. Even that can’t be done all at once, or my neck pain builds to breathtaking extremes. If I manage four such days in one week, I am doing well. I’m just being honest here. I know it’s whining to complain of my inability to work. At least I have the luxury of living without a job, thanks to a good disability policy that kicked in as soon as I lost a surgeon’s earning potential. I am fortunate that my physical limitations and psychological vulnerability have not driven me into poverty. With that acknowledged, it is also true that becoming a person people flock to for insight requires a level of effort that I have not achieved in a very long time. Not to mention the professional socializing and cold introductions I’d have to master. I’m an introvert both by innate personality and as a result of an upbringing that taught me the safest approach to life is to hide under a bush.
The spiritual series will continue, though today is a break from all that. What I’m setting aside is the dream of widely dispersing my method for moderns to feel spiritual. Instead, this project will bolster my sense that life means something, but will only provide a bit of amusement for a few others. I hope to intrigue those who find my blog and are persistent enough to wend their way through my prose. But I fear that will be the extent of my voice. Not that this would be insignificant. I believe it to be a worthy pursuit, but it will not improve many lives. I have not completely discarded the ambition of building a larger audience, but right now that seems unlikely.
This dose of reality leaves me free to ask what it is I most enjoy writing. Is it memoir? Is it philosophy? Is it ranting against pharmaceutical malfeasance? If the audience will remain small no matter what I choose to say, then why not say what gives my heart wings? And that, of course, is what I’ve done with this site all along.
Did my bout of grandiosity rise to the level of clinical mania? My sleep suffered, and I’d have gotten almost none without Ambien. The pace of my speech accelerated. My grip on the reality of my limitations relaxed. I opened to others in unprecedented ways, and if I had not been married might have pursued a fling. On the other hand, I did nothing impulsive. Did not spend unwisely, did not have an affair, did not gamble, did not drink. My behavior remained more or less acceptable, though I displayed more emotion at the retreat than normal for a fifty-year-old man. But isn’t that one of the points of retreats, to open up?
Why am I tempted to make a mood swing into an illness? Probably because it would make me feel less uncertain of ‘me.’ If I could ascribe my recent excitement to a disease separate from my core person, I would not be left asking what’s wrong with me. I would not have to puzzle over who this person is that can be silent, withdrawn, and discouraged one day, and voluble, intimate, and excited the next. But cutting myself off from the loopy side of my personality would be a copout. Better to embrace my occasional quirky behavior and soaring ambitions. Even if I fail to rescue the world from its rigidity and insistence on limiting the human mind, I can at least be me. I can be a person with turbulent emotions, passionate dreams, and creative visions. I can continue my efforts to combine logic with lyricism. It may be that others will see me as odd. Or maybe it’s only me that does. Either way, I can love myself, be happy I differ from the norm, and speak up. Isn’t that one of the goals of life, after all? To be ourselves, to be proud, and to give voice to our most heartfelt values?
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jss at http://jssfive.blogspot.com
One of the problems of trying to comment on somebody else’s post on spirituality is that it’s such a vast topic and rarely can accurate thoughts be conveyed in the obligatory comment of 75 words or less. Additionally there are so many people who simply do not ‘get it’. The experience is foreign to them and I think they are either overwhelmed with the subject matter, they feel too ignorant to comment or they just flat out don’t buy it. I, fortunately do not feel any of those things, which is not to say that I wouldn’t have some years ago, but no longer. I do ‘get it’ whatever ‘getting it’ means. I’ve come to believe that ‘getting it’ means nothing more than being familiar with the struggle that it presents, with the oftentimes nebulousness – it is not something to be grasped, held in one’s hand and conclusions reached. It is a dynamic, frequently hazy, puzzling experience.
Your last paragraph in particular seized me. As a person who for many years outwardly exhibited the ultimate self-control all in the interests of keeping hidden many of the true aspects of myself because they did not further the interests of what might be considered ‘good’ and ‘proper’ behavior I can honestly say I hear you and boy do I know in spades the difficulty. I am having these days great difficulty in containing the ‘quirky’ aspects of myself and the funny thing is these ‘quirky’ aspects are not injurious to anyone, they do not involve murderous tendencies nor a desire to hurt anyone in any way. They involve rather humor, a little bit of nuttiness, a great deal of energy and desire to experience who I am, who are the people around me and what is the world that I am living in. It involved the occasional desire to break out into song in public. I jest but not really. I have found that it has been a grave mistake to suppress this for so long because these things seem literally to be bursting at the seams. It is oftentimes very uncomfortable. But we endure.
Posted at December 14, 2009 on 6:25am.
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Will at http://willspirit.com
lostinamaze–
One obvious thing that only became apparent to me as I wrote this and talked to others, is how for most people faith remains free of the intellect’s interference. It’s solely experiential, or a matter of inner conviction, or in any event not something they have to ‘think’ about. For a few years during and after my spiritual ‘visions’ that was how I felt, but at every other time of my life my rational mind has put a big boulder in front of my heart’s door to faith. Until I could ‘think’ my way around it, I could not get through. Nowadays, faith remains experiential, but I can’t get to it without the acquiescence of my rational mind. I think many agnostics feel the same way. They have a yearning to find comfort in ‘God,’ but can’t have faith in something they don’t believe exists. ‘God’ seems so unlikely unless you look at the whole picture, which is what I’m trying to do.
As for spirituality vs religion, I see the difference as one of both concepts and social pressure. To me, spirituality is about the inner experience of the presence of God. There may be thoughts about what one is feeling, maybe even some imagery. But the primary focus is on the inner touch of the divine. It is a personal voyage. Religion is more intellectual, and more group-oriented. It puts forth a set of rules, descriptions, bylaws, metaphor, and scripture to provide the rational mind material to use to bring the ‘self’ toward spiritual connection. It often states a view of the cosmos. It gathers people together in formalized ways to further enhance the effect.
A spiritual person who decries religion might still use props and rituals, but not necessarily in a group, and not usually confined to a particular philosophy or tradition. More ecumenical, if you will.
A religious person still (hopefully) feels the divine touch, but does so in the context of a formalized system of thought and action, and with the support of a group of people who believe the same set of strictures.
I am working hard not to pretend to be building a religion. It would be silly if I were. First of all, all but a few very (ancient) religions are built around charismatic founders. I am not charismatic. I am introverted, hesitant, awkward, and compromising. A charismatic religious leader is extroverted, bold, smooth, and brimming with confidence in his or her ideas. Second, I am obscure and have only a slight and occasional fantasy that my status as an unknown blogger will ever change.
But even if I did possess the needed qualities to build a religion, I would not do it. I am opposed to religions because they try to formalize the formless. I am not trying to tell people what God is. I may give a few ideas, but I really don’t know and neither can anyone else. All I am trying to do is point out that whatever you believe, there is room in scientifically grounded views of reality to accommodate the existence of a universal consciousness. Science cannot exclude the possible existence of an entity that satisfies many (though not all) of the various qualities people associate with ‘God.’
If you were to pin me down, however, and ask if what I am doing is spiritual or religious, I would probably have to say it tends more toward religion. I am using intellect to understand faith. That is the realm of religion. Spirituality uses the heart to live faith.
–Will
Posted at December 14, 2009 on 8:22am.
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jss at http://jssfive.blogspot.com
I cannot believe that God would expect us to separate our intellect from our faith. I firmly believe that all aspects inherent to human beings, intellect, emotion, our physical being, instinct, all of these things are actively involved in the process that we refer to as faith. We can know both experientially AND intellectually. We as human beings have a need to understand rationally and I do not believe for one minute that God asks us to discard that aspect of ourselves when it comes to faith. Quite the contrary seems to me that he would fully expect that we use to the best of our ability a tool that he has provided in the making.
Posted at December 14, 2009 on 8:39am.
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Will at http://willspirit.com
jss–
There was time, many years ago, when I felt myself so accomplished that (within limits–aha!) it seemed I could afford to show others how ‘different’ my mind was. I talked openly about my insanely abusive childhood, my frequent arrests as an adolescent, my disastrous love life, my intense mood swings, etc. I thought that people couldn’t really criticize me when I revealed such things from my status as a successful and widely respected subspecialty surgeon. I have no idea, looking back, what people really thought or said about me behind my back. I probably should have been more circumspect, if only to protect my professional reputation. But I got by for many years, until those very mood swings conspired with a failing neck to bring me down. Nowadays I have nothing impressive to hold as a shield against the accusation that I’m just neurotic and unreliable. So where I once felt my ‘weirdness’ was belied by my success, I am now just a sad, failed, mental patient, at least in the eyes of my former colleagues. As I toy with rebuilding some kind of professional life, I keep hitting the obstacle of my flightiness. I can seem perfectly solid and reasonable one day, and absolutely giddy, or tearful, the next. How could I ever get back into a professional role with this personality? I think society’s desire to squelch all behavior that does not fit in the narrow center of the bell curve is misguided. Maybe some day there will be more acceptance of ‘different’ personalities in the same way there is less racism and sexism than in times past. I hope so, but we have a long way to go. When times are hard, like now, the people on the fringes are the first to suffer. That just increases the tendency of others to crowd toward the center of the herd. I agree it is unhealthy to squelch our true selves. It leads to self-criticism and loss of soul. I have lost the ability to squelch, apparently. Sometimes I feel this has been good for my soul, and other times I think it just makes me odd. Or maybe both are true. At this point I have little choice but to be ‘real.’
Also, I agree that ‘God’ wants us to use our intellect, and speaks to us through it. Or I might even go further, and say that intellect is one of God’s voices. It is the universe having achieved a level of organization that permits structured language and thought. It is the universe moving past mute presence and into the realm of discourse. But when I go this far I am just putting forth my personal theological views. In more basic terms, if there is a ‘God’ then there is every reason to expect ‘God’ would want us to use every tool at our disposal to experience faith, presence, and divine touch.
–Will
Posted at December 14, 2009 on 10:05am.
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jss at http://jssfive.blogspot.com
Will,
Sounds like a good measure of humility has been handed to you. I suspect we all get it in one way or another. I know I have. I find your honesty refreshing.
I’ve been reading some Jung lately. Fascinating stuff and so much of it speaks to what we talk of in our posts. I just finished The Undiscovered Self and Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams. This is a man that embraced as possibility whatever human phenomena he came across I think. Chose to study it rather than dismiss it as this or that. If you haven’t already I would recommend his writings.
Posted at December 14, 2009 on 11:59am.
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Will at http://willspirit.com
jss–
Even at my most successful, I never possessed a great deal of confidence. Losing so much in the way of status hit me very hard. Having gone through a meltdown, years of anguish, and gradual acceptance, I am now returning to mere humility. Much better than all the years spent feeling crushed and worthless, which of course was just another species of hubris. My post today shows me zeroing in on humility. I’ll be at peace when I can accept myself as a pretty ordinary human, without the drive to overachieve, or the flare for tragedy.
About fifteen years ago I read a number of Jung’s books. I think he had a far better understanding of people than his early mentor Freud. Your comment reminds me that this series of posts I’m working on would benefit if I did some review.
–Will
Posted at December 15, 2009 on 9:25pm.
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isabella mori (@moritherapy) at http://moritherapy.org
humility is a wonderful thing. as you say, it’s freeing. and yet – grandiosity is so much more seductive (well, i guess it’s almost the definition of humility NOT to be seductive). i still have glimpses of seeing myself on an oprah show but am grateful that they have diminished from hour-long fantasies to little blips on the screen of my consciousness
the topic of how “mental illness” (whatever that is) integrates with personality and life experiences is a fascinating one – thank you for tackling it!
Posted at January 3, 2010 on 1:23pm.
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Will at http://willspirit.com
isabella–
It is always a fine line to separate unhealthy grandiosity from vigor and confidence. Or healthy humility from self-condemnation and humiliation. The grandiosity is very seductive; but it’s unbalanced and all-too-often unrealistic. I can’t totally escape it either; and it goes a lot further with me than hour-long blips. But at least I’m learning to catch it, own up to it, and try to learn from it.
By the way, I agree with your tacit questioning of the ‘illness’ concept in ‘mental illness’. More and more I’m trying to move toward the word ‘variation’ and to look at ways to make my mind effective, rather than trying to get it to fit some narrow concept of normalcy.
Thanks for dropping by.
–Will
Posted at January 4, 2010 on 2:45pm.