The Rules for Being Human

by Dr. Chérie Carter-Scott

Lessons, Lessons

6. You will know you've learned a lesson when your actions change. Wisdom is practice. A little of something is better than a lot of nothing.

Sneaky the way the author of this list Dr. Chérie Carter-Scott, snuck three points in here. They used to tell us in Seminary that a three point sermon was the best format. So, we'll deal with them one at a time.

The first 6 points in this series have been about lessons. 

• How lessons are part of the agenda for our life on planet Earth. 
• How lessons get harder until they are learned. 
• That a lesson ignored or resisted will not go away. 
• And how people in various guises show up to help us remember to get the lessons we need.

Now, we get to the crux of the matter. The proof that you have gotten a lesson is that you do something different, something that gets the results you want, when confronted with a situation, issue or person that formerly set you off. And you do this "something new and better" consistently.

Which is what self-responsibility and self-actualization are all about.

I could tell you a million stories about this one, but try this: when I was little, I was also the shortest kid in class. Little did I know back then that I'd grow to my present towering height of 5' 7" (my friend Kath (hi Kath!) ) e-mailed me the other day and said she enjoyed working with me what she actually said was "I enjoy working with such an odd little man." But I digress.

When I was about 9, my gym teacher (also short), watched me get my clock cleaned, and said, "Learn martial arts and also learn to defend yourself with you mouth." I put the martial arts part on hold until University, but quickly learned that sarcasm and biting commentary reduced people to a quivering mass of jelly. This became my approach to life, and was fuelled by my temper.

Fast forward to my 31^st year, in '82, and I was in training to be a therapist. My therapist Gloria (hi Gloria!) said, "Do you want to be loved or feared?" I decided to mend my ways. Figured it would be easy. Wrong. But by the end of the year I thought I had it figured out. I hadn't taken anyone off at the knees. I was cured!

Fast forward to '86. Some of you know I was clergy for a while. I thought I was doing that degree to lead to my counselling degree, but somehow also ended up in a congregation. There was an Elder in the Session who wanted to be Superintendent of the Sunday School. I couldn't appoint him because the teachers said they'd resign en masse. So, to force me, he'd show up at each monthly meeting with a long list of my failures in the past month. As I knew what the game was, I'd find a way to gently deflect him.

One time, though, I lost it. I turned to him, slipped into nasty mode and gave him a list of his failings, along with his head. I was thinking that the rest of the Elders would see my point -- how he'd been picking on me (sob, sniffle) and how unfair that was (poor me!). Nope. They rallied around the Elder and wondered how I could be so cruel to such an nice old guy. I drove home that night and had a long moment with myself. I haven't slipped since.

I still think the wise cracks. I just gave up on saying them, because they don't get me the results I want. They just make the situation worse.

In each instance in my life where I've been stuck, and there have been many, I knew I was "getting it" when my behaviour around the situation, issue or person changed. Pure and simple.

Wisdom is practice. And, of course, the wise person practices wisdom.

Wisdom is much different from intelligence, as you know. I know many brilliant people whose personal lives are in the dumper, simply because they have not cultivated wisdom. The wise person believes and acts as if they have an endless list of available choices for the situations they confront. It would never occur to a wise person to repeat a behaviour in a situation or with someone, that didn't get the results they wanted.

My northern office is in Port Elgin, Ont., home of Bruce Nuclear. I often say, when counselling up there, when the warning bells go off in the control room, you want an operator who will do whatever it takes, will try anything and everything to prevent a meltdown. The last thing you want is a person pushing the same button over and over, as the plant melts down, muttering, "I'm sure pushing this button is going to work eventually."

Wisdom is all about flexibility and a sense of humour. Because, in the end, it is said, the wise person knows nothing.

And indeed, "A little of something is better than a lot of nothing."

 I used to have a little bumper sticker up in my office which read, "If you aim at nothing, you will hit it." Oftentimes people will complain that change takes a long time. They'll try something, and get slightly better results and think, "At this rate I'll be at this for the rest of my life." They make a subconscious decision that, because change takes time, maybe they'll just go back to doing things the old way. The results of that way are not what they want -- they may even be making themselves sick in the process, as their bodies break down from lousy choices, but the path to another way seems altogether too long, too hard.

So, they stop, and simply feel sorry for themselves. And get sicker. And eventually die. Seems sorta sad, eh?

My expectation, for myself and for my clients, is that we are on a path of incremental change. Who I am at the core of me is not changeable. (Remember, above, I said I still get angry and do all kinds of sarcastic lines in my head? That stuff is a part of the core of me.) What has changed is how I deal with me and others around this and other core issues.

The beginning of change is often a small step into a new direction. Recognizing and celebrating this is far better than staying stuck in the familiar, non-functional known.

Shen Article, from The Haven—excerpts
written by Gerry Fewster

(emphasis all mine!!)

With its slogan "Health is Connection," the Cowichan Valley Branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association has taken a bold and irreversible step toward redefining the field of "mental health" from its very core. In what might seem like a simple shift in focus from the treatment of illness and dysfunction to the promotion of health and well-being, the traditional mythology that classifies, pathologizes and medicalizes human minds amid emotions is actually cast aside and replaced by a renewed curiosity about the breadth, depth arid diversity of the human subjective experience, the untapped potential of personal resources and the formidable tenacity of the human spirit.

Our concern is not with a mental health subculture, populated by patients inflicted with diseases and disabilities being treated by experts peddling cures and symptomatic remedies, but with the broader realm in which the innate potential of all people to fully explore and experience their own lives is developed and supported.

In this sense, health is not about perpetual happiness, contentment, the absence of fear or even the absence of disease, it is an unqualified embracing of life for its own sake, along with a recognition that we all participate in the process. And life is not about adherence to some conjured-up definition of normality or compliance with some arbitrary ideal, it is the experience and expression of what it means to be fully alive-whether we happen to be sitting in a wheel chair, shuffling through a psychiatric ward or lying on our death bed and whether we are in ecstasy or despair.

We recognize that emotions lie within the body, thoughts pass through the brain, the Self encompasses the totality of experience and the Spirit defies containment. Since all are essentially inseparable, we consider the traditional distinction between physical and mental health to be absurd and the current emphasis upon biological determinism to be distorted and hazardous to our well being. On the other hand, by placing us back at the centre of our own lives, we once again raise those tricky philosophical, ontological and spiritual questions that have been conveniently avoided in the old medical-scientific world view.

But, whatever new pathways are there to be explored, it is important to recognize that we are heading in a direction that will continue to challenge many assumptions entrenched in our culture and many practices that remain essentially unquestioned. Our own challenge is to be well prepared for the journey; to be aware of our own resources to create change; to be confident in our own inherent wisdom to make up our own minds; and to find the courage to keep going.

Optimal health exists when a person experiences Self as an integrated whole that encompasses the body, the emotions, the mind and the spirit. Perspectives that view these as discrete realms of experience, and attempt to address them independently, are inherently disconnecting and, thereby, unhealthy. But this state of health, experienced as a pervasive sense of well being, can only occur through connection with other "Selves"- without you, there can be no me. To become whole, the Self needs to be experienced, expressed from the inside and recognized from the outside. Hence, the critical context, for both health and healing is the interpersonal (Self-Other) relationship.

I assume that it is impossible for anyone to really know and understand another person's subjective experience. To claim such insight is not only arrogant, but involves a depersonalization that is potentially damaging to the well being of both parties.

Health is not a struggle against adversity but a life-long process of seeking and sustaining wholeness. And this can only occur to the degree that the person participates directly in that process, through Self-Other contact and by creating conditions in which connectedness can grow and flourish.

We are complex biological, psychological and spiritual beings, each evolving in our own way but, at the core, we are all the architects of our own lives and, whatever challenges we happen to face, the pathway to health begins and ends through our own creations. From this perspective, the process involves an understanding of our circumstances, of the options that are available and of the choices that we make.

None of this is intended to write off mental health services, or even diminish the value of mental health professionals. What we are suggesting is a fundamental shift away from the notion of victims being treated by experts toward a new contract that places service users at the centre of their own lives and challenges practitioners to understand and respond to each person's unique experience. We are inviting professionals to make personal contact with those who seek, or require, their services and to use their specialized skills and knowledge to assist in accessing and mobilizing inherent personal resources. We are challenging the professions to step down from their pedestals, to abandon their carefully protected boundaries and recognize that health is a matter that embraces the whole person in body, mind, emotions and spirit. But, above all, we are urging all who demand, or make use of, these services to throw away the illusion of miracle cures and quick fixes and recognize the ways in which they are active creators of their own life experience. So do we have a new model, a vision as to what these services should look like in their ideal form? Truthfully, we don't and, we don't want one. The form can only emerge through the re-connection of people, with themselves and with each other.

It is much easier to slip into the role of expert, healer, advocate or social activist bent on enhancing other people's lives than to simply bring the Self forward with no other agenda than to make connection with others. On the other hand, it has been our experience that relationships based simply upon the presentation of Self and curiosity about others quickly become strangely profound. This doesn't mean that our desires, beliefs and abilities must be held in storage - they are part of who we are. The difference lies in the intention to allow connection to occur rather than to try to negotiate some pre-conceived or familiar relational arrangement. It's not easy. But there really can be no turning back to what we have now rejected. Life, after all, is an on- going experience of shifting conditions and creation - that's what keeps us alive, healthy and human.

Letter

(The only "background you need is that my client, who wrote this letter, is a physiotherapist. Thus the additional concern for the hand wound.)

This letter is used with permission of my client.

O.K. So I'm trimming my fat candle yesterday as my lunch guest does the dishes, at his insistence. The candle is sitting right there waiting to be trimmed so I take my dullest knife and begin. It's a dumb way I do this task, each time telling myself be careful girl, but I just haven't bothered to think up a better way of doing. So I continue to do it the same awkward, dangerous way. When people watch me do it they cringe.

So I was doing it while my friend had his back turned doing the dishes. All was going well, but then he finished said task and sits down to watch me. Well I become self conscious and clumsy. He makes no comment. Just watches, figuring I'm adult enough to handle it whatever way I want. Then the inevitable happens. The knife slips, and stabs into my left palm. Only superficially thank goodness.

But just after it slips and I see the blood, I see my life work flash before my eyes. No big technicolor thing, just a strong sense of how close I came to severing the tendon. Dumb. Real dumb, I tell myself. You saw it coming and you STILL DID IT. How blonde can you be!!!!????

My friend was quite calm about the whole thing, making no big deal about it or saying something not helpful like "Well I saw that coming." I felt a mild shock reaction then, a bit light headed. It's healing well and only aches a little when I stretch my hand out. I'll be able to work today though taking more care than usual.

Just the sight of that knife makes me shiver when I look at it. I deliberately left it in the same place where it happened just to remind myself. Now I don't usually react so emotionally to a minor cut, but something about this one really stabbed into my guts. Gave me a sharp reality check. Brought up some emotion too. Vulnerability perhaps and much more that I couldn't begin to put into words. I allowed them to be and didn't push them away. My friend is sensitive enough to allow me my space. I sat in the sun in my sunroom for awhile to recover. The point of contact was on the lung reflex point and close to the solar plexus point.

I also have the strong feeling that it has something to do with the ...whatever the hell it is that my work with you is shifting about inside. Something to do with doing things the way I'm been doing them isn't only not working but it's hurting me. It's all very symbolic I know. But what's the meaning of the hand, specifically the left hand? Feminine side. The hand is the part of the body that gives and receives, and for me a part that works very hard. Makes me wonder if I'm not subconsciously trying to render myself incapable of work. It doesn't really feel like this is the case, but it does seem rather obvious or am I reading too much into all this?

Sorry to call on you again so soon after my last call. Seems I need extra contact when I'm in what feels like this new place where there isn't much light to see by and no paths that I can see yet. I've been reciting a quote from T. S. Elliot that I heard Marion Woodman use in one of her videos.

I said to myself
Be still and wait without hope,
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
And wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing.
There is yet faith.
But the faith, the hope and the love are all in the waiting.
And do not think,
For you are not ready for thought.
So the darkness shall be the light,
And the stillness, the dancing.

Woodman thinks this speaks of the shifting between one level of awareness to the next and the sense of being lost and helpless one feels. Similar to the lobster after it sheds its old shell and before it's new one has grown in. It gives me a sense of comfort to recite this to myself. I've used it now for a couple years. A mantra I guess it's become. Anywho thanks for being on the other end.

My reply

In more ways than one, I delight in being on the other end . ..

Well. And wouldn't you stab yourself in the presence of someone who seems to "get it" and thereby sits there quietly while you have your experience! Amazing what you can draw into your life as you allow yourself to unfold.

My guess would be that you have always taken your "work" more seriously than "being you," and the bodily shift you are experiencing chose to communicate to you through something that would get you attention without rendering you immobile. Just a little jab where you'd notice. Can't help but think of Jesus, nails, and martyrdom, too. As I often say, we've already had one Messiah, and look where it got him. Time to come down off the cross, methinks.

Scott Peck, in The Different Drum, talks of four stages of faith. Chaos, fundamentalism, doubt and mysticism. Just talking on the phone to a friend and client this am, who has begun the "leap of faith" required to get from doubt to mysticism. My comment to her, and now to you, (and to my group next Sunday -- this is too good to keep) is that the leap of faith is a leap into the unknown, where all the rules from the left-behind "other side" don't apply. Which is why the phase ahead of the leap is doubt. This is the point you are in, blowing off all the old rules, as they simply don't work. Or perhaps more properly, don't work on the other side of "the leap."

I see Peck's plan as a spiral. You leap, landing in mysticism, and the walk starts again. You're in chaos, with no functional rules. Soon, you find a guide and find a new set of "fundamentals," which you follow slavishly so as not to get lost. Then, you let go of these rules, through doubt and questions, thereby allowing you to leap into the unknown, again and again, moving higher and higher. Or you sit down, lick your wounds and refuse to budge. That is always a choice.

Anyway, what a great story. Yes, dear heart, you are finally paying attention to yourself, and now you can learn to "get the point" without stabbing yourself in the process. Yet another behaviour change for you. I celebrate your learnings and unfolding. You'll want to thank your friend for being there and helping the process unfold by simply observing. Very cool person. Thanks, too for the poem! Same thing I'm talking about - about the leap into the unknown -- the dark and scary unknown, and landing on the other side and beginning again, despite the fear. In the stillness . . . there is light. Warmly, Wayne