On Purpose
The central argument Frankl makes is that life has meaning whatever the circumstances, even when profound suffering is encountered. The title itself is the core message: we can and must say „yes to life“ not because of circumstances, but in spite of them. It is easy to say „yes to life“ when everything is going well. If that „yes“ is contingent on circumstances, however, it can never be sustained because, as we all know, circumstances change as much as the weather in my native Ireland. Everything, even our existence in this incarnation, is transient…
This Time
Even the most articulate and hard-working of us may find we cannot erase the imprint of a parent who was too busy or depressed to notice us or who seemed to consider us a burden. We then interpret this as our caregiver wishing we’d never been born. When we internalise such stances, our shame, if it could speak, would repeatedly tell us that “the world would be a better place if we were dead”. Our lives change only when we reconstruct the missing inner maps that should have been formed in safety and attunement…
Redemption
That is what the Twelve Steps are all about: a shift in perspective. Before we begin the journey of recovery, we are caught firmly in a trap that we cannot spring through self-sufficiency or mere egoic willpower (ergo the need for a “Higher Power” of our own understanding). We also suffer from a chronic perception disorder because of having lived so long in chaos, overwhelmed mode, denial, delusion, and the suppression of all the emotions we could not process or endure during the first, formative years of our lives. As traumatised adult children, we see the world as we are, not as it is..
Emotions
In my family of origin, as I experienced things, there was no common language for dealing with the multitude of feelings that are integral to the human condition. It was as if we tried, in a group effort, to read Anna Karenina in the original without any prior knowledge of the Russian culture, language, or even the ability to read Cyrillic script. Emotions are sometimes characterised as `feelings in motion´. A wide array of emotions exists. The following list captures those generally identified as the most common: Acceptance, admiration, affection, amusement, anger, angst, anguish, annoyance, anticipation, anxiety…
Solid Ground
For many of us who lose their way having emerged from dysfunctional families, the opportunity arises when, after a period of active acting out in substance and/or process addiction, we finally get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and `hit bottom´. While this is not an ideal way of finding solid ground beneath our feet (we usually land on our ass, in fact!), it does enable us to finally begin inserting a solid foundation into the skimpy structure of what our life had become…
Response-Ability
Our brain, therefore, if stuck in autopilot, will keep flooding us with emotions. Without the ability to pause and reflect before responding, we generally get caught up in the mental reactions or even reflexes of old, of which we are not aware. And we are generally not aware that we are not aware. Today’s world is in many ways an echo-chamber of the earliest circumstances of childhood. This impulsivity tends to get us into a lot of trouble, with ourselves and those around us, causing conflict, strife, even disease…
Shining Our Light
Any absence or lack of connectedness has more to do with the adult parents and caregivers than with the child herself. It is precisely because the caregivers are not emotionally and spiritually equipped to provide what the child needs, especially in the sense of being seen, and provided sufficient affection and safety to continue being her True Self, that she begins to experiment with ways of `earning´ or effectuating exactly that. We begin to develop a False Self to have our needs met. Rather than viewing this as a maladaptation, we can recognise in this the innate intelligence of evolution. Coping strategies secure our survival, after all…
Intention
When I am out of sorts, – restless, irritable, and discontented – it invariably turns out that, for reasons often beyond my grasp, I have fallen off the beam of conscious awareness and end up suffering from the illusion of disconnection from Source. The result is a combination of feelings: anxiety, overwhelmed, disconsolate, and forlorn…
Guilty!
He has stopped running now, got exhausted, ran out of steam, and arrived at a turning point where a decision had to be made. Was it going to be a continuation of the No to life, or an embracing of the Yes. He chose the latter. Turning around to face what he had been avoiding all along, he recognised the wound, the original sin inculcated in his childhood self and later self-perpetuated when he became his own prison guard on death row. The accusation of having been guilty of causing another’s unhappy demise…
Astronomical
Finding a free bench in the park outside the village, I settled in for a longer period just before the eclipse reached its climax at ten minutes past noon. Now, totally relaxed and in awe of what was happening, my heart began to fill with gratitude. What a privilege to be able to experience something so superb! As I watched in awe, two contrasting ideas came to mind. The first concerned vastness and infinity. What an amazing notion, to consider that our solar system is at the edge of a galaxy which is only one of between 100 billion and 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe…
