I can appreciate what Dr. Myers is saying on this one. (By the way, I love the questions he comes up with, which is why I find myself responding to them so often. You would do well to check out any of his books. They are well written, easy to read, and feel like a breath of fresh air on the brain.)
It would seem like we have all been programmed to be insincere, often pat advice, and move on to the next major event in our own lives—except to do that would mean that we would have very little in terms of personal support in our personal lives. I venture many a family, marriage, and friendship can be burned out and broken by crisis events that happen to all of us, but we all seem unable to offer little more than catch phrases, clichés and slogans. What has become of us as a society, and what does paganism challenge us to do instead? And, why does it seem when we are trying to outline the path of progress, to enriching our lives with value and meaning, that we are stuck with these bits of words we hope help like verbal talismans and charms? Is it really, as Dr. Myers questions, signs of superficial spirituality?
I need to qualify this with some of my experience. I recognize what
cailleachsidhe is saying about the cultural use of language as distancing discourses, rather than engaging each other. Social insulation is acts like, if you will. But what exactly is it insulating from?
Clichés, slogans, and catch phrases were a part of my journey to recovery from drug addiction back in 1990. Twelve step fellowships have a discourse of their own, and sometimes, scholars attempt to criticize those fellowships and their programs by examining the discourse or a small segment of the larger world-wide fellowship for behavioral congruence. Problem is, the language used in the programs are unique to both 12 step movements and individual fellowships, and is expressed in both the literature in print and the testimonials of the members. Narcotics Anonymous uses different language in reference to God (after the 12 steps, it is termed “Higher Power” throughout, which is one of the reasons linguistically that pagans find themselves a home within NA rather than AA, which sometimes persists in using obviously Christian prayers in its literature and groups meetings.) However, one of the biggest ways people are taught the basic principles of how to live the principles of the 12 steps is by slogans. If anything, one suffering from short term memory dysfunction needs ways to remember coping strategies. The slogans and clichés are ways to remember how to approach a situation. Sometimes, the discernment of what to use when is not as clear, and people only remember what they can in the moment. In time, compassion and sensitivity comes into play, but in the beginning of learning how, people need slogans and catch phrases to learn bits of wisdom. For some, that opening of awareness is so profound that people confuse the opening of the mind with awareness as the entire process of spiritual growth itself. It is not the process, just an event in a process.
All slogans speak to wisdom. Dr. Myers is right when the proverb speaks to a wisdom a collective culture understands and expresses in language. The problem we have with clichés, like people relatively new to addiction recovery in 12 step fellowships that after one learns what the language is, one overuses the language in an attempt to be helpful. I call this the “five year old with a hammer” syndrome; in recovery groups, where people have rigid ways of responding (their addiction of drug use (which includes alcohol in the language I use) is very much a rigid method of coping), people use the clichés and slogans when what is needed is the language of empathy and compassion, and then, if required, advice, solution seeking, then peace. Empathy involves listening, not talking; attending, not preparing a speech for when it is your turn. Engaging another respectfully is listening to when a person is ready to hear the message. It is not anyone person’s job to express a message to another; a person truly engaged in supporting another empathetically allows the other to disclose, express, and ask for further support attending and listening, not forcefully offering quick fixes and band-aids that are really unsolicited advice. Caring and engaging of one’s time and energy is involved in that supportive work.
The use of the slogan, while it may be indeed true, without allowing the other to express their distress, is tantamount to suggesting they do not matter, and their lot in life does not matter. There is no sense of entitlement to state that to another whom we see as our equal, but at times, when we have the resources of better support, wisdom, education, life experience and so forth, we can take a stance of unsolicited advice to another, and disempowering the other in the process. The slogan or cliché or catch phrase is a band-aid, which could be a ploy to distance oneself from the distress, but it is also reflective of the collective problem our social structures and cultures have created. No one goes deep, no one engages trauma, and no one grieves. Most of the time, language is a poor expression of emotion, especially at a deep emotional level. (Some of the best art and music is inspired by the expression of raw emotion, to the point that we cannot help but be moved by the work of the artist, as we all can relate to the emotion expressed in the work.) The problem is that our culture expects us to shoulder our emotional burdens on our own in some sense of pseudo-independence, suffer in silence, and use wisdom to comfort us when in deep distress.
Babies fuss and fuss, and need a mother’s external reassurance to calm themselves down. The mother serves to teach the child to cope…soothing tones, rocking, soft tones, hugging, and the child settles and calms down. Science has outlined this process of emotional regulation very well, and we now know that children without emotional safety under six do not develop good self-regulation routines in their brains. How much of our culture takes parents away from parenting in the name of survival; how much distress comes from economic uncertainty; how many people have survived all kinds of things in our world. What are we truly seeking when we talk about what is bothering us with a trusted other? This help at settling down, calming down, having faith restored, and being connected once again when we feel so disconnected. The seeking of an external source of comfort comes from the fact we are not born with it, but through a process, we internalize it. Much of spirituality to me serves to do the same thing, that is, internalize a process of responding to life.
It is my observation most of our culture has very poor emotional literacy at best. Some of us struggle with expression in a culture that expects a “weather report” of detachment in using language to describe our feelings, and while some of that is cultural, there is an underlying assumption that “this kind of emotional detachment is the best way, and all of us should adopt this as the best way”, which has been promoted by some in the name of violence prevention. Some have seen the science of emotionality to mean that we are best left in a sense of low arousal in dealing with our emotions. Truth is, emotional arousal and handling it is really a combination of cultural and social expectations. There are many cultures in our world that allow certain types of expression that the prevention advocates would like to see squashed entirely. Frankly, it is dangerous to call all emotional arousal violence, but this is the rigid standard some are slowly creating in their attempts to indoctrinate and educate the masses. An example of this confusion is anger management curriculums, and the attempt to use an educational method to teach emotional skills. It is taught like a course, to people struggling with emotional over-arousal problems from years of poor self management, physical biochemical brain-based systems of flooded arousal, and then we add low language capacity based on poor literacy and reasoning skill, and further diminished reason, as it is for all of us, in the heat of the moment. Kids use hitting in anger long before words, as an expression of the impulse and emotion, and we have to intervene and teach them a different way. What the “best way” is, has been a subject of debate for the last twenty or so years, and keeps changing.
So, we have low emotional literacy, poor coping skills, and now we have real distress, and pet slogans. We collectively want to relive the distress, but like an inconsolable baby, some traumas are not easily fixed, some situations not easily resolved. No one of us can offer the “right course of action” to another, really. So, we offer band-aids, but there is really not much we can offer in words. And, some of us do not want to really engage in the others pain, as we do not have a lot of resources to cope with our own pain, so we shut down another’s attempt to express their distress. Some of this is projection, and some of it is avoidance. Still, when it comes to strategies, avoidance is a short term solution, not a long term one. We will in a society of instant gratification, and credit misuse is a sure sign of that. Consumerism is a larger version of exploitation to avoid feeling, and in the end, avoidance of pain does not resolve it.
Paganism to me does address the issues of pain, healing, rebirth, and value head on. To say that those who offer slogans and clichés are superficial in their spirituality is to run the risk of assuming that because we have poor language and coping skills or social intervention skills, we are not validly spiritual. It assumes that those who have better skills are more spiritual. Paganism does not necessarily reward achievement of these abilities per se; I believe that what is expected is progress. Can we get past the use of slogans and clichés? Only through examining self and seeing how one is both a mixture of so called positive and negative traits, that people are consistently inconsistent when it comes to living up to what they believe in, especially when personal costs are involved. People are indeed grey, and paganism is a spirituality that reflects and expresses that grayness as a truth in the world.
How can one go beyond where they are at then? Self-examination, reflection, discussion, mentoring, and, for what it is worth, engage the pain. No one has died from feeling a feeling. They have certainly died from trying to avoid feeling, and have certainly felt like they were going to lose their minds to madness from feeling, but a feeling is a feeling. Emotional arousal is one more thing in the body that happens, and our minds get to choose what meaning it has. I would say paganism challenges us to look at our emotional lives differently, and to sort out what engaging in all of life’s experiences really means, for ourselves.
Related Websites -
Things Not To Do When Instructing Your Dog by Ira Nelson It is the ambition of every dog owner to have a well-trained dog. However, many dog owners do not take into account the amount of effort and time which is needed to train a dog properly. That is the reason why a number of mistakes are made...... -
Saxophone 101 In comparison to many other types of musical instruments, the saxophone is still relatively new to the world of music. The saxophone was originally created by a man named Adolphe Sax around the year 1840, and it was first mentioned in print in a magazine article in 1842 that was...... -
Signs And Symbols Make People Buy When Conventional Efforts Fall Flat Marketing is a very tricky game that most people tend to choose to work safe; which will earn them results but will not turn their companies into highly popular names on any grade. When one want something more, one need to study a thing or two from the past. All...... -
Empathy with Pets I will begin by talking about empathy, and empathy is not compassion. Empathy is the ability to feel the feelings in creatures and places, like entering the presence of someone who’s depressed, and without asking or making a "logical" observation knowing that they are. Has anyone experienced this? Much of...... -
Dark And Light Mana Let’s discuss problem psychic vampires. When unaware they tend to be angry people, and you can feel it because they don’t just drain you, they negate you. Even if they aren’t being mean to you, it is just very hard to be present with them, though not all unpleasant people......


![Reblog this post [with Zemanta] Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=7ed851d0-9d90-4b66-9bbd-fb722a58bf50)



![Reblog this post [with Zemanta] Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=375d858e-61cd-45e7-8b93-ac155275330f)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta] Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=75433b4f-b314-4829-87a4-ce21097cda2d)






![Reblog this post [with Zemanta] Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=824b5dc2-8539-4de0-a165-bfe518595893)







![Reblog this post [with Zemanta] Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=4330ff10-9e72-4003-9563-54995996d3dc)