Well Found Books
Chapter 2
Can I Get there from Here? Origin and Model
Overview
We look at how people cope with life and death issues and how it is they come to search for peace and harmony. The first section provides a narrative followed by a table summarizing the circumstances in which we may come to this search. Then, bullet point summaries are provided of the major themes of this book.
Quotations
To thine own self be true . . . William Shakespeare
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation. Oscar Wilde
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. Aristotle
The only journey is the one within. Rainer Maria Rilke
And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself? Rumi
No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself. Thomas Mann
Coming to Our Path
We may arrive at our search from many different directions. We may find ourselves happy, content and free, yet want to move forward toward life's full satisfaction and adventure. We might also start from a stressed, worried, overwrought situation and be eager to resolve our current difficulties. No matter what our starting point, the path to peace and harmony is available to each of us.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow (1954) developed a model of motivation which identified the human ability to move forward to higher levels of functioning, provided our basic requirements are met. He refers to these basic needs as deficiency or deficit needs. Once our physiological and safety needs are met, he proposes we move on to belongingness, self-esteem and self-actualization. Of course, if anything happens to disrupt our life circumstances, like loss of a job or a home, a catastrophic fire or flood, we are back to meeting our physiological needs as a primary focus.
What happens if people are caught in the behavioral trap of severe emotional stress? In general, we react to highly tense situations by seeking fulfillment of only deficiency needs. We may find ourselves reacting with substantial apprehension and anxiety. In such situations we are likely to feel stressed, edgy, worried, demoralized and overwrought. Our reaction to this kind of emotional trap is likely to produce ineffective coping responses that only make our situation worse. We might find ourselves craving, grasping, and clutching for others in search of support, assistance, consolation, sympathy, reassurance or guarantees that we will be OK, while we actually feel overwhelmed. That is, when we are caught in a behavioral trap we often lose our basic coping strategies and no longer solve our immediate or long term problems (cf. Elliot and Smith, 2003), but search for emotional support. This is a downward spiral.
If we are fortunate enough to meet our basic needs and move forward to the domain of growth needs, we may be able to let go, release ourselves from behavioral traps and instead experience the freedom of growing and moving forward. We might do this in the form of celebrating our gifts, feeling a sense of increased confidence, experiencing increased capability to tolerate uncertainty, being interested in new challenges and taking comfort in our successes with increased self-confidence. We may be able to benefit sufficiently to move forward to a more intuitive approach to the problems that surround us. Perhaps we can adopt more rational and logical cognitive approaches, seek out the problems and formulate solutions to them, become increasingly functional in our world and in enhancing our personal growth. We are now good candidates for life's adventure toward peace and harmony. We may be able to find simplicity, contentment, new directions, increasing productivity, meaningfulness, understanding, joy, blossoming, and ultimately the goal of peace and harmony. This is an upward spiral.
The table below visualizations and summarizes these personal needs and sequences them in a progressive fashion to identify that, as we achieve satisfaction of each level of needs, we are positioned to move forward to higher levels of functioning.
Table 2.1 Different Avenues to Our Path (Not included)
Line of Argument of this Book
• The substantial challenges of living and the risks of life and death may become a heavy burden for any of us.
• The fundamental disappointments of uncertainty and death may produce denial, minimizing, and pretense that all is well.
• People may be distressed by life choices and decisions and the less than positive outcomes in navigating difficult situations.
• Sometimes people become unduly focused on the potential for bad outcomes (Catastrophes).
• The stresses that individuals face and their responses to them, including highly effective coping behavior, as well as depression, anxiety and existential angst are important concerns.
• Difficulty in coping with life problems and concerns about end-of-life problems are real and need to be recognized and addressed.
Life Perils Giving Rise to the Model
Here is a starter set for the model that is framed below. It is intended as a “warm-up” or orientation.
• Sometimes we fill our lives with needless torment and suffering of our own making.
• We may unknowingly fall into a behavioral trap.
• Much of our stress or suffering comes from craving what we don't have.
• If we can diminish or preclude craving, we may be able to move on to:
o Peace
o Harmony
Cautions
• It takes grit.
• There is no magic.
Conceptual Model
• The childhood fear of the dark is a simple metaphor and model of life anxiety and death anxiety. In the same way that youngsters are helped by parental coaching, the rest of us may be able to find ways to deal with the ongoing life stressors, as well as concerns about death.
• Institutionalized religion provides answers for some life challenges and problems, but these solutions are characteristically not based on valid observation or logical inference. Such world
views rely on faith and a belief in a supernatural power to sustain them.
• A naturalistic worldview offers an alternative. Skepticism, questioning, and the search for evidence- based and logically developed understandings provide an alternative and possible remedy.
• Our search for the path to peace and harmony is based in the observable, natural world. No superstition or magic is needed to sustain this model.
• Rigorous thinking, experiential learning, persistence, resilience and vigor, will be required to find and follow our path.
• Personal grit can be discovered within ourselves by managing physical and mental resources.
• Methods used to accomplish these goals include powerful techniques adapted to our needs:
o Increased conceptual understanding
o A brief, efficient and powerful relaxation exercise
o A modified form of ancient meditation techniques
• Personal oneness and wholeness is our objective rather than fearlessness
• Both mindfulness and personal reflection are benefits of starting on our path to peace and harmony.
• With increased understanding, alternative frames of reference and grit, but no magic, we have an excellent chance of finding our path to peace and harmony.
Advocacy
It is not my goal to write a dispassionate analysis of the problems presented by the topics discussed here, or to pronounce that all world views provide an equal opportunity to understand the realities of our situation. I am clearly an advocate of personal growth and of coming to terms with ourselves in the form of peace and harmony. On the question of what kind of a world view it takes to get an accurate understanding of our situation I am no less and advocate. We will dialogue our way through the issues and you will need to be the judge of what is workable for you. As identified in Table 1.1, I see this book as an offer of empowerment, not a prescription.
As you will see in chapter 8, I regard myself as a spiritual person (SPNG) as long as I am permitted to define the kind of spirituality I favor. Why spiritual? (See: Mini- Glossary) Why not agnostic, atheist, theist, deist, or any of the rest of the available classifications? As we will soon see, my definition of spirituality takes considerable exception to the common definitions, and it suits me just fine.
Q & A
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is typically presented as a pyramid. Where's your pyramid? In your table you left out physiological and safety needs altogether, how does this work?
The influence of Maslow’s needs hierarchy powerfully affects a lot of people who have taken psychology courses. My point here isn't to replicate Maslow's model, but to identify that it is probably implicit in the thinking of all of us.
Could I be starting my search for a path in the wrong way? If I get off on the wrong foot, can I ever recover?
There's no right or wrong place to start. We’ll need to start from where we are and that place is just fine until we are ready to move on to something more workable.
We won't be able to do very much wrong in starting toward or following our personal path.
Are you really saying we don’t have to be exceptionally good or special but also, that we don’t have to be incurably bad to search for our own path? Is it really OK to be just ordinary people looking for a better life?
Yes. There are no special qualifications required to seek your own path.