This is http://www.essayz.com/a9011042.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %HIDDEN SECRET PRIVATE SHAME GUILT COMMUNICATE JOY 901104 It is dangerous for a community to have, tolerate and/or respect hidden and secret occasions of self-guilt and self-shame. Shame and guilt which fester in hidden corners of private lives can do much damage in secret, for in such secret places there are very few ways in which the mistakes which lead to such guilt and shame can occasion integrative learning. We are communal creatures who learn the most of what we can learn in open and honest communities. We learn much less than we might learn when we live in closed and secretive communities which lack reliable channels of communication; and are not true communities. Patterns which inhibit open and honest communication are dangerous patterns. Patterns which promote open and honest communication are patterns which reduce danger. In self-guilt and self-shame isolated individuals are prone to draw disintegrative conclusions which are not open to reliable verification and/or validation. Isolated and/or estranged individuals find it exceedingly difficult to check on the reliability and validity of their perceptions, thoughts, feelings, logic, reasoning, beliefs, values, ideals, and self-esteem and/or lack of self-esteem. Thus it is dangerous for communities to persist with patterns of communal behaviors which occasion the development of self-guilt and self-shame. It is dangerous for individuals to respect self-guilt and self- shame. It is dangerous for individuals to respect behavior patterns which lead to self-guilt and self-shame. Collusive games of mutual self deception and the associated patterns of addictive and codependent behaviors occasion much self-guilt and self-shame. The dynamics of such patterns of behavior hide themselves and so their victims are unaware of how they come to experience self- guilt and self-shame. In collusive communities the logic of self-guilt and self-shame are hidden from the view of creative people who might through love truly help the victims of such logic transcend the prisons of their perceptions, thoughts, feelings, logic, reasoning, beliefs, values, ideals, and self-esteem and/or lack of self-esteem. Through their manipulative efforts the participants in collusions, addictions and codependent behaviors create situations in which they and others become isolated, alienated and estranged from each other and unable to know each other intimately through real open and honest communications. Rather, they promote the operation of taboos, inhibitions, prohibitions, injunctions and mandates with the threat of rejection for disobedience; and with false promises of love for compliance. The love which is promised is promised falsely, and further the love is not truly love; for the whole process is poisoned with dishonesty through and through. A natural response to such processes is rebellion against its lack of integrity; but such rebellion itself is often disintegrative and compounds the difficulties which occasion the rebellion. Rebellion against disintegrative behavior is often itself disintegrative. It is difficult to respond to disintegrative behavior in integrative ways, especially when the disintegrative behavior is sincere, sophisticated, respected and engaged in at great personal self sacrifice. One mistake which we naturally make is to rebel against all efforts to offer guidance, just because many efforts to offer guidance are violently manipulative and alienative. It is true that the guidance which is offered by taboos, inhibitions, prohibitions, injunctions and mandates under the threat of rejection for disobedience, is guidance which is alienative and destructive. Even so, in the spirit of love, open and honest guidance can be offered which does not inhibit, threaten, reject, alienate or destroy. Rebels need to avoid the mistake of rejecting all offers of guidance, just because many offers of guidance are diseased and lead to dis-ease. Rebels need to seek to learn how to recognize offers of guidance which are made in and by the Spirit of Love, by people who truly know what real love is, and who truly live by and in the Spirit of real love. People who know what real love is, truly live by and in the Spirit of real love. They do not try to force people to leave their prisons of private and secret shame and guilt. Rather they offer the prisoners invitations to come out of such prisons to more open and honest patterns of living. They do so by giving the gift of real security which is the true freedom to be vulnerable in honestly intimate relationships wherein there are no manipulative threats of punitive rejection, nor manipulative offers of conditional acceptance. The prisoners need to seek to learn how to recognize such truly integrative invitations, and they need to learn how to distinguish such invitations from false efforts to achieve control through the use of dishonesty as a manipulative tool, in technical efforts to attain preconceived personal goals as steps to increased self esteem. People who know what true love is, report experiences which indicate many of the hazards which we may encounter in life, and the probable consequences of failing to recognize them and failing to heed the warnings in the descriptions. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================