MInd – Regain Body Wisdom

The challenge of a renaissance soul

So, was there really something amiss with me? Even with this notion gnawing at me, I wouldn’t have rewritten a single word of my life’s narrative. It had been perfect just as it was, trials, tribulations, and all. I had learned abundantly, shared generously, and my life had always revolved around educating, healing, and writing. The uncertainty about anything else felt perfectly acceptable.

Having been away from my hometown for years, I missed the opportunity to attend alumni reunions or homecoming events in two decades. Then the Alma Mater invited us to celebrate our 25th medical school graduation anniversary. Out of the original 30 medical students, the 18 of us that graduated together were a spirited group of dreamers, eager to make a difference in the world.

Upon arriving at the gathering, I faced a stark realization that time had indeed marched on. My peers resembled our former professors, not just because they had shed their student attire, but also because each were showing gray hair and a touch of middle-age paunch (not me, I thought). As they shared updates on the years gone by, a second intriguing revelation struck me. Each of them had realized their dreams while I was still navigating the world. Or, as a dear friend in their sixties put it, I was still figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up. However, no matter how young I felt, I was undeniably an adult. I had been married (and subsequently divorced), raised a remarkable daughter, fulfilled my earlier promise to serve the less fortunate, crisscrossed my country, ventured into the publishing industry, contributed articles to various publications, was on the verge of publishing my first book, had traveled to Canada to become an art therapist, and established a non-profit focused on youth alongside an innovative school.

Choosing Art Therapy as a second career was driven by the desire to add a new approach to my work with young individuals. It also felt like the perfect moment to amalgamate all my passions: to converge the roles of healer, educator, and artist.

Until then, I had never echoed my parents’ concerns about the need to find a “stable and secure life.” Even though I hadn’t amassed much wealth, I was quite content with my learning process and achievements and felt my life had been exceedingly engaging, meaningful.

However, looking at my friends, it struck me how early, at 20 or 22, they had known exactly what they wanted for their lives. Now, in midlife, they appeared accomplished and prosperous.

I had reasons then to suspect that I was an adult grappling with attention deficit disorder. I even consulted my Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), and some of the criteria did seem to apply. So, was there really something amiss with me? Even with this notion gnawing at me, I wouldn’t have rewritten a single word of my life’s narrative. It had been perfect just as it was, trials, tribulations, and all. I had learned abundantly, shared generously, and my life had always revolved around educating, healing, and writing. The uncertainty about anything else felt perfectly acceptable.

A few years prior to the gathering, fresh from Canada with a wealth of knowledge about mental health stereotypes (apologies: “diagnoses”), I vowed that, in order to become a “fully functional, stable adult,” the time had come for me to settle down. I would reside in the same place for more than the customary average of three to five years in one place, which had been my norm, and devote myself to a single specialty.

Was it truly feasible? Life, it seemed, had other plans for me. Although I did stay put for 13 years, I held three part-time jobs, ran a non-profit, and maintained a private clientele. And then, I relocated to the United States when circumstances grew challenging in my homeland. I started from scratch in Florida, and had to be really creative to make a living. I went to massage school so that I could continue to offer Reiki treatments (had recently become a Reiki Master), I became a Trager practitioner, I got my mental health license after a few years, I became a consultant for a massage school’s continuing education department, created a business to promote holistic healing, wrote for several publications, published a few books, and I opened a Holistic Center in Bonita Springs.

Over time, I came to truly value what I had gleaned from my myriad passions and occupations. I even discovered that there was a label for my type of personality, and that it had gained acceptance, even becoming trendy. They call us Renaissance souls. According to the person credited with coining the term, author Margaret Lobenstine (Secrets of the Renaissance Soul), adaptable souls like us stand a better chance of thriving in a world that’s very fluid. Our diverse passions and experiences have made us adaptable, resilient, and capable of offering more than just a narrow set of skills in the job market.

Anger, the deadliest sin

By Silvia Casabianca

You may remember. In 2007, we were shocked with the news:

A Southcorean, “Seung-Hui Cho, 23, an English major, killed 32 people and committed suicide at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.”

As we were reminded by this deadly event, anger has the power to ruin families and lead humans to committing unthinkable acts.

In the aftermath of killings like this one, full-size WHYs hammer our mind. Seung-Hui Cho killed his mates without a word of warning. He had enough cold blood to leave the campus after killing two, email his videos and come back to continue with the killings on campus. Do we need to ask why?

It’s easy to excuse ourselves from any responsibility here by saying that this man was sick, that his classmates “innocently” tormented him because of his bizarre behavior and that they could not have anticipated the impact of the bullying on him or that the real origin of his mental health symptoms was in the poisonous effects of chemicals from his family’s dry cleaning business.

In a public statement, his sister said that his family, “never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence.”

Why not?

How is it possible that not one single person perceived the magnitude of the anger Cho had bottled in, anger which ended in such a fatal episode? Maybe we have learned to view anger as an inevitable part of life, a human “nature” feature, an emotion that does not necessarily need to be overcome, and that many even accept and justify presenting us with the image of a biblical wrathful Jehovah, or of a loving Jesus who was still capable of enough ire to whip merchants out the Temple.

However, we know better. And from this painful lesson and the many more mass killings that have happened since, we may learn that it would do a lot more good to our society if people understood God and Jesus as synonyms of joy and love and compassion.

Why was Cho so lonely that nobody helped him overcome his anger, calm his fears, resolve his hatred? After the killings, it is difficult to say that it was “none of our business.” We won’t be the same after mass murders happen. It is our business.

In addition to the profound compassion that I feel for the families and friends of those sacrificed in mass killings, at the level of my soul I feel also a deep compassion for people like Cho, a person who seemingly lived a tortured life, and I pledge to advocate not only for a zero-tolerance-to-violence society but for a zero-tolerance-to-indifference world.

These events might not be part of our conversations after a few weeks, but they will not easily be forgotten. We might choose to forgive the murderers and question the responsibility of those who couldn’t prevent the tragedy. However, I am aware that nothing positive would come from hating a murderer or just pointing fingers.

Of course, the above are not the only questions that came to mind.

If, from a spiritual standpoint, we are all one, what is our responsibility in this situation, as a society? “We fell down with everyone in that classroom,” a blogger said referring to the victims of the VA killings, and I share the feeling. Let the questioning that seek explanation to delayed warnings and delayed response to the threats be.

I comfort myself after such sad days thinking that after a terrible act of violence like this strikes our hearts, it, extraordinarily enough, also opens the gates to appreciating life in its fullest (imagine what those who were spared feel now!), to reflecting on contributing to building a compassionate society, of learning and teaching socioemotional skills at home and in schools.

Let’s take a moment each day to express our love to our fellow humans who are mourning dear ones after these tragedies occur, including the family of the gunmen. And then, take another moment to feel our responsibility to promote a world where we truly support each other.

Spiritual seeking or fashionable Secret

By Silvia Casabianca

You complain: “Life is difficult, unfair and lonely. My efforts are seldom acknowledged or rewarded. I don’t have the family, job, house, car or friends that I deserve. Not only life is not as it should be, but I cannot change the world to my convenience. Or, can I?” But then came The Secret (the movie, the CD, the book).

“Oh, you certainly can, because you create the world you live in with your thoughts, your words and your actions,” the masters say. “Just learn the principles of the ‘Law of Attraction’ and all you desire will be manifested. If it doesn’t work, just review if you are using the principles properly: find out what you’re doing wrong.”

“This is The Secret to everything – the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted,” read the promise delivered on The Secret’s first official web page. A misnomer by now, The Secret carries a message that caught the attention of the world in a way that perhaps none of the former publications on spirituality, religion or how to become rich in three seconds have.

So, if you crave an abundant, a worry-free life, and you haven’t seen the movie or bought the book, what are you waiting for? Besides, it’s not the only book on the topic. You can get Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires, by Esther Hicks or The Master Key System, by Charles F. Haanel, to name a few.

In the past 50 years or so, the Americas, from Alaska to La Patagonia, have been flooded with information on spiritual, religious and metaphysical matters. Most of the material presumably comes from the East or from esoteric knowledge that was previously withheld from the public. This knowledge has been marketed through books, CDs, DVDs, movies, social media and charismatic speakers. Shall we hypothesize that spirituality provides more answers than science? Even though science has dug deeper and deeper and to the level of the most minuscule particles life is made of, it would seem that the answers it provides do not suffice. In our quest for meaning, it’s not the amazing biomarkers helping doctors in early detection of cancer, the trip to Mars, or the development of fiber optics, and artificial intelligence, but the feeling that God is reachable what brings hope to people whose lives have been stricken by disease or scarcity.

Back in 2001, the economist Paul Zane Pilzer reported that Americans were spending $200 billion annually on wellness, from fitness clubs to vitamins. Well, in 2022, the industry surpassed the $450 billion mark.

Although wellness and nutritional products have reached a plateau and have faced the threat of limitations brought about by regulation of supplements and vitamins by the FDA, the industry continues to hold the promise of getting to the trillion-dollar mark soon. However, a glance at the incredible success of such movies as What the Bleep do We Know, Conversations with God, How to Know God, and The Secret, is enough to see that spirituality as merchandise nipped at the wellness industry’s heels.

What are these products really selling? Hope? Magic? A power drawn from realizing that one’s life is totally on one’s own hands? The common ingredient is faith. Recently, a Reiki patient reminded me of Friedrich Nietzsche’s definition of faith: “Not wanting to know what is true.”

Indeed, and beware! You can use superficial knowledge of the laws of the universe, or a poorly-understood spiritual principle as a tool to deny your reality. Therein lies the danger of the trivialization of metaphysics, the commercialization of the sacred and the cheapening of spirituality.

How could anyone learn the principles that gurus have mastered in a lifetime of dedication and meditation by watching a movie, listening to a tape or attending a weekend seminar? No Buddhas or Einsteins are born in a snap. Why is the marketing of promises to make over our lives so successful? Is people’s wishful thinking replacing effort and creativity in resolving financial needs, or are we all truly looking for a spiritual life and a re-encounter with a re-defined God that exists within? Is this perhaps a unique rebellion, turning off the current paradigm, whereby only a few deserve abundance and good health?

In Where Are We Going? (ReVision magazine, spring, 2001), Mariana Caplan discussed contemporary spirituality trends: “When mystical experiences become our obsession, and we run from workshop to teacher to fancy esoteric tradition looking for the next high, we have taken a great detour from the needs of our culture – a culture that is obsessed with boldness but devalues subtlety; that is infatuated with excess but scorns simplicity; that honors selfishness while mumbling about service.”

Is narcissism fueling racism?

Is our racism fueled by narcissism? This is a time where we need to educate ourselves, strive to understand, use empathy to grasp what living in someone else’s skin means.

I’m throwing the question there, like bait, wishing someone will help me answer it. The question would not have much transcendence if it were not because many of the ills of humanity in the present are due to this plague, characterized by the incapacity to feel the pain of others.

BLM Vigil — Credits: https://blacklivesmatter.com/now-we-transform/

If narcissists lack something, it is empathy. They cannot connect with the feelings of others; they cannot grasp other people’s inner world. In the United States, it is essential to become “the” Number One, defeat a rival, earn more, be more productive, be famous, and the consequence is that more than anywhere else, but not exclusively, narcissism is becoming widespread. Narcissism and individualism are close cousins. The fact that the Times magazine called the Millenials the “Me me me” generation is not an accident. Neoliberalism feeds this trend. A neoliberal logic calls for a growing personal responsibility and discounts the solidary responsibilities of the state or the significance of social justice issues

It is reflected in the way we educate children, the way parents raise them, the undeserved praise we provide them? Is it a matter of intellectual rigidity where we cannot see beyond our limited experience and what we believe (or were told) is true?

As I see protesters all around the United States (and the world) marching in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, as I see workers protesting and demanding fair wages, I also see the faces of hundreds of people who have no clue about what these protests are about. People who cannot understand what being a black person or living on less than a minimum wage means.

Racism is such that the actual color of the skin, the social status, the level of education doesn’t really matter if you’re not one of them. I have been called a “coloured” person because I come from a South American country (even if my skin color is rather milky white) and the medical degree I earned there, a white male Republican illustrated to me, is not as good and respectable as if I had earned it in this country!

I had to educate myself to understand that I can’t–and probably will never be able to–fully grasp what the experience of a “coloured person” is in this country.

I can say, though, that it requires empathy to step out of our comfortable places and get into someone else’s shoes. Narcissism is thinking we are better, we know better, and others should just be just like us.

I have often heard that if someone does not have a better life, they have not tried hard enough. Those who adhere to this theory are probably oblivious to the history of white supremacy, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, supremacy, and privilege. Will learning about the suffering black people endured while working to build the wealth of others allow us to be more empathetic? If not, what would?

Conscious evolution from fear to solidarity

How do we responde to stress or fear? We have choices but we need to learn how to regulate emotions and become more compassionate.

Dr. Silvia Casabianca argues that humans are hardwired for empathy, love and compassion. These gifts reside in our genes, our physiology, our chemistry, and they can be nurtured and developed. They can be harnessed and used to solve many of the problems we struggle with-from the interpersonal to the geopolitical. Millennia of human experience have led us to this moment when we are perhaps finally ready to embrace, and enact our true, loving nature. The coronavirus pandemic provides us with an opportunity to rethink the way we live, to appreciate what we have instead of craving for what we don’t have. This might be an opportunity to become more aware of how crucial relationships are and that we’re so interconnected that what I do, can affect everybody else. Go to www.SilviaCasabianca.com or buy her book in Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/ydy6eljm

We’re wired for love but humans have created stratified societies that enhance competition over cooperation and having over just being. The coronavirus pandemic provides us with an opportunity to rethink the way we live, to appreciate what we have instead of craving for what we don’t have. This might be an opportunity to become more aware of how crucial relationships are and that we’re so interconnected that what I do, can affect everybody else.
We often fail to embrace our common humanity or commit to our common destiny with full responsibility. It often takes a crisis, an epidemic, a recession, an earthquake, a hurricane, to activate what Shelly Taylor called our tend-and-befriend response. But if we learn new parenting and education modalities that take into account our human potential for empathy, compassion and solidarity, we will become equipped to solve the most pressing problems humanity and our planet face.

Our foremost asset is that we’re born hardwired for empathy, compassion, and love even if the current state of affairs in the world often seems to contradict this assertion.

Many of our problems come from the way we learn to respond to fear or perceived threats in the environment without consciously assessing them first. In other words, we have not learned to regulate emotions, we respond automatically. This is mostly because our educational and parenting models are centered on modifying children’s behavior instead of promoting autonomy, self-compassion, and empathy.

Child abuse has lasting consequences

Disciplining children by physical means is still commonly accepted around the world. What many people still don’t understand is that this practice can serve as a prelude to an escalating pattern of child abuse.

According to the United Nations, eleven percent of the world population lives in extreme poverty –– make less than $1.90 a day––and therefore struggles to fulfill basic needs. Even though fewer people live in extreme poverty these days, almost half of the world’s population —3.4 billion people— still strives to meet their basic needs, the World Bank said in 2018.

Child abuse and neglect can result from the convergence of poverty, high levels of stress, low levels of education, and lack of parenting skills. In households where people are struggling to make ends meet, children’s basic physical, emotional, and spiritual needs are more often neglected.

Researchers have found that exposure to repeated stressors cause hormonal imbalances and activates an area in the brain called the limbic system. The mental status of the parents, the way they regulate emotions, end up affecting children. We need to be aware that brain development and mental health are the result of our interactions. When caregivers or teachers interact with children, they are impacting their brains. This, in essence, is how love becomes flesh, says author Louis Cozolino in his book “Neuroscience of Human Relations,” (W. W. Norton & Company; Second edition, 2014)

Childhood adversities, including neglect, and physical, verbal or emotional abuse, affect the child’s acquisition of skills, their social competence, and their capacity to respond empathically. And, what is worse is that studies have consistently found that any form of physical punishment is associated with future violence against caregivers, siblings, peers, and partners. However, researchers also found that children’s aggression was reduced by stopping harsh discipline.

When a child is born, he or she is equipped to naturally experience concern for another. But, as researchers have shown, deprived children or children exposed to any form of child abuse or trauma, have problems experiencing empathy or even recognizing emotions different from anger, which is a response typical of the fight-or-flight response to stress (resulting from the activation of the amygdala in the brain).

It’s therefore essential to set up policies in place to address the need for parenting education for all caregivers, as an effective child abuse preventative strategy.

Stop the pursuit of happiness!

What did Thomas Jefferson have in mind when he considered essential to add “the right to the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence? Life and liberty were, of course, vital rights that the forefathers of this country had to fight for when the colonies weren’t allowed the sovereignty to decide their own destiny when the British army was abusing the colonists.

But why the pursuit of happiness? I’d like to understand the intention behind the words. I believe that it was not about individuality and not about possessions. Their fight was for freedom and I am inclined to agree with those who think that they were referring to that happiness that can only be achieved when you work for freedom and for the public good.

The pursuit of happiness is since the declaration of independence a goal linked to the American way of life. People have come to pursue happiness, or what they believe happiness is, through the most extraordinary ways. Money and fame have become the avenues that supposedly take you to Heaven on Earth. But it doesn’t take long for people to realize that money can’t buy happiness. People achieve riches and fame and they party, drink alcohol, consume drugs, have sex, all in pursuit of happiness. Often times people get a quick peek at or a brief sensation of elation that might feel to them as heaven. But, because it doesn’t last long, they go for more and more of it until it risks becoming obsessive and destructive behavior. Might explain why people are frequently unsatisfied. Longing, always longing.

A divorce between the soul and the ego might be the big culprit of people’s lack of happiness. The soul is capable of experiencing the utmost joy and peace. The ego is greedy and lonely and afraid. It can seek experiences that can elevate the body to the heights of elation or manic moods but cannot achieve joy on its own. Joy is a less intense experience, but it lasts longer.

The pursuit of happiness has been misunderstood, I think. It’s not about the individual, but about the collective wellbeing; it’s not about possessions but about achievements. It’s more about doing the right thing than a lot of things!

COMPARE TO BUDDHISM… Accept suffering is part of life.

The third person is essential for emotional health

A dad is trying to playfully connect with his 9-year-old at a restaurant. The boy is standing to the left and the father has his arm around him. Both seem a little uncomfortable. The dad starts throwing what seems like a math quiz at the child.

What’s 40% of 50? the dad asks and the boy has trouble finding the answer.

The dad gives him clues, takes him to “what’s 40% of a hundred?” to which the boy easily replies 40 and then the dad insists with the former question.

Even though this time the boy easily says 20, he is frustrated and concludes, “I’m not smart, dad.”

This simple anecdote of interaction between father and son makes me think of a hundred things.

For one, how difficult it is to respond sometimes to the emotional needs of another person!

The father’s intention seems to be to communicate with his son, to play with him, to stimulate the child’s brain. However, he doesn’t seem to realize he’s making the child feel incompetent and stupid. Not a good foundation for a parent-child relationship, but unfortunately this interaction is not uncommon between adult and young males.

There was an implicit “leave me alone” plead from the boy that the father disregarded. I wonder if the child will remember this one as a humiliating moment where he perceived his father was more intelligent. Will he also feel that his father sees him as a failure and therefore won’t feel proud of him? Not unlikely, the father-son memory will be recorded with some resentment that will mark even the son’s choice of career (I’m not good for math, I will choose art).

The saddest thing though is not only that the father didn’t see the child’s discomfort (the father kept insisting) but that the dad’s good intention was not recognized either.

I believe in these cases a third person is essential. Was this a divorced father sharing weekend time with his child? The mother was not there. Would she have stopped the father from going on with the quiz to protect the child? Would she have interpreted and explained to the child what his father’s intention was?

I’ve seen how important it is for single parents to have a third person reinforce their authority, share responsibilities, explain their intentions to the child.

I’ve also seen how important it is for a child who is verbally mistreated in public to have a third person intervene and stop the abuse. It takes the blame out of him/her (“It is not something I did what explains my parent’s abusive behavior”).

I am certain that in many occasions our perception of the world is tinted and biased because we lack that third person in our lives who can explain and interpret the facts for us. For example, a grandfather who provides a different perspective; the stranger who intervenes to either defend the child or take the steam out of the situation; the wife who explains dad’s intention; the therapist who allows for a space where emotions are acknowledged, words listened, and new perspectives are possible.

Let’s look for opportunities where our children can see the two sides of a coin. That will help them integrate lightness and darkness and grow emotionally healthy.

My truth is your truth?

“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.”
― Carlos Castaneda

In Don Juan, the Sorcerer, Carlos Castaneda said, “To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle.”

In the spiritual path, we sometimes have this illusion that we can reach or we have already reached “the” truth. We talk about things like “keeping inner peace” and “putting aside the ego” and “we’re all one.”

The problem is we have trouble recognizing we are a “mere candle” of the infinite number of existing stars in the universe. “The truth” would be beyond the summation of all potential light that all the existing candles can shine.

When we get/feel separate from the whole, we stop contributing our share to the big light and still, we go around shouting “I have the light, I have the light, I have the light.” We want to show it to everyone else, we preach our truth, force our light unto others.

Holding to our beliefs as if they were a supreme truth revealed leads us into trouble, big trouble. When we hold the position that we’re right, and someone differs from us, then they must be wrong, uh? What follows is separation.

We fight for what we believe, which is understandable if we identify ourselves with our beliefs. But we’re not our beliefs.

Disagreements get us upset, and we snap out of balance. Her or his opinion becomes a threat for me…

What if instead, we seriously, honestly, work for integration, acceptance, union? Are we afraid to integrate a new idea or perspective into our existing beliefs? Being afraid would mean that our ego is disconnected from the soul. I bet the soul, which is adventurous, would always take on the challenge of exploring unknown territories.

I say, let’s us add and multiply instead of subtract and divide!

Let’s take what the other says, even when we disagree or feel challenged, as an opportunity to move forward, learn and integrate new perspectives.

Is selflessness possible

We’re ego and soul, and yin and yang, opposite forces, characteristic of duality, struggle inside us.

One of the most compelling challenges in my spiritual life has been to really understand the motives underlying my own feelings and actions. One of my teachers said a long time ago that a healer’s actions need to be motivated by what he called “pure intentions.” However, since subconscious forces drive us, how do we know what our real intentions are at any given moment?

For example, the most generous gestures could be driven by the need to please others or to be loved. An action could give us stature to the eyes of others but only our inner core would know how many pints of selfishness our generosity hid.

But this is not a new dilemma for me.

At 15, I was already a snob philosopher who could swear with no shame that she understood Socrates pretty well. Plato’s writings got me thinking about the essence of life, about beauty and goodness and I pondered what would be the best way for me to achieve some kind of utter kindness, selflessness, integrity… only to come to the conclusion that achieving this utopic perfection would on itself be tremendously self serving because I’d be striving for it basically to feel good about myself.

So, is selflessness really possible?

I follow the great egalitarian philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in that man is born good but the pernicious influence of human society and institutions corrupts them. I also believe with Daoists that we are born with wisdom, trust, faith, love, peace and joy and life experiences makes us learn anger, grief, fear, mistrust, resentment.

But be what it may be, we’re still made of ego and soul, and yin and yang, opposite forces, characteristic of duality, struggle inside us.

Maybe our life is about bringing light into our darkest places inside. Maybe it’s about increasing our awareness of our true essence. Maybe enlightenment is this consciousness of our wholeness, which is made of contradictions, about keeping a constant awareness of our oneness in the midst of our perception of division and differences.

The question then is not if selflessness is possible but if we could increase awareness of our interconnectedness.