Nice Guys Finish First!

"NICE GUYS FINISH FIRST? How can anyone with the brain of a cock-roach make such a stupid statement?" So rang out the scorn of a killer talk show host when I was doing a book promotion at a major television station in Ohio. When I was on tour in Cleveland, John Clancy quoted Leo Durocher who said just the opposite -- “Nice guys finish last.” John also quoted from books that stressed the need to be a tough talking, no nonsense guy or gal who intimidated others and took what he or she wanted in his or her activities -- possibly following instructions given in a book called, "Succeeding In Business And Love With A Swift Kick To the Groin."

O K, I admit it, I made up that title but you get the picture. Clancy had done everything except put a dunce-cap on my head as he seated me on a stool before the cameras and, despite his complete ignorance of what I had written, proceeded to ridicule my leadership seminar for managers, pastors, teachers and other professionals. He held a copy of this book up for the audience of some three hundred people -- with tens of thousands more watching television from their homes, and asked;

Who can believe this drivel? Everyone on earth knows that a nice guy or gal hasn’t a choice in this lousy, rotten world. You gotta be tough and mean to be successful. Everywhere! How many agree with me that this stuff is nonsense? Raise your hands.

That was somewhat premature since no one in the audience had any idea what I was teaching in my book and seminar, but they voted as Kelly asked them to. Many had preconceived notions and about two hundred people in the studio agreed with John. He then asked, how many agree with -- he didn’t actually say it -- this dunce on the stool, but his non-verbal communication made his meaning quite clear. John was all geared up to take me apart for writing something he didn’t understand. He pointed to the overwhelming number of hands in the air and said; Take it from there, Professor! Let’s see how you handle this rejection of your entire concept. He sat down in the audience, as all three cameras zoomed in close -- to watch me sweat, I suppose. Then, because I knew what my program was all about and he didn’t -- I countered by agreeing with the host. I said;

If you consider a nice guy or gal a doormat, a wimp, a marshmallow -- I agree with you completely. Such a person doesn’t have a chance to succeed in a tough, competitive world in which many other persons are striving for the same things we want for ourselves. The tough-minded guys and gals will run over the wimps in a very short time. I however don’t think of the doormats of the world as truly nice guys and gals. I see nice persons as competent and intelligent men and women who understand the nature of influence, cooperation and persuasion power -- as those people who;

MANAGE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM AND SKILL --

SHARE THE REWARDS OF ACHIEVEMENT WITH THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO HELP THEM SUCCEED --

CREATE COMMUNITIES OF COOPERATIVE ACHIEVERS IN WHICH EVERY PERSON IS A RESPECTED MEMBER --

And that, I said to the group, is my definition of a nice guy or gal, of a decent, emotionally honest parent, teacher, manager, pastor, military officer or what have you! Persons who follow my three rules I’ve just given you are the really nice and successful people of this world.

I folded my arms and sat back on the stool -- waiting, for I had said all I intended to in defense of nice guys and gals. So, I waited and waited -- for John to recover from his confusion. I could almost hear the gears whirring in his head as first one camera and then another zoomed in on me and then on to John and panned the audience before coming back to me and John -- for almost a minute. And that is an eternity of dead time on television. The camera operators were getting frantic when John finally stood shook his head to clear his thoughts and muttered right on the air;

Well, I’ll be damned! I never thought of nice guys that way.

Most people don’t but we then had a great time on his show. I had convinced him that my approach is by far the best way to succeeding throughout life, rather than by clawing and screaming, trying to defeat everyone else, destroying the relationships that create friendship and love, clogging your arteries and corroding the plumbing that keeps you alive -- with bile and acids boiling through your vascular and digestive systems to eat away your health and life.

John had the people vote again and this time all but two men of the three hundred or so in the audience voted that nice guys and gals did indeed have a greater chance at success if they followed my view of sound relationships. The viewers immediately saw the wisdom in my approach and I trust that you also shall understand it that way! The next Sunday, after I’d returned home to Minneapolis, I drew my pastor aside, told him this tale and joked;

If you had my percentage of conversions, we’d have the largest congregation in the country!


MAKING YOUR LIFE COUNT

This report is about people and about succeeding or failing in life, since some degree of success and failure are the only real options that are open to us. It is written with the knowledge that neither power nor pleasure exists in a vacuum. Virtually everything good we do in life requires the cooperation of people in different ways. And every person whose help you need in order to succeed has his or her own agenda that is important to him. .

Therefore, you will have to over-power, out-skill, deceive, or persuade others before society will consistently allow you to share in the marbles, money, passionate lovers, prestige or promotions you want. Only in this way can you make your life count for something worthwhile.

Fortunately, every reasonably intelligent and well adjusted person can learn how to predict the attitudes and to shape activities of the men and women you must influence regularly in order to make your life successful. It also shows you how to influence their choices in ways they approve by using sound methods of personal effectiveness. You can do these things by learning and using powerful techniques developed by some very good psychiatrists and psychologists. These methods are unknown to most people, although professional therapists, consultants and social workers have been using them for decades with much success.

Most people struggle through life the best way they can, succeeding once in a while, but more often failing because they never learned how to consistently make good things happen when and where they are needed. They simply blunder along -- accepting whatever the luck of the draw offers them daily, never really taking charge of their relationships in a mutually rewarding manner that keeps people cooperating with them.

Many persons try to succeed by using the values, attitudes, expectations, choices and skills they chanced to learn in childhood. Unfortunately, in this age of relentless change, when power and authority are shared by more and more people, to depend on what you picked up at random as a youngster is a poor way to shape your life into a successful affair. In our conventional behavioral patterns many mistakes have been handed down from generation to generation. At home you were probably socialized not to ask embarrassing questions of your elders. At school you were expected to memorize the correct answers. And if you are like many people, you are still waiting for someone to ask the right questions so you can show what a good student you were. Unfortunately for your welfare, no one is ever going to ask them, since most of the answers you learned in school are no longer appropriate. Yet -- millions of men and women who would never imagine crossing the country by covered wagon instead of jet aircraft, who would never take some medicine man's snake-oil cure, try to succeed in life by using methods that were outdated a century ago. And then they can’t understand why they aren't among the better achievers of society.

Today, men and women are coping with complex events that are affecting their lives in many crucial ways. Medicine, personal behavior, education, entertainment, sexual customs, politics, engineering and business methods are all changing more rapidly than at any time in history. We no sooner get comfortable than life rolls over once again, forcing us to learn an entirely new set of attitudes, activities and relationships!

And yet, not one of the changes sweeping over us like Pacific waves crashing onto a reef, has such critical implications when making one’s life count for something satisfying as the attitudes that people now hold toward power and control.

The Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney mystique (Tell the jerks what to do!) doesn't motivate competent persons any more. If it ever did! For example, since many disasters were caused by fighting the wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. During our shameful wars against poor, dark-skinned Third World nations such as Vietnam, Libya, Panama, Granada, Hati, El Salvador, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and others, many perceptive women and men have lost faith in our institutions. After the 9-11 attack on the Trade Towers, an F B I agent was questioning a Minneapolis man about the loyalty of a Muslim neighbor. He asked Anthony; does he ever criticize the American government?

Tony was flabbergasted for a moment before he blurted out -- Everyone I know criticizes Washington -- including myself and probably you! We see the Congress and state Legislatures consistently selling out to the highest bidder, business executives such as Enron and World Crossing stealing fortunes and disposing of the faithful employees who do great work at the drop of a point on Wall Street, the criminal justice system with politically ambitious district attorneys often convicting and executing always poor, mostly minority men who couldn’t possibly have committed the crimes for which they were convicted. The very flexible morality of primitive politicians, greedy business executives, fundamental preachers, powerful governmental officials and existentially enraged citizens who feel the execution of any minority man whether guilty or not is a good day’s work -- is a weak reed upon which to lean for wisdom and a satisfying life.

Not long ago a middle-aged local realtor told me of an experience he had with his youthful secretary. Dan said that Dianne was a hardworking, high-spirited employee who was competent and loyal enough to become his administrative assistant. He said, she reminded him of the flippant young secretary in the former T V series THE PRACTICE. But he began to notice, to his middle age displeasure, that she was dressing more and more casually, as if she were going to a picnic rather than to a business operation. So, he called her into his office and tactfully asked her to dress according to his code -- the long accepted business code set by such giants as I B M, General Motors and Honeywell. The young woman sat silently as he spoke, but when he finished, she stood up and said quite pointedly;

Who needs this formality in an informal business such as this?

Then she walked out of his office, returned to her desk, and continued to work harder and smarter for his small company than any assistant he had ever employed. As he related the story, Dan sighed deeply and said there was little he could do about her impertinence, unless, of course, he wanted to cut off his nose to spite his face. He could protect his ego against an outspoken girl -- could fire her and really teach her a lesson, forcing her to take unemployment pay, a month or two of subsidized vacation, and get a job with a company that would not be so stuffy about the way she dressed. But, he would be the real loser. He would spend a month trying to find a suitable replacement, another three or four months trying to help the newcomer learn the job, and another six months blaming himself for letting his ego cost him a year's efficiency in his office. He kept his mouth shut and retained a great assistant -- for he lacked the power to force her to comply with his requirements. Indeed life does go on and we must adapt, must cope with reality in order to succeed, even if doing so makes us suspect that the world is going to hell in a handcart, because humans hate change inordinately and yearn to freeze life as it was when we were first learning to mange it; even when doing so costs us a bundle. Many people do just that because personal prestige is more important to themselves than performance or profits, but it quickly leads to dysfunctional families, schools, companies, churches and communities.

The power that parents exerted over their families, teachers over their classes, and pastors over their parishes, has gone the same way it has with employers. It has passed into the hands of people who refuse to be coerced, so much so that for years I have not met anyone in authority who didn't admit that he has less power than his predecessors did a few decades earlier. For example, for generations, Marine Corps drill instructors were required by their macho commanders to drive their recruits brutally, shrugging it off when a few boots died of drowning or heat prostration, saying you cannot hope to make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Today, that abuse of power will quickly get a DI hauled before a court martial and condemned to a long stay in a military prison.

Because of this distrust of authority and growing spirit of independence and self-reliance, any attempt to use intimidation is usually more harmful than helpful, regardless of popular recommendations to win success through brute strength, to apply raw force. To succeed consistently with and through people, you must master sound personal methods for winning cooperation and commitment. I know of no other place to learn them quickly except here, for I have developed them from different approaches to cooperative relationships over the past forty years. Perhaps you could spend several years in a graduate program in psychology. But even then you would likely find that most university departments stress simplistic behavior control concepts that reflect their behavioral philosophy while failing to adequately deal with an existential or a life-style approach to success. Skinnerian Behaviorism proceeds on the assumption that all we need be concerned with is minute acts of behavior -- that human values, attitudes, expectations and relationships are immaterial to controlling others. I’m a firm believer in the use of rewards but my greatest complaint against behavioral technology is the assumption that the strong and competent persons we must cooperate with will sell out for peanuts -- for a few toys or a pat or two on the back. Face up to it, every strong person brings to each relationship his or her own needs and assumptions. No employee, student, spouse, in-law or voter is a blank page upon which we can write what we wish without resistance, counter proposals and outright rebellion when we behave as power freaks.

By selecting carefully from all across the field, I have learned many practical methods that will help you understand the importance of personality patterns, to avoid conflicts consistently and win the cooperation of many people so they respond to you in a positive manner. In addition to my work in academic and clinical psychology, I have also got down in the mud and blood of real life as lived by most women and men. In addition to teaching in two very good liberal arts colleges, I served seven years as a church pastor within a denomination to whom ideological beliefs were very important. I was Vice President of Manufacturing for a farm tool company, Manager of Engineering Research, Methods and Training for a huge eight thousand employee UniRoyal chemical manufacturing complex spread across twenty-two thousand acres and director of a Learning and Learning Disabilities clinic in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Thus, I had many rich experiences in both line and staff work before becoming Professor of Leadership Psychology in the Executive Development Conference at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Of course, when you start using the methods taught in my books, you shall realize while many people have an increasing sense of independence, most will cooperate when you help them succeed along with you. People want sound leadership for their activities, successful problem solving and low conflict organizations. Unfortunately, although they yearn to be self-reliant and competent, many men and women continue to interact in the negative ways they learned in childhood and have seldom examined again. This is very close to one definition of neuroticism;

Neurotics are persons who compulsively hold self-defeating attitudes and use harmful activities that failed in the past with the assumption that this time they shall succeed even though they have not been improved.

A woman who marries a succession of brutal and abusive men -- each time believing that she will succeed in winning their love and support, has a serious flaw in her emotional apparatus. So does a merchant who stiffs his or her customers and then plans on developing a successful store on repeat business. To help people feel good about cooperating with you, as a means of succeeding with a growing number of people, you must make the revolutionary effort to use the superb methods I have drawn together for your use.

Actually, there are only two basic psychological attitudes and expectations you can hold as you relate to the people from whom you want to win cooperation.

FIRST -- You can struggle against learning new ways of relating, persuading and leading others, never discovering how to shape life the way you want it to become.

SECOND -- You can accept the methods that change has brought to our society and its organizations, adapting to people with skill and wisdom and mastering new ways of reaching your goals through cooperation.

If you remain defensive, the best you can do is circle the wagons and fight a rearguard action against those who refuse to cooperate even if you avoid ulcers and your heart doesn’t split like a rotten melon. Then, circumstances and more adaptable persons will control your life. When you need to win the personal commitment of a suspicious stranger, a surly worker or rebellious adolescent, you shall have to do the best you can with whatever crumbs they toss to you. You shall struggle consistently. That route is already overcrowded with those who have no concept of what is happening in their lives - who have no idea of how to win interpersonal commitment beyond bullying those whose cooperation they need to succeed and attacking those who would make life satisfying if treated wisely and well. At least you will not be lonely in that circle of futility for most of the persons you know shall still be going around and around for the next forty years or so. But you shall not be living the rewarding, stimulating live which competent and successful women and women can enjoy once they learn how to focus their powers wisely along lines of excellence.

You will find, as you apply the concepts and procedures I teach, that they can become a normal part of your relationships with other people, an aspect of life they may not understand clearly but which they approve wholeheartedly. They will realize that you have become a more understanding, more rewarding person with who to live, work, and play, a real winner in the true sense of the word, and they will give you a depth of commitment you will probably find astonishing. I am personally thrilled that my oldest son, now with grown kids of his own, has used the concepts that appear in NICE GUYS FINISH FIRST as well in my other books like THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEADERSHIP and WINNING REPEAT SALES to become one of the finest automotive service managers in America. That is a documented fact, since his group recently tied for first place nationally in service satisfaction for the Saturn Division of General Motors.

There is no great mystery about this -- wise people like Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha and others have been teaching for thousands of years, that you must not only treat men and women as you need to be managed, but as they need to be rewarded physically, psychologically and philosophically. Then no one shall be surprised that you are indeed a nice guy or gal who:

MANAGES INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM AND SKILL --

SHARES THE REWARDS OF ACHIEVEMENT WITH THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO HELP YOU SUCCEED --

CREATES COMMUNITIES OF COOPERATIVE ACHIEVERS IN WHICH EVERY PERSON IS A RESPECTED MEMBER --


There really no other way to soar as if on eagles’ wings.

WISDOM FROM THE FULFILLMENT FORUM
From The Book, NICE GUYS FINISH FIRST
JARD DeVILLE http://www.fulfillmentforum.com
Permission to use if attributed to author with his website address.

YOUR SOUL AND YOUR BELIEFS - LOGOTHERAPY FOR FULFILLMENT

For as long as humankind has left a written record, men and women have thought of themselves as having a soul -- or even as being a living soul who came out of the Cosmos in some mysterious manner. This crucial aspect of personhood is still perceived as the key element of our inner life by theologians, philosophers and most existential scholars -- often with the assumption that only creatures with self-introspective abilities can exist in an altered state even after death. Roberta can remember the grief she felt as a youngster when her parents explained that her badly wounded dog wasn’t going to be in heaven -- poor Tippy had no soul to carry on after his demise!

She was desolate as a child but obviously has matured to understand more clearly what theologians and philosophers mean when they speak of the soul as the central factor of human personality. Of course, most persons spend little or no time pondering how and why the soul originated in the complex creature-self or unified body/spirit personality humans have evolved to become. Unfortunately, a great many women and men fail to understand there are often choices we should make and service we must offer to others for nothing more rewarding than the health of our intangible but always active souls. The very perceptive Ernest Becker wrote;

It really doesn’t matter if we discover that our inner assumptions about human nature and the world, our self-awareness in language, art, laughter and tears, is built into ourselves genetically or socially. We still haven’t discovered the inner forces of evolution that have led to our character development in ways that no other mammal shares. But it is this development in a human mammal capable of introspection, that we still mean by the word ‘soul.’ The soul remains the mysterious life force for each person, with the inner dynamisms and pulsations of existence.

In other words, the soul is at the heart of our self-awareness, is the crucial element of the creature-self aspect of each personality. The soul is the seat of spiritual virtues, positive attitudes, high expectations, mature beliefs and responsible choices and through it humans yearn to make sense of life and love, of significance, rage, guilt and violence. This causes thoughtful men and women to ponder the purpose of their lives according to their values and expectations. Our ancestors always created superstitions, traditions and philosophies in order to understand life in a pre-scientific era and to rely on theologies and ideologies to justify what they planned to accomplish. Of course from our human beginnings on the Savannah of Africa, some women and men were open minded and generous while others were closed minded and grasping. Some people loved others and other persons seemed incapable of offering love or support to anyone beyond their own supporters. Obviously, this crucial aspect of life is what we are concerned with.

Earlier scientists, physicians and psychologists, who were themselves maturing beyond myths and superstitions to understand life and matter through scientific methods, assumed that while humans were often confused and conflicted, they would live more successful lives guided by scholarship than by worn down religious traditions and ideologies. Superstitious beliefs, they assumed, would soon be banished. Men and women would surely learn how to live without the myth of a supernatural God insulating them from reality. Fearful and illogical humans would choose to live in a rational manner because the scholars were pointing out their many idiosyncrasies and irrational decisions. Boy -- did the early scientists ever underestimate the staying power of subjective human expectations and beliefs! Jard sat beside Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square one day and debated the nature of his flight around the world from Singapore with a twenty year old member of the Flat Earth Society. The young woman insisted that he had actually flown around the rim of a plate shaped world! Since he had seen the curvature of the earth from thirty-five thousand feet, he was not persuaded by the charming if somewhat ideological girl. When teaching psychology at Olivet College, he once had several Creation Science true believing students walk out of a class session when he pointed out that the resistance microbes develop to anti-biotic medications is a form of evolution occurring before our eyes. The ideological youngsters had no intention of learning anything about science -- their minds were already closed to anything new unless it fit into their constricted world-view.

One major problem in psychology arose because that Freud and many of his contemporaries had imbibed deeply of the secular philosophy of Nihilism. This mind-set is the disastrous belief in disbelief, the assumption that all values are relative, that real politik comes out the barrel of a gun and the ordinary people should be used or even abused by the aristocratic elite that controls every nation. Nihilism is the wretched philosophy of meaninglessness that focused Germany’s aggressive attitude through five bloody wars, destroyed its peasant farmers through the Industrial Revolution and orchestrated six million additional victims during the Holocaust in less than a century. The mind set that Germany was superior to all other nations, that it had a divine right to dominate Europe, was embedded in its national anthem -- Deutsland Uber Alles -- ‘Germany above everything else.’

Humans have always been prone to violence in our relationships, as a brief reading of history, scripture or the Greek tragedies reveal very well, but our ancestors always understood that war and the sacrifice of their sons and the destruction of their homes and crops was evil and spiritually bankrupt. Warfare and heroism is far more glamorous and heroic at a distance than up close and bloody. It was very hard to convince a farmer that watching a band of pillaging horsemen abscond with his family’s winter food supply was some great boon to society in the long run. Only powerful aggressors who planned to personally benefit from slaughter have justified war. They still do, as they sacrifice ordinary men and women and their wealth in order to serve their nefarious purposes!

Only in the last few centuries have philosophers and theologians, usually in the service of narcissistic rulers, rationalized aggression as somehow beneficial to a society and blessed by God. Only recently have the spin doctors of America created a bloddy,war,relationships to justify rapine and raiding, of maiming and murder. The spin doctors of society understand that fear and greed always sell better than faith, hope and love, that mind-bending propaganda in an era of televised images can step by step seduce naïve people into virtually any kind of self-defeating behavior.

A CONSCIOUS AWAKENING - Wisdom From The Fulfillment Forum

Arguably, the greatest teacher and natural psychologist of all time, Jesus of Nazareth, told the multitudes who came to hear him, 'Man does not live by bread alone.' He was not alone in making this observation -- others including Moses, Mohammed and Buddha to name a few, have observed that any person who lives a secular life to the exclusion of spiritual virtues and choices wounds his or her soul.

An old and treasured friend asked Roberta for advice because she respects her spiritual values. Donna explained that her brother Warren, long the black-sheep of their family, had become obsessed with religion. After a soap opera life-style filled with conflicts, disappointments and a messy divorce, Warren claimed to have had a spiritual awakening that makes life deeply satisfying. His persistence was annoying to his older sister. When Donna paused to catch her breath, Roberta asked about Warren. She wanted to know what was currently going wrong in the brother's soap opera life.

Donna hesitated for a moment before answering.

Well, nothing actually. Warren's stopped his carousing and running around with other women and has gone back to Susie. He's patched things up with the kids and taken up his career. He's paying off his debts with interest.

Roberta couldn't resist the temptation. And that disappoints you?


Donna was annoyed with her question.

Of course not! I'm pleased for him but he keeps calling to talk about my lack of faith. Warren is fanatic about it. He wants me to accept Christ, to relate to God as he has; whatever that means. Why should I, when I've never messed up my life as he did?

Seldom has anyone opened a door so wide for spiritual dialogue between two friends about the vital faith factor in a life of personal satisfaction! Roberta quickly pointed out the difference to Donna between a casual acceptance of religious beliefs and a focusing of one's life in a covenant relationship or a meaningful connection with God. For, her friend was wrong about not needing a relationship because she'd never made the mistakes Warren had. We know Donna too well to accept that -- her tragic quartet of suffering, guilt, rage and death is as real as our own or as yours.

Tietjens spoke for all of us in her poem written metaphorically in blood during the desperate days of World War I.

I have too many selves to know the one.
In too selfish a schooling was I bred.
Child of too many cities that have gone
Down wicked crossroads of evil schemes,
And at too many altars bowed my head
To light holy fires to self-proclaimed gods.


Warren was phoning Donna to share the good news that his spiritual slate was wiped clean, that he was empowered to start life over anew with a spiritual restoration so dramatic Jesus called it being born again. His life is far more satisfying than it had been during his locust years and he lives with a new sense of purpose and permanence in something greater than his narcissistic appetites and illogical fears. Rather than selfishly grabbing all the pleasure he can, he now lives with an accepting and loving life-style. No wonder he wanted to tell his sister about it! He'd found the strength and courage to become the kind of husband he always wanted to be and could never become in his own strength. Donna may have been annoyed but Susie was delighted since she'd never stopped loving Warren. He no longer feels like a cosmic orphan in a cold and dangerous universe and that changes everything in their marriage. He's ended his spiritual bankruptcy through God's grace and is at peace with the Lord of the Cosmos, with Susie and their children for the first time in his life. He is consciously connected in the Cosmos and cannot be silent about his newly satisfying life.

Each person who seeks satisfaction, whether good or bad or more realistically a combination of both spiritual and secular interests, has to deal with the tragic human triad of suffering, guilt and death. Because of our primordial ancestors' terrifying experiences as fangless and weak little hominids, struggling to survive the great felines and canines on the African savannah, we still have hidden deep within our souls anxieties that never completely vanished. This homosapien angst includes the potential for greed, rage, dishonesty and violence when we feel frightened, devalued or endangered. I don't have to point out that every person who ever lived has suffered from various sources, life teaches us that. We fear pain and try every way possible to avoid it but it is part and parcel of human existence. Our suffering includes physical distress from accidents and illnesses and emotional pain from the loss of loved ones and, for example, the suffering from being discarded by a lover. Existential frustration or spiritual bankruptcy causes philosophical distress. Then too, every person with the slightest grasp on reality realizes we are all doomed creatures. We perish and to go the way of all flesh.

William Shakespeare expressed it well when he wrote in one of his brilliant plays;

Every man born of woman owes God a death that shall be collected at the time and place of God's choosing.

Between the beginning and the end of human existence, every person must cope with the distressing feelings of fear, inadequacy and guilt that are buried deep within the unconscious aspects of each soul. No one escapes unscathed the death dread that comes from our approaching extinction. Neither do we miss the guilt that follows our sins of commission and omission. None of us, except for paranoid psychopaths, go through life without making choices that we regret and also failing to do many decent things we should have done. Our greed and our fear of being hurt sees to that. Even today, I can think back and feel twinges of guilt and relive times of inadequacy that come from relationships I bungled as a teenager and from choices I handled badly in adulthood. I have no doubt that the parents of the youthful shooters in the Littleton, Colorado tragedy at Columbine High School were crushed by their guilt of commission and omission. Actually, the only secular way to get rid of the tragic quartet with its suffering, guilt and death dread is by repressing our anxieties into our psychological unconscious. There they fester and disrupt almost every activity and relationship we have. To break the grip of the tragic triad, to mature beyond the turmoil it causes, we must step up to a higher level of personal responsibility. Here is the truth of the matter.

Over fifty years we have synthesized the work of the best psychologists in the world and have discovered that science and faith, psychology and religion and psychotherapy and worship are far closer and more crucial to satisfaction than most persons realize. Both well up out of our human traits; they come from our need to deal with the tragic triad, to find security and peace in our complex world. After discarding our homosapien anxieties, rage and guilt, after connecting with God, we discover for ourselves what the deeply dedicated physician Albert Schweitzer meant when he wrote;

We must stop attributing our personal and cultural evil to other persons and to society, and learn to exercise our own wills and to accept our responsibilities in the realm of faith, worship and morals.

Indeed, a conscious commitment to God includes a regained sense of personal worth and responsibility for self and humankind or it is a self-serving and bogus connection. Early Christian faith was intensely personal, including a conscious relation- ship with Jesus when he was alive and later, metaphysically in the spirit. Unfortunately, after a few hundred years that personalized faith was lost as secular nobility and a church aristocracy ripped Christianity away from the people and reorganized the faith for their own benefit. The concept of connecting with God personally was discarded in favor of a hierarchy that stood in the door to determine who would be acceptable to God and who wouldn't. The priesthood substituted ritual which they could control for a personal faith they couldn't, demanded payment for deliverance and used torture against dissenters that would have gagged a Nazi storm trooper. As late as 1960 the Magdalene Society of Ireland was still flogging, starving and working to death poor pregnant girls who'd come to them for help. The psychotic Mother Superior called it redemption through penance but it was a vicious punishment scheme right out of the horrors of the medieval church. No wonder that Pope John Paul, as he approaches the end of his life, suffered much guilt for the way his church completely justified the assailing Muslims, burning odd women as witches, murdering heretics and Protestants during the Inquisition and failing to challenge Germany's destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust.

The Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran traditions have always stressed growth in faith through the sacraments and learning rather than a dramatic Damascus Road experience in which St. Paul was knocked senseless from his saddle when God finally got his attention. Obviously, there is much good to be said about rearing children in the faith from their earliest days. I know only enough theology to get into trouble with it but I do understand that at the very least a personal commitment is sound psychology and good theology. Which is why denominations that forty years ago wouldn't have anything to do with Billy Graham's relational ministry, now have prominent pastors and laypersons leading city wide crusade teams? They have learned that spiritually committed women and men make more faithful members than those who merely agree that faith is nice and possibly more satisfying than a secular lifestyle.

Although it is difficult for secular skeptics to believe that joy and satisfaction is found through a spiritual life-style, we can prosper in many ways through our faith. This can now be seen through a large body of research. Psychiatrist Raymond Moody, some years ago, researched and wrote the amazing book called Life After Life. In it he described scores of experiences through which persons from all walks of life died clinically and then were called back through heroic medical procedures. Multitudes of persons, perhaps as many as several million, including Roberta who bled to death during the birth of our third child and was revived miraculously, went through the now famous tunnel to the light on the other side of life and then returned to complete earthly missions. The life after life experience has become too common to deny, although some scientists legitimately debate its cause. However, most researchers see it as a real event. From time to time we catch glimpses that existence isn't all over for us with the death of the brain and body -- some aspect of our soul seems divine and linked forever with the God who brought us into existence. We suspect the human race has been experiencing this for a long time, which would account for the elaborate Egyptian celebration of life after life during the ages of the pharaohs.

We can also verify the power of prayer in our lives as believers after relating to God. Professor of Cardiology Randolph Byrd of the University of California Medical School in San Francisco studied some 400 patients at San Francisco General Hospital over a period of several years. They were in the Cardiology Unit with massive heart attacks or severe chest pains that required serious treatment. Dr. Byrd conducted traditional double blind research in which neither the health care professionals nor the patients knew which half of the sufferers were being prayed for - in addition to the best care the hospital could offer them. Their names were sent to church groups around the Bay area for regular prayers. The two hundred control patients received the precise same medical treatment but without consistent prayer. The results were spectacular, far beyond statistics, almost beyond belief!

According to Larry Dossey, M D, who has written Meaning And Medicine and Healing Words (The Power Of Prayer), the group being prayed for reacted precisely as if the patients were being given a miraculous new medication. The 200 being prayed for, although taken at random in a double blind, had far fewer deaths, required less surgery and were soon put on a much milder medication schedule. They healed more quickly than the control 200. Dr. Dossey reports that had any new drug been so effective, it would have been hailed world wide as a modern medical miracle. Dossey cites some one hundred thirty research studies which show that prayer heals and how it is connected with the temporal area of the brain's right hemisphere! We can call this telepathy or communicating with God or whatever, but the truth is; When we pray for you with love, compassion and concern, knowing we are connected with God, something good happens to you! Also -- the other way around when you pray for us.


From the day I learned that my innocent nephew on Death Row in an Arizona prison was getting an appeal hearing, I prayed devoutly that justice would be served, that the judge would see the truth and release David. What happened at the hearing? Within forty-five minutes the judge threw the conviction out as being without any merit and sent David home with his mother and father. When we connect with God -- we also connect with each other and it can be a fulfilling connection! A tremendous victory over evil men and systems can be had through prayer.

The operative word in the all-time favorite gospel song Amazing Grace is to believe; to believe God's great spiritual revelation to humankind. Some years ago, the story goes, a college pre-medical student told her professor of New Testament Studies that she could no longer believe the Bible, that it was filled with impossibilities such as the virgin birth, the calling forth of Lazarus from the tomb and the resurrection of Jesus. The professor smiled benevolently and explained.

Mary Ellen those are the little issues, the starter beliefs to get you moving in the right direction. If you think those are odd, wait until you find that God expects you to come for communion and to believe that the big and ragged, scary-looking black man kneeling beside you at the altar rail is your brother in Christ. And that you are being called to leave your prestigious medical practice to serve as a clinic doctor to the Hottentots of Africa. That you are to take up your cross daily and follow Christ in simplicity as the Quakers taught rather than buying a new Mercedes coupe every other year. That's what you shall find almost impossible to believe!

Viktor Frankl, my mentor in this distinctly spiritual approach of Logotherapy, wrote that each person has a deeply philosophical nature, the spiritual unconscious, which is as vital to health as the psychological unconscious discussed by Freud. Of course Christian philosophers have always taught this in the church's dual emphasis on personal redemption and maturing discipleship. Research reveals in a variety of studies that men and women who hold strong spiritual beliefs - who live with a focused faith, hope and love -- with God's grace, have far fewer physical, psychological and philosophical ailments than those who do not. Life is much more satisfying in a wide number of ways when we consciously connect to God through a personal covenant relationship with Christ.

Sound research studies also reveal that women who relate to God have about sixty percent more sexual orgasms, of a deeply satisfying nature, than irreligious women. Also, husbands and wives who consistently worship together are sixty-eight percent more likely to enjoy loving, peaceful lives. Quarrels, child and spouse abuse, divorce and family abandonment are reduced enormously in families that worship together.

In other words, if you want to marry well, to have a long, deeply satisfying sexual relationship with someone who will be a supportive lover for life, with a true partner who shall not abuse or abandon you and your children, you'll cut the odds of failure by more than half through finding your soul-mate within a faith community. Of course you shall have to continue maturing spiritually through your own acts of grace in order to meet the needs of your spiritual unconscious.

Accepting Christ, becoming conscious of God's grace, being born again, establishing a covenant relationship or committing your life to Christ -- is an early step toward maturing spiritually. Then we must love each other and pray regularly for one another. A fulfilling life through a covenant relationship and service to humankind isn't at all like buying a ticket on the Boston to New York shuttle. We are required to keep paying our dues to the people with whom we share life and love. Warren has discovered this as he keeps pedaling his bicycle along and we hope his sister does also.

Here is a great starting point. God the Cosmic Creator and Seminal Spirit is open to all souls who hunger and thirst for a spiritual restoration. No one gender, race, class, country, congregation, denomination, political party or economic system is more precious to God than any other.

God offers us a come as you are invitation!

Unfortunately, we regularly see nihilistic, narcissistic persons pretending that God loves them, their political parties, countries and companies best, in order to claim power and prestige over and to collect money from others. Such narcissistic religious, racial or gender exclusivity and superiority is always an egoistic, all too selfish way of dominating others, of boasting;

I speak for God so all you inferior sinners must bow to my spiritual superiority. You must believe as I believe, worship as I worship and even vote as I vote or the God who gives me power over you, shall reject you as unworthy of associating with we the better people.

This is the narcissistic, pharisaic sin of spiritual neuroticism that Jesus condemned more harshly than any other human failing. He blasted the religious egoists of his day, calling them empty cups with nothing to offer, calling them brightly painted tombs filled with rotten bones rather than life. Unfortunately, the more frustrated and alienated from God and each other persons become, the greater the temptation to pretend that one is superior to the rest of humanity. That way, the pretenders' spiritually bankrupt don't seem quite so meaningless. Of course, it is all a sham -- any form of exclusivity and superiority is devastating to spirituality and loving relationships. Superiority pretensions really are a form of neuroticism, a defense mechanism by which possessions, pleasure, power and prestige are substituted for a spiritual sense of purpose and permanence. Spiritually maturing persons don't need egoistic self-deception to feel good about themselves. They can prosper without making others look bad. They are able to see the good in other women and men without becoming petty and mean spirited.

Ranier Maria Rilke cautions us in these words:

All those who seek God tempt Thee,
And many who find solace would bind Thee,
To gesture and to form, to ritual and release.
As if their small candle had banished the darkness!



Alberta Jernigan of Houston spoke at a recent conference of Christian women.

We affluent American Christians are the fortunate of the world. We are the people who must express love by doing all we can for suffering humankind. Henry and I worked hard for decades to build our oil business but we never grew greedy and mean as so many financially driven, secular minded business people do. We never tried to pull up the ladder after ourselves as many Texas politicians did when they sold out to the racists and sexists. God has blessed us, but our love becomes real only when we serve others.


Spiritual love makes a tremendous difference in our values, attitudes, activities and relationships. Perceptive writers from John the Beloved to world-class psychologist Carl Rogers report there are two basic types of persons.

There are those who love others and those who do not love.

I take that one step further. There are many reactionary persons in business, government, education and even in the church who are so filled with frustration, fear, greed and resentment that they cling desperately to the past. They are unable to love freely, unwilling to adapt when change threatens them and thus they cripple themselves and their families because life keeps shifting inexorably around them. There are also courageous women and men who accept change as it comes, adapting in new activities and relationships, thinking creatively about life and their place in it, loving others deeply. They go on, empowering their families and organizations psychospiritually in confusing times.

We must mature spiritually or our relationship with God remains passive and weak rather than active and strong. Of course, as committed Christians we do believe that a covenant connection occurs through faith, hope and love in the Lord Jesus Christ. We must work at developing sources of meaning and create places of the heart in which we meet with the people with whom we share love and life. All our maturing attitudes, activities and relationships begin with God and probably end with God. As we commit our lives spiritually through purposeful activities, focusing our powers within God's grace, our lives do become satisfying. We shall not always be happy, although we have often heard thoughtless young people assert that a spiritual commitment resolves all of life's difficulties. They're mistaken; their problem is that they haven't lived long enough to gain wisdom about life's tragic quartet of suffering, guilt and death. They don't realize that on the average of five years, every person, family, church, company and community faces a major problem that cannot be resolved but must be bravely endured. The great tsunami that swept in from the Indian Ocean ruined spiritual and secular people alike. Kindly saints lost everything as quickly as violent dope dealers for the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.

It should be obvious to any thoughtful person that humankind's spiritual conflicts are real enough. Humans do indeed have the desire to control others, to force weaker persons to yield to our choices, to rule the roost as we did so briefly in childhood. Yet, there is also that inner aspect of the mind Viktor Frankl calls the spiritual unconscious. We all start with an inner response to the way life should be lived, sensitivity to beauty, love, decency and wholeness. Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, called this tendency the moral law within each human soul. Kant felt there was no way to explain it, that this law existed within everyone from creation. We believe it is what our ancestors in the living religions of the world called the god-ache -- the yearning to be connected to the Seminal Spirit. We have discovered through our decades of research, counseling and teaching, that any attempt to understand the meaning of life must account for Kant's universal conscience that exists within human hearts and minds. We all want to feel good about ourselves. We strive constantly to increase our times of satisfaction in ways that reveal how nature itself is thrilled by the joy of wholeness in working and playing, loving and learning and in worshipping and persevering. But, along with this need for completeness, nature has also arranged that is almost impossible for humans to find fulfillment directly in our activities and relationships. As with so much of life, we have to use a by-product approach.

We humans have our spiritual unconscious that leads us to seek the love, grace and beauty of God and the Cosmos. God is the ultimate source of all music, art and creativity as we live communally with those who appreciate and support us. Of course, we also wish to be unique, to shine greater than our peers, to dominate them in order to gain the lion's share of life's benefits. The first motive comes from our fear of being alone, our horror of isolation, of being at the mercy of nature, having to rely on the meager physical, emotional and spiritual resources we carry within ourselves. We want to love and to be loved, to co-mingle with our peers in all manner of ways. This desire to be part of something important from which we gain respect creates feelings of self-transcendence. This is the religious love called agape, the delightful uniting of the creature with the Creator that leads to conscious kinship with the Cosmos and its elements. Psychoanalyst Otto Rank put it this way;

For only by living in close union with a God-Ideal that exists outside our own ego, are we able to exist at all.

The need to connect with the divine isn't merely a simple superstition or a search for assurance because of our limitations in a vast and dangerous Cosmos -- even if that is what some contemporary researchers think. They assume that the concept of God is a human invention used to compensate for the terrors of existence. Actually, faith and belief are developing perceptions of what is really going on in this incredibly complex Cosmos of which we are each so small a part. Connecting is an out flowing of our human need for completeness -- now and forever in a self-transcending relationship with the Cosmic Creator that lifts us up and out of ourselves. As Rank said, we cannot prosper alone, in our own strength, although in our secular society, many abandon spirituality along with simplistic forms of worship, neglecting faith, hope and love and trying to prosper with inadequate searches for satisfaction. Such persons starve spiritually while going to great lengths to fill their empty souls with possessions, power, prestige and pleasure -- becoming careerists, gamesters, gangsters, recluses and even deviants. They become existentially frustrated and alienated in the midst of the greatest human prosperity of all history; then wonder why they feel lost in life, stuck in a swamp of meaninglessness that breaks their spirits and leaves then feeling purposeless.

This is the other side of human nature. Along with the universal search for love and meaning that we call agape or divine love, we often yearn to dominate and manipulate others
-- to stand superior to all the world, to win prestige and enjoy pride as if one were god-like. While the self-transcendent aspects of life are called agape or divine love, these narcissistic elements are certainly Eros or sensual love. This is far more than mere sexuality, including all forms of potency and power. This includes the urge -- the compulsion -- for a life free from rules and regulations, for exciting experiences, the unfettered development of one's powers, the longing to rise above nature and to win prestige greater than one's peers through pleasure and possessions. This is the urge to maximize one's personal gifts, to achieve on one's own terms through self-expansion. However, if we focus too completely on Eros we become ruthless predators. If we live only with agape, we fail to develop our powers to any large extent. We must strike a balance in all of life.

Of course, we accept as completely acceptable to God that women and men connect, worship and serve others in many different ways. Human personality is too complex for uniformity and so is faith and the organized church. Our one small candle never casts out the greater darkness. We illuminate life only by uniting with others in places where we belong. Roberta made a simple confession of her childhood wrongs when little more than a toddler. The Nazi murderer of millions, Herman Goering, confessed his many crimes and connected with God just before he was scheduled to be executed. A friend of mine reached the great decision point in his life while plowing a field of cotton with his tractor.

Many confuse esthetics with spirituality, apparently unaware that humans have always been a religious species -- that every one of our previous civilizations was built around religious beliefs. Some of the worship was simplistic and occasionally very cruel as with the Aztecs, but the clergy were scholars and engineers and often rulers. Humans have always craved mystic, supernatural experiences and relationships to feel at home in a vast and mysterious Cosmos. That is represents our yearning to connect with our Creator and we are all vulnerable until we develop meaningful spiritual practices that take us closer to God's ideal for us in the community in which we belong.

Dangerous Narcissism - Wisdom From The Fulfillment Forum

In this era of increasing complexity and deepening confusion, triggered by our self-defeating choices and compounded by the existential frustrations coming from a fast changing, emotionally unstable life-style, most persons are tempted to seek simplistic solutions to their psychospiritual challenges. We all want to live well, but usually on the cheap, forgetting that H L Mencken said, “Simple and neat solutions for complex problems are usually simple, neat and wrong.”


ACTORS ALL - I MYSELF - ALONE
When life fails to bring us consistent satisfaction, when our weaknesses withhold from us the ego satisfaction we crave, most persons create fantasies that ease the pain caused by the near universal life-style dilemma of uncertainty. This allows each fearful person to protect his or her precious soul from suffering without exercising a great deal of effort. Some people cling to self-defeating attitudes, activities and relationships that offer short-term gains, while sacrificing the long range benefits only a maturing life-style provides. Our self imposed repressions and denials keep us from learning what we really need in order to live a consistently liberating life.

Spiritually minded adults who are maturing beyond their anxieties and self-deceptions have learned from our terrible 20th century disasters that existence is seldom simple. Unfortunately, psychospiritually immature persons avoid that reality of life like the plague, fervently hoping that denying everything unpleasant will deliver them from their problems. Winston Churchill, England’s great war time prime minister, muttered in disgust when he was trying desperately to get his people to prepare for the attack by Adolph Hitler’s Germany:

The average man simply cannot tolerate the truth. And should he inadvertently stumble over it, he immediately hurries away lest it force him to discard the delusions with which he comforts himself.

Around 1910, Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries I enjoyed so much as a boy, was also the author of several serious historical papers. He reported that the European nations had become so civilized they would never again resort to war to solve their differences. He really believed with most Victorian and Edwardian Britons that humans are rational beings who automatically make the most responsible choices for themselves and for society. It was this naive belief in rationality that helped cause such a negative reaction to Freud and his followers who demonstrated beyond dispute that a great many persons across Europe were simmering kettles of irrationality, yearning to fall violently on one another personally and nationally. Most physicians, ministers and philosophers considered the early psychologists lunatics to even hint that rational Europeans carried within themselves disastrous anxieties, hatreds and ambitions they keep hidden from consciousness. As Kipling would say, perhaps strangers such as Chinese, Americans and Frenchmen might be neurotic, but never proper English gentlemen! Actually Doyle’s Edwardian England was a hotbed of neuroticism and psychosis. And Continental Europe was even worse.

Freud was right, of course, for within forty years after Doyle’s prediction, his rational, responsible world had fought World War I and World War II, endured the Holocaust and begun a half century long financially and spiritually devastating Cold War. As usual, there was little ordinary men and women could do to keep their commercial, political and military abusers from slaughtering a hundred million persons across the twentieth century. Unfortunately, few of us made a serious effort to stop them - which for me verifies the fact that we do indeed contain within our hearts and minds the narcissistic seeds of greed and violence we deny through the ultimate lie. This lie is the myth that men and women are mostly cool and calm persons who would live at peace were it not for a few wicked abusers who disturb the peace. We, the citizens of Western Civilization, failed miserably to behave responsibly as we followed ruthless manipulators who promised us revenge on and loot from those evil savages who competed with us from across first the Rhine and later the Vistula Rivers. Look, the most vicious abusers always find some enemy through which they harness many naïve cultural neurotics to do their bidding, to slaughter one another for the benefit of some ruthless and egoistic aristocracy.

J. R. R. Tolkien, the eccentric Oxford University don ended his magnificent LORD OF THE RINGS saga with some sound advice for humans troubled by wounded egos. He had Gandalf the wizard admonish the hobbits Pippin and Merry to be modest when they return home as national heroes. After many adventures they’d met with fortitude and courage, in which the peaceful little shire-folk defeated the overwhelming forces of Sauron, their wise old comrade told them to remain modest. They must remember, he said, they are after all only very small chaps in a vast and dangerous Middle Earth. Pippin and Merry laughed from the depths of their earthy hobbit souls and agreed with Gandalf. One hobbit said not to worry, he became heroic and bold only under protest, only when forced into battle by desperate circumstances. Actually, he’d rather be home writing books on family history than treading the paths of glory which he’d found led many comrades to the grave. The other hobbit sighed and said;

Alas, we Tooks and Brandybucks cannot live comfortably on the heights with the kings and nobles of Middle Earth.

They quickly tired of fame’s limelight; both wanted to go home and operate their farms in the lush green fields of the Shire with their loved ones. Hobbits have always shown excellent judgment; they spend most of their time growing and consuming as much good food as possible.

We are all beset by challenges that frustrate us consistently in an age when an act as simple as driving on a freeway requires a life or death decision every sixty seconds. Politicians are ruthlessly destroying our beloved Republic, creating a wicked American Empire in which one percent of our citizens control ninety percent of the nation’s wealth. Corporations destroy three million American careers every year through downsizing and out sourcing, dishonesty abounds in many places, millions of Americans are addicted to narcotics and terrorism is on the increase. We have only recently come through the Cold War with the threat of mass annihilation waved constantly as a red flag by politicians to manipulate us. Millions of Americans can remember crouching under their school desks, fearful that each alert would bring a nuclear holocaust. Teachers and principals everywhere were in turmoil. I was teaching science while in graduate school at the University of Cincinnati and we teachers were powerless to change anything the Military/Industrial Complex and its political lackeys saddled us with in order to stop the spread of collective ownership of the world‘s resources.

Unfortunately, all humans are self-centered to a greater or a lesser degree. I can think of no more striking example of narcissistic selfishness than the problems Mr. Clinton brought on himself, his family and his government through sexual encounters with women drawn like moths to the flame by his power and prestige. Even after his public relations disasters with Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones, he used Monica Lewinsky for his own ego satisfaction. How egoistic he was! What on earth made him think a twenty-two year old girl would keep secret a sexual relationship with the world’s most powerful man? Didn’t he realize his political enemies understood his sexual compulsions well enough to anticipate another fall from grace they could exploit? In the book HUNTING THE PRESIDENT the author reveals Clinton’s enemies had already financed Paula Jones’ lawsuit and chosen Kenneth Starr, a rabid Clinton hater for his defeating the first President Bush, as special prosecutor to attack him and still Mr. Clinton considered himself invulnerable. The egoistic use of power often overwhelms our judgment and causes us many problems. Gennifer Flowers quipped, That boy just doesn’t learn! Actually, he’s quite like many men and women who are narcissistic in their outlook. Gary Hart, a Colorado senator aspiring to the presidency, challenged the media to catch him with a woman beside his wife if they could. Unfortunately for his ambition, some reporters could and did, taking photos of him with Donna Rice on his lap while cruising aboard the launch Monkey Business and he had to drop out of the campaign and leave politics. A little modesty about one’s power can go a long ways toward survival in our relationships. Martha Stewart was egoistic and proud enough to assume she was above the law and paid a steep ego and financial price.

We bring many problems on ourselves through our selfishness. Humans are so narcissistic that we give ourselves the benefit of every doubt, thinking ourselves superior and deserving more privileges than the common folk. The world revolves around I - MYSELF ALONE! And then we repress and deny everything that causes problems and pain. Gandalf’s advice is good for us also. At best, we are temporal creatures who live briefly on the bubble of existence, although we normally ignore our vulnerability so long as health and wealth lasts. We remain only actors, Shakespeare said, pretending and strutting on the stage, speaking our few lines and vanishing into the wings as understudies take over our precious roles. Nevertheless, despite our limitations, each person whether woman or man, instinctively and automatically feels like the protagonist in the play - the central character around whom the action swirls, who deserves the lion’s share of the applause. All those lesser characters at the edges of the drama really should defer to us. That seems only right, for we can stand on life’s stage, swing our eyes around and see that I - MYSELF ALONE appears to be the only person in the midst of the action. We want to believe, if we will honestly admit it, that we are at the center of the Cosmos with everyone else waiting at the edges. And herein comes one great persisting tragedy for individuals, families, communities and entire cultures.

Very little about women and men is painted in pure black and white colors. A great many aspects of life come in shades of gray, somewhere between holy sainthood and ruthless deviltry. Humans should try to get along with a modicum of decency and satisfaction, at least until we are frustrated to distraction, frightened badly and feel we must fight to preserve our self-esteem, our possessions, our pleasure or our power to function without domination by another person.

Therefore, while I write about narcissism and self-esteem, about our desire to win respect from our peers, to become someone of significance, that also comes in many shades of gray. You may yearn to become the very best, most loving and competent nurse in Cook County Hospital. That is a noble ambition while also assuring us of continuing respect from friends and esteem about ones self. We all need to receive esteem, even if it’s only as the best neighborhood Martian slayer on the latest video game, so we almost all try to make ourselves look somewhat better than we really are. This is as normal as human narcissism gets. On the other hand, the Mafia don who wants the most respect within his “family” - which is another way of saying he demands fear from his subordinates - or a ruthless business manager who will cheat employees, suppliers and contractors to promote his or her wealth, is searching for dominance rather than esteem. This is certain to create distrust, resentment and attempts by others to restore some balance of power. But nothing is simple!


NATURE’S NASTY TWIST
Narcissism, when it gets out of hand. is an example homosapien selfishness, is usually dangerous and often fatal, leading us to lust inordinately for power, prestige, possessions and pleasure. Sigmund Freud who wrote long after Jesus’ time, reorganized the Biblical concept of mammon in classic terms. Freud used the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus, who was so enamored with his own beauty that he died while admiring it, to explain our often overwhelming fixation with ourselves and our schemes. He coined the phrase narcissism to identify this condition that causes such devastation at so many times and places where humans interact.

Our virtually universal narcissistic drive to be superior - to appear more important than anyone else, to seize possessions and power and prestige over others, is arguably the major cause of human conflicts and most crippling disasters that follow. Massive human problems come from our yearning to make everyone else subservient to egoistic I - MYSELF ALONE. This lusting after possessions, power, prestige and pleasure, when it gets out of hand, is at the root of almost all individual, group and national conflicts.

This universal craving for existential significance became embedded in our psyches as a survival element during our primordial ancestors’ struggles as fangless little hominids who made convenient meals for the big carnivores on the wild African savannah. Because they could neither run fast nor fight fiercely, those with the greatest narcissism were more likely to survive and pass their genes on to a family group that carried them eventually to us. Those that didn’t run and grasp and hoard what they needed, who didn’t become paranoid enough to sacrifice their peers so they could escape, were less likely to survive. Their genes were lost to us. Now, a few million years later, each of us is still determined not to be ignored, devalued or deprived of our right to self-esteem, our right to dominate those lesser creature-selves around us.

From that egoistic lust for superiority, arises the bloody history of our violent race. Disaster comes often because the people and societies we yearn to dominate feel precisely the same way about us. As in the endless Balkan and African conflicts, people are almost always on a collision course with persons, organizations and nations that are equally willing to use others for their own benefit. Of course, each group rationalizes its violence as being caused by those evil strangers across the valley who threaten their own righteous and holy way of life. Obviously, we humans virtually always deny bringing conflicts down on ourselves. We are always tempted to blame others for our problems so we can justify our attacks, can feel good about sacrificing our young people to teach the enemy of the decade a lesson about challenging us. George W. Bush never makes a speech without praising the young American fighting men and women while ruthlessly cutting the Veteran’s Affairs budget just as the flood of casualties from his wars need the most help. He also constantly condemns the ruthless villains who attack and frustrate the good and righteous American way of dominating the world. After all, most humans feel that I MYSELF - ALONE absolutely do deserve the best in life. This narcissistic fantasy that each of us is superior to the rest of humankind and more deserving is buried deep in our unconscious from where it oozes out in crucial times and places. This nasty twist of human nature has complicated life more and more for us.

I realize that in order to cope with 21st century challenges, humans must become bold and courageous. We need to be brave in the presence of adversity - to live as strong men and women when most ordinary souls like Tolkien’s hobbits wanted only to be left alone to make a living and rear a family. The human experience has never been easy, in fact it is always fatal eventually. Unfortunately, reactionary persons, those with too strong a defense system who cling to the past, always feel that society is at a crossroads, that nations can be saved only through a rebirth of the heroic self-sufficiency their ancestors supposedly nurtured. I challenge that simplistic assumption for one major reason.

The so called lost Golden Age of America, from just after our Civil War until the Vietnamese War, was golden mostly for affluent white males. Everyone else had to take what the powerful robber barons didn’t want. Unfortunately financial abusers are like the Wyoming Rancher during the range wars who said he only wanted what was his - and what was next to it! With one or two percent of contemporary Americans owning some ninety percent of the nation’s wealth, they pretty much have it all! In my youth, multitudes of families lived in abject poverty as the novels GRAPES OF WRATH and GOD’S LITTLE ACRE revealed so poignantly. I know, I was there at the time, so don’t try to fool me with half truths and ruthless ideologies. I remember the ragged, barefoot kids in school, the fights with the greedy aristocracy who opposed school lunch programs, free books and school buses as communistic in nature. I remember President Hoover sending the U. S. cavalry against fathers pleading for food for their children. And the glee of the generals who were laughing and joking when they were ordered to attack the rabble. A huge percentage of families endured severe hardships while trying to survive. And regardless of the myths many reactionary preachers and primitive politicians concoct, in order to frighten people into pulling their chestnuts from the fire, life really became much better for many persons. Only now, those benefits are being taken away by a wicked consortium of financial neo-fascists, reactionary political neo-cons and fundamental religious neo-zealots who are moving heaven and earth to crush everything decent and to deliver the nation back into the ruthless hands of the robber barons who have arisen again through Global Capitalism and the outright bribery of our politicians.

Many more persons of both genders and families of all creeds and races did better financially than at any previous time in American history. The rascals who deny this are either idiots or are yearning for a return to a white, male dominated society. Even the radical preachers protesting loudest about our liberal society, who keep trying to recreate that white, male controlled culture of the past because they are selfish white men, are fixated almost exclusively on material things. They hate sharing their power, prestige and possessions with women of all races and with men of color. To state it bluntly, the blatant narcissists want to steal everything they can haul away. That is the way their mind-sets operate, this is where their core values lead them, although they use clever propaganda to persuade the naive with their own clamoring anxieties, that they are working for patriotic or spiritual reasons when they are working for I MYSELF -- ALONE.

Nevertheless, going through the challenge of earning an education, building a career, nurturing a marriage and rearing a family while maturing, does require strength and courage. I know of no easy way to become a maturing person. I believe it is this reality that led early psychologist William James to call for human heroism on our often dangerous pilgrimage through life, for we are all bedeviled by selfish yearnings. Most of the scholars I draw from agree that many humans are frequently crippled by our universally self-centered traits that get out of control.

When it is uncontrolled, narcissism keeps every community and civilization boiling with frustration and aggression. Two cultures demonstrated this quite clearly. Our anti-bellum southern aristocratic men wore their egos on their sleeves, quarreling and dueling at the drop of a perceived insult. Imperial Germany and Spain were even worse - the haughty posturing of men and women is very obvious in old black and white photographs from the era. They struggled to win heroic significance for themselves and their social classes.

What do we yearn for and whom shall we sacrifice to get it? How powerful are the motives that flog us onward in our desire to become significant? How completely do the aristocrats in our communities shape our opportunities - with their wealth being used to control politicians and the criminal justice establishment and to finance the propaganda systems that stack the deck for themselves? How can we save the American Republic?

We all try to conceal our character flaws by finding clever ways to justify them. Not long ago my wife and I were waiting in a checkout line that had stalled when an elderly woman needed to exchange a purchase and several twenty year old youths successively paid their bills by writing checks for under three dollars. I started muttering and Roberta poked me. Take a walk before you embarrass me, she whispered.. I left and when she came out a few minutes later, she was laughing. We’ve been married half a century and she still has the ability to surprise and delight me. Naturally, she can see right through my facades - but she loves me anyway! I sometimes wonder why. She told me in her unique fashion;

It was your old egoistic need for existential significance acting up again. You just couldn’t stand having a line of simple folk slow down a world-class antique motorcycle restorer and community theater actor could you?

Not a word about my books because she fights fair. I grinned wryly in agreement but protested to protect my ego.

Well, I am not alone -- I have plenty of company out here.

Indeed I do and while I know these concepts well enough to write about them, I too have a need for esteem within my soul. I would even appreciate a little cosmic worth from time to time. And so would you! So does everyone and that yearning sometimes runs wild in every society. Few events demonstrate this narcissistic selfishness in action more clearly than the constant battling in Serbia, Indonesia and among many African tribes.

In his book MEIN KAMPF, the arch-villain Adolph Hitler described very well the frustrated narcissism gnawing at Germany’s resentful people after that nation’s defeat in World War I. After a century as Europe’s bully boy, Germany was reduced to poverty and hunger, even eating their cats and dogs to survive, calling the cats roof rabbits. Europe’s aristocrats would have done well to learn from him rather than dismiss Hitler as an ignorant rabble-rouser who deserved their contempt. They’d always issued orders and docile corporals saluted and said: By your leave, Sir. Some of Europe’s powerful died on meat hooks and in gas chambers because they failed to see that Hitler’s lust for power and prestige was every bit as great as their own. However, the slain aristocratic elite were a minority. They always are as narcissism often triumphs over ethics, morality and spirituality.

Many more, like most French, Lithuanian, Belgium, Swiss and Italian aristocrats, sold their souls to retain their possessions, power and prestige. The French House of Deputies enacted every cruel law Germany wanted, betraying their Jewish citizens to Gestapo death squads who were enthusiastically supported by the local police. The French government deliberately delivered their own demobilized soldiers into four years of slave labor in Nazi factories and sold working class girls as prostitutes in German troop brothels. Not their own children, of course, who avoided the terror by hanging out on the Cote d’ Azure during the war years, but the sons and daughters of the working families over whom they had power. Then, when France and the other nations were delivered from German tyranny, the politicians immediately repressed everything evil they’d done. To this day the ruthless abusers of France and Belgium have seldom been brought to justice - the entire French government repressed its cooperation with the Germans. Everyone pretended he or she had fought in the resistance when only a very few ordinary men and women actively opposed the Germans.

Only late in 1999 did the French government pass laws that would return confiscated Jewish property to the children and grandchildren of the original owners. The guilt of being traitors to French civilization was hidden so deep within their collective unconscious for decades that France officially insisted there was no stolen property to return. Few of the European aristocrats and their police enforcers were like the brave people of Denmark and Bulgaria who held steady to their values to battle the Germans. The Danish and the Bulgarian police were the only European cops who collectively chose to support their own people rather than betray them. They organized the resistance underground, saving virtually all Danish and Bulgarian Jews and freezing in place two Wermacht heavy weapons infantry divisions needed badly by the Germans in Normandy on D-Day. It is quite likely that those twenty-five thousand additional troops on the bluffs over Omaha Beach would have swept the D-Day invasion force of Britons and Americans into the sea and left Europe under the conqueror’s heel.

In other words --

While all humans are genetically and emotionally tempted to be selfish and narcissistic enough to cause conflicts and wars, if we live with ethical virtues and spiritual values, of the kind that Moses, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed taught, if we lay aside our contrived self-deceptions, we can live far more peacefully within ourselves and among others. We can enjoy meaningful activities in places of the heart where we belong with the people with whom we share love and acceptance.


Author:
Jard DeVille has published more than a score of psychology books, seminars and psychological assessment instruments. His book NICE GUYS FINISH FIRST was a powerful best seller. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEADERSHIP was New American Library's offering in their Executive Development Series. Visit http://www.fulfillmentforum.com for Free Ebooks and Ebiz tools.

My Kid Brother Joshua

How he became the messiah of god.

read more | digg story

Free Self Improvement eBooks

Great Free psychology life style ebooks

read more | digg story

SaveDarfur.org has a post called "Lobby Congress" that's worth checking out...

You can help pressure Congress to do more to help the people of Darfur by meeting with your congressional representative or members of his or her staff. To learn how your member of Congress voted on important Darfur legislation please visit DarfurScores.org.
Click Link and help today Lobby Congress

TO LOVE FOREVER

We were leading a seminar for sexually sophisticated, exuberant and articulate young couples when James, one of the husbands, said: Nancy and I long ago learned how to insert Tab A into Slot B, so we don't need a sex manual. We know all about adequate foreplay for women, exotic positions, and multiple orgasms. We love our nights of romance but how do we make our marriage worth keeping together when we are not making love.

Emotionally healthy men and women almost always share their lives with lovers whose happiness is crucial to their own fulfillment -- even if they failed to understand the reciprocal nature of mutual satisfaction while they were young. In our youthful years we may be so filled with such intense sexual desires that we forget it really does take two to tango successfully for any length of time. If either lover feels deprived, the music soon loses its ability to charm us. As we learn to love a person deeply, we want both to be personally satisfied -- while also becoming a pleasing lover. Our sexual pleasure remains second rate unless the lover becomes a full partner in the intimacy. Of course, some neurotic persons use sex in a power play for ego benefits that have little to do with love. We insist -- all psychospiritually healthy women and men want to please the sweetheart with whom they share physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. Anything less is selfishness -- is prima facia evidence that one is still an emotional adolescent, grasping what he or she can in a short term relationship. Sexual selfishness and the potential for abuse that follows is always the result of one's serious emotional and spiritual failures.

Despite the universal need for loving relationships, one marriage out of two fails, with a major cause of divorce being serious sexual disappointment caused by some form of narcissism -- satiation or some kind of neurotic power struggle within the relationship. Many of the marriages which survive are such emotional and sexual disasters that the partners are left with a terrible sense of disappointment about the entire affair. Actually, comparatively few men and women actually remain lovers for life with the joy that a sound relationship guarantees. It is obvious that many couples have not mastered the attitudes, activities and relationships needed to make love permanent. We, Roberta and Jard, realize that we have done pretty well -- we are still sharing our love for one other and enjoying our erotic intimacy after half a century of love and marriage. We have thought much about all this and have come to the delightful conclusion -- We are not yet through! Despite all odds and some glaring mistakes along the way, we have managed to remain lovers because we understand some key factors about relationships:

To begin with:

WOMEN AND MEN REALLY NEED EACH OTHER FOR LOVE TO PROSPER.

SEXUAL AROUSAL AND PLEASURE IS A NORMAL STATE FOR LOVERS.

SATISACTION INCREASES EXPONENTIALLY AS WE MATURE TOGETHER.

These are attainable ideals that unfortunately, because of narcissism and nihilism, can be crippled enough to destroy relationships. However, since the need for love and intimacy does not end with conflict and unhappiness -- even after separation and divorce, most persons with failed marriages usually seek someone new with whom to share romance. We have learned how vital it is to have a loving partner who cares deeply about us; who eagerly and joyfully joins their body, mind and spirit to our own. Unfortunately, some people continue looking for a perfect partner rather than learning how to become a better lover. Nevertheless, most second marriages succeed well enough to be held together. Couples, the second time around, usually have more realistic expectations and attitudes -- can abandon the youthful selfishness that comes between themselves and their lovers, and accept the partial loaf of a sound relationship if not a grand romance..

Actually, many marriages fail because the institutions that are supposed to help men and women live together without too much conflict, fail at their tasks. For example, many people tell us that the church must accept a full share of the responsibility for the failure of many relationships. Its emphasis on archaic rules, the condemnation of spontaneous sexuality made possible through birth control, and reluctance to accept lovemaking as a spiritual relationship in and of itself, long after science has separated sex from child bearing, has been crippling to a great many marriages. Too many reactionary clergymen have simply not come to grips with the realities of life and love since neurotic medieval myths and superstitions about sexuality were accepted as basic religious morality.

Even today in most fundamental and orthodox religious denominations, morality is connected almost entirely to sexuality. In much of the right wing church you can engage in virtually any kind of racism or sexism -- condemning minorities and manipulating women -- so long as you profess to have been born again and do not commit adultery with your neighbor's child or spouse. Or at least, don't get caught committing adultery! We find such practices not only a simplistic view of spirituality but really a mockery of faith, hope and love within the Judaeo/Christian and the Islamic traditions.

Our educational institutions have done just as poorly, for they occasionally teach sexual mechanics and techniques while ignoring the need for spiritual love which is vital to keeping a relationship alive and well, filled with sexual satisfaction and make the sweethearts mutually supportive over the years. Few of the sex classes we see go beyond simply teaching how to be sexually effective, how as James said, to insert tab A into slot B. Now, with most of the emphasis on how to have a glorious orgasm (or half a dozen of them), it's as though love, acceptance and mutual support have become sexual taboos. Not enough attention is paid to those things that make intimacy satisfying throughout life, to keep one's relationship permanent. The vast majority of sexual self-help books have failed to make this vital point clear since they are often based on several distorted assumptions about life and love. Usually missing from such books is the understanding that humans are always subjective beings with deep spiritual needs that must be satisfied or else life turns sour. Life must become meaningful rather than just successful if we hope to live with satisfaction. Our needs and motivates go beyond the physical and psychological levels of personality to the philosophical. As a result, many books that don't consider the psychospiritual aspects of life fail to help the users all that much.

Our book, LOVERS FOR LIFE is based on the principle of honest partnership and mutual acceptance. We simply cannot find lasting satisfaction except by being truthful. It is also based on the belief that we all need to live with spiritual values, positive attitudes, high expectations, mature beliefs and responsible choices. Of course, few couples begin this way -- we must learn how to survive together while we mature as real persons. The myth that men and women are so different that misunderstanding and conflict are inevitable is just that -- a myth. Conflicts arise when we relate as lovers from the immature or neurotic needs of adolescence, when we fail to understand personality patterns, when we are pushed from our comfort zones, and when we behave in selfish ways that cause resentment. Then lovers become adversaries who are struggling to win power, prestige pleasure and possessions without regard for the other person's needs. Dissatisfying lovemaking virtually always occurs because one or both of the lovers behave narcissistically.

Because sexuality and love-making is so compelling in and of itself -- so important to normal, well adjusted women and men, we sometimes fail to realize that consistent sexual satisfaction is always the result of having a mutually supportive relationship rather than the cause of a good marriage. Because of the prominence of the pleasure principle, many people still put that cart before the horse. Many and many a person in counseling tells us that they cannot understand why they are having so many problems when the sex is still good. Of course it is -- it is the only thing still holding them together -- with so many other problems both are determined to make something work well. We find that fearful women who remain with brutal, battering men often engage in wild lovemaking with their cruel abusers, doing everything the men want, trying to make something, anything, satisfying in the relationship. But it isn't a mutual connection -- such a man is very much the tyrant she is frantically trying to please in the only way she can share intimacy with him. This seldom lasts long when everything else good has collapsed. And unless a woman feels trapped, unable to take care of herself, with no one to turn to for deliverance, many women soon decide that sexual satisfaction purchased at such a price is too expensive in the scheme of life. They move on.

Others make the same mistake our sexually frustrated and often neurotic Victorian ancestors did as they tried hard to turn love into a sexless, platonic relationship. No one personifies this more clearly than Mother Lee and the Shaker sect of Christians who came out of England during the Victorian era. We understand why this happened and why groups like the Shakers became celibate; the men and women living within the same colonies but in separate dorms and never sharing sexual love. Sexual diseases were rampant in Victorian England and America at the time. About one person in five had a serious venereal disease at the time of our Civil War and there were no cures. The young Confederate general A P Hill contacted gonorrhea as a West Point cadet and suffered from it the rest of his life until he died in his late thirties. In addition, because they had no reliable birth control methods many wives were pregnant or nursing almost all the time. Married women were baby making machines and every major religious denomination in England and America in 1900 still insisted that birth control was a sin against God and humanity. It is still in the Roman Catholic Church. Birth control was forbidden because primitive societies needed a constant flow of strong, young persons to do all the scut work needed to keep life running smoothly. Such churches still confuse social traditions with spirituality as they always have. As late as 1900, childbirth was a trip down into the valley of the shadow of death for every woman. The childbirth death of great many women was an acceptable trade-off with the need for more workers for the farms and companies of the time. Childbed fever due to contaminated bed clothing was so virulent that most women had their wills written before giving birth.

Roberta's maternal grandfather, an undeniably devout Methodist preacher, had seven children with his first wife before she died after the final birth and then had twelve more kids with his second wife before she also died in childbirth. Women had no rights -- they could not refuse their randy husbands access to their bodies even if another pregnancy would be fatal. Their marriage dowry was given to their husbands, they could seldom work outside the home and if they did, the law required them to surrender their earnings to their husbands every payday. Actually, they were treated as brood mares as Abigail Smith Adams wrote and wrote again to her husband Samuel Adams when he was helping form the United States government. She urged him over and over to give women some civil rights but he was unable to persuade the southern contingent of politicians to treat women fairly. It took more than a hundred years for women to gain the vote and some simple rights to manage their own lives. With disease and death a common outcome of a sexual relationship, and with a complete loss of freedom from entering into a marriage, Roberta says she can certainly understand why Mother Lee founded her Shaker colonies. The arrangement was so women could care for themselves -- by themselves -- and with the celibate companionship of those men who were willing to treat them decently. Of course, Jard also understands why the Shakers prospered during that period and failed when women won some freedoms, learned to plan their babies and could avoid venereal disease through modern medicines. The lives of women became so much better during the 20th century that few needed to abandon marriage and children in order to become real persons. Thus the Shaker colonies vanished as society changed drastically.

Men and women who have lovingly committed their lives to each other have every physical, psychological and spiritual reason to develop deeply satisfying sexual relations as a positive aspect of life. Each of us needs a loving soul with whom to share the many responsibilities and rewards of life, to labor with during the day and to fill the nights with the magic of a passion that doesn't fade but becomes more mature and fulfilling as we enfold one another with kisses and caresses We believe that anyone who teaches otherwise, who wants to ration a couple's sexuality to conception, whether in the church or out, is emotionally crippled and wants others to suffer with him rather than mature in the physical aspects of love. The very concept of life-long celibacy and sexual deprivation is a wicked sociopath requirement laid on couples by medieval minded clergy who are trapped by their sexist theology - which is why ninety percent of English speaking Catholic women of child bearing age defy their clergy to practice proscribed forms of birth control. And why almost seventy percent of Catholic priests from African, Asian and Latin American nations are rearing families with secret wives or with women with whom they are in permanent sexual relationships. To end this practice of love and affection would destroy the Catholic leadership of most nations south of the equator.

Fortunately, even a when person has been crippled and confused by religious, political or cultural myths about the role sexual relationships play in life, human resilience is so great that he or she can learn how to live a purposeful life, one leading to happiness and permanence in relationships. No one is doomed to unhappiness in a partnership unless he or she accepts someone's manipulation of himself. Ridding oneself of distorted symptoms and selfish behaviors can help pave the way toward maturity and fulfillment.

We, Roberta and Jard -- have lived together for almost half a century. We reared three kids and even our grandkids have kids now and we still love each other dearly. We would like to be able to report to you that we had a storybook romance and marriage: We would like to, but alas, we cannot. To start with, Roberta certainly did not get a Prince Charming in Jard. He is a stubborn, willful man who has gone through life doing precisely what he wanted to do. Of course, Roberta wasn't a Fairy Princess -- at times the sparks flew. They still do! But, we started life even, both having naive attitudes about living together. She assumed Jard would be like her father, and he thought Roberta would be like his mother. Don't all young couples make that mistake? We soon learned how wrong that was but above all we shared a strong religious faith that helped us!

At one time we were even like two veteran riflemen in combat. One soldier was from the Louisiana marsh country while the other was from the mountains of Colorado. They had little in common but survival, they didn't understand each other, and they would not have even known each other but for the fact that they were in the Army at the same time. However, they have saved each other's life so often that each has forgotten how to survive without the partner. One kicks in the door and the other throws in the grenade. Without a great deal of deliberation! We have even moved past that and now are fairly tolerant and understanding. The repeated grinding of two dominant personalities, although it created friction and sparks on many occasions, has abraded a pretty good fit to our marriage. Sexual pleasure and psychospiritual intimacy are still vital parts of our ivies, and we recommend them highly to everyone (although we realize that sexual satisfaction can exist only as a part of our total relationship). We are fortunate that we have kept our sexual relationship alive and satisfying -- despite the myth that sex is for the young. I suppose many in the reactionary church who would limit sex to conception and childbirth consider us a dirty old couple -- but you can imagine how little time we spend worrying about their neuroticism! Love is a constant source of rejuvenation for our life together.

In LOVERS FOR LIFE we have included projects and processes for your use. They have proved very valuable for us and for couples in our seminars. In the beginning, using them may make you feel as awkward as giving a speech or singing a solo for the first time. They will become familiar with use, however, and will help you develop a mutually supportive partnership that remains pleasurable and permanent. Use them well to strengthen you mutual concern and self-transcendence; for they are tools with which to build greater understanding. Even if boredom and desperation have set in, these methods have the power to revitalize a relationship and make it worth keeping -- even when you are not making love at the time. May God bless your attempts to grow toward happiness and fulfillment, for all of your life!

SAMPLE SELF-FOCUS


WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE OUR VICTORIAN ANCESTORS WERE SO DETERMINED TO KEEP WOMEN SUBSERVIENT TO MEN -- EVEN TO THOSE WHO WERE ABUSIVE AND SOMETIMES MURDEROUS?

WHY DO YOU THINK MANY MEN STILL ASSUME THAT THEY OWN THE WOMEN IN THEIR LIVES -- THAT IF THEY CANNOT CONTROL A WOMAN, THEN NO OTHER MAN SHOULD LOVE HER?

SAMPLE PROJECT - BASIC ASSUMPTIONS


Discuss with a friend or write a short paragraph or two or three sentences on what the following could mean to you.


MEN AND WOMEN REALLY DO NEED EACH OTHER FOR LOVE TO PROSPER.

SEXUAL PLEASURE AND SATISFACTION IS A SOUND ASPECT OF LOVE.

ONLY BY MATURING TOGETHER CAN LOVE BECOME DEEPLY FULFILLING.


We wish you the very best as you make your life meaningful and fill it with love.