Curs de consiliere psihologică pe Edx

De curând am început să citesc un curs de consiliere psihologică existențialistă pe Edx și notez aici răspunsurile mele la diverse întrebări, pentru cei care știu engleză, răspunsuri care erau parțial scrise deja pe acest blog al meu, adică subînțelese. Acum sunt la jumătatea cursului, deci voi mai posta jumătatea cealaltă când voi termina sau ca fragmente pe parcurs.

Existential Well-Being Counselling Course on Edx

1.I am not new to Edx, and I have a beautiful memory about a course I took here about civilizations - Western Civilization: Ancient and Medieval Europe, a course that entranced my mind and soul, thus probably my body too if we think about human beings as integrated wholes. Unfortunately, this is an introductory topic, the one that people like me are afraid to step into, in order to protect others from breaking conversational rules. Well, you know - the drop-outs like me are never welcomed, but I will say only the truth as short as I can and for the last time about me in this course - I am very poor, I am disabled, I am from Romania, from the outskirts of Bucharest and the worst misery is that I am totally alone, apart from the relation with my mother, begging in vain for years for any kind of social activity, for at least a few virtual connections. I was almost completely alone since 1984. That's all I have to say about myself, remembering the book ”To kill a mocking bird” and the character of Arthur Boo Radley, apart from the fact that I was psychiatrically treated thus my human rights were taken and I asked in vain for them - the medics refused to give me the official papers needed. I have to add two things. One is that I was a student - 6 years of psychology and 5 years of medicine, but I was gifted more for theories and philosophy and so am I today and I say hello to everyone who learned psychology wherever they are and two - that my main motivation of taking this course is to see other people interacting with each other here, learning their basics, to enjoy life among others - though it is only an illusory wireless connection, maybe we, as human beings, do not particularly engage in real life in more direct connections, maybe all it is about a wireless connection between our brains. I write poetry and I am still the same young heart happy to see others being happy, happy to help others if possible, and who knows, maybe one or two unknown persons would like to hear something from me. It is true, I had a suicide attempt 22 years ago, now I told everything about me, but I believe that it is not contagious. My name is Cristina-Monica, and I am 49, but I was always called Cristina, though unknown persons on the net had the tendency of calling me Monica, who knows why. I am CMM, which means 1900. Human life and civilization still looks familiar and wonderful to me.

2.My well- being means being content with what I have done throughout the day when I go to sleep. This definition encompasses everything because it means happiness, calm, peace, and physical well-being too. From the physical/material point of view, I have done all I could do, so I don't feel frustration or other negative emotions. From the social point of view, I can be content if I could do my best to be with others or to help them, from my self's point of view I am happy/content, and from the spiritual point of view, doing my best means to be a part of the human world, the only world we know. I am aware that doing my best means at the same time achieving an equilibrium because stretching one cord too much can break it, while not stretching it enough leads to sadness. So, the word that counts to me today the most to my personal intimate ego is contentment. And harmony. Questions: Comparing my own definition of well-being with different theories exposed here, I can say that I am closer to the subjective theories and to the eudaimonic theory. The theory with 4 headings, the one I analyzed here, seems to be appropriate for any kind of subjective perception because it encompasses everything.

3.I believe that focusing puts the client right in the middle of the world - and the counselor uses the word we are "zooming" - so it is about centering one's world into his own consciousness, focusing and enlarging through analysis. The positive axis or axiological attitude helps to make someone breathe after freeing some space in their focus range. The answers lie within - in the deeper part of our own world - that's why the counselor asks first for relaxation and eventually closing the eyes - because this gesture is metaphorically bringing the inside outwards - when I close my eyes I can see inside me, that is the wise answers.

When I think about my personal strengths - what I had learned through the years - I think about patience, positive attitude, valuing and maybe overvaluing sometimes reality itself - both people and I deserve precious feelings and to be cherished. This is not only subjectivity, but it is also a matter of objectivity too because no one can live by himself and inside the social system we are as much important as the others. I meant that I have the strength to enjoy even fewer good things, to multiply the joy of being involved in the world.

4.It is hard for me to write down these facts about myself. I believe that this kind of self-analysis is not very important or useful to others. It is too little, but I also believe that others can understand what I mean here, or sympathize with what I think or feel. Right now I am feeling better because I am aware of my environment and I made a partial covering for my table lamp from a sheet of paper and it feels very fine like this, the light is mellow and does not hurt the eyes anymore, yet I am a little afraid that it can burst into flames. Anyway - this is only the making space part, by distracting attention to lights and the environment.

To me, compassion was always the most difficult emotion or feeling to experience - because I suffered inside when I realized that I cannot help some particular people. Anyway, by reading the papers presented here and combining them with my own insights and aging, I feel more comfortable now about this feeling. I did not do those exercises, because I am aware of beautiful or good things in my life daily, I never lost that ability. I really enjoyed reading them carefully and I really learned better the distinctions in English for those concepts - empathy, sympathy, pity, compassion, and self-compassion. In my native language, it is slightly different. I think that my opinion about self-compassion changed a little bit by comparing it with these lectures. Self-compassion is a form of compassion and it can result in the same dismal feeling - helplessness if one cannot help himself. Yet here one finds that it is as important as compassion, another difficult feeling. Of course one should maintain a good balance because one cannot help others unless caring for himself. One cannot truly love another if not being happy within. It is always the same balance turmoil, yet I still believe that action in such cases is better than contemplation, if and only if we can pay attention to good feelings and be grateful.

Someone here on the forum wrote about the difference between cognitive and emotional empathy. I never felt the real sympathy or empathy consciously, but maybe unconsciously, like it was written in this course that science discovered recently more about physical bonds between living beings, even beyond biological kingdoms. But, as I said before, I was many times struck with deep compassion feelings, within my mind, especially when I could not help. Anyway, gradually, I went towards believing that the best attitude is to be grateful and to be happy to do your best each day because more or less is not good.

5.To me, an important existential question is whether a bad feeling or attitude or event in our lives can really do some good. I found until now, in the first section of this course, the idea that it is good to acknowledge and accept our bad feelings or other weaknesses and to express them. I partly disagree with this conception, because handling evil is dangerous by its nature. Many people avoid talking about their failures or traumas because of many reasons, depending on their education or their social background which bears many prejudices. I agree, negation is not good in the long term, but people who are resilient and can cope with life's struggles feel that stressing the importance of evil facts might hurt others or even oneself. I still have to think more about this issue.

As for the second question, I will share here my own experience. When I was a child, I was raised amid different odds and ends and found in my grandma's cupboard beautiful ancient porcelain figurines or plates, some of them older than centuries. I was not an expert, but I realized this and found only in later years that they were authentic and precious and intended to sell them for basic needs because I am poor and unemployed. I was asked to take macro pictures of them and their marks that can prove that they are authentic. And then I compared with marks catalogs on the net and it seemed that they are authentic. (Maybe they were not, maybe they are too many broken in the world.) But, for the first time in my life, I realized that, sadly enough, all of them had marks of cracks through the years and centuries and they were not carefully repaired. I could not sell them, but I found a site for such old porcelain with cracks, with big prices, maybe it was something fishy about that - where the owner said these marks were a better proof along with the signatures, for their authenticity. So, we are humane and human beings and we too can bear cracks from our life endurances. Those porcelain figurines are a perfect metaphor, alongside with Kintsugi art in Japan. I still have them, and they remind me of good things in my childhood when everything was aglow. Some people are fortunate enough to be perfectly repaired, others have to bear scars, but, from a distance, everyone is beautiful. So is everyone for the one who learned to accept this miracle that is called a human being.

Another personal story is that I was in love with Andersen's fairytales - my favorite author in childhood - and I had read the story of The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep, where one can find the reason for such cracks in fragile things, that are meant to stay safe in their homes - the foolish need of adventure and the foolish need of finding one's freedom beyond the realms of our knowledge. Both porcelain dolls, who were lovers, ran away and got broken then repaired by the owner. This means, from the existential point of view, that one can find freedom inside his own mind because freedom does not reside only in external physical conditions, and man is condemned to be free, as Sartre once said. But the owner can be what different people call God. My belief is that if we are a part of God, God itself is a part of us, which was being said by different philosophers, e.g. those who see the world as a multitude of intertwined systems. I forgot the name of these approaches, I will search again, probably a kind of holo-systemic world.

I don't entirely agree with the idea that light can enter only through the holes or imperfections in our lives. I remember a quote from a well-known Romanian poet and philosopher (I am Romanian) who said that only above murky waters can we find beautiful water lilies. It is almost the same idea. The fact that bitter tastes can lead to sweeter tastes, a fact scientifically proven by the way, as far as I know. So it seems that life is the same - like a roller coaster when moments of excitement and joy appear because of sudden changes in fortune. But my inner intuition tells me that bad is not needed in order to reveal good things. Yet, if life is not kind to us, we can make the best we can from it, as Sartre said.

6.I have strong beliefs regarding the philosophy of language and all the other sciences which deal with language as a study object from different points of view - psychological, philosophical in the broad sense of the word, pragmatic, social or political, etc.

The first question asks about my own assessment as a subject on the axis belonging versus autonomy. First belonging or belong is a word that can be split into two entities: be + longing. I, therefore, am (be), and nevertheless, I am longing. Or long, the root of the word. I am in need of something, I wish for that thing is the etymological root of the word belong. That is me, more precisely my emotional part - with my body and soul - that is my physical and psychological and also social part of me, I am close to the point of belonging with all my heart. This longing and belonging place me at home in my body and my surroundings. This is a part that cannot be resected from my body and mind. From a spiritual point of view, I am autonomous and closer to the autonomy end of the axis. Autonomy came from Greek origins and it means auto(self) + nomos (law), which means I am my own juror and in the same time the creator of the laws of my existence, which is only partly true for everybody. As a whole, I believe that autonomy and belonging don't measure exactly the same dimension. The opposite of belonging is being cold or indifferent. The opposite of autonomy is dependence. I give myself an 8 points place on a 10 points axis for each of these two dimensions. If it is necessary to choose among them, then I feel more longing and belonging than exercising my autonomy, that's why I am here.

The second question is easy to answer. Everyone is within the limits of his/her human condition, but being authentic means to be free, to feel free within, whatever the limitations are. I can feel that I am shaping my own life, but this does not mean that I have the illusion of being a supernatural hero. From a spiritual point of view, I am aware of my belonging to a greater whole, thus I am happy, I do whatever I can and I don't long to be able to do more than possible. The shaping process involves an appropriation of the objects and phenomena including oneself through knowledge, not necessarily increasing my physical or intellectual propriety (written books, art objects created, etc.). It is the simple joy of under-standing.

7.In one of my latest answers to questions, I wrote about my disagreement about the extremes of the continuum autonomy vs. belonging, as if they were concepts referring to different dimensions. Only now, after I read about existential practice and therapist-client interaction, I understood that these concepts are valid inside this type of therapy, they are not only theoretical realms. Like this, they make sense. These existential givens are drawn out from the therapy process. The most inspiring thing to me was the way the therapist deconstructs the patient's ongoing treatment of her reality in order to reach a higher goal. I don't know if I am right, but it seems like a deconstructivist approach, but maybe this does not matter too much.

From the case study, I learned about outcoming the fear of something worse for the patient who is choosing the smaller evil, instead of facing the real threat consciously. Most people simplify their decisions by doing this kind of bargain and sometimes they are wrong. The therapist's intervention resembles that of a kinesiotherapy worker, who is taking risks because of his experience in treating different back spine troubles. In reality, he is not taking risks, because there are common outcomes to any human interaction like this, like the way we recognize the same existential givens for any human being, either therapist or client. Sophie built a wall around her heart, so to speak with the words of a country song that I remember right now.

8.”I am that which I am” seemed a very appealing approach to oneself. Even in harsh times, the simple fact of being alive and being conscious can bring joy. I believe that we can lose ourselves into a greater love or realm of existence - and I think that this is also a spiritual dimension.

Besides this, I admire the self-discipline to which some of the exercises point. I believe that following a schedule is a good thing and the same works for doing different exercises - mentally or physically. I think that my well-being can improve by adding the forcible good way of behaving or being. If I am lacking energy or I am bored or maybe lazy or depressive, I can think do it anyway, you should do this and, after a couple of weeks, I can see the results. I am a person centered on doing what is right or necessary or simply the best thing to do - as a duty - without being compulsive. The limits that my self imposes to my life are rewarding in the end - I feel free and happier to have this kind of self-control. I think that this is a basic human need, having a normal schedule - avoiding being trapped in misery by means of doing the forcible good. A schedule is necessary because we have an animal side and we are all connected with the moon and the sun and with the other people in the world with their biological rhythms.

9.Through the years, getting older at wiser to some degree (I just felt a kind of self-actualization of my understanding of the world and human life starting when I was 35 and continuing until I was 46-47 then slowing down until now when I am 49, but maybe it was not the end and who knows what I shall discover next), I found some facts about physical imbalances in my life. I will pinpoint only one of them - somehow related to the case of Helena. I, too, being raised and living my whole life in a temperate northern climate, trusted the seasons and learned to be watchful and sensible about them and the way their course through the year affects me, especially my physical and intellectual being.
The finding surprised me a little bit. My best time was always autumn, then winter, then spring, and ultimately, the least favorable to me was always summer. This is also the order of my preferences for Vivaldi's masterpiece The 4 seasons. Vivaldi - a word reminding about living, being lively and alive. I was born in the second part of February, at the end of winter, so I entered the hardship of life through one of its tougher parts for me - the onset of spring, when everything bursts out. My preferences regarding the beauty of seasons respect the same order if the winter is snowy or enriched with graceful hoarfrost or thin ice layers. Another interesting fact is that all my three close relatives, except for my mother who is still alive - father, uncle, and aunt - died in the summertime when I was away from them. At the same time, there is a saying in my country which says that ducklings are counted only in autumn, expressing that only those who can survive hard times and the beginnings can be enrolled in another series. School time used to start in autumn, such as for me it was easier, then also easy, then harder and finally the hardest times it was luckily vacation, summer holidays. I realized that these findings are a part of my spiritual being, but also physical, psychological. As for the social part, it was obviously the opposite, because of objective conditions. Regarding the study about Helena's migraine, it is a little different - her realization that it is comforting to know that spring shall always come after winter and so on - autumn after summer, etc. - means that she linked this habitual patterns with her spiritual being, realizing that human beings and herself too, have the autumn of their life and also that there is good and bad altogether, that we cannot enjoy good things if we don't really accept the normal difficulties inherent to our human condition.

10.What happens when you experiment with reversing the question “What should I do about this situation?” to ask yourself: “What is this situation doing to me?” It is understood that the situation is not a happy one, otherwise one wouldn't feel the urge to do something about it or to assess its consequences. The first question releases adrenalin and other stress-related hormones. I understood that I should focus on other dimensions - existential - not biological. It is an urge to achieve a goal after settling a level of accepted performance. It is a question that stimulates the volitional processes in the brain. It is a compelling drive, a pushy "voice" of consciousness. Many times people can behave like this, in a hurry, without fully understanding the echoes of the painful situation within ourselves. I believe that this kind of interaction with stressful events can be useful and necessary in emergency situations when we don't stop and ask why is it that a load weighs upon one's chest, and hurry to take it off. If I ask myself what this situation is doing to me I can analyze my very reasons for a change and I can become more motivated for changes, able to engage in more powerful life-changing events and techniques. Self-compassion becomes conscious and accepted, my weaknesses are better understood.

What are your personal barriers to pausing or giving yourself “a minute” to sense how a situation is affecting you? My personal barriers are the fear of being overwhelmed or distracted by too much suffering in the search for a real solution. I also fear the boomerang effects of negative feelings or words, wondering if they can hurt others and also me in return - I mean I don't want to open a hand fan painted with sadness in front of me, in order to refresh my mind and my body.

I have to add a few things and questions. I was impressed by the last article read here, just before this forum. I am talking about the paragraph talking about focusing and the spiritual realm. I found these words throughout the course - “going back to the ‘source" and I am not certain what this means. I felt a deep sense of joy by reading this paragraph from Professor Leijssen Mia, whatever it might have meant for the author in the very beginning of its creation: Here the term ‘soul’ can be used to indicate that these experiences are perceptible in your body and at the same time extend far beyond the boundaries of your physical self. Whatever terminology you prefer, you can experience a spiritual or transpersonal dimension when you practice focusing. Being lovingly present in this ‘infinite’ realm of experience brings you face-to-face with experiences that turn out to be extremely meaningful. For me, it is an enriched meaning.

As for the focusing process, I think that is like going from exteroception towards interoception or cenesthesia - the perception of my body's internal organs. This perception is not always conscious, it is many times unconscious or subconscious, right under our line of awareness, and that results in influencing our mood in a subtle way. My own theory is that our senses are not only doors for the perception of the world around or within us, but also effective ways to protect ourselves from physical or psychological dangers. That's why focusing without any thought on music or sights, or touches, tastes, and scents can result in our freeing from pain and reordering our reality. Interoceptive processes are alike. Instead of the external world, we focus inside our body and make a show of it (if only for oneself) and thus we can detach from it at a later time - or the pain is smoothing and becoming friendly. Senses are like shields that change arrows' movements. I am not certain about cenesthesia and maybe my whole theory is not correct though I can argue more about it. It is only a metaphor maybe. And we can remember the saying medice, cura te ipsum. By taking care of ourselves, we can be beneficial to others.

11. What were the best times of your life? What was going on in your life that created good circumstances for you? How did you contribute to making it a good time? What were transformational moments in your life or experiences that have changed your life?

I shall answer in the shortest way that I can to both topics, hoping I would find something meaningful to others too. My lifeline is an expression that reminds me of my grandma, who used to predict my future by looking at my hands (by the way, my hands are to me the safe-heaven place of my body, yet lately I experienced symptoms of neuropathy - benumbing, difficulty to do the typing, and I take medicine for that and I believe that it is still good enough). Looking at my hands she foresaw that my lifeline shows a difficult future, plus that I was tremendously generous with other persons, by the fact that my fingers were drawn outwards in extension when I opened my hand. I made many times that exercise of drawing a line in past years, by myself. There is a time when many of us feel the need to do that. Most of my "happiness" moments happened (it is good that these words resemble one another like in my native language the word for "tomorrow" resembles that for "hands") within the frameworks 0-6, 6-12, and 30-50 years of age. When I was a child I was very playful and very happy and conscious of my happiness and very loving and grateful, though I was raised partly alone. My thirst for beauty in nature, my joy of reading or playing with others, or alone, my joy of discovering nature and writing short stories about it made everything happening even more beautiful. After 35 years of age, shortly after my father's death, which was a transformational moment, the same as my suicide attempt and losing a part of my left leg was 6 years before that moment, I continued to read art history books, history of literature or simply history or books which offer a synoptic view upon human civilization and I began to understand life from a deepened perspective. I began to use colors and paint or draw something, a fact that made me realize that I did not improve my skills of this kind after 13 years of age. But the most important fact by far was that I discovered classical music, that kind of treasure which did not make too much sense for me in my youth.

When I was young, always enraptured by natural beauties, I used to listen to simple folks' music and I used to read existential literature and philosophy, like Heidegger, Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir. Back then I believed that this existential framework solves any problem and can bring relief to anyone. But, because life pushed me at my wit's end, demanding from me too much suffering, especially from being always alone, later on I found that existentialism was not a solution to everything. But I started this course with a deepened respect for it, taking from it what's ever-shining. Growing old, after 35 years of age, I also began writing poems, a fact that I used to do in my childhood and adolescence. Throughout my entire existence, the perfect friend would have been an introvert, just like me, because I really respect others' silence and I love to feel my own source of joy and love in quietude.

My best contribution to my well-being was my overall capacity of enriching experience with heartfelt moments, a kind of serene peace, of blissful moments, of calm, yet always very complex emotions and beautiful feelings - for humans, human artifacts, life itself, and natural surroundings. From popular old songs and hits, I can remind here about the country songlines - "you got to stop and smell the roses", Abba's hit Fernando which says “If I had to do the same again, I would my friend, Fernando" or the well-known "My way" - "I state my case of which I'm certain... I did it my way" or Neil Diamond's - "I am, I said", all of these and many others being in line with the existential framework of thought, where we can find, as it is written here in this course, that one is fully oneself, not necessarily happy, if one thinks that he would have lived his own life again the same way he did once. (Nietzsche).

I may add something nihilistic of my own - everything is transient, everything is vanity, not only material aspects of reality but also our so much treasured idealistic values or ideals - yet one can be happy or at least at ease with one's one fate - amor fati. But I always add - only with the hand in the hand of goodness.

12. What was for you an experience of loss that has something added to your strengths or growth? What kind of effects did you experience after doing some of the exercises?

I shall start by answering the second question. I believe that, compared with medicine, psychology uses a greater percentage of positive words, and I believe in the power of the words transient around our existence. Maybe this is even truer about this positive approach of existential psychology, or, to be more precise, in the tradition of person-centered psychotherapy. I believe that this greater amount of positive words can help us or relieve us per se. These exercises about tackling different unwelcomed existential givens gave me the impression that one can practice a more detached and relaxed way to face painful moments or to make difficult decisions. Plus the power of positive words by itself.

I had many experiences of loss throughout my life and they surely added more strengths and growths to my self. Two of them come to my mind right now - losing a part of my left leg due to a suicide attempt and being isolated/ alone for a long period of time, even right now. Loneliness is the hardest thing to endure in the long run. The strength that I developed is a little more sympathy and acceptance to fulfill my own needs and joys, because otherwise I had been too much convinced that human life can have meaning only if it is connected with others - well, to be honest, I still feel the same, but now I am happy to be here in this virtual land with others. Maybe I feel a little more comfortable with loneliness. As for solitude, which was defined here in this course as a kind of something that can lead to alienation from oneself, I did not experience that, apart from my later years, when I felt that by being alone a long time I begin to lose touch with my authentic self. While going through hardship, I learned to value the insights that language can bring to us - a kind of illuminating experience, in this world based on a language convention, as Yalom said. Our freedom manifests itself within the realms of the language - spoken or written words. I can explore here the meaning and close sounding relatives of the words - sole, solitude - it is close to the soul - we find our soul sometimes better when being alone, solitude is similar to the Latin word for sun and to the solfeggio and the musical key sol. And to the word naming ground in my language. And the soles of our feet, etc. All of these can bring beautiful insights - for example I realized not so long ago what's written in this course - that every person is actually alone, because no one can really share the same existence or meanings with others. We are like different suns or stars or islands - like many popular songs say. I found the same idea expressed by Professor Mia: ”People that are able to accept loneliness as an existential given, who realize that there always remains an unbridgeable gap between the individual and others, invest in a rich inner life and make more use of the diverse sources that come their way."

When I lost my leg, almost 22 years ago, I also had an NDE experience. I won't relate this here. Anyway, it was seemingly obvious that I was at risk. From this painful loss, I gathered a few strengths, like being even more grateful to be alive, investing time in writing poems - which I intended to be a kind of beautiful gift to others but I admit that I failed to create something pleasing to them - yet I don't regret that I wrote them, being grateful to have a prosthetic limb that allowed me even to climb moderate heights. Etc. I believe that real introspection is impossible in the literal sense because we are expressing thoughts about how we perceive ourselves and it takes time to do this, so we only talk about past moments in introspection and we cannot spectate or see for real our present experience, moreover, we can get lost in this process, we can be cheaters in regard to the truth or we can be too resilient, etc. It is only one strange phenomenon about me that I shall relate here, hoping it is not too shocking, or that it doesn't break taboo rules. Not so long ago, in the autumn of 2017, I had a very strange paranormal experience, which frightened me and I had to lull myself asleep shortly after. I had a vivid dream that occurred 2 times that night. I saw something similar to a brain on my mental screen, a very well irrigated brain, the color of it was orange because of the blood vessels and nervous tissues and it was fantastically shining. Exactly the moment that I saw that thing I woke up and had in less than a few seconds, almost instantly, an all-comprising experience of my whole life, since early childhood to present times. I read once that other people experienced this thing before a clinical death or in very dangerous moments of their lives. And it happened twice. From this kind of shock I learned to be happier with myself, at least for some time and to continue to do good things in order to feel better, even if I cannot please others.

13. What do you experience as your personal biggest threat to integrity?

To me, the biggest threat to integrity seems to be the fear of forgetting, with old age, different essential facts or life conclusions which I drew out, or even my intimate feelings of bliss and happiness. It did not happen until now but I found myself searching, a few days ago, the laws and the formulae for the movements of objects on a slope, downwards, understood when I was 15 - realizing that I forgot a part of it. I said to myself - it is stupid for me to care about such things at almost 50 years of age as a woman - yet I know inside me that even forgetting about intellectual data learned once can lead to discomfort, it is true only a little discomfort. It is so because good times in my life are closely linked with intellectual activities amid other things, yet I know that our best things and own discoveries stay with us. Forgetting is a normal thing. Another threat is being alone.

What touched you in particular when reading about forgiveness?

Forgiveness was one of the best parts of my life and I really believe that it can improve physical and psychological well-being. Forgiveness is wisdom. I read different novels about this and I must name here only two well-known books, situated at the extremes of the axis forgiveness-revenge: Les Miserables and The Count of Monte Cristo, both of them linked with my own life experience. By reading the Count, I felt disgust and fury, because he is taking revenge (a bad and futile thing) at any cost - killing secondary and innocent characters in the pursuit of his heartless revenge. I was still young, I could not accept calmly such a thing. When a movie was made about this story, they soften the hideous facts written in the novel and even his hideous treatment of the woman that he fell in love with long ago. By reading the Miserables I felt pity and sadness and bitter tenderness because the good hero suffers a lifetime and does good deeds a lifetime only to be neglected in the end by the daughter he adopted and devoted his life to and by his son-in-law, whose life he had saved. He dies because of poverty and solitude and cold winters at old age. At the end of his miserable life, both his daughter and his son-in-law come to pay their respect to him, because they are told the truth that they could not understand by their hearts. He stands as a perfect example that forgiveness and acceptance of one's fate and death bring joy even against the whole misfortunes possible. He forgives his children who come at him for being forgiven and he dies as a happy man. On his modest tombstone, in a corner of the cemetery only a few words remained:

*He sleeps. Although his fate was very strange,
He lived. He died when he no longer had his angel.
The thing came to pass simply, of itself,
As the night comes when day is gone.*

This leads me to my personal painful experience - a week before my father died unexpectedly, he came to my place and asked me for forgiveness and I said yes, although I did remember all that he did evil towards me. Throughout my life, I always trusted the good in him, remembering the way he treated me when I was a child, before the great divide since I was 13.

Wisdom is constructed in one's life through life experiences and not by reading alone. I need to add here about a poem written by another well-known Romanian poet who says that we cannot find the imprints of beauty or life's incentives or unfathomed secrets or the way towards change inside books, which cannot help us to fully treasure life; it is only through living, suffering and being passionate about things that we can hear the grass growing.

14. What are coping strategies that you experience as really helpful in your daily life?

I found effective in my situation mostly the first 4 strategies listed by Profesor Mia Leijssen:
•Cognitive selection
•Cultivating the positive
•Taking care
•Capacity to adapt

How does your favorite coping strategy contribute to meaning in your life?

I shall write here about the effects or the way of developing a positively cultivated conscience. I remember the case studied here when the counselor asks the client if she does find beauty, goodness, or truth in her life. She is a little puzzled. When I started to write poems in 2007, my poems were like childhood scribbles. My kind of ars poetica was an ideal of coming of age of truth, beauty, and good altogether, especially truth and beauty. My poems underwent a solid transformation from 2007 until 2012 when I had already become the owner of my poetical thinking, writings (sometimes prose, which gives an impression of more self-control) were a kind of self-imposed psychotherapy resulting in more self-knowledge and understanding of how my unconscious mind works and how I deal with the Un-known. I give you an example of one very old poem of mine, moreover, it is about my own translation of one of my poems:

INTUITION
Like a heart upon a stone,/ Amber burning on a pyre,/ Like the scent drilling to bone/ On that painful, brilliant fire,/
Like slow walking on a wing,/ Rustles waking up our ears,/ Dreams forgotten every spring,/ The beginning of all fears,/
Like a truth in this time flight,/ Finding in my palm foundation,/ Which I held maybe too tight/ To believe in its perfection.

I have plenty of examples of goodness in my life, deeds from myself and from others, and plenty of room for truth and beauty - which I experienced as rejuvenation, happiness, peace, perfection, sublime.

Or a fragment from another childish poem, far from my own true self, who was fighting to emerge from within in this essay of artistry, knowing that poetry was not my calling, but philosophy:

We’re responsible for what we think/ Even when our hopes begin to sink –/ Since then, under any kind of weather,/ Truth and beauty always stayed together.

Thanks to everyone for reading and maybe pausing to perceive my lone self here. I forgot to note an important detail: when I started my poetical journey I had a great amount of self-knowledge, but I did not know where I would arrive and what I would find at the end of it.

15.Which of the list of the Spiritual Narrative Questions felt most relevant to you? Why?

Almost all of them are relevant to me, but I will focus upon the 4th: Would it be meaningful to sense kinds of doorways that naturally open spirit for you; like, for example, experiences in nature, certain religious symbols, rituals, or practices, or readings?

These doorways or otherwise named here as Everyday Gateway Experiences, might be open to anyone, yet not acknowledged by everyone. Before getting into the heart of the matter, I have to say something very of great relevance to my own life as a psychiatric patient. The truth about me can be said in one phrase as "I was totally rejected, without having the chance to talk with anyone or to be with anyone (apart from 2-3 exceptions)". We cannot be with others by writing written monologues. Such spiritual experiences - I will give a few examples later - were in great number in my life, they were a source of wonder and joy and paved the way to a more complex and deep self-understanding. It may be that these spiritual experiences arise in the lives of every intellectual, yet they are considered to be normal, intimate, already understood. The psychiatric patient is rejected and acknowledges this fact. The problems surrounding a deep understanding of the world and spiritual growth pertain mostly to intellectual patients and become an object of scorn and even violence if they are foolishly shared with others. Those others are rejecting the same way any other cognitive or emotional overt attitude of the patient, because of the social conventions around that person. So, the patient knows that he/she is the same as others and tries to avoid any overt explanation of what he feels or thinks about any kind of subjective experience, including spiritual. Anyway, if he would have been accepted that would have never been the case. Spiritual experiences, alongside others, can be met with skepticism, rejection and reluctance to be respected or acknowledged and, most of all, they are explicitly considered to be a mark of psychosis or another abnormality, even though they are common to other more fortunate people. Such experiences should be tackled with respect, love, gentleness, secrecy, and silence.

Those who are mental health cases can be trapped in the hands of people who are not aware of their spiritual being or technicians who are not aware of the spiritual realms of existence. I believe that the spiritual dimension is present in both intellectual or non-intellectual minds and souls, but its self-awareness or understanding differs. Thus, if the lonely patient talks - if he ever talks! - about the spiritual a-ha moments in his life, he may be considered paranoid or schizophrenic without further investigation, even if the rest of his life is stainless. Apart from this spiritual dimension, his overall image of the universe and/or humanity can be correct. This spiritual dimension can be present even in younger intellectuals as well, but they are not aware of it, or they don't recognize it. It can manifest itself in peak experiences, blissful events, gateways to the unknown, different types of broad encompassing meanings.

I liked very much one of the exercises from the past sections - the one where the client writes down what he is, then he places the papers in the order of importance, renouncing one by one to each of them, saying goodbye to each of them - then, when he is empty, which thing stays rooted in his self? I believe that only his spiritual self stays with him. I have been through many existential difficulties or crisis, but I felt that there are a few things that no one can steal from us, even in the most desperate moments: the joy to be aware or to observe or to imagine that happy people exist, that laughter and play exist, that good and justice are there too, even if not everywhere. We can be happy that others are happy even if we are not their family or friends and we can enjoy the world as a spectator. Even if we cannot help them. Another tough root is the love for beauty, either artistic beauty, but even more natural beauty as a whole, which, in its multitude, cannot be the creation of only one artist. And the third strength is the happiness to understand and link things to one another.

Now I will give a few examples from my many personal examples of such doorways to the sacred or to the mystery of the wholeness. Once I was very sad and miserable, walking the streets alone as I always did, in search of images and beauty offered to the senses. I sat down on the fence of a nearby church and it was a sunshiny day and there was no wind, as far as I remember. Though the willow behind me was high above and out of reach, something moved one branch and it poured water - maybe rain remnants - upon my head, as if it was a kind of baptism or consecration. Then nothing, no more miracle - and, after a while, I got up and walked farther. Another time I was in a car on the road with my parents. The sky was heavy of dark clouds all over the fields and the region was unknown to me. Suddenly, on my right, a church appeared, and it was brightened by the sun, and the fall of graceful sunrays was beautiful and restricted to that area. Another fact happened to me after I visited a monastery in my area, but not too close to my home. I walked alone on tight and secondary streets and I memorized the name of one particular street because it had an odd name and I had to search in the dictionary for it. After a week or so, I was attracted by a sheet of paper glued on a shop/building window. I got closer and only then I realized that it was about political voting, a fact out of my area of interest - I saw that it was written in small letters and I had no glasses with me, but I realized by chance that it was a list of street names. All of a sudden my weak eyes were directly drawn to the name of that distant street that led to the monastery, amid hundreds of other streets, as if I were a LASER light. I had a great many such experiences, starting with my adult age, around 18 years of age. Some of them are about books - whatever book I may choose, either from my own home or from a library, either already read by me or not read, many times when I opened at random the book I found words closely related to what just happened in my life, or even to what is going to happen without being aware that it can happen. When this happened to me when I was 18, I got scared - because it seemed that my brain was someone else's playground. Growing older, I understood the deeper truth and it made me smile and happy - it was certainly a simple and normal spiritual experience, and only after a few years I found it numbered in a parapsychology book, a fact that made me sad. I also understood better the connection between the unconscious and consciousness and creativity within these frameworks. These facts about books are related by others too, maybe more by marginal people, and they remind us about the habit of predicting the future in old times through the random opening of the Bible or of another well-known book. I give you now a recent connectivity/spirituality example: I was reading about Descartes (the philosopher) in an ebook that I downloaded by chance in my internet drive. There it is written, as such philosophy historians use to do , a kind of anecdotical story about Descartes, I quote "prompted to philosophy by a series of dreams (on November 10, 1619) of a man selling water melons." I don't know if this story is genuinely true, but these days and also in other years, there are loaded trucks with water melons in my surroundings, and they put a high-volume announcement while racing through the streets, advertising for their water melons as if a muezzin calling for prayer.This ebook is written by Norman L Geisler, it is a history of western philosophy, volume II.Anyway, here is the moment to recount the story about "the book of sand", written by Jorge Luis Borges, one author who delved into the unknown and who wrote different other stories like that. Other examples from my life are crystal clear (spiritual) connectedness or synchronicity. I give another example of synchronicity - a few years ago I had to go to a dentist. Suddenly, walking on the street, my eyes were drawn to see a bush with snowberries, which reminded me of childhood. It might have been that I was really remembering my childhood happy moments about these berries, popping them under my feet. In the same period of time - not too long, only a few weeks, maybe less, I visited a distant park and I saw by chance some snowberries in a corner. And it happened the third time also as a coincidence, seeking what was hidden. Another odd thing happened when I wrote a poem about a dry autumn leaf swinging on a spider thread - a fact that I noticed in the countryside, when I made a short film with my camera. Then, thinking about my poem after years, walking aimlessly on the streets nearby, my eyes were unconsciously drawn upwards and above a bench in a small playground and there it was - a withered leaf hanging on a spider thread, the only one there. Then I wrote a second poem about this encounter. Because I am a cerebrospinal individual, I can acknowledge this kind of experience as centeredness to any human intellect, as they might be to others too. Because I am a cerebrospinal individual, I can acknowledge this kind of experience as centeredness to any human intellect, as it might be the case with others too.

Take one idea or one illustration from an article in this section that touched you particularly strongly. What was it about this idea or this illustration that resonated in you?

I was touched by the story of Annelien, the deaf infant who recovered all of a sudden. I see causality as a form of synchronicity at the same time. If such doorways to the spiritual world open, even if they seem odd, they happen for two reasons at least and one of them is the fact that we are present there to acknowledge them. I will not write in detail about this.

I will say this bluntly in a few words, days after my genuine and truthful involvement in this course helped me realize a new insight: some ignorant people may call people like me "psychics" and may develop feelings of rejection towards us. This is a label. I am talking about the multiple coexistence and connectedness experiences of mine. Like this, people like me often become the supposed cause of evil, or scapegoats. In reality, I was pure goodness and self-control and peace and calmness and I did not trigger, not even unconsciously, the aggressive behaviors of some people against me. Anyway, no one ever asked me a thing, no one really talked with me my whole life, and I am still in disbelief that only a few people have this "psychic" ability, maybe every intellectual is like this, centering and organizing the environment around his life, both past, present, and future. I will stop this writing here.