ishallbelife

[ishallbelife]

Shame is about who we are, and guilt is about our behaviors. We feel guilty when we hold up something we’ve done or failed to do against the kind of person we want to be. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, but one that’s helpful. When we apologize for something we’ve done, make amends to others, or change a behavior that we don’t feel good about, guilt is most often the motivator. Guilt is just as powerful as shame, but its effect is often positive while shame often is destructive. When we see people apologize, make amends, or replace negative behaviors with more positive ones, guilt is often the motivator, not shame. In fact, in my research, I found that shame corrodes the part of us that believes we can change and do better.

Brené Brown, PhD (The Gifts of Imperfection)

#brene brown #quotes #shame #guilt #cultural studies #gifts of imperfection #the gifts of imperfection

[ishallbelife]

Guilt is just as powerful as shame, but its influence is positive, while shame’s is destructive. - Brené Brown, PhD (Daring Greatly)

#guilt #shame #self-hatred #shame scar #brene brown #brene brown quotes

[ishallbelife]

Apparently, this conversation (noted in the picture and in the last post) is legendary, but I’ve personally only heard about it from two people: Danielle LaPorte and Jonathan Fields, who has interviewed LaPorte on his Good Life Project podcast and cites her as the source.

Still, this passage has dug its heels into my consciousness and not let go.

It crosses my mind every time I learn about another mass shooting. Regardless of the details of the shooter or their alleged motivation, I remember the Dalai Lama’s question: “Are the people like that very violent?”

Though some of these shooters also commit suicide, I’m not saying that if the shooters just loved themselves more, we would all be better off. That’s like making the case that if Hitler had gotten into art school, millions of Jews would not have been murdered. That reduces the horror to something much manageable: If only x was different, then this could be prevented. In my opinion, that’s wishful thinking.

But as a culture, we accept a degree of violence that is pretty devastating once you learn to see it again. It goes well beyond guns. If we all see the world through a haze of self-loathing, would we necessarily be startled by a person who appears to hate everyone? If we’re all a little sick to varying degrees, are we going to be likely to spot the kind of sick that eventually leads to mass murder?

How could you think of yourself this way?

In 1990, there was a small gathering of psychologists, scientists, and meditators who came together with the Dalai Lama to explore the topic of healing emotions. Sharon Salzburg was there—she’s a much-adored writer on lovingkindness and happiness, and the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in the U.S. Their poignant interaction at the meeting is now legendary.

She asked him, “Your Holiness, what do you think about self-hatred?” Apparently His Holiness looked startled, leaned over to his translator, and emphatically and repeatedly asked for a translation of “self-hatred.” Finally, he looked back to Sharon, and asked, “Self-hatred…what is that?”

Hold up. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who is considered to be the incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, didn’t get the concept of self-loathing—something that so many of us westerners know all too well? You know, DOWN on yourself, man. We live this way. When I first heard about this event, I thought, Doesn’t everyone hate themselves to some degree, like, isn’t it just universal human affliction? Apparently not.

Also present at that meeting of great minds was meditation teacher and author Jack Kornfield, who adds to the story. “Then, [the Dalai Lama] asked not only whether we knew what [Sharon] was talking about, but also if we ourselves experienced this self-hatred. And almost all the Buddhist teachers there, representing an entire generation, said ‘yes.’”

With his hallmark humility, the Dalai Lama responded, “I thought I had a very good acquaintance with the mind, but now I feel quite ignorant. I find this very, very strange.”

Some philosophical discussions of this story bring up the point that while it would be hard to say that Tibetan Buddhists and the Dalai Lama have literally never heard of self-hatred or self-aggression, it’s simply not emphasized in their spirituality in the way that it is in the western world. Maybe this is because they didn’t grow up with the Original Sin soundtrack playing in the background of their lives.

Thrown for a loop, His Holiness wanted to explore the concept of self-hatred further. He was not letting it go. “Is that some kind of nervous disorder?” he asked. “Are people like that very violent?” And then he delivered this white hot Truth in the form of a question:

“But you have Buddha nature. How could you think of yourself that way?”

--Danielle LaPorte, on the Dalai Lama via White Hot Truth

#danielle laporte #dalai lama #quotes #self-hatred #mental wellness #mental wellbeing #mental health #gun violence #mass shooting #white hot truth #scartending #shame scar #self hatred scar #cultural scars #cultural scartending #cultural studies

[ishallbelife]

How could you think of yourself this way?

In 1990, there was a small gathering of psychologists, scientists, and meditators who came together with the Dalai Lama to explore the topic of healing emotions. Sharon Salzburg was there—she’s a much-adored writer on lovingkindness and happiness, and the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in the U.S. Their poignant interaction at the meeting is now legendary.

She asked him, “Your Holiness, what do you think about self-hatred?” Apparently His Holiness looked startled, leaned over to his translator, and emphatically and repeatedly asked for a translation of “self-hatred.” Finally, he looked back to Sharon, and asked, “Self-hatred…what is that?”

Hold up. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who is considered to be the incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, didn’t get the concept of self-loathing—something that so many of us westerners know all too well? You know, DOWN on yourself, man. We live this way. When I first heard about this event, I thought, Doesn’t everyone hate themselves to some degree, like, isn’t it just universal human affliction? Apparently not.

Also present at that meeting of great minds was meditation teacher and author Jack Kornfield, who adds to the story. “Then, [the Dalai Lama] asked not only whether we knew what [Sharon] was talking about, but also if we ourselves experienced this self-hatred. And almost all the Buddhist teachers there, representing an entire generation, said ‘yes.’”

With his hallmark humility, the Dalai Lama responded, “I thought I had a very good acquaintance with the mind, but now I feel quite ignorant. I find this very, very strange.”

Some philosophical discussions of this story bring up the point that while it would be hard to say that Tibetan Buddhists and the Dalai Lama have literally never heard of self-hatred or self-aggression, it’s simply not emphasized in their spirituality in the way that it is in the western world. Maybe this is because they didn’t grow up with the Original Sin soundtrack playing in the background of their lives.

Thrown for a loop, His Holiness wanted to explore the concept of self-hatred further. He was not letting it go. “Is that some kind of nervous disorder?” he asked. “Are people like that very violent?” And then he delivered this white hot Truth in the form of a question:

“But you have Buddha nature. How could you think of yourself that way?”

--Danielle LaPorte, on the Dalai Lama via White Hot Truth

#danielle laporte #dalai lama #quotes #self-hatred #mental wellness #mental wellbeing #mental health

[ishallbelife]

Note: This strikes me as a really good invitation for scartending.

In my next post, I’m going to cite a secondhand account of a conversation between the Dalai Lama via Danielle LaPorte’s White Hot Truth, but I also highly recommend going deeper into the Dalai Lama’s own words through other works.

I especially loved as The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World (co-written with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Douglas Carlton Abrams) or Mission Joy: Finding Happiness in Troubled Times, a related documentary you can find on Netflix. (The latter is especially fun, because you get to see the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu enjoying each other.)

People would like to be able to take a pill that makes their fear and anxiety go away and makes them immediately feel peaceful. This is impossible. One must develop the mind over time and cultivate mental immunity. Often people ask me for the quickest and best solution to a problem. Again, this is impossible. You can have quickest or you can have best solution, but not both. The best solution to our suffering is mental immunity, but it takes time to develop. - The Dalai Lama, The Book of Joy

#quotes #dalai lama #the book of joy #mental wellness #dalai lama quotes #bookofjoyquotes #mental health #scartending #full range of motion #ancestral healing #ancestral scars #ancestral #culture #cultural scars #mending #shame scar

[ishallbelife]

People would like to be able to take a pill that makes their fear and anxiety go away and makes them immediately feel peaceful. This is impossible. One must develop the mind over time and cultivate mental immunity. Often people ask me for the quickest and best solution to a problem. Again, this is impossible. You can have quickest or you can have best solution, but not both. The best solution to our suffering is mental immunity, but it takes time to develop. - The Dalai Lama, The Book of Joy

#quotes #dalai lama #the book of joy #mental wellness

[ishallbelife]

Traditional peoples who feed their families from the land have harvest guidelines too: detailed protocols designed to maintain the health and vigor of wildlife species. Like the state regulations, they too are based on sophisticated ecological knowledge and long-term monitoring of populations. They share the common goal of protecting what hunting managers call “the resource,” both for its own sake and to safeguard the sustainable supply for future generations.

Early colonists on Turtle Island were stunned by the plenitude they found here, attributing the richness to the bounty of nature. Settlers in the Great Lakes wrote in their journals about the extraordinary abundance of wild rice harvested by Native peoples; in just a few days, they could fill their canoes with enough rice to last all year. But the settlers were puzzled by the fact that, as one of them wrote, “the savages stopped gathering long before all the rice was harvested.” She observed that “the rice harvest starts with a ceremony of thanksgiving and prayers for good weather for the next four days. They will harvest dawn till dusk for the prescribed four days and then stop, often leaving much rice to stand unreaped. This rice, they say, is not for them but for the Thunders. Nothing will compel them to continue, therefore much goes to waste.” The settlers took this as certain evidence of laziness and lack of industry on the part of the heathens. They did not understand how indigenous land-care practices might contribute to the wealth they encountered.

I once met an engineering student visiting from Europe who told me excitedly about going ricing in Minnesota with his friend’s Ojibwe family. He was eager to experience a bit of Native American culture. They were on the lake by dawn and all day long they poled through the rice beds, knocking the ripe seed into the canoe. “It didn’t take long to collect quite a bit,” he reported, “but it’s not very efficient. At least half of the rice just falls in the water and they didn’t seem to care. It’s wasted.” As a gesture of thanks to his hosts, a traditional ricing family, he offered to design a grain capture system that could be attached to the gunwales of their canoes. He sketched it out for them, showing how his technique could get 85 percent more rice. His hosts listened respectfully, then said, “Yes, we could get more that way. But it’s got to seed itself for next year. And what we leave behind is not wasted. You know, we’re not the only ones who like rice. Do you think the ducks would stop here if we took it all?” Our teachings tell us to never take more than half.

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

#quotes #robin wall kimmerer #braiding sweetgrass #culture #cultural studies #western culture #scartending #cultural scars

[ishallbelife]

Where Dr. Brené Brown uses the term “scarcity consciousness,” Dr. Estés uses the term “famine.” She specifies that you can experience famine within a culture, which causes sickness—as you can see in the above quote and the previous post.

Famine is a matter of survival, of course. But when it’s over, “scarcity consciousness” can linger—and it can drive unhealthy behavior, even when the physical hunger has been addressed.

Obviously, it’s not just wolves or women, but all genders that are affected.

And whenever I read the line about an individual “with a spiritual/psychological problem that causes her to fall into traps,” I think about advertising. All of it, whether it’s a TV commercial or a billboard or a social media post.

In a culture ridden with scarcity consciousness, that conscious hunger and the unaddressed insatiability, everyone is susceptible to being told exactly what their needs are and what products can meet them.

-

On the JourneyPen Project, I often name Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés as my creative elder. She has been enormously influential on my own work, including my novels. I first read Women Who Run with the Wolves in 2008 (the complete text--though I'd read complete chapters well before that time).

I need to credit her influence here too, so here she is--the elder who reminded me that sometimes it's the culture that is the problem, not me.

Like the starved soul, the wolf has been portrayed as vicious, ravenous, preying upon the innocent and the unguarded, killing to kill, never knowing when enough is enough. As you can see, the wolf has a very bad and unearned fairy-tale and real-life reputation. In actuality, wolves are dedicated social creatures. The entire pack is instinctively organized so healthy wolves kill only what is needed for survival. Only when there is trauma to an individual wolf or to the pack does this normal pattern loosen or change.

There are two instances in which a wolf kills excessively. In both, the wolf is not well. A wolf may kill indiscriminately when it is ill with rabies or distemper. A wolf may kill excessively after a period of famine. The idea that famine can alter the behavior of creatures is quite a significant metaphor for the soul-starved woman. Nine times out of ten a woman with a spiritual/psychological problem that causes her to fall into traps and be badly hurt is a woman who is currently being starved or who has been critically soul-starved in the past.

Among wolves, famine occurs when snows are high and game is impossible to reach. Deer and caribou act as snowplows; wolves follow their paths through the high snow. When the deer are stranded by high snowfalls, no plowing occurs; then the wolves are stranded too. Famine ensues. For wolves the most dangerous time for famine is winter. For woman, a famine may occur at any time, and can come from anywhere, including her own culture.

For the wolf, famine usually ends in springtime when the snows begin to melt. Following a famine, the pack may throw itself into a killing frenzy. Its members won’t eat most of the game they kill, and they won’t cache it. They leave it. They kill much more than they could ever eat, much more than they could ever need. A similar process occurs when a woman’s been captured and starved. Suddenly free to go, to do, to be, she is in danger of going on a rampage of excesses too…and feels justified about it. … There is something about famine that causes judgment to be blighted.

--

Words by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD.

{Another quote in the Scarcity Scartending constellation}

#quotes #clarissa pinkola estes #wolves #women who run with the wolves #creative elder #famine #scarcity #culture #cultural studies #western culture #wolf #wolf quotes #scarcity scar #scarcity consciousness

[ishallbelife]

Like the starved soul, the wolf has been portrayed as vicious, ravenous, preying upon the innocent and the unguarded, killing to kill, never knowing when enough is enough. As you can see, the wolf has a very bad and unearned fairy-tale and real-life reputation. In actuality, wolves are dedicated social creatures. The entire pack is instinctively organized so healthy wolves kill only what is needed for survival. Only when there is trauma to an individual wolf or to the pack does this normal pattern loosen or change.

There are two instances in which a wolf kills excessively. In both, the wolf is not well. A wolf may kill indiscriminately when it is ill with rabies or distemper. A wolf may kill excessively after a period of famine. The idea that famine can alter the behavior of creatures is quite a significant metaphor for the soul-starved woman. Nine times out of ten a woman with a spiritual/psychological problem that causes her to fall into traps and be badly hurt is a woman who is currently being starved or who has been critically soul-starved in the past.

Among wolves, famine occurs when snows are high and game is impossible to reach. Deer and caribou act as snowplows; wolves follow their paths through the high snow. When the deer are stranded by high snowfalls, no plowing occurs; then the wolves are stranded too. Famine ensues. For wolves the most dangerous time for famine is winter. For woman, a famine may occur at any time, and can come from anywhere, including her own culture.

For the wolf, famine usually ends in springtime when the snows begin to melt. Following a famine, the pack may throw itself into a killing frenzy. Its members won’t eat most of the game they kill, and they won’t cache it. They leave it. They kill much more than they could ever eat, much more than they could ever need. A similar process occurs when a woman’s been captured and starved. Suddenly free to go, to do, to be, she is in danger of going on a rampage of excesses too…and feels justified about it. … There is something about famine that causes judgment to be blighted.

--

Words by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD.

{Another quote in the Scarcity Scartending constellation}

#quotes #wolves #women who run with the wolves #clarissa pinkola estes #creative elder #famine #scarcity #culture #cultural studies #western culture #wolf #wolf quotes #scarcity scar #scarcity consciousness

[ishallbelife]

Obviously, it would be incomplete to speak about scarcity in our culture without also bringing forward Brené Brown.

According to Dr. Brené Brown, “scarcity consciousness” is so prevalent in our culture that we have stopped seeing it. Like fish born in a polluted river, it is the only home we know. We’ve spent our whole lives swimming in it while it wreaks slow, persistent damage in every cell of our being, until we are unsafe even to ourselves. She obviously writes about this in her books, but here’s a good primer she wrote for Goop.

It looks like a solely mental problem: “never ________ enough” has repeated on loop in my head for as long as I remember. But the insatiability associated with that thought pattern, it shows up at every interpersonal level; it’s threaded through the fabric of our whole culture.

Worrying about scarcity is our culture’s version of post-traumatic stress…

Scarcity thrives in a culture where everyone is hyperaware of lack. Everything from safety and love to money and resources feels restricted or lacking. We spend inordinate amounts of time calculating how much we have, want, and don’t have, and how much everyone else has, needs, and wants. The greatest casualties of a scarcity culture are our willingness to own our vulnerabilities and our ability to engage with the world from a place of worthiness.

After doing this work for the past twelve years and watching scarcity ride roughshod over our families, organizations and communities, I’d say the one thing we have in common is that we’re sick of feeling afraid. We want to dare greatly. We’re tired of the national conversation centering on ‘What should we fear?’ and ‘Who should we blame?’ We all want to be brave.

Our culture of scarcity is defined by this sentence:

Never _______________enough.

It only takes a few seconds before people fill in the blanks with their own version:

Never good enough.

Never perfect enough.

Never thin enough.

Never powerful enough.

Never successful enough.

Never smart enough.

Never certain enough.

Never safe enough.

Never extraordinary enough.

The three components of scarcity are shame, comparison, and disengagement. To transform scarcity we need to Dare Greatly; we need to cultivate worthiness, a clear sense of purpose, and we need to re-engage.

Brené Brown, PhD - originally posted for Goop here.

#scarcity #scarcity scar #scarcity consciousness #cultural scars #cultural scartending #scartending #brene brown #scars #the scars of western culture #quotes

[ishallbelife]

Worrying about scarcity is our culture’s version of post-traumatic stress…

Scarcity thrives in a culture where everyone is hyperaware of lack. Everything from safety and love to money and resources feels restricted or lacking. We spend inordinate amounts of time calculating how much we have, want, and don’t have, and how much everyone else has, needs, and wants. The greatest casualties of a scarcity culture are our willingness to own our vulnerabilities and our ability to engage with the world from a place of worthiness.

After doing this work for the past twelve years and watching scarcity ride roughshod over our families, organizations and communities, I’d say the one thing we have in common is that we’re sick of feeling afraid. We want to dare greatly. We’re tired of the national conversation centering on ‘What should we fear?’ and ‘Who should we blame?’ We all want to be brave.

Our culture of scarcity is defined by this sentence:

Never _______________enough.

It only takes a few seconds before people fill in the blanks with their own version:

Never good enough.

Never perfect enough.

Never thin enough.

Never powerful enough.

Never successful enough.

Never smart enough.

Never certain enough.

Never safe enough.

Never extraordinary enough.

The three components of scarcity are shame, comparison, and disengagement. To transform scarcity we need to Dare Greatly; we need to cultivate worthiness, a clear sense of purpose, and we need to re-engage.

Brené Brown, PhD - originally posted for Goop here.

#brene brown #scarcity scar #scarcity #scarcity consciousness #cultural scars #cultural scartending #scartending #scars #the scars of western culture #quotes

[ishallbelife]

The Scars of Western Culture: A Non-Exhaustive List

Here are the scars I notice most frequently.

Scarcity (Branch)

Self-Hatred (Branch)

Separation (Root)

#the scars of western culture #scartending #cultural scars #western culture #scarcity #self-hatred #survival #shame #separation #sundering

[ishallbelife]

What do I mean by full range of motion?

Denial, as I mentioned, demonstrates that a scar is present. If you are so dug in that you can’t even see the pain in front of you, and you aren’t willing to unravel the pattern that caused it, then a scar has you in its grip. A scar is preventing you from doing all that a human can do.

Humans have already proven a powerful capacity for cruelty and destruction.

I’m interested in regaining more of our capacity for kindness and mending.

#denial #culture #world #mending #full range of motion #scartending #regaining capacity

[ishallbelife]

Some days, in the face of the world’s pain, this cultural scartending feels like too small of an offering.

But then I remember: I’m not the only individual committed to this work.

We all do, in our own ways. This planet is home to billions of humans working with their scars, and I wonder what the world might look like if we all regain our full range of motion.

That alone gives me a fraction more hope than I had before.

#scartending #cultural studies #cultural scars #culture #bridgebuilding #full range of motion

[ishallbelife]

To me, the old excuses have also grown increasingly unsatisfying.

As I’ve grown up, I can see that denial doesn’t help anyone. It simply inflicts another generation with the same scar. It’s the same energy in a different outfit. If we continue to defer the psychological reckoning, it lands on the young.  

So, instead, I’ve learned to ask myself: “How do I mend the damage of my ancestors? How do I carry my European and European-American heritage with integrity?” I choose to work with these ancestral scars. I break up my inherited scar tissue by examining, investigating, and speaking about them.

I do this to regain full range of motion, so that what I pass on to the next generation has less trauma and more hope.

#ancestral scars #Denial #scartending #western culture #culture #cultural studies #cultural scars #denial #excuses #cultural scar tissue #trauma #hope

[ishallbelife]

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, my literary elder, frequently speaks about Scar Clan, and for over a decade and a half, I’ve found much comfort in her teachings. She talks about how the scar is stronger than the skin around it. She talks about measuring one’s lives in scars instead of years. She talks about those with invisible scars under their skin.

So, I don’t aim to erase scars. The same way we can’t change the history of the land where we live, we can’t completely eradicate the scars we already carry.

But some scars have healed in a way that hinders us. Some scars have downright festered and need to be cut open to drain. Some scars have simply healed in a way that binds us, like scar tissue after a surgery.

For generations, white people (like myself) have believed that addressing these scars was largely unnecessary. I continue to hear others say, “It’s not that bad, compared to….” {fill in the blank with a historical era}. Or, “we’re not as bad as…” {fill in the blank with another group of white people}.

I’ve been there, and I include myself in this.

Denial itself is a symptom of a scar constricting your ability to respond.

Tears are a river that take you somewhere. Weeping creates a river around the boat that carries your soul-life. Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace new, someplace better.

There are oceans of tears women have never cried, for they have been trained to carry mother’s and father’s secrets, men’s secrets, society’s secrets, and their own secrets, to the grave. A woman’s crying has been considered quite dangerous, for it loosens the locks and bolts on the secrets she bears. But in truth, for the sake of a woman’s wild soul, it is better to cry. For women, tears are the beginning of initiation into the Scar Clan, that timeless tribe of women of all colors, all nations, all languages, who down through the ages have lived through a great something, and yet who stood proud, still stand proud.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD - Women Who Run with the Wolves

#denial #symptoms of cultural scars #cultural scars #scartending #scar clan #clarissa pinkola estes #quotes #tears #culture #cultural studies #literary elder #cultural elder

[ishallbelife]

Tears are a river that take you somewhere. Weeping creates a river around the boat that carries your soul-life. Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace new, someplace better.

There are oceans of tears women have never cried, for they have been trained to carry mother’s and father’s secrets, men’s secrets, society’s secrets, and their own secrets, to the grave. A woman’s crying has been considered quite dangerous, for it loosens the locks and bolts on the secrets she bears. But in truth, for the sake of a woman’s wild soul, it is better to cry. For women, tears are the beginning of initiation into the Scar Clan, that timeless tribe of women of all colors, all nations, all languages, who down through the ages have lived through a great something, and yet who stood proud, still stand proud.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD - Women Who Run with the Wolves

#scar clan #quotes #clarissa pinkola estes #tears #wild soul #culture #cultural studies #cultural scars #scartending