I am posting directly today from two different current reading sources_actually I am loosely quoting, and I do not want to reveal the sources although the writing may be recognizable to some. It is because I would like friends, family, and other interested readers to focus on the content versus authors, or book titles and their subjective relevancies...
It is more appropriate to me, to hear your own responses to the content, as I am using these references to solve my own dilemmas about my big question: HOW to make money and be happy on the soul level? In our culture, as hard as it is to hear any form of (constructive) criticism nowadays, I am most curious how thought remains head-centered even in associations I admire the most. Yes, these are people who have brilliantly polished minds, and yet I am frequently astonished that this seems to be all, especially when these same people begin to experience illness in the body...I pose these considerations as non-judgmental food, that is gently brought forward for the purpose of noticing_ so, I propose: there are different kinds of very intelligent thought of which to become more aware. More on this later.
Now the quotes:
Mutual Connection
'The overarching concept, or organizing principle, of Bodynamic Analysis is that humans, in their development, inherently move toward greater and greater connectedness with others and the world. Marcher calls this drive
mutual connection, and sees it as our most basic motivation. This concept is expressed from a different point of view by Maturana and Varela in their scientific treatise,
The Tree of Knowledge: 'This is the biological foundation of social phenomena: without love...' '
(What is it_love? What kind are they referring to? What are the different kinds of ways of looking at love that open us to our greater sense of self, our higher self?
Just a glimpse of this aspect of limitless love consciousness, referred to as the higher self, and one can never go back to only a head-centered set of experiences in this life!)
' 'without acceptance of others living beside us, there is no social process and, therefore, no humaness.'
In a healthy development, mutual connection grows in breadth as the human being acquires an increasing variety and depth of resource and tools for the realization of this connection. During each developmental stage, the focus of connection in the...relationship occurs around a particular theme. In the first stage, the
focus is on developing a secure sense of existence; in the second, on a sense that our needs can be met; in the third, on exploring the world, and being autonomous; in the fourth, on having our own power, our own intentionality or will, and still being loved; in the fifth, on being able to have deep romantic and sexual/sensual feelings; in the sixth, on forming deep beliefs and opinions about the world and reality, and expressing them; in the seventh, on being a member of a group without the need to be special, but also with our uniqueness valued.
If we take the Opinion Structure as an example, it is a time when the human being is helped to form beliefs and to express them verbally. In a healthy development, the human being learns that she can have her own opinion and others can have theirs, and there can still be a connection; that differing opinions do not imply separation. She can stand up for her opinions and still be separate enough from them to take in new information and change. Health in this stage might be expressed as: ' I may not be right, but I know what I think.'
Implicitly, the character structures come about through
breaks in mutual connection. Every time there is a break in mutual connection, there is a break in development. A break in mutual connection occurs whenever a human being is placed in a dilemma of having to give up an impulse or resource in order to maintain contact, or having to give up contact in order to keep the impulse. The early and late character position for each stage are the ways the human being attempts to maintain a connection to self and others. A human being in the early position of character structure will tend to withdraw from connection to maintain a sense of self. A human being in the early Need structure, for example, waits for you to come to them if their needs are to be filled. It may look as if they are indifferent about the contact, but they are really waiting for you to come to them. The later positions in each structure fight for contact, but will often give up maintaining a sense of self. While they fight for contact, they don't trust the contact and thus don't let it in. For example, the late Need structure will distrust or denigrate the things that are offered to them. Additionally, the fighting often breaks the contact, since from the outside it may be perceived as pushing away. So we can see that both early and late positions have compromised their abilities to simultaneously be in contact and have a clear sense of themselves. '
The other quoted source:
'No one acts entirely out of self interest, just as no one acts entirely out of altruism, but the assumption of self-interest is a common simplification in attempts to understand the behavior of others, particularly those whose common sense has been diluted by reading too much economics. Women often err in the opposite direction. Because they are traditionally taught to emphasize service, their choices may be uninteligible and therefore deeply suspect. Yet although their motives don't match expectations of those around them, one can be struck by how terribly hard (this group of) women worked as students and later on in their careers, and how often work is underappreciated when the motive behind it is not understood.
It is not only in childhood that people of high potential can be discouraged or held back and their promise subverted or sustained. The year before...a group of women had declined to stand for tenure. One of them simply said that after six years she was used up, too weary and too eroded by constant belittlement to accept tenure if it were offered to her. Women (were) worn down or burnt out. During the three years...as dean of faculty, ...watched some young faculty members flourish and others falter,...gradually realized that the principle instrument of sexism was not the refusal to appoint women or even the refusal to promote (although both occurred, for minorities as well as women), but the habit of hiring women and then dealing with them in such a way that when it came time for promotion it would be reasonable to deny it. It was not hard to show that a particular individual who was a star...had somehow belied her promise, had proven unable to achieve up to her potential.
This subversion (was) accomplished by taking advantage of two kinds of vulnerability that women raised in our society tend to have. The first is the quality of self-sacrifice, a learned willingness to set their own interests aside and even be used up by the community. Many women...end(ed) up investing vast amounts of time in needed public-service activities, committee work, and teaching noncredit courses. Since these activities (were) not weighed significantly in promotion decisions, they (were) self-destructive.
The second kind of vulnerability trained into women is a readiness to believe messages of disdain and derogation. Even women...full of confidence gradually (became) vulnerable to distorted visions of themselves, no longer secure that their sense of who they (were) matched the perceptions of others. When...told...before coming and without previous discussion with me, that he had heard (I) was 'consistently confrontational,' that (I) had made...'a tense, unhappy place,' and that he would want to select a new dean, (I) (should) have reacted to his picture of me as bizarre, and indeed confronted its inaccuracy, but instead (I) was shattered. It took...a year to understand that he was simply accepting the semantics of senior men who expected a female...to be easily disparaged and bullied. Like so many of the young women they had managed to dislodge. It took...a year to recover a sense of...self as worth defending and to learn to be angry both for...self and for the (institution) as (I) watched a tranquil...turned into one that truly was tense and unhappy.
The problem, as (I) came to understand it when (I) had had time to follow the development of individuals over several years, was not only to ensure the hiring of women and minority members. This was hard enough to do from the dean's office, but what was even harder was to turn... into a place where all young women and men hired to teach (as well as students) could thrive, whether they were promoted and asked to stay or not, a place where whatever talents and strengths they brought from childhood could be fostered and they could go from strength to strength. Such a place would have to be challenging as well as supportive,...providing room for criticism and discipline as well as indulgence. But it could not be belittling.
The need to sustain human growth (should)/ must be a matter of concern for the entire society, even more fundamental than the problem of sustaining productivity. This, surely, is the deepest sense of homemaking, whether in a factory or an institution or a household. For all of us, continuing development depends on nurture and guidance long after the years of formal education, just as it depends on seeing others ahead on the road with whom it is possible to identify. A special effort is needed when doubts have been deeply implanted during the years of growing up or when some fact of difference raises barriers or undermines those identifications, (but)/ and all of us are at risk, not only through childhood (but)/ also through all the unfolding experiences of life that present new problems and require new learning. Building and sustaining the settings in which individuals can grow and unfold, not "be kept in their place" (but)/ rather empowered to become all (they)/ one can be, is not just the task of parents and teachers, (but)/ also the basis of management and POLITICAL ( all caps are my insert!) leadership_and simple friendship.'
Fertility, tempera
