We live in a time when attention spans are shrinking while demands on our emotions are accelerating at ever increasing rates. The media that once brought us news now seems determined to interpret it, forcing us to take sides rather than come to understanding. This growing white noise of conflict threatens to overwhelm our ability to find peace of mind. How can we clear away the unnecessary clutter and help ourselves, and others lead lives of true contentment and continuing growth? The answer to this question is found in a remarkable new book, Beyond Help, by Dr. Camaron J. Thomas. It is a breakthrough guide that shows us, step by step, how we can help ourselves and others become better human beings in a dehumanizing world. Thomas' text is profound yet easy to grasp and richly illustrated by examples taken from her long experience as a professional mediator. It leads the reader through the challenges and pitfalls of self-perception to the heights of the abiding presence; showing us how to cast debilitating baggage aside along the way so we can rise to our fullest potential. Beyond Help breaks the mold of self-help publications by empowering rather than manipulating the reader. It is a lifeline to anyone struggling to evolve in the turbulent waters racing beneath the surface of today's social network.
Beyond Help
A Breakthrough View Of How We Help Ourselves and OthersBy Camaron J. ThomasAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Camaron J. Thomas, Ph.D.
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4634-3283-6Contents
Introduction..................................................xiii1. A Thinking Self............................................32. The One That Knows and Needs...............................133. Needing Conflict to Survive................................294. How Conflict and Help ... are the same.....................475. Is All Help Broken?........................................616. "Help" On a Social Scale...................................777. Right on the Cusp..........................................1118. From the Heart and Then Some...............................1259. How We Help in Presence....................................14310. An Abiding Presence.......................................171Epilogue......................................................187List of References............................................195Index.........................................................203
Chapter One
A Thinking Self
We live in a constant state of conflict with ourselves, with others, and with what is. We don't see it because it feels normal; we've grown accustom to it. We wake up, weigh-in, check for wrinkles or gray hairs, and our spirit sinks. Or we recall the argument from last night; the things we didn't mean but said with gusto. Or we remember it's Monday and we have to go to work; it's cold and grey outside, and need to hit the gym before dinner ...
Worse still, our world is nestled in a much larger one that seems to be running amuck. Law-abiding citizens are finding it makes more sense to walk away from a mortgage contract then to pay it. Adult children are flocking home because they simply cannot make it on their own. Entire states are thinking about filing for bankruptcy. Global warming, long term health insurance, and spending cuts have become everyday topics of conversation ... just as our commitment to civil discourse has all but disappeared. And we haven't even touched on world affairs.
We blame this condition on all sorts of things: bad parenting, a lackluster education system, the erosion of moral values; fewer people attending church, a rise in violence, the decline of the family unit, an unrestrained media. At times, it can feel like we're beyond help. But this is a hopeful sign: the fact that so many structures are crumbling is pointing to what's wrong and to the way out. We only have to look at the situation more deeply ...
In our heart of hearts, we each think we're somebody - and therein lies the problem.
Contracting Into a "Me"
Most of us were taught we evolve as human beings. We start with certain personal aptitudes and universal capacities, innate abilities and gifts, a given temperament, and we grow from there. We acquire language and, to a lesser or greater extent, the skills to communicate. We learn to navigate a family situation and over time, increasingly larger and more complex social settings. We accumulate knowledge and experience, to varying degrees and over differing lengths of time. We learn to maneuver in a society of expectations and a culture of rules and opportunities.
There is however, another point of view. We can be seen as condensing into our present form: from a state of pure energy which contains all possible configurations, we shrink down into this body and this mind. From there, the contraction continues: from the full breadth of all the possible ways we could be, we condense down into this particular person with its own thoughts, emotions, fears, and desires (See Yogic Sciences, Kashmir Shaivism; See also Shantananda, Easwaran, and Frawley).
You can imagine pure energy as infinite potential, brimming with every conceivable outcome, capable of manifesting any shape, form, thought, or entity. Then it contracts into a particular body and a particular mind. A body that loves to run, makes varsity track, has no sense of rhythm and consequently, can't dance, has a weakness in its back muscles which slowly becomes chronic ... maybe condensing further to a body that used to run, grows heavy and lethargic, and tires on an up-hill climb.
The mind follows a similar contracting pattern. We start as an open slate of abundant possibilities and step-by-step, we create a self ... a person-self. The person-self is our slice of the infinite breadth of possibilities ... the one that's known as "me". It's comprised of all the thoughts, associated emotional states and behavioral patterns we repeat most frequently, the ones we identify with. It embodies our temperament, moods, beliefs, values, opinions, needs, feelings, mannerisms and reactions. We also share a set of deeply conditioned collective patterns with our fellow beings; among them,
• An underlying feeling of uncertainty;
• The tendency to compare people and things;
• A viewpoint that tends to be dualistic; and,
• A nagging sense of discontent.
This person-self has a voice. It's the voice in our head and a tool for expression. The voice speaks the mind. It interprets our external experience and narrates our moment-to-moment inner world. It tells us what we think and often conveys that thought out-loud, and gives expression to the repetitive ways we think, feel, and behave. But it also talks to us: reaffirming, rationalizing, analyzing, explaining, labeling, questioning, and reiterating our reality. The once abounding pure energy is more limited now: it's compressed into a distinct being where experience is processed in a very personal way.
From this point of view, we live life as a person-self, a mental image of who we think we are. Our patterned ways of being harden down from use and become automatic; or as some say, as we grow, we grow more so. The future becomes defined by what has come before. We anticipate, experience, and react to life in a fixed way, shaped by the past. So "I" am as I've always been ... which leads to such comments as, "Well, you know me," "That's just how I am," "I have to be true to myself," or "I'm standing on principle here." It's all a process of contraction.
These two points of view are not contradictory. When we live as a person-self, we still continue to accumulate knowledge, only of a more limited kind: book knowledge, individualized experience, relational skills, and navigational tools. What distinguishes the two views is the sense of direction: one sees the person-self as an expanding experience, the other as a condensing one. The former sees the person-self as the goal; the latter sees it as a step. Yet even while we're condensing, we still have pure energy, the supply of infinite potential, at our disposal:
[We have] the whole room, and we limit ourselves to the one tiny portion of it where we have "spun" our own creation.... We perceive some objects and not others ... make associations with our past experiences, and so we invest our perceptions with our own meanings ... This, then, becomes our world ... We have no other (Shantananda, 2003, p. 76).
Of all the possible realities, we shrink down to one – mine - and a habituated collection of thoughts, feelings, and actions we repeat over and over again.
We Each Have a Story to Tell
Every person-self has a story to tell. It's the story of "me". Our story is the running narrative in our head. You can compare it to a news story: a certain event happens and the news industry goes to work. It investigates and asks questions: What really happened? When did they know? What should have happened? Could it happen again? And, who's to blame? The result is a story. The same is true for the person-self.
We each have a story we repeat to ourselves and tell others about "my life"; how we see the world and other people. Our story is both self-defining and self-fulfilling. In my story, "I" play the leading role because everything in the mind is processed from the vantage point of "I". My likes and dislikes, preferences and prejudices, dreams and expectations, all play an integral part in my story. And my story evolves over time, complete with plots and subplots.
Our stories are grounded in the past and anxiety over the future: what happened to me, what might happen, the dilemmas I face, what I have to look forward to, what I've gained, lost, need, and worry about. Our stories embody the sum total of all the experiences we have processed to date. Whatever we choose to take in from the outside world is incorporated into our story. If it doesn't quite fit, we adjust it.
Our stories shape and confirm our sense of identity. Many people, for example, identify with their jobs and that becomes their story: "I'm a teacher, so I value education. I always put the children's studies first and tell them...." If you were to tell this person otherwise, he would take offense and get defensive because you'd be attacking how he sees himself.
People love to tell their story and will often do so unsolicited:
• "I was an only child. My parents were very busy, so I never gained the self confidence I needed to ..."
• "I've been fat all my life. It's in the genes. I've tried every ..."
• "I made lots of money but I blew it. I had a really good time but now, looking back, I should have ..."
• "Everyone abandons me. It's happened all my life. I'm afraid to trust anyone. I just can't depend on ..."
• "I love doing for other people. I've always been that way, every since I was a child. I've always been there for others ..."
• "My mother raised a strong woman. I can do this job – degree or no degree. That's not the issue. What's important is ..."
• "I keep choosing the wrong person. They just don't make me happy. In my next relationship, I'll be sure to ..."
We may have a complaining story, a procrastinating story, or a story of poor health. We may be a victim, feel unworthy or taken for granted; feel superior, better educated or spiritually advanced. We may be over-achievers; carry a story full of rotten relationships and unfulfilled dreams, or of abuse, poverty and missed opportunities.
Our story lines are endless. We can whip up a story about a single event or issue: the man who describes himself as an "avid listener, a fierce defender, and a staunch supporter" of his local public radio station – that's a big piece of his story. Or we can weave a story into a full-blown life style: the environmentally enlightened woman, complete with a license plate that proclaims her to be "vegan", who feels very strongly that everyone should follow her lead.
Once our stories firm up, they become a kind of emotional script. We tend to see events and circumstances through our story. We also use our stories to justify or explain ourselves: "Well, you know, I've never been very good at intimacy. I always ..." Yet every story is a contracted point of view. It's a way of reminding ourselves and shouting out to the world - "This is who/what/how I am."
Me or Mind?
The person-self is immersed in the mind, just as the mind is in the person-self. They feed off one another. When we speak of mind, we're doing so as in neuroscience: "as an `emergent' property of neurons when they are assembled" (Lewis, 2009, personal papers). In other words, the mind "emerges spontaneously from the assemblage of neurons that make up the brain" (ibid.). By brain, we mean all of the brain's inputs, including our interactions with other people and their brains, as well as the social environment.
The person-self is made up entirely of thoughts; it is wholly mind-made. Our stories, principles, past and future – these are thoughts too. As a person-self, we are both created and controlled by the mind; a mind conditioned by the past, communicated and reaffirmed by a voice, and that imprisons the future; a mind that shapes how we see out and what we let in and in time, grows indistinguishable from who we are. As a person-self, the mind produces thoughts and chatters away. This constant thinking, what Eckhart Tolle calls "compulsive thinking", is a deeply ingrained, collective human trait. We are forever analyzing, dissecting, interpreting, planning, questioning, justifying, and configuring ... thinking.
If you don't believe this, watch your mind for a moment. It tells you what's happening and what to do next. You are constantly thinking: What did he mean by that? Where is she going? Why did she do that? Try as you may, within a moment's time, you've forgotten what it was you meant to remember because another thought has taken its place. Our senses act as the mind's gathering tools. Even our emotions are slaves to it: emotions are mental perceptions that take place in the body; which is to say, we react physiologically to what the mind is thinking.
But why is this so? Why are we so addicted to the mind? It's because the person-self is never okay as it is. Its entire existence is haunted by fear and desire. So the person-self makes it its mission to avoid anything it finds threatening and attain whatever it desires. Unfortunately for the person-self, it doesn't rule the world – it needs the mind to help out. The mind's job is simple: make everything okay. The person-self relies on the mind to make sure everything goes according to plan; to keep us happy and shield us from pain, to make sure people like us and don't hurt us ... in other words, to "create a semblance of control" (Singer, 2007, pp. 91; 13). This is, of course, an impossible task which keeps the mind constantly engaged and the person-self fully absorbed in it.
As a result, we live in our heads. We spend our entire lives lost in, deep in, mired in thought. We label every item, classify each event, and reflect on every situation. The mind creates our agendas and to-do lists; it generates our reactions, opinions, solutions, and actions. We become transfixed with problems: figuring them out, weighing our options, and trying to fix things; explaining how things work and why people behave as they do; strategizing what to do and anticipating off into the future. We are dominated by thoughts, inundated by them, driven by them. And in time we become them.
We become this person-self. We accept it as our self. We go by a given name, are a man or woman; a gay man, a businesswoman. We identify with a career: we're managers or care takers, plumbers, secretaries, stay-at-home Dads, mail carriers, or restaurateurs. We're blond or brunette, young or youthful, Democrat or Republican. We're contemplative, jealous, gentle, practical, joyful, serious or carefree. We contract down to a mental image of who we think we are; a descriptive set of characteristics that get woven into our stories ... thoughts we make real.
What was once a mental construct is now "me", and "I" and "mine". We live life as a person-self with "Mind" in charge. We believe in the story. We obey the voice. We mis-take Mind and its thoughts for who we are and spend the rest of our lives attending to, improving, adding to, and maintaining that person-self. From that point forward, "We derive our sense of self from the content and activity of our mind" (Tolle, 1999, p. 18). And everybody does it, so we hardly ever notice (Tolle, The Doorway into Now Intensive, 2008).
I Know, and I Know I'm Right
The person-self is a collection of thoughts we've grown attached to: it is our self, it's me. Of course, we could be anyone. In fact in some schools of thought, we could choose to be anyone at any point in time. There's no reason we have to be who we were yesterday.
Similarly, we don't have to believe what Mind tells us or do as it says. It's Mind that tells us that it's Monday, and cold and dreary outside. We could just as easily look outside and dress accordingly, without the mental commentary or dampened spirits. Periodically, we try to do just that: we make resolutions and vow, "From now on, I'll _________" - lose weight, be more sensitive, listen to my kids, whatever. But very quickly, we slip back into our old established ways. There's a reason for this, yet it doesn't have to be so.
Nevertheless, once we accept this person-self as our self, it becomes our sole frame of reference. We see our self in a certain light and like to project and present that portrait to others. But because this person-self is not some thing we can touch or point to – because it's a collection of thoughts - it needs constant reinforcement. So everything we think, do, and say is aimed at bolstering the person-self ... at propping it up. Everything happens from the vantage point of "I":
• "Hi, I'm _______________"
• "I need to ____________"
• "This is important to me"
• " I love _______________"
• "This is my family"
• " I have a degree in _________"
• "I'm in charge here"
• "This is my new __________."
Given the alliance between "me" and Mind, it's not surprising we put a lot of stock in the content of Mind. Mind processes information from our inner world and the world around us. It thinks and perceives. The way we think and perceive is unique to us: no-one else does it exactly as we do. Thinking and perceiving is central to who we think we are. It's how we know:
The act of perceiving and knowing is at the very root of our existence as individuals ... [It's how we understand and give] personal meaning to everything around us. [It's what] distinguishes us as a separate, experiencing entity (Shantananda, 2003, p. 133).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Beyond Helpby Camaron J. Thomas Copyright © 2011 by Camaron J. Thomas, Ph.D.. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
