I am very interested in this ongoing process. It seems that my role is to support his unfolding and make sure that his needs are met as they continue to change. And by educating myself, I think I will be better equipped to percieve his needs and anticipate the changes that he will go through. This way I will not get in his way and I won't be blindsided when he changes.
As of now his needs are basic: touching, holding, nurturing, feeding, keeping him comfortable and sensory stimulated. As he grows out into the next phase, his needs will be different. At some point he will need rules, at some point he will need to be rebellious, to establish independance, but for now his needs are very basic.
Here is some food for thought I'd like to share on this topic - from Michael Mendizza of Touch the Future:
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=550 align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>Freedom and Responsibility
Raising Shameless, Free, Responsible Young People - Part III
by Michael Mendizza
Remember being three or maybe five years old, running through the sprinklers on a hot summer day, naked and free. Can you do that today? Where did that freedom go, not necessarily the freedom to do whatever you want, but the freedom to enter the next moment without a trace of embarrassment, shame or guilt? What is embarrassment? What purpose does it serve? Who benefits from embarrassment and guilt, the controller or the controlled? Is shame and embarrassment empowering or crippling? If crippling, and I believe it is, why would we do this to each other and especially to our children, and so often, with such vengeance? Shame on you! Can we guide children into adulthood so they blossom into fully embodied, present, sensual, responsible and passionate men and women without crippling them along the way? That is our quest.
Shame and the Origin of Self
True responsibility abides in freedom, not conformity as many believe. To be free, deeply responsible, one must be shameless - without shame. Shame means disgrace, dishonor, that our acceptance by the group, tribe, village, church, club, gang is threatened, broken or rejected. Shame is the primary behavior modification strategy used by culture, including parents, to insure that members adhere to strict norms. We do it this way, not that way. We can tell by the way she moves, dresses, the color of her skin, that she is part of our group, an insider. He is not. You can tell by the way he looks, how he speaks. We sing these songs, not those. We bow our heads this way, not that way. Acceptance by the group is assured by paying allegiance, conforming to rules. Break the rules and our position is threatened. Deep inside this feels like embarrassment, rejection, disgrace, shame.
Adults disapprove of children’s behavior eleven times to each positive encouragement. The pattern, even to a toddler, is painfully obvious. Children learn very quickly to anticipate disapproval. Like a grain of sand irritating an oyster this defensive reflex, with its associated feelings of embarrassment, rejection or shame, becomes a habit. Every time we reach for something new, try something different, read out loud, step up to bat, ask a boy or girl to dance, there it is – that old-defensive feeling.
This conditioning runs deep and begins early with smiles of approval and frowns of disapproval. Yes, approval conditions and controls just as much as punishments. Visit Alfie Kohen’s remarkable work, Punished by Rewards, and you will see. According to Alan Schore, MD, author of Affect Regulation and the Origins of Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, the creation of our image of self begins most strongly between twelve and eighteen months, when we leave the safety of mother’s arms and become mobile. Increased mobility brings greater risk. Strangely mom, dad and caregivers respond by saying “No.” Most often we ignore their prohibitions. They, in turn, respond by turning up the juice. NO! they scream. Every nine minutes, research tells us, toddlers are threatened with NO! and DON’T and each splits the child’s attention forcing a defensive response.
Each new exploration seems to transform loving caregivers into screaming maniacs. The pattern is repeated so often that children soon develop a preemptive defensive reflex. Like Pavlov and his dog, just the thought of trying something new rings an inner bell triggering a defensive response along with a corresponding loss of real development and learning. The child learns to self regulate, that is, limit their development, by conforming to predetermined patterns, which, for many, never stops.
Schore states; "Mother utilizes facially expressed stress-inducing shame transactions which engender a psychobiological missatunement with the mother." Her look warns the child that the action he or she is taking or is about to take will break the bond. That is a threat and this becomes a permanent imprint.
Driven by nature to explore the world, the child is threatened if he or she does by their caregiver with whom he or she is equally driven to maintain the bond. The resulting conflict sets up the first major wedge in the infant’s mind. The toddler and young child will maintain what integrity they can, but eventually will split and become one of us. We then speak of the emergence of the child’s “social self,” by which we mean he or she has adopted the enculturated mask we adults have learned to wear. They create an image of themselves in the mirror they see reflected by others. Soon the image replaces their true identity and they forget who they really are.
This preemptive defensive reflex, now a familiar habit, creates a disturbance in the child’s developing body and brain. Like a nagging thorn the disturbance stimulates the brain to create an inner image of the familiar pattern, an image we learn to call our ‘self’. And because children are threatened so often this image feels normal, real and permanent.
Consider the possibility that the image we create, believe is permanent, of supreme importance, justify and defend, is just an image. What does that say about our self? Which comes firstthe self, the image or the feeling? Most would say the self. Perhaps we have it backward. Maybe feelings of embarrassment, threat, rejection and shame come first and from that we create the image.
Now You See Me – Now You Don’t
Of course, you say, everyone has a self. It is defined by our body. Clearly I am different from the tree or a rock. Look again, more closely. The body is made-up of trillions of interdependent cells and each is defined by its body. Which one is the real me? If a cell dies, and millions do each day, is my ‘self’ any less? A report recently revealed that as much as 40% of the cells we call me aren’t even ours. They are bacteria, yeast and millions of other buggers hitching a ride. Should we consider all these parasites part of ourselves? Yuck.
David Bohm, the bridge scientist between Einstein’s generation and our current crop of theoretical physicists, described how the boundaries we think of as solid, our skin and bones, for example, aren’t. The closer we look, all matter, including the matter we call ourselves, begins to break apart. Zoom in closer and giant gaps appear in all directions. Edges get fuzzy and soon dissolve into nothing (not a thing). Now you see me. Now you don’t.
OK – so the body doesn’t define the self. What about the energy that makes up the body? That too gets pretty dicey. Energy, according to Einstein, doesn’t operate according to the same laws as the so called ‘physical universe’. The vast majority of energy in the universe (the one song) is non-local. In simple terms this means that it is everywhere at the same time, except, in the quantum universe, time doesn’t exist. Where is the self now?
Everywhere, all at once, beyond time and beyond space. Try to catch that in a paper bag.
The image is so convincing. It must be real, tangible, a separate independent entity, captain of our ship, the one experiencing the embarrassing feeling. Alexandra David Neil, author of The Secret Oral Teaching in Tibetan Buddhists Sects, describes in great detail how masters of the inner world contend that experience comes first, then the image which we falsely personify as an independent entity. Pull back the curtain and the all-mighty and powerful OZ (our self image) is not what we believe it to be. The wizard is an image created by the brain because that’s what brains do. Among a million or so other things, brains create images of sensory, emotional and imaginative experience. Again, like a grain of sand, the disturbance of not feeling accepted, not belonging, embarrassment and shame are experiences and the brain creates images we call ‘our self’ to comprehend and catalog these experiences.
The self must be real and permanent. Every time we look at ourselves, there we are. What we miss are the rare moments when we aren’t looking. With complete attention, a hallmark of optimum states of learning and performance, complete attention is invested in meeting the challenge of the moment. Complete means 100%. This means no attention left over to evaluate how we are doing while we are doing. Complete attention means total engagement and no me. Krishnamurti put it this way: “With complete attention there is no observer.”
We are not talking about each individual’s expression of creative potential. No one is quite like us, at least not yet. (Human cloning is not far off. Imagine how that is going to shake up the meaning of self.) Yes, we are all unique snowflakes floating ever so briefly in the churning stew called humanity. Frankly, we are ever so much the same. Much more so than the minute differences some of us express. Snowflakes, however, don’t make up psychological images, names, get insulted, feel hurt, defensive if another doesn’t like their crystals. Snowflakes don’t make up philosophies, ideologies, invent racism, conflicting religions, witch hunts, national boundaries, and strike out at others who don’t share the same fantasy. All this is inseparably linked to the same image making process that gives rise to the illusion we call ‘me’.
Don’t be nervous. We are simply questioning our unquestioned belief in a psychological image. Where did it come from? What purpose does it serve? The image is a cultural construct designed to control us, limit and constrain our development. That is the hidden, true function of the image. Culture needs deep hooks to keep us from flying.
Who Needs A Self Anyway?
When has your self (the image that feels embarrassed) helped you ski, dance, sing, speak, hit the ball, paint, take a test, ride a bike, make love and a million other things? Could the self-image we protect and cherish be nothing more than a ghost, a brain-fart, or as Charles Dickens described, “the manifestation of an undigested bit of potato,” an imaginary ball and chain that has shackled humanity for thousands of years, keeping most everyone repeating the same dumb things generation after generation?
What if the image we call our self is only there when we look, when we feel threatened, a habit we learned as children? The self-image might be self generative. Looking creates the image. Maybe, just maybe, looking at ourselves creates an illusion that there is something to look at. Behind the illusion is a familiar disturbance, a preemptive defensive reflex.
But we really need a self to know how we are doing. Don’t we? The body has an instant feedback system called proprioception. Move your hand behind your back and you know exactly where it is. You don’t need a self-image to learn and grow. Hit the ball. Watch it fly. You know if it goes straight or lands in the pond. This is direct, honest, accurate feedback. Feeling embarrassed about muffing the shot is different. Embarrassed looking is different from just looking. Embarrassed looking is defensive. It produces a disturbance in the body causing the brain to generate an image. And we are all enchanted by it. We are convinced, like the kings new clothes, that we are the image. But what we call ‘me’ is just an image, a metaphor, something that represents something else, a grain of sand under our skin.
Making matters worse, much worse, is the fact that being an image our self-world view absorbs and takes on the appearance of other images, most often the images formed from the customs and beliefs that define our group, tribe, nation, religion, gang, political party. I am a republican. I am a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, Asian, Black, a Native, a pitcher for the Mets, a baker or candle stick maker. Each of these categories is defined by a system of beliefs. Beliefs are mental images. Belonging to the group demands that we abide by, believe in and incorporate these group images into our personal self-image. That is what belonging to a culture means.
On critical examination we find that the image we feel so embarrassed about isn’t really ours. The image is cultural and all cultural images operate more or less the same. That is why group images, be it a gang or corporate identity, morph so easily into our personal self-image. One can hardly tell the difference because there is none. Our brain could care less what image it holds. Images are images. They are all the same as Charles Schultz, author of Peanuts, put simply. “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.” And we do it so naturally. It feels safe inside the circle and so scary outside. The greater the fear the more narrow, conservative, fundamental our self-world view becomes.
Less is More
When threatened, rather than defending the image, which has been our defensive reflex, personally, nationally, religiously and culturally for centuries, there is another possibility. Be more inclusive. Expand your self-world view. This happens naturally, simply when we peal away the limited and often false images we have accepted about ourselves and project onto others. Online dating services are doing it. Check the box. “I am spiritual but not religious.” My self-image and with it my potential spirituality expands when I am no longer a Hindu, a Christian or a Jew. The group to which I then belong, all of humanity, expands tremendously.
The next challenge is to drop the image that I am a human being. Bang. Who I am expands again. Birds, bears, sea lions, chickens and whales suddenly become brothers and sisters. Not as a sentimental idea, a romantic wish, rather, as a direct, immediate, tangible, practical reality, one new-agers might call mystical. Less is more. We expand when we free ourselves from the cultural categories that bind us. Drop the limited image and the next image expands. This, I believe, is nature’s plan, her agenda, to connect, bond with and literally become ever larger and more inclusive by shedding, like a molting snake, limiting beliefs and images. With each shedding we become larger, until finally there is no image at all as we pour over the horizon embodying everything.
This rant about self image isn’t theoretical. It is the most important, most practical step we can take. How can we raise shameless, free and responsible young people if we first blind them with stupid images? The energy and attention mistakenly invested in the defense and maintenance of self images, tribalism, nationalism, religious conflicts, gangs, wars, personal, corporate and global comparison and competition is the very energy needed to solve the challenges that threaten life on our big blue marble.
Understanding that images are images gives new meaning to unconditional love. Real love is never conditional. Giving love in return for tribal allegiance is manipulative. Love is love, not something to dangle on a string like a carrot.
Unconditional love eliminates the threat and with that the need for defensive images disappears. Can you love unconditionally? You can’t if you have an image that demands justifying, comparing and defending. Imagine being a child and looking in the mirror of a mother, father or caregiver that loves unconditionally. What freedom that would bring. In that freedom, when the conditioned image disappears, real intelligence begins. Only then can the energy and attention used to sustain the image be playfully invested in learning and performance. Freeing ourselves from the ghost images that haunt us is the first step. How? By putting an end to feeling embarrassed about anything. Banish shame from your life now and for evermore. Experience and model the responsibility that true freedom brings.
It takes energy, attention and creative intelligence to navigate today’s ultra complex world. For tens of thousands of years this creative energy with its limitless potential has been sucked into false images at the expense of real learning, growth and true human development. Free yourself from these images and you free the children who are looking to you for guidance. Can’t you hear them? “You are our only hope,” Obi-Wan Kenobi. This is the moment. It is our turn at bat.
“There is no self, only thought that creates the self.
Krishnamurti
To be continued.
For the complete essay parts 1 -3 (https://ttfuture.org/pdf/mm_shame_1-3.pdf)
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</TD></TR><TR><TD><HR SIZE=1>You have my permission and thanks for forwarding this newsletter to friends and colleagues who you feel would benefit from its contents. They may subscribe (at no cost) on Touch the Future website, https://ttfuture.org/amember/signup.php (https://ttfuture.org/amember/signup.php)
Michael Mendizza
Touch the Future
P.O. Box 1226, Solvang, CA 93464
805 688-2190
www.ttfuture.org (https://www.ttfuture.org/)
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