Darkness on the Edge of Town

 

Everybody’s got a secret, Sonny

Something they just can’t face

Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it

They carry it with them ev’ry step that they take

Till one day they just cut it loose

Cut it loose or let it drag them down

Where no one asks too many questions

Or looks too long in your face

In the darkness on the edge of town

 

A song by Bruce Springsteen

 

I grew up in the Santa Clara Valley, what is now called “Silicon Valley” – home to the businesses of Google, Apple Computer, and Facebook.  When I was born, I was full of joy.  I think babies are whole and feel connected to all of life – everyone and everything.  I took the criticism of my parents, teachers, coaches, siblings, and friends and began to criticize myself.  I tried to be good.  I blamed myself for many things that  had nothing to do with me – my dad’s temper or my teacher’s angry outbursts.  In turn, I learned to judge others, and I felt better by comparing myself to others.  At least, I was a better football player than him.  In my family, school, and later work, I came to realize as an adult that our American culture was one based on harsh judgements and conditional love.

Our culture has a strong belief in independence – doing it yourself.  This strength of character has its faults.  Due to this rugged individualism, we are lonely and isolated in many ways.  It is true that we may connect with our iPhones or other computers, yet many of us live in communities where we are strangers to our classmates, neighbors, family, coworkers and – even – ourselves.

Here is a list of what people are wanting socially in their families, neighborhoods, and workplaces (from a North American research study):

1. Having neighbors with whom you can interact freely and comfortably.
2. Being able to share deepest feelings with someone.
3. Having friends who value the same things in life.
4. Being in a group where you can discuss your most basic beliefs and values.
5. Having friends you can always count on when you are in a jam.
6. Having people in your life who are never critical of you.
7. Being part of a group that helps you grow spiritually.
8. Having cooperation rather than competition with people at work.
9. Having people you can turn to when you feel depressed or lonely.
10. Know more people in your community.

One doctor found out about this in his research.  Dean Ornish, MD, wrote:  “At first, I viewed our support groups simply as a way to motivate patients to stay on the other aspects of the [heart-disease prevention] program that I considered more important: the diet, exercise, stress management training, stop smoking, and so on.  Over time, I began to realize that the group support itself was one of the most powerful interventions, as it addressed a more fundamental cause of why we feel stressed and, in turn, why we get illnesses like heart disease: the perception of isolation.”

There are reasons why we separate ourselves from others.  The answer lies in this research.  People attending a community building workshop were asked to rate significant barriers to connecting with others:

1. Hard to find people you can trust (before workshop-65%, after-32%)
2. Fear of being judged (61%, 13%)
3. Fear of being rejected (55%, 10%)
4. Feeling misunderstood (52%, 16%)
5. Unable to lower my defenses – social mask (48%, 0%)
6. Too shy (42%, 21%)
7. Fear of appearing weak (35%, 7%)
8. No opportunity to meet people interested in connecting (30%, 16%)

 

How do we find community?  One answer can be found in the research of Daniel Siegel.  When we are mindful, we are more able to change in order to face the challenges of every day.  Being mindful is just being aware of what is going on around us as well as being aware of our thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.  When we are mindful, we are not overwhelmed with worry about the future – the test tomorrow or the baseball game next week.  We live in the present and our mind and heart is liberated from much worry and emotional suffering.

When we are mindful, we are paying attention to the unfolding of possibilities in every moment.  Attunement is how we focus our attention on others and perceive their communication at all levels – the sad words they chose, their eyes shamefully looking downward, or the fearful look on their face.  I need to take these and other signals from the other person inside my mind and be aware of them to be attuned to this other person to whom I am listening.  I can think someone is angry at me, because they look mad.  If I ask my friend, “Are you upset with me?”

My friend may say: “Am I mad at you?  No way.  It is Bob who I am so angry with!”

Now, I am getting more attuned to my friend.  I understand what is going on inside her.  I need to carefully set aside my assumptions about what someone is thinking or feeling to see and hear clearly what they are really feeling and thinking.

When I am present, I am open to others and the wisest parts of myself.  When I attune to others, I work to become aware of what the other person is thinking or feeling.  At a wedding, they often say referring to the couple: “Two shall become one.”  Resonance is when I connect with another person in a special way.

Resonance is when we both attune to each other and we are changed by the thoughts and feelings of each other.  Daniel Siegel writes: “When such resonance is enacted with positive regard, a deep feeling of coherence emerges with the subjective sensation of harmony. . . Two literally become linked as one.  The whole is larger than the sum of the individual parts.”

The word used for this is synergy.  This is a relationship between people or things who rise to a new level, because of the quality of the relationship.  Groups can be high in synergy or low in synergy.   David Goff writes: “Synergy, therefore, is a way of describing the qualities in a relationship (that produce the likelihood of a greater or lesser whole).  A good example of this difference is one that most people have experienced.  Some groups generate positive energy, the way members interact makes the group smarter than any member would be alone would be.  Conversely, the way members interact can create a negative synergy, which makes the IQ of the group lower than any given member.”

In 1978, I went to work at the Rustler Steak House in San Jose, California, USA.  I was fifteen years old and worked with a group of employees who were around my age.  We spent a lot of time together away from work doing the things that teenagers often like to do: playing football and baseball, going to the beach, going to movies, and going to parties.  I loved spending time with my friends from work.  Our connection with each other changed the way we worked together.  The quality of our relationships improved as a result.  The performance scores of our restaurant dramatically improved when we were evaluated by the area manager.

Food is something I love.  We can find synergy in delicious food.  Recipes, which often combine the same ingredients in different proportions, or add or delete certain ingredients for different effects.  When I cook spaghetti sauce, I use many individual ingredients: tomato sauce, basil, sausage, oregano, mushrooms, onions, thyme, and peppers.  If I were to eat a raw onion by itself it would be an unpleasant experience.  If I took a handful of basil and ate it, I would not enjoy it.  Yet the combination of ingredients in the spaghetti sauce with pasta and cheese are magnificent.  This is synergy!

In this video, Tim Locke describes the “We Psychology” of Fritz Kunkel and the barriers that keep us from connecting with our own creative center as well as others – our parents, classmates, siblings, friends, children, spouses, and significant others.

 

I live in a culture of rugged individualism.  I generally feel that I dare not be honest about myself, even with a person sitting next to me at church, a line at the store, or someone who works down the corridor.  I have learned to be vulnerable and express my needs and emotions with those close to me – my beloved, my friends and some of my family.  Yet it is different when I am walking around the community of Silicon Valley where I live, in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of California, USA.  When I am out in my community at AT&T Park at a San Francisco Giants baseball game, the mall, or at the beach, I am polite and careful, generally not talking about my private feelings or conflicts.  When I was 26, I came to learn a very different meaning of the word community.

Community can arise when there is a crisis.  An earthquake or a Tsunami can leave an area devastated with badly damaged buildings and flooding in the streets.  Many people may be injured or dead. As a result, people pull together, whether rich or poor, from different cultures, and from different religions.  They work together in a spirit of cooperation and sacrificial love.  Once the crisis ends, people often return to their ordinary lives and prejudices.

There is a different type of community than the one that emerges in crisis and it is called intentional community. I first met my friend David Goff at a workshop for Community Building in Marin County, California, in 1989.  On this weekend, I learned how to develop an intentional community.  The two leaders gave the group of about 50 people, who were mostly strangers to each other, simple instructions: listen deeply, speak when you feel moved to speak, use “I-messages,” practice inclusivity, observe how you maintain separation, and share responsibility for the outcome of the workshop.  The leaders used silence, stories, reminders about the guidelines, and brief feedback to the group as a whole – not directed to any one person.

After two days sitting with the group in a circle, I experienced a profound sense of community on a foggy Sunday morning in the Marin Headlands.  I felt peaceful and my mind was quiet.  Feelings of compassion and kindness filled my body.  I lost track of time and myself; I experienced a sense of the sacred.  I had a shift of my awareness and felt a connection to the group as if we were at one with the whole group.  Before this experience, I had never been aware that I felt this way toward my family or friends.

This weekend changed my life and motivated me to learn about intentional community.  With David Goff and others, I spent from 1991 to 1998 learning about how people function in groups and how intentional community arises.

David Goff had a stroke in 2003 due to a rare disease.  David is bound to a wheelchair, wears a patch on his right eye, and types using only his right hand.  In 2013, he published a book called, “Embracing Life: Toward a Psychology of Interdependence.”  David impresses me with his resilience and strength.  He writes that we need to see ourselves as we are truly.  You are a part of the whole universe which is larger and more diverse than it is possible to imagine.  Like the universe as a whole, including all the planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, and supernovas, you have creativity, strength, and resilience that sustains you.

Yet at times, I may fail to remember, recognize, and experience my potential.  I may be going on a date and feel afraid of the unknown.  I may be about to take a test and get angry at the challenges.  Yet, I am always connected to the universe as a whole: a vital source that is positively vibrating with energy, potential, and creativity.

Fritz Kunkel was a German doctor who was injured badly in World War One, during a battle.  Dr. Kunkel also had an experience of connection, where he felt connected to everything and everyone – a sense of “we-ness.”  In this video, Dr. Tim Locke, Executive Director of Four Springs Retreat Center, describes the psychology of Fritz Kunkel, called “We Psychology.”

 

Lee Atwater wrote shortly before his death from cancer: “The 1980’s were about acquiring – acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn’t I pay for a little more time with my family! What price wouldn’t I pay for an evening with friends! It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don’t know who will lead (in the future), but they must speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.”

When someone says, “He has a big ego,” they mean he is inflated. Inflation means to fill up like a balloon or tire – to be puffed up! To be inflated is to see yourself as unrealistically large and unrealistically important. One is beyond the limits of one’s proper size, so one is proud, vain, pompous, and presumptuous. Deflation means letting the air out of something. It can be a great blessing to hit bottom which has been called, “the dark night of the soul.”

From 1995 to 2001, I worked for CPP, Inc. as a corporate trainer and consultant. CPP, Inc. is the exclusive publisher of the MBTI^® which is also known as the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator^®. The MBTI^® is the largest selling personality test in the world.

I had just graduated with my Master’s Degree from Santa Clara University a few months before arriving for my first day on the job at CPP, Inc. I thought I knew a lot about the MBTI^®. Over the next six years I learned a great deal about the MBTI^® from psychologists, researchers, and authors who have devoted a great deal of their profession work to study personality type . It was a humbling experience for me in a good way. I had an exaggerated perception myself and life corrected me. It was a painful lesson – but a valuable one.

Emma Jung said to Elizabeth Howes, “There are egos, and egos, and egos, the problem is to find the real one.”

There is a false ego which is not based on the reality of who I am. Yet, there is a real ego. When our real, authentic ego is in its most creative role, it is spiritual in nature. This healthy ego is an accurate view of who I am. I perceive myself and the world in the right size. I can develop a real ego by making healthy choices which are sometimes difficult and painful.
The ego is who I am speaking about when I say “I.” The ego is what I know about myself, including my attitudes as well as my reactions. It is the part of myself that is aware of reality and makes choices. The ego is an extension of my creative center, what Carl Jung called, the Self. This is true for all of us, I believe.

Some egos are like a canoe on a raging sea. When someone has a weak ego, they feel overwhelmed by the challenges of their life: homework, dating, money, family, work, or children.

There are egos like a Cruise ship on a duck pond. Someone with this type of ego says and does things to look powerful or important, often in an aggressive or ruthless way. Like a large ship, they are too big and slow to maneuver efficiently and effectively with other people and situations.

Once in a while, we find an ego like a tugboat. This type of ego is small, yet nimble and very powerful. The tug boat is powerful enough to tow a Cruise ship. Robert Johnson writes that humility is to know yourself as you are – no more, no less.
The modern world has lead us into a state of consciousness that feels hopeless and barren, because we have lost our instinct. We build planes that fly into space, map genes, cure certain types of cancer, design and build amazing super computers, and reduce the spread of disease – like AIDS. Yet our success goes to our heads, and our contempt grows for what is natural and accidental. We consider the irrational to be an inconvenience and the irrelevant to be a mistake. I get frustrated when my iPhone takes too many seconds to respond to my command. We must all cope with the reality of the world which is both logical and emotional as well as rational and irrational.

As human beings, we can be in a state of self-deception where we are cut off from our psychic resources. This alienation of our ego is a state of not being aware of ourselves and others – egocentricity. When we are consciously aware of reality, our decisions reflect the people around us – those whom our choices affect. If we are objective, then we serve the world with our choices and not merely what we perceive as our narrow self-interest. The more egocentric we are, the greater we lie to ourselves. Fritz Kunkel writes: “Egocentricity without self-deception is not possible.”

Gerhard Adler said, “The ego has to be born and the ego has to be reborn.” The real ego is reborn continually when we act with wisdom. Sometimes, we act under very difficult circumstances with people criticizing us, and it can feel painful – sometimes extremely painful. These are the choices that shape who we are. These are the choices that, in time, cultivate joy within us. Please watch this video, where Dr. Tim Locke discusses, “We Psychology” and the reality of inflation and deflation.