Blog 2246 – 12.23.2021

The Answer To You Is You

Time was when keeping a journal or a diary was a way for people to think on paper privately and I understand that talk therapists still encouraging their patients to write down there innermost thoughts. It is therapeutic. The dictionary defines therapeutic:

Well, that was not all that helpful now was it? It is always disturbing to me when dictionaries try to define a word using the word itself, sort of a Catch-22 situation, like my Paw Paw telling his girls they could go swimming when they learned how to swim.

Just what disease is the therapy of speaking our innermost thoughts to a priest or a mental health professional, both bound by confidentiality agreements, or writing them in a daily personal diary suppose to cure. The one dread disease that comes to mind is misunderstanding. Many have experienced traumatic life altering events in their lives but even many more of us are plagued with misunderstandings of what has happened in our lives. William Shakespeare’s is purported to have written, “Be true to thine own self and thou canst be false to no one.”

Getting at the truth about Who and Whose we truly are is, I think, the best way to get to the root cause of all the diseases and maladies that afflict us.

One of my favorite quotes from the first Crocodile Dundee movie ‘s where he comes to New York to visit the attractive reporter that wrote about the then only famous in Walk About Creek, Australia crocodile hunter. She takes him to a party to meet her friends and he tells a joke about people acting crazy in New York. While dancing she tells him one of her friends has been in therapy for several years and he wonders aloud if he should apologize for the joke and the reporter goes on to tell him that many people pay big money for someone to listen to their problems. Dundee replies that back in Walk About Creek if anyone has a problem they just tell Walt and he tells everybody, no problem. I still smile at the simple wisdom of talk therapy in Walk About Creek.

Failing to keep government secrets can end you up serving a long prison sentence however trying to keep personal secrets can also be a prison of sorts. Talking about your problems to a kind and listening ear, or writing them down to be read can not only unburden us from carrying some pretty heavy baggage around but it can help us to remember uncomfortable things that we have perhaps unconsciously chosen to forget, things we could not handle at the time they happened or just misunderstood.

Someone has said that sunlight and fresh air are are often the best antiseptics. There is a New Testament phrase, “By the washing of the water which is the word.” That is most often interpreted to mean that the Bible, or Jesus who was referred to as The Word, is the answer to all our problems. I think it may have a simpler less Catch-22, using the word word to define itself meaning. Another Bible phrase that I have taken a little poetic license with to make it part of my daily spoken affirmation or mantra is: “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in my sight, O Lord my Strength and my Redeemer. Not talking about Big Brother or the Book, but my highest best self, the Universe, my loving and infinite source.

The best books, the best journals, diaries, blogs, movies, talks, and talk therapies always lead to the same conclusion about Who we are and Who God is, a long kept secret that never should have been, “Hear O Israel, the Lord God Is One. Lest you think I am promoting the Jewish or Christian religions above all others, the name Israel that Jacob (liar) was changed to after he wrestled with an angel means (God fighter). By the way Jacob lied to get his father to bless him as his first born, and the wrestling with an angel all night, a match he lost by the way, was because he refused to let the angel go before he/she blessed him. I was all about the blessings with ole Jacob/Israel. And it seems to be with most all of us all the time. Blessed means happy and though the pursuit of happiness is listed with life and liberty as things which we were endowed by our Creator we should bless ourselves for we are, I think, in the highest best sense self-made, there being only One Self.

Circular logic you say, a true Catch-22, defining a word using the word. The word is You-Who.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

( I, too, with you helped hang the moon and we did a pretty fine job of it)

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uE8qP3jDtjBavSK3dVSbop-VF4csZR_6/view?usp=drivesdk

Fall In Love With Me