Category: Received Wisdom

Naperville, July 2005

Life has ways of surprising you when you least expect it. One of those moments occurred for me in a Fairfield Inn in Naperville, Illinois. We were visiting Joan’s relatives in Chicago and I hung back at the hotel while our kids napped.

I had purchased a copy of Parabola at a nearby Barnes & Noble. This passage from T.S. Eliot (cribbed, actually, from St. John of the Cross) jumped out at me:

In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
_

This was both startling and counterintuitive. Up until that point, life seemed additive—knowledge and experiences building on a foundation of prior knowledge and experiences, stretching back years into childhood. Eliot was suggesting otherwise and I knew in that instant it was true. ✸

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Postscript [08/09/2021]. Here’s a related passage from Anthony de Mello: “They didn’t teach me how to live at school. They taught me everything else. As one man said, ‘I got a pretty good education. It took me years to get over it.’ That’s what spirituality is all about, you know: unlearning. Unlearning all the rubbish they taught you.”

Who Am I?

I’m finally getting around to memorializing some of the “self-help” books that have helped me over the years. The thread that runs through this grouping is the difference between “I” and “me” (or “true self” vs. “false self” or “observing self” vs. “observed self”—this has been described in various ways).

David A. Frenz, M.D.

“Me,” the conceptual self, can suffer; “I,” which is pure awareness or consciousness, never can. The end of suffering involves withdrawing your attention from “me” and resting in “I.”

This can be a little difficult to understand, let alone practice, which is why I seldom use it psychotherapeutically. But for those who are ready, it can be liberating.

Anthony de Mello’s Stripping Down to the “I” (starts on Page 46) is a great place to start. If it seems like nonsense, don’t be troubled and simply ignore this post. If, however, you’re intrigued, consider reading on.

Received Wisdom — 1

Suffering

 

Mental suffering takes place when we don’t get what we want, or when we’re forced to live with and endure what we don’t want.

—Steve Hagen

 

Steve Hagen. Buddhism Plain and Simple. Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1997, p. 30

Received Wisdom is the big ideas that I use with patients. This post is the first in a series of many.