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More Family Dynamics

Alright! The Kids Are All Right – Some of Them

The theme of the week seems to be family dynamics. I went to see The Kids are All Right and thoroughly enjoyed it. I laughed, I cried and mostly, I enjoyed watching a movie with more emphasis on character and relationships than pyrotechnics.

Watching the family dynamics in this modern alternative family situation reaffirmed the notion that – people are people. No matter what the family situation, we can’t seem to escape the trials and tribulations of parenting and growing up. I’m giving The Kids are All Right a thumbs up for entertainment, a heart for heart, a star for intellectual stimulation and a snort for comedic relief.

A day later, I watched Biography on A&E. The segment was on Rodney Dangerfield. To learn about Rodney Dangerfield’s childhood is a real heartbreak. Amazing that with all that baggage, he didn’t suicide. The biography is a real insight into how a traumatic childhood continues to play itself out over time and the difficulty involved in resolving deep emotional scars.

Watching The Kids are All Right and Rodney Dangerfield make me aware of the challenges presented to each and everyone of us when it comes to experiencing what is truly real in us.

Great Characters

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July 30
Family Dynamics – Psycho Dynamics
Are Your Family Dynamics Driving You Psycho?

Psychodynamics are at the root of family dynamics.

The other night I watched The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. I thought this movie did a pretty good job of reflecting how emotional baggage and issues can be passed down from one generation to the next. I’m sure the book was much better at fleshing out the characters and issues, but given the time constraints, the movie gives a good taste of how family dynamics can drive us a little psycho.

As they say, we don’t get to choose our family – unless you subscribe to the notion that the soul initiates some sort of choice in incarnating – a notion that seems particularly anthropomorphic to me in the ways it is generally related.

As I observe and work with myself and others, psychodynamics and family dynamics account for a great deal of the content presented to explore and work with. Many people fail to appreciate the depth and subtlety of how psychodynamics and family dynamics bind the soul and occlude awareness of our deeper nature.

Intellectual understanding alone will do little to free our psyche from the patterns and conditioning formulated in our early experience. The roots of these patterns exist at a pre-verbal level of development and the only way to free the consciousness of the pattern is through re-experiencing the affective state in a manner that allows a process of disidentification to occur.

An understanding of the self which would include perspectives from depth psychology, object relations psychology and the spiritual perspective (true self, soul, being) is a great help in supporting the process of disidentification.

Psycho Family Dynamics

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July 27
The Flame of the Search
The Flame of the Soul

It is better to remain ignorant than to pretend knowledge. If you know that you are ignorant and don’t pretend otherwise, there is a question that stays alive and continues to burn in you, a deep hunger for the truth. A. H. Almaas – Diamond Heart Book III: Being and the Meaning of Life

Every once in a while, I like to pick a random image and see what it inspires me to write. I found this image of a flame at (where else) RandomImages.com.

Human beings are curious, we have an innate curiosity and our behavior is certainly curious to observe. Many believe that curiosity is an aspect of the mind – to some degree it is, but it’s deeper nature resides in the heart and deeper still in the soul.

One of the mysterious elements of THE MYSTERY is knowing. Awareness and consciousness beget knowing – and it appears that deep in the nature of consciousness is a desire, or at least a natural dynamism to know. And, fundamentally, what is there to know but the manifested side of reality.

So, we can say that God, True Nature, The Mystery seeks to know itself or it is constantly revealing itself to itself via awareness and consciousness.

All of this gets reflected in us human beings as desire, longing, passion, curiosity, etc. to know. Of course there are many who have issues and resistance to knowing and curiosity due to childhood conditioning.

The Flame of the Search is fuel for the soul for the journey home. This fuel is not external, it is of the soul – it’s very dynamic nature. The journey home can be very difficult, with much pain and suffering. A bright flame is needed to meet and move through the obstacles and inertia of ego structure and misplaced identity.

The Mystery has another dynamic quality that serves the soul – magnetism. The soul longs to know, the Mystery draws it home and True Nature reveals, reveals, reveals.

And this is what the image inspires today.

Curiosities

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July 9
Heart’s Desire
Heart’s Desire

One day while in a downcast mood

I walked in mountain solitude

Absorbed within deep heartache

Particular paths I did not take

Late the hour on that day

Recalling not footstep’s way

When open eyes I could not keep

Dreamlessly did I sleep

Awakened by morning’s light

Untold beauty awed my sight

Alpine meadow sweet and fair

Surely God’s very lair

On every blade dew did glisten

Choral birds bade me listen

Such majesty in that place

Heart’s response flushed my face

Deep inner rhythms stirred my soul

I lived complete within a whole

The sun climbed high upon the sky

Before my tears began to dry

And as I rose to take my leave

Once again, did I grieve

To leave such beauty far behind

Made no sense to the mind

It begged a flower me to take

Wanting one such small keepsake

Gently from within my breast

Loving words from the Guest

To cast a ripple on this pool

Would be the act of a fool

True contact won’t fit a sack

To be carried on your back

Mind’s desire for history

Is the living death of me

Tomorrow today will be the past

Your memory can’t make it last

This moment holds a choice for you

The options are only two

Going back from whence you came

Or heart’s desire if you’re game

Though walking now on unknown ground

A joyful magic I have found

The mystery of that lair

Heart reveals everywhere

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June 28
Come, come, whoever you are
Rumi entreats us to come to the beloved

I was at Esin Restaurant in Danville, CA last night having a glass of wine when Esin joined my dad and me. We got to sharing history and stories. I mentioned Rumi to Esin (she is from Turkey) and she said her mother read Rumi. Esin remembers her mother reciting these lines:

Come, come, whoever you are.

Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.

It doesn’t matter.

Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Come, even if you have broken your vow

a thousand times

Come, yet again, come, come.

I asked Esin if she knew of Yunus Emre. She did and wanted to know how I knew of him.

Don’t all lovers of the divine know of Yunus, Rumi, Hafiz, Rabia?

Mystical Poets

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June 26
Is it YOUR Lucky Day?

Human Vulnerability & Grace

In the blink of an eye it can all be gone – our sight, our friends or children, our homes or health, our life. Even so, it is all grace, magic and miraculous – and some of it gets posted on YouTube.

June 23