Reverse Thinking

Schopenhauer - a philosophy for grumpy people?

In my last article - Can feeling grumpy be good for you? I mentioned one of my favourite philosophers - Arthur Schopenhauer - who was a grumpy old man already by the age of 19. I first read him at 15 and developed a 'bah humbug' attitude which was delicious and self-indulgent while it lasted although I no longer think it is clever - or even profound - to be pessimistic about life. Even so, I still think that Schopenhauer possessed a genius for philosophy. (He also wrote a lot about sex).

Here are a few gems:

After your death you will be what you were before       your birth.    

Everyone takes the limit of his own field of vision for the limit of the world.

The conscious mind may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells within the body.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the sight of a letter/email from that person.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Console yourself by remembering that the world doesn't deserve your affection.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

There is no absurdity so obvious but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to introduce it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

The closing years of life are like a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

The greatest of mistakes is to sacrifice health for any other kind of reward.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome.

In my next article I will write about the advantages - and disadvantages - of pessimism for life.

Childish? Or Childlike?

This week marks the death - in 1969 - of Richmal Crompton, who wrote the William Books.

I loved to read about William books as a child. He was my hero - school-hating, anarchic, clever, rebellious and wise. But his best quality was that he despised the pretensions of 'grown-ups'.

Possibly my favourite line is when William tells one of his girlfriends:

'I think I like you almost as much as my inseck...'

William is child-like. He says things as they appear to him, not as others think they ought to be.

Regular readers may recall that I once published an article called 'Life is so ridiculously simple that a child of five could get it' in which I referred to the Boy who saw through the Emperor's New Clothes. I argued that wise children see through the illusions produced by conditioning. As does William.

In the William books it it is the adults who are 'childish', while William and his mates are sane. The adults sulk when they don't get their own way, they have tantrums (or 'fainting fits'). They are selfish, stupid, and slaves to convention.

The paradoxical lesson is that, in order to 'grow up' we need to become more childlike:

• Living in the moment
• Following our emotional imperatives
• Exercising spontaneity
• Being more honest
• Working against boredom
• Rebelling against the rules
• Laughing at convention
• Seeing things as they are
• Telling things as they are (even when we might be wrong)
• Bucking the rules
• Being 'silly', 'goofy', and 'anarchic'
  

Why religion doesn't work for me

I have wasted most of my life trying to be religious. Here's what it got me:

Worrying about the life to come rather than the one I have right here.

Despising my body, my emotions, and my mistakes, for being human-all-too-human.

Thinking that going to a temple discharged me from working on myself.

Obsessing that if I prayed or meditated hard enough I would eventually 'get it'.

Giving away my power to priests, psychics and gurus.

Falling in with the judgment that anger, sex, ambition and pleasure are evil.

Thinking that being moral and being spiritual are the same thing.

Wasting time trying to work out what Buddha, Krishna, Christ and Mohammed really meant (if their immediate hearers didn't get it then how can we?).

Ignoring the fact that many religious are smug, elitist, judgmental, intolerant.......

Looking the other way when evil was at work and explaining it away with ideas like 'karma', 'sin', 'God's will', 'heresy', 'holy martyrs'.

Missing the the fact that superstitions are obsessive-compulsive disorders. The anxiety-averting idea that, if you repeat the rosary, the chant, the sacrifice, enough times then you will stave off misfortune and become worthy of salvation.

Excusing the fact that many people acclaimed as divinely inspired are in fact egomaniacs.

Riding over the fact that most psychic predictions and prophecies are either wrong or so vague that they could mean anything.

Trying to be a 'good' person and ending up being a nonentity.

Torturing myself that I never seemed to be any nearer to God.

Next up I will be writing about the alternative spiritual life I recommend. But please don't read it if you are looking for the meaning of life. Seems to me that the religious sickness depends precisely on asking yourself unanswerable questions.

      "Once people find God they cease to be human beings".

       Erich Maria Remarque.

Image By † Jimmy MacDonald †

Life is so ridiculously simple that a child of five could get it

You have all heard the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. If you forgot, you can read it again here.

In the story, the adults are fooled by their own conditioning into believing that a thing must be true because the Emperor says it is so. Although the Emperor's clothes are, in fact, invisible - everybody behaves as if they exist.

The child doesn't see the clothes because he is not deluded by other peoples' rules about authority, about obedience, and about reality.

We all grow up with these rules. Some rules are open-ended, useful and benign. For example - rules that say we should give other people a fair hearing, or that we should check the facts and get advice before making important decisions.

Other rules are rigid, obsessional and malignant. For example - rules that say that some people belong to an inferior race, or that we are 'evil' if we disobey our parents.

Some rules can actually cause delusions. Meaning that Headmind ignores, over-rides or distorts what our eyes and ears tell us.

Here are a few examples:

• Some people don't 'hear' their children being rude because they have a rule that children should be treated differently from adults.
• Some people don't feel anger because they were taught that anger is 'bad' and should be ignored.
• Some people don't 'see' their partners showing them love because it was drilled into them that they are unlovable.
• Some people don't notice they are getting stressed because they are under an obligation to be SuperWoman.
  

Until a child goes to School his exposure to conditioning is generally minimal (although some parents do start way too early). This gives him a number of advantages:

1. Living in the moment. Do you remember how endless the summer holidays were when you were a child? Because each day was spent in eternity?
2. Spontaneous expression of emotions. So a child can be gentle one moment, angry the next and laughing a minute later - living in the stream of feeling and going with the flow.
3. A child tells things they way they seem to her - not the way they ought to be.
4. The child doesn't pretend to be someone she is not (except in play) so her energy isn't exhausted by acting a part.
5. Connected to Bodymind - fully aware of their changing feelings, needs and perceptions.
6. Creative, playful and imaginative. Playing infinite games rather than finite games.

So In Reverse Therapy we argue that the Child of Five 'gets it' when Adults often don't. In fact the heading to this blog could say:

Life is So Ridiculously Simple that ONLY a Child of Five could get it.

If we adults are to get back to being wise we need to recognise, unlearn and release our conditioning and turn rules into choices, rather than obsessions. We can start that right now by connecting to the body and coming to our senses.

Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.
                                                                                               The Earl of Rochester