Category: Metaphysics

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Tornadoes in Cleveland, Tn

Young Road
Last night possibly as many as five tornadoes passed through my home of Cleveland Tn in Bradley county. The power went out before eight pm but came back on some time in the night. I live in the southeast corner of the county. It appears the worst of the storms went north and west of me.

My parents who live north of me were without power until later this morning. Cell phones worked some but not reliably. My Verizon Mifi was always able to get a connection however.

Neither of our homes received any damage. However, just a few miles up Spring Place road, there was a lot of damage. An abandoned restaurant and a hair salon were destroyed. One end of the strip mall across the street was hit as well.

I have been listening to the emergency services radio part of the day and it sounds like there is damage all around the county. So far nine have been confirmed dead including one body found hanging form a power line.

I am thankful that a bubble of protection was placed around me, my family and friends. My dog did a good job of guarding the under side of the futon in the back room last night as well.

I am looking forward to seeing our community work together to recover quickly from the damage.

For lessens I learned helping with the clean up see the next post: Tornado Safety

Bar on Spring Place road
Hair Place on Spring Place
House of BBQ
Traffic backed up on Spring Place due to other routes being closed.

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Dealing With a Defiant Child

I have been learning about dealing with a defiant child from Caleb. He is a smart boy who is very insistent about having things done his way. It does not matter if his way is inconvenient or even impossible; he insists that things be done in his certain way.

For example, he cannot drink his tea if the glass is too full or not full enough. He will simply go thirsty and complain if his glass is not filled to exactly the arbitrary mark he has set. Making the situation even more difficult for those around him is that he rarely communicates this need before the drink is poured. His explanation at that “you should have known.”

He has absolutely no respect for any authority. His own desires are more important than any rules that are placed on him. He has no trouble making friends because he is outgoing and outspoken, but he has trouble keeping these friends because he is absolutely insistent on having every thing done his way. He is a terror to teachers and church workers who have him in class because he refuses to follow any rules other than his own.

He has been kicked out of schools and other social groups because of his unsociable behavior. Even his own father will have nothing to do with him due to his defiance and overall disruptive behavior.

He has been to a variety of doctors and social therapists and given several acronyms as to what is wrong with him. However none has yet developed a plan of how to deal with him.

Only one teacher has been able to deal with him and even she has days when she can’t handle him. She is a Sunday school teacher at a Unity Church. She accepts him just the way he is and practices non judgment. He responds well to her loving acceptance. However even she cannot get him to comply with the rules that the other children easily follow.

I have noticed what seems to be a flow in the process used by most people who try to deal with Caleb. They try to change him. He is very determined in his way that he will not be changed and soon there is an impasse. Those who try to accept him as he is and try to find ways to work with him seem to have more success in getting him to conform. However, he will always find ways to exert himself and continue to demonstrate his ability to control a situation.

If he finds himself in a situation where he has lost control and he is forced to submit to some authority that has temporarily overpowered him, he will shut down and hide. He often carries a blanket with him even on the hottest day so that he can cover his head and face if he encounters a loosing situation. If he can’t use his blanket, he will remove his shirt and cover his face. He will become violent if forced to interact when he is trying to hide from the situation.

He can express love and affection at times. For example, he recently shared his lunch money with a girl in his class who did not have enough. He loves to share snacks with the neighborhood children. But he will not share his toys. He will however leave them scattered around when he is done playing with them.

He picks who he is affectionate to. He is not influenced by the opinions of others. He sees no duty to show love and affection to even his mother. He is not motivated by a desire to please others.

He shows some signs of autism in that he does not recognize social cues. However it may be that he recognizes them yet fails to take social cues into consideration when choosing his actions.

When dealing with a defiant child like Caleb one is faced with two choices: engage in a battle of wills to see who is stronger or accept him for how he is and adjust to compensate.

Deep down all of us have the same desires as Caleb. We want things to go our way. We want to choose our own actions regardless of how others feel. We want to hide from authority when we are not allowed to do what we want to do. However most of us have decided that the benefits of getting along in society out weight our desire to express ourselves freely. By looking at how we are like a defiant child rather than how we are different helps in learning how to deal with one.

When we try to accept him for who he is and try to adjust our own behavior to compensate, we will have more success. However it is very difficult for most people to be able to set aside their own ego long enough to see that letting him have his way briefly will go along way toward achieving mutual goals. Setting clear rules with tangible consequences in advance seem to work very well with Caleb. However, consistent follow through is required as Caleb will test to see if the rules are consistent.

Overall, he responds well to people who accept him and are willing to work within his self imposed rule system. However he will tell you that he does not like rules. He means that he does not like other people imposing rules on him. By looking for ways to work together and avoiding unnecessary confrontations, the defiant child can be guided toward mutual goals.

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Synchronicity

Synchronicity

Lately I have been noticing more and more synchronicities in my life. Carl Jung says that we should pay attention to synchronicity as it is a message from your subconscious. I have tried to pay more attention to synchronicity to see what message my subconscious is trying to send.

So I am starting a log of Synchronicities to see what I can find. The log will be updated at the synchronicity page.

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Forty Nine

Imagine cruising down the interstate enjoying the view through a big glass windshield. The stars are bright and your destination is miles away. You are driving along with out a care in the world. Everything is going well and you expect to arrive at your destination at exactly the scheduled time. Music plays softly in the background and the clatter of the engine combines with the roar of the tires on the pavement to allow you to settle deep into the warm comfortable driver’s seat.

Then suddenly your vision is blurred and glass shatters in front of you. A large lump of something lands in your lap as you try to control your bus and protect the precious cargo of passengers behind you. Someone has just gotten their jollies by dropping a large object from the bridge above you. You safely pull the bus to the side of the road and inspect the damage. Miraculously you are still alive. Just a few cuts and scrapes.

Glass is scattered through out your bus but none of the passengers are seriously injured. Everyone is OK but you will not make your destination on time. And your bus is going to need some serious repairs. It could have been worse. Like it was for a woman a few years ago who had a stone dropped through her from possibly the same bridge. She died from her injuries.

So it could be worse, but still it is pretty bad. What fun it must have been for the hoodlums who tossed the weight into the bus wind shield? Did they even get to see the crash in the darkness? A whole bus load of students returning from a trip are jolted from their peaceful ride by a senseless act.

This story is from this week’s news. A bus load of Lee University students was attacked as it cruised home on I 75 this week.

I read somewhere that life goes through seven year cycles. If so, then this is the end of my seventh cycle. Tomorrow I will be fifty.

I feel like this cycle of my life began with something crashing through the windshield of my life. I was comfortably cruising along in my career as an engineer for Westvaco Corporation. I had comfortable pay. I was good at what I did. People respected me and I was surrounded by friends. While there were many things I did not like about corporate life, I was very comfortable. I had challenges to keep my mind occupied and a comfortable office to go to each day. I was ready to cruise on auto pilot to retirement.

Then, suddenly, my dream was shattered. The plant I worked at was closed. There was some fall out but I was not really injured. Just a few scrapes. The impact reverberated through the other parts of my life.

Suddenly, I was faced with struggling for finances and not feeling very useful. Much of my self worth was wrapped up in being an engineer for Westvaco. When I was not that anymore, I felt like I was nothing.

I tried a few other jobs but none of them gave me any satisfaction. I was not good at them so my self worth went down even more.

My old friends drifted away as they moved on to other jobs. I found my self in a very bad spot. I was alone and felt pretty useless.

In the process of rebuilding myself, I discovered the new thought movement. I discovered it entirely by accident. Or so it seemed.

I began reading books about how to make money and I discovered that there was a common theme in all of them. The idea was that we each create the circumstances that surround us rather than being manipulated by them.

As I studied concepts that were foreign to me such as the law of attraction and the law of mind action, I began to see evidence of their truths. I remembered times when I worked at Westvaco when I had observed this very phenomenon. But not having any basis for causal relationship, I dismissed it like any good engineer would.

I had once made the statement that Westvaco should pay me to be in a good mood because when I was, the presses ran better and if I was in a really good mood, we would set production records. If I came to work in a bad mood, then we had nothing but trouble.

But even after reading the Tao of Psychology, I refused to acknowledge the relationship between my moods and the circumstances. There was no way my emotions could cause outside circumstances was there?

During the last few months at Westvaco, I met a faith healer. The stories he told and the things I observed caused me to believe that there really was more to the universe than what I had learned in school. But I still but my faith in science. But to the true science of mind, just the traditional observational science.

As I studied more and read books by Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Charles Filmore and others I began to realize that there was something to this science of mind. I began to see that everything I observe is first created in my mind. I also began to understand what Wallace Waddles meant when he said that controlling the mind is the hardest and most import work any man can do.

I am still working on learning to control my thoughts. I often don’t feel that I have the freedom to create with my thoughts. My upbringing in a guilt based religion pops up often causing me to feel that I don’t have the right to even want certain things.

So as I begin my fiftieth year tomorrow, I am moving forward with excitement and wonder. I wonder what will happen next. I have moved way out of my comfort zone and most of my life lines are gone. I will be on my own to create the life that I desire. I can’t rely on anyone to do it for me. I am excited and scared at the same time.

I feel like I have wasted a lot of years getting to this point in life. I have always prided myself on being a fast learner, but in this most important area of life, I feel like I have been very slow on the uptake. Hopefully the pace will pick up and I will learn to release the old constrictions and begin to create a truly happy life that I want.

But first I have to feel like I deserve it.

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The Hero Complex

The Hero Complex

One of Carl Jung’s archetypes is the hero. We all love the hero in our stories and movies. He is the one who despite all odds, swoops in to save the day. He puts aside his human vulnerabilities and makes every thing right in the end. Usually he does so with his own brute force or superior intellect.

The hero usually has no knowledge of the subtle forces of the universe working behind the scenes to create the situations he prevails against. He sees only the surface circumstances and his own power to save the day.

Without even realizing it, many of us long to be heroes. We love to help others who are less fortunate. We get great pleasure from pulling some one up or assisting them in some circumstance.

Often the pleasure is heightened when there is a common enemy involved. We often seek out someone or some organization to play the role of the villain so that we can be the hero and rescue some other soul from its evil clutches.

We often join in support groups where we commiserate with others about how we have been wronged by this person or that organization. When we cannot play the role of hero ourselves, we often seek out a hero. We look for someone to save us for the conditions that seem to be inflicted upon us.

What this hero complex misses is the realization that we each create our own reality. We create this though our thoughts both conscious and unconscious. Through what Jung refers to as synchronicity, events take place so that we see our beliefs played out in front of us in what we perceive as reality.

For example if we believe that money is scarce and that we have to work hard for money, we will see ourselves surrounded by poverty. We will create an evil villain out of the rich people around us believing that it is because of their oppression that so many are forced into poverty. We will totally ignore the opportunities that we have to create wealth for ourselves because we believe that the evil villain is repressing us.

Instead we will look for a hero to save us. We will seek a leader who will crush the evil rich people and spread the wealth among the poor and oppressed. Or we may try to be that hero and try to take down the rich. We will seek ways to destroy their wealth so that it will not be a constant reminder that we have not created the wealth that they have.

As a hero we take joy in watching one of the evil rich people come to ruin in either a personal scandal or bankruptcy. What we often fail to notice is that these situations are but temporary set backs to those who understand the workings of the universe. Even if they loose all their wealth, they will use the universal principles to create more wealth unless they too fall victim to he blame game and begin searching for or acting as a hero.

The hero loves to solve problems. He feels good when he overcomes some great obstacle to attain success. People who attain the same success with out the seeming struggle are often looked down upon by those who seek the hero archetype. Success that comes too easy is not looked upon as success. Even if the results are the same.

The belief that life was meant to be a struggle is furthered by fictional stories of all types. The most common form of story telling is that of a hero who saves the day. The more interesting the villain; the greater the hero. Often a large part of the story is spent creating and intensifying the evilness of the villain. Little may be know about he hero but he is considered a great man if he saves the day against the villain.

All we need to know about our hero is that he has some weakness that he has to overcome and that he overcomes the villain the end. We feel better about our hero if he uses his greater strength or cunning skills to overcome a villain than if the circumstances or luck play a large part in the salvation.

By having grown up listening to these stories, we often feel the need to seek out heroes or become them ourselves. We seek validation by becoming either a victim or a hero or possibly both.

Examples can come from every day life as well as form our great stories. Think about a lime when you lost your keys and had someone help you find them. Or remember a time when you had car trouble and suddenly a helpful person appeared as if from nowhere to help you get going again. In these cases we maybe we were the one who saved the day. Think about how good that made you feel.

Rather than seeking to create situations where things just work out and you always know where your keys are and your car is always safe and reliable, we tend to notice these extenuating circumstances more. By putting more emotional energy into these situations, we create more of them.

When we act upon the hero complex the feel good energy released from assisting someone in distress becomes like a drug. You feel useless and unworthy when you are not actively helping someone with a problem. In these cases, the larger part of you works behind the scenes using synchronicity to create more and more situations where you can act as a hero.

As your subconscious gets better and better at creating these situations you may begin to feel overwhelmed. But instead of taking at look at your belief system and working to create a different pattern, you may start looking for your own hero. You begin to act as a victim yourself and continue to create more and more of these situations that require a hero’s assistance.

The hero victim cycle becomes addictive and often there seems to be no solutions. Bigger and bigger problems are created that require larger and larger heroes.

The only solution to the hero complex is to stop look at the problems and start looking at the situations that are desired. This method is completely counter intuitive to both the hero and the victim. In fact it may be impossible for them to comprehend. It takes a huge paradigm shifty to even begin to think about such an environment.

Only through concentrated and conscious effort can the thought process be restructured to stop finding villains and start seeking opportunities. Scarcity thinking plays heavily into the minds of both hero and victim. Only by considering infinite resources can we break out of the hero victim cycle and begin to create the world and circumstances that we desire.

The hero complex is deeply ingrained into western culture and may be very difficult to break in our thought process. Recognizing the hero complex is the first step to ward creating the circumstances you desire rather than fighting against those that we do not desire.

I welcome your comments and would love to hear your examples of the hero complex in your life. Please enter your comments below.