Experiencing Ideas as Authority or Terror

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anxiety problems, authentic self, Charles Williams, emotionally important ideas, existential angst, false persona, loss of self, religious beliefs

You must regard your own emotionally important ideas with the respect due to proper authority. To be authentic, you must live by these defining and guiding ideas. (Photo: public domain)

Charles Williams was a British polymath combining considerable skills as a poet, novelist, theologian, and literary critic. He was also a valued member of the famed Inklings writing circle and a powerful influence on Narnia creator, C. S. Lewis. Williams’ most famous biographer is Alice Mary Hadfield who, during widely spaced periods in her life, wrote two perceptive critical biographies filled with useful insights concerning his life and work. One of her most revealing penetrations has a bearing on existentialism.

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Chasing Happiness Cannot Replace Personal Growth

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Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, desire to learn, meaningful self-realization, necessary self-knowledge, personal development, pursuit of happiness, three stages of learning

A. N. Whitehead said learning is impossible without the desire to learn. This matters because all personal growth requires us to learn something. (Image: public domain)

Is it enough to chase happiness in life? Numerous philosophers have argued that, for a deeply satisfying experience of life, something more is required, something founded on substantial personal growth, rather than a preference for a particular ephemeral feeling that manifests in a constant effort to spend a lot of time in the desired emotional state. Is it possible that the “pursuit of happiness,” so central to American, and indeed, much of contemporary Western values, may actually get in the way of attaining life’s greater riches?

I have already argued, in “Religious Conversion Can Block Self-Discovery,” that a desire for spiritual salvation in the religious sense can seriously impede a person’s growth process. Here I will make the case that thoughtlessly chasing happiness

The Human Need for Heroism, Glory, and Renown

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escaping from ordinariness, exceptional people, finding your vocation, getting more from life, heroic ideals, purpose in life, searching for answers, unconventional lifestyle

A perceived lack of meaning in life may indicate a desire for a more heroic and glorious way of living. (Image: public domain)

Many people suffer a lack of meaning in their lives, especially in the prosperous countries where the hardships of surviving on a day-by-day basis are not pressing. Decent incomes and the modern social safety net provide leisure time and security while removing the need for the incessant life-sustaining, highly significant activity demanded by dire necessity. For most people in the developed nations, only casual pastimes, meaningless entertainments, or sporadic volunteer work (which someone else could do) remain to fill the void. This situation is regarded as wonderful, yet in reality, it exposes the comfortably well-off to the serious risks of boredom and lack of purpose. It is no accident that suicide and depression rates are high in wealthy nations.

The Concept of Liberation in Psychology

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authentic self, emotional problems, existential psychology, free will, making decisions, personal responsibility, psychological pain, psychotherapy, repressing emotions

Psychotherapy seeks to liberate the sufferer from emotional pain thus restoring greater freedom of action. (Photo: Wikipedia)

I have been in psychotherapy for a very long time and have acquired a philosophical interest in some of the ideas behind the various psychological schools of thought. Inherent in them all is the concept of “liberating” the patient or client. I am sure no professional would ever put it this way, but psychologists are like the Allies storming ashore in Normandy to liberate Europe from the tyrant’s grip and restore democracy.

No matter how one conceptualizes it, liberation implies some kind of oppressive situation from which the sufferer would like to be freed.

Some Personal Thoughts on the Life of Malcolm Lowry

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alcoholic authors, alcoholism and inspiration, anxiety problems, identifying with writers, literary biography, struggling writers, troubled writers, writers life

Lowry suffered from acute anxiety and had his most productive periods in a secluded squatters camp in Dollarton, British Columbia.

Introduction

Finding out roughly what kind of person you truly are is the starting point of self-understanding. Many years ago, I discovered that troubled writers are the people who most resemble me – or whom I most resemble. I may also be like other kinds of disturbed people, but they remain largely invisible while published writers leave behind a readable and illuminating record of their emotional and psychological struggles. My discovery,

A Day in the Life of a Hermit Writer

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becoming a writer, bipolar disorder, hermit lifestyle, individuation process, manic-depressive illness, solitary writers, wanting solitude, writers life

Winter can be hard on hermit writers trying to live on the cheap. (Image: WPClipart)

I suffer from manic-depressive illness. In the early nineties, I was newly diagnosed and recovering from a complete nervous breakdown. A few years earlier, realizing I had a terrible problem, but not knowing its true nature, I had taken refuge in a shack near a 10,000-acre tree farm that bordered the British Columbia wilderness. All told, I was to spend sixteen years there, many of them in combative cognitive-behaviour therapy.

Old ambitions of becoming a writer had resurfaced

H. G. Wells’ Universal Struggle with Sensuality

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bohemian lifestyle, conformity, fear of disapproval, inner conflicts, ladies' man, love affairs, pleasure seeking, respectability, sensuality

Rebecca West is perhaps H. G. Wells’ most famous lover. Their affair has been described as “explosive.”

H. G. Wells was a sensual man whose taste for young women got him into trouble on a number of occasions. His famous and explosive affair with journalist and author Rebecca West is only one of many such adventures. Being an intelligent man, Wells was aware of the price he paid for these extra-marital indiscretions, yet he continued with them throughout his life.

Biographer Lovat Dickson writes that Wells’ struggles with sensuality ended up in his novels: “the anguish of the sensual man who has to conform to the hard rigour of life.”

The Unconscious Mind Is the Human Quintessence

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alchemy, Druid priests, fifth element, Hermetic tradition, individuation process, personal transformation, sacred grove, unconscious mind

Trees are a source of the mysterious quintessence, which is an externalization of the unconscious mind. (Image: Wikipaintings)

The concept of “the quintessence” has more than one historical root. Here I will deal with the one that really does have roots, the one that involves sacred trees. It may seem strange that people once considered certain trees (and by extension, groves) sacred, yet there is a simple logic to the belief and – not surprisingly – a link to modern psychology.

Most of us associate the practice of worshipping trees, or worshipping among trees, with the Celtic peoples of Western Europe.

The Desire for an Idealized Self

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authentic self, chronic self-alienation, ethical behaviour, false persona, idealized self, moral standards, personal salvation, self-rejection

The case of C. S. Lewis reveals that the desire for a splendid false self leads to self-alienation.

Both the religiously inclined and secular types strive to acquire a splendid false self. Between the two groups, the terminology may differ, but the game remains the same.

English author and academic C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) experienced a sudden religious conversion while still a young man. He went on to become one of the 20^th century’s best-known religious writers at a time when faith – in Europe, at least – was decidedly on the wane. Whatever one might say about his beliefs, Lewis is a superb example of how a skilled writer can win a following and find substantial success by going against the dominant trend. Conservative writers take note.

The Inner Nag vs. Inner Wisdom

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associative thinking, excessive self-criticism, false persona, inner guide, inner voice, non-linear thinking, personal wisdom, unconscious behaviour

The human mind has two aspects, one of which can be a nag and the other a source of great wisdom. (Image: Gutenberg)

In this post, I want to present another example of the associative workings of the unconscious mind. Years of strenuous psychotherapy and much “soul searching” have made me sensitive to the meaningful little clues and useful responses the unconscious scatters through our lives. We all have these experiences, but many of us, not understanding their potential value just shrug them off. I recorded this simple incident in one of my notebooks. To set the scene, I should mention that I was living the hermit’s life in a forest shack on the edge of the Canadian wilderness at the time.