<snip> As mentioned before, my pastoral counselor is happily married, funny, smart, kind, down to earth. And objective about me and my strengths and flaws. If for no other reason than it's her job description to be so.
Share, do you think it is possible for your pastoral counselor to be "objective" about your strengths and flaws if your storyline is the only source of information she has about you? Her objectivity will be limited to what is possible within the larger subjective story you are telling her - i.e., your truth about your life. Are you paying her money, btw? She sounds like a great support system but cannot be truly objective, IMO. It's good to have people that support us, so no judgment there. ________________________________ From: Share Long <sharelon...@yahoo.com> To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2012 9:16 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: to Emily I'm amending that masculine to HYPER masculine. Hyper masculine is a phrase used by Waking Down in Mutuality groups to describe a mindset of conquering Nature, conquering animals and our own animal nature, overpowering others and generally destroying the planet. Rigorous honesty sounds more like a hyper masculine approach to human development. I believe that a new paradigm is emerging. It includes the experience based context of a settled mind and body. Within that context, the honesty that emerges is full without being jarring. When the body minds of people are jarred with so called rigorous honesty, it merely causes them to shut down. I think the hyper masculine was appropriate at a certain stage of human development. But I think the time for the hyper masculine approach to anything is done. If only to save the planet. Even EST become less jarring, confrontational and hyper masculine when it morphed into The Forum. When I think of my wise others, they are wise even before they encourage me. As mentioned before, my pastoral counselor is happily married, funny, smart, kind, down to earth. And objective about me and my strengths and flaws. If for no other reason than it's her job description to be so. ________________________________ From: authfriend <authfri...@yahoo.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2012 10:39 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: to Emily --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Share Long <sharelong60@...> wrote: <snip> > Similarly, I don't know if I'll ever be completely healed > of all my mental or emotional stresses or glitches. I know > from Maharishi that the biggest stresses are the last ones > to be released. They're also, in my experience, the most > subtle ones, the ones we often can't see in ourselves. > Thus the necessity for wise others to help us. > > Anyway, I simply keep living my life and aiming for complete > healing as wisely as I can. When I see spontaneous and > positive changes in my behavior, then I'm encouraged that > I'm going in the right direction. And when the wise others > in my life give me positive feedback, that also encourages > me. For me, these are the criteria to use with regards to > becoming, if not completely healed then at least more healed. Is it possible that the big but subtle stresses that we can't see in ourselves might lead us to mistakenly identify changes in our behavior as "positive" when they are not? And along the same lines, is it possible that those big stresses might mislead us as to which others are wise and whose encouragement is therefore dependable? Might those stresses, in fact, lure us into deciding someone is wise *because* they encourage us? > BTW, rigorous honesty sounds like one of those masculine > New Age admonitions such as Werner Erhardt might have > cooked up. FWIW, it's not "New Age" at all. As a phrase, it was popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous, which was founded in 1935, but it's been around far longer than that and has never been exclusive to AA. It's a very fundamental concept, after all. And to think of it as "masculine" seems to me to be insulting to women, as if it would be too much to ask of them that they be rigorous about their honesty. > I prefer the phrase fuller honesty if only because it sounds > more settling to the body mind. I'm not sure demanding honesty of oneself *should* be settling. I suspect if examining oneself in this regard isn't at least somewhat uncomfortable, it means one has settled for something less than full honesty.
