HEALING
by Norm Lowry
We live in a culture gone mad, a society so disjointed that we have forgotten both who we and those around us really are. We have given up our health--physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually--and our ability to heal ourselves and others, all for a distorted sense of power that only destroys. Few of us seem to be able to claim any happiness at all, only misery, which we blame on someone or something else. And if asked for the name or names of those with whom we have genuinely satisfying relationships, few if any can honestly provide one name.
So what do we generally do? We tend to buy into society's love of mental illness; a state where circumstances are fully beyond our control; a state where we can play the victim; a state where we can take medication that will make our pain go away. But does our pain genuinely go away or do we simply transport ourselves into a state where we can get out of dealing with our reality for yet another moment or two…?
My life has been no different than the many others who have suffered horrendous abuses, tortures, and tragedies. I've found my obsessions, compulsions, and hatreds with which to build massive walls to keep myself presumably safe. I've found myself meaningfully classified and diagnosed, professionally, and, I've taken my poisons which raised my seratonin level so I could feel better, for my token moment or two. Yet where did it all get me? It left me alone, firmly entrenched behind self-built walls that shut out all meaningful interaction.
One day, while literally depressed out of my mind, I went to see a movie. I found that while I was watching the movie, my depression was nonexistent. When the movie was over and I set foot outside, I found that my depression was right there waiting for me. So I went back inside and watched another movie, another three or four movies to be truthful. It didn't take extreme brilliance to realize that my thoughts and choices of the day were altering both my feelings and physiology. I was choosing to depress, then choosing to stop depressing, when I found a more effective way to engage life. My old, self-protective paradigm was faulty and had become useless to me. So I went in search of a new paradigm.
That day, at the movie theater, my insanity was exposed for what it really was: a massive lie that was literally sucking quality life right out of me and, it was my chosen lie. There may genuinely be such a thing as mental illness, if there's a genuine pathology that can be found to physically prove it. And surely medications are at times needed, as they seem to lessen the anxiety of those turning certain emotional corners. But I was past this basic need. What I found has completely changed my life.
I found a teacher who taught me six things:
1. Life can only deeply be engaged by the one willing to accept complete responsibility for all personal behavior.
2. As neither the past nor what occurred in the past can limit me, only working in the present and toward the future can effectively aid my personal growth.
3. Relating as ourselves is always fruitful, relating as "transference figures" is never fruitful.
4. Personal growth is never to be found in excusing behaviors on the basis of unconscious motivations.
5. The morality of behavior--the distinguishing between right and wrong solidifies the investment in personal growth.
6. The more satisfactory our patterns of behavior, the more and better we fulfill our basic needs. (William Glasser)
Today I no longer live by trying to deny the real world. I do not try to fulfill my needs as if some aspect of my world does not exist. I do not live in defiance of the existence of actual problems. Today, I live to be involved with and to engage people, all people. I look for quality, satisfying relationships in which I ask others to be real with me, as I am real with them. I seek to change only me, as it is absurd to think that I can change another, anyway. I correct myself when wrong and credit myself when right.
In being healed, I am becoming a healer….
5/24/15
