Dear reader,
I think I have touched on the subject of 'change' in various articles but it seems that it is one of those issues that needs to be discussed from different angles, if we are to understand it as best we can. At the same time, I am pondering on the results of the recent elections with the rise of the far right in Europe. We already know that life is constantly changing. We are constantly in progress and evolving. Every morning we wake up somehow different to who we were the night before, physically, psychologically and mentally. We are in a permanent state of change and data processing consciously or unconsciously. A big change occurs in two ways, internally or externally. When something changes externally, we are called to redefine our relationship with that and take the same or a different position that will maintain our survival, safety and prosperity as we understand them every time. For example, if an earthquake happens and a man's house is destroyed, he will have to find another home to stay and continue his life. In external changes, seemingly external at least, we have no involvement in the fact that they happened as they were not caused by us. Internal changes are probably a little different story. A person is called to listen to his inner, deep voice calling him to make a change from within. Some people find it easier to deal with changes and others find it it difficult. Internal change, even if it concerns ones health, encompasses the choice as well as the responsibility of the person himself. For example, if someone is diagnosed with an illness and a serious medical advice suggests to him to change dietary and other habits in order to improve his health, they have the choice not to follow it and continue to live as before, thereby taking the responsibility for any consequences. An internal change may often bring to the surface information from he past that we did not want to confront and incorporate in our lives. For example, the reasons why we had made specific choices in the past or how we had behaved towards ourselves and others. If we are not prepared to deconstruct ourselves in order to better understanding him, then any change will be based on non-solid foundations. This is often the case when we make hasty decisions in order to find a solution to a problem and, thus, stop to understand that there is a problem, the reasons why it exists and what could be the ways to effectively resolve it. In the above example with the illness, a quick and easy solution could be the intake of drugs without making any change in diet and various other stressors that may affect the overall health of the individual. Therefore, restoring health will be partial, if at all successful. This could also be the viewpoint of the results of the European elections, particularly of Greece. Of course we are talking about a deeply complex subject, but for me the parameters for exploring it are the same. Europe and Greece in particular, by encountering and being part of the economic crisis and its consequences, was called upon to reconsider the foundations and values on which it leads its life. It is like waking up in the morning with a serious cold. There are systemic problems both at European level and at the level of the countries where solutions were sought and created that do not consider and solve the problems effectively, but provide a temporary relief, as the aspirin in the cold, whose real cause was that the person was not warm enough the previous day. Any thorough analysis and understanding of a problem, leads at least to some solutions and some lessons. My understanding of the Greek results (perhaps for the whole of Europe) is that people are quickly and easily looking for someone who will promise them hope, solution, relief and a better future. They vote, that is, with the sentiment, with the raw emotion a person has just before he drowns, grabbing the first, seemingly strong hand that is found in front of him in order to be saved. This moment of 'despair' for me hides something more problematic, the transfer of responsibility. It is easier for a society to vote for a man with special needs than to take care of his needs in the every day life. It's easier to punish someone as a liar, when people are lying every day without consequences. It is easier to ask for a political honesty and credibility when the same people had been having bad relations with those values for years. It's easier to trust someone we looks and behaves like oneself someone rather than someone who is a little different and somehow provokes us to change. It is almost impossible to expect different results when we continue to do the same thing. With Love, Panos
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Dear reader,
It has been a while since I last wrote an article and this is because sometimes it takes time and silence to really listen to what is happening within and around us and to wholeheartedly connect with it. My attention at this time-and perhaps no accident that coincides with the European elections-is particularly attracted by the coherence, the connection and the continuity of life. Perhaps only when we grow old enough and the life before us is equal or shorter than the life behind us, we begin to look back on our lives underlining what has been important to us, what things were difficult or easy in our lives, how we were making the decisions about our lives and in general what are the main themes of our lives and what gives it its meaning. As a psychotherapist I often encounter these questions with the people I am working work and it is almost impossible not to observe, reflect and study them. Personally, these questions accompanied me, or rather, always guided me in my life, especially with regards to the criteria with which I needed to make decisions about my life that would eventually form what we call a life path. I imagine that many people at some point or periods in our lives have felt the burden and perhaps the fear that goes with responsibility whether we have made or will make are the right choices, whether they will make us happy and work for our own good, whatever we think that is. I have seen people 'staying still' for years when faced with a decision or a dilemma by ignoring it indefinitely and thus leaving a part of their self and life static. I find that every man at any given time does what he can and knows best given his self-knowledge, knowledge and perception of him and of life in general. Any person, that is, makes a choice (and non-choice is a choice) each time in the light of the hiring and what is important to him, i.e., uses some-consciously or unconsciously-criteria. These criteria or the reasons whether we created them, whether we learned them from others, are part of who we are or who we think we are. As we become more self-aware, then those grounds on which we have made a choice are sufficient to support any result, even if this is unpleasant. By understanding and accepting these reasons and also taking into account the factors that we do not have control over, we feel a silence within ourselves and not tension, because we acknowledge that we did the best we could and learned the lessons on what we might want to do differently in the future based on what is important to us. I understand that what I am describing may sound quite general, so it requires an example. When I decided to create this blog and start writing, I was confronted with the obstacle of what is called the 'guard of security'. I have been writing my thoughts in some form since I was little, but publishing them on my own web site initially seemed terrifying. 'Have you got anything to say?', 'You will receive many negative comments', 'People might not be interested in them' were just some of the critical suggestions that this guard was making to me . At the same time, I strongly felt that I wanted to express things, especially when they could potentially become stimulating thoughts for other people. I made the final decision with the thought that even if one person takes something out of or benefits in any way from what I write, for me it was worth the effort. Someone might consider this selfish and that would be another point of view. For me, however, this signifies the quintessential of life, that all forms of life are inextricably linked and constantly influenced by each other. In the same way that we would not exist if there were no plants to provide us with oxygen, in the same way we impact each other continuously in ways that we may not yet fully understand. But the fact that life is a huge interconnected web is undeniable. A smile can make someone's day, a piece of information can be helpful to someone else, a little honesty and understanding can raise awareness and open a communication channel with a another person. Of course it might also not. From our experiences we constantly learn things about ourselves, about the world and about life. This knowledge of ours, the information that actually forms our individual path that we have created, could perhaps, if we share it, become useful to someone else and thereby ensure the continuity of our existence and coexistence. When we recognise or remember that we belong to this magical web of life and that we are just a part of it (as individual consciousness) then our personal path can only be constantly connected and ending up as a drop with a special contribution to one big sea. With Love, Panos Dear reader,
In this article I want to discuss some observations about how everyone sees, experiences and relates to themselves and the world around them. Each one of us is unique and special and the soul that is essentially the essence of our existence, consists of distinct qualities, experiences and lessons that it has acquired in one or more incarnations (if one believes in them). In this life a soul enters a body and temporarily takes the form of a character that is born in a particular place, in a particular family, at a particular time to learn specific lessons. Something like the role that an actor embodies in a performance. This does not mean that the actor is exhausted in this role and that the role describes the whole of who she is or her potential. One's character is shaped according to the experiences that the person has in combination with the qualities of his soul, two people who have been exposed to the same situations growing up are not affected or react in the same way. Every experience leaves an imprint on a person's soul, the form of which depends both on the experience itself and on the type of response of the person on which the experience remains. This is also the field, the prism we would say, through which one starts to see and live himself and his life. Growing up, one might realise that she is not only the product of her original experiences (and those imprints) but that she has got a greater range of possibilities for herself and, consequently, on how to create the life based on who discovers herself to be. For example, a person growing up in a family that owns a family business can be expected to take it over as an adult, but also he can choose to pursue another interest of his, missing on one hand the certainty of the ready-to-run business, gaining, on the other, the joy of exploring his new interest. The criteria based on which one person makes one or the other choice constitute the prism, the glasses, the values of the soul that sees the world through. Similarly, on a psychological level, if someone has felt guilty about something in their lives as a child (the imprint), then they may continue to live their lives with guilt for many things and at the same time expect others to feel the same way, twist various information in order to fit to this pattern. In a similar way when someone wears glasses, he sees well, whilst pictures that are not covered by the lens are seen as blurry etc. The lesson of such a person in this life could be the integration of new information into his soul, may be self-forgiveness, love and respect for himself, acceptance of his innocence, etc. Like any lesson, they need the repetitive practice, and if they are not assimilated again and again until they become the new imprint, then they will come back again in circumstances, reflecting the already existing imprint. Similarly, when a lesson has been assimilated, it becomes the new prism through which someone sees, experiences and connects with the world and, thus, behaves towards the others. If, for example, someone values honesty, understanding, respect and love, then they will apply them to themselves and to the encounter with others. We are all in a continuous journey of learning from one another and there is no right or wrong way of living. With Love, Panos Dear reader,
The subject of this article seems to me to be particularly important as it lays behind many other issues I have previously discussed. The emotion of fear, its management, confrontation, understanding and resolution is particularly current especially with the rise of fascism but also in the world of self-improvement where fear is the 'bad' feeling that one has to overcome to be free in order to create the life she wants. Although part of this sentence may not be wrong, the obsession with which some may defend it may cover other things. In mental health field, feelings are seen as information about how we relate to ourselves and our environment. For example, we are happy when something is very pleasant and we feel sad when we experience something as very unpleasant. Fear serves to alert us of the presence of danger in order to act in such a way as to maintain ourselves in a state of security. If we did not feel afraid, then it is likely that we would get killed when passing a road with cars or by being hit by various objects we would meet in front of us. To some extent, therefore, fear contributes an ally to our survival and development playing an important role. The degree and the way each human organism activates or uses this feeling varies and is shaped as such for various reasons. As a psychotherapist, it is impossible not to refer to the early years of a person's life where he learns from the environment what is dangerous, what to be careful of and what to trust. We are taught how to use a knife, an electric cooker, how to protect ourselves from an animal etc. Like all other emotions, fear is created based on our past experiences and the information we have about the world. For example, if a mother is afraid of dogs (because maybe a dog once bite her) then she can teach her child that all dogs are dangerous and he is going the be afraid of them too. However, as the child is getting older she may have different experiences of dogs and decide to approach them with curiosity by learning if or how they can be dangerous for her. Another cause of fear may be the encounter with the unknown, that is, when we live an unprecedented experience, our minds may employ whatever information they have in order to calculate and prevent any 'damage' or 'loss' to our system, e.g. feeling pain, etc. The mind fills, that is, any empty space of information (or processing of new information) with whatever information (scenarios) it already has and can create in order to prepare our system as a mapped field for what may happen in order to take the most advantageous action. The intensity of the experience of a feeling is, therefore, a correlation of the experiences, knowledge, (memories), the information that a person has stored for the particular thing, and the means he believes he possesses to deal with it. For example, if a dog attempts to attack a person, then the availability and use of a wood stick can be a protective and deterrent factor to the attack. Another possibility would be that the person does not see or do not know how to use the wood stick and, thus, he will continue to feel defenceless against the imminent attack. Depending on the presence of the factors of this correlation, the organism almost automatically chooses the best possible solution to manage and resolve the situation in order for the organism to remain safe (and therefore alive). When it concerns dangers of non materialistic nature, things become more complicated. The fear of an illness, for example, may be related to the fear of death, the fear of learned helplessness, the fear of loneliness, and so on. Regardless of the opinion, information or personal experience we personally hold for a person' s situation, when someone feels something, fear for example, for him this feeling is real and we must respond to it as such, if we want to be of any help to this person. Possible ways of dealing with fear can be to 'fight', 'flight', or 'freeze' by being paralysed and result in prolonged inactivity as the person may feel unable to manage and survive the feeling of fear, so he decides not to confront it. In addition to courage, dealing with a fear presupposes that the person feels that she will benefit more by doing something than doing nothing and also that the person believes that she has got the resources to cope with it (strength, support, etc.). And that's where we return like the snake bites its tail, to where we started from, what we have learned to fear, to trust, and ultimately what life scenario we are living. Admitting of feeling fearful by itself is considered by some an act of cowardice, weakness, disturbance as if a person chooses consciously not to want to resolve an internal conflict that keeps him 'stuck' in the same position. However, seeing fear from the point of view of knowledge and evolution, then we understand that the person who is afraid is in distress because he feels that a part of him is in danger and that he needs something to feel safe in order to be able to resolve the fear and incorporate the new experience (the same one who is afraid of). This can be acquiring more information, receive support, acknowledgement, appreciation and confidence in the strengths and qualities of oneself, gaining trust in others, etc. If we all learn to recognise, express and accept everything we feel including what we are afraid of, then we will see how many things we have in common rather than separate us as people and also what resources (help, etc.) we need from ourselves and others to move from an unstable position to really live a free movement life. With love, Panos Dear reader,
It is Holy Week here in Orthodox Greece and these days call many people for peace and reflection. Believing in Christianity or not, we cannot help but acknowledge that for those who believe this week it is a series of rituals with many important messages. I therefore wanted to refer to one of these messages that I consider to be more present and important because of its humane nature. For me every religion is about humanity, it is an existential 'proposition' about how a person can live his life, what is the meaning of it, what is there after the earthly life and so on. At the risk of sounding like a priest, the message I keep from Easter is the direction of attention to the resurrection. Whatever kind of life one has chosen to live, it has her worries, anxieties, reflections, difficulties, joys, achievements, sorrows etc, that is the complex wave of life. In this constant busyness and alternation we may not have the time or energy to locate (i.e. find the space) for other things that are not obvious at first glance and be present at the forefront. The intention of this article is to draw the attention, albeit briefly, on these things that exist and we do not often look at. It may be a desire that we want to fulfil but we never find time and energy for it, it can be a conversation with ourselves that we avoid, it can be a behaviour we repeat and we do not know exactly why, and whatever else that might be. Everything we feel, think, desire acquires the importance we give to it. If we do not pay attention to it then either is being resolved as not important (having fulfilled its role) or it remains dormant, inactive, dead. In the second case, we end up continue living- with more or less consciousness of- with something dead in us, which can with its decay touch and other previously 'healthy' parts. In this very resurrection I refer to... To the one that we realise that something within us is dead and we have the choice of either let it be removed from our organism, or bringing it back to life by activating it, giving it meaning even for the first time, doing something about it in the same way we give food to our bodies in order to remain alive. Everything in order to stay alive and healthy or to revive require some kind of 'food' which might be showing care, express feelings, show attention, acts of love, interest etc. Often by simply acknowledging what is happening to us or why we are doing something, it may be enough to feel some relief and continue the flow of energy within us. Nature teaches us every year through the cyclic process of seasons how birth, blossom, death and rebirth are part of the cycle of life. Always seeking the completion and the expansion of consciousness, days like this I cannot not recover the forgotten and significant, the unspeakable, the things that exist in the room and somehow need to be arranged in the space. By giving them the meaning we want to give them we can maximum the space that is available to us and have all our parts active and ready to be used. This might not be easy and may require acceptance, forgiveness and change within. For all these things that are waiting to become alive again or to be lived for the first time, like children who want to play freely after school with only an open heart. With Love, Panos Dear reader,
This article stems from my recent observations, findings and experiences that I wanted to share as such and less as thought provoking reflections (as if there should be a distinction between the two). In theory we know that each one of us is special, who consists of combinations of different genes, thoughts, emotions, behaviours, experiences etc. In practice, however, we tend to put people into categories, to say such a group behaves in a certain way and another group in a different way; to a certain extent it has proved useful, in order to somehow understand people and the world. Moreover, it has been useful in science to understand that what happens in one's body occurs in others' too, so the impact of a particular surgery will be the same in more than one patient. But maybe the result will not be the same. Based on my experience in learning about mental health drugs, while common effects are observed, the overall effects vary from person to person. So no matter how much we try to simulate an average person, he will always be relative and escape the absolute definition. When we say that each one of us is special and unique means that each person exists or experiences something completely unique at any given moment in terms of kind, quality and intensity that cannot be compared to anything else that ever existed or will ever be again. There will clearly be similarities with other experiences, but two occurrences, for example, of the same surgery can never be identified as the same. Staying with such a realisation everyone will have their own thoughts, senses, worries, reflections etc. By staying with this thought we may realise a great deal about our lives, e.g. how worthy we all are as a mixture of matter, energy, life, God, how reasonable it is to feel alone when others do not exactly understand us or how much we need to explain our experience for someone else to understand us. I personally do not think it is one of the easy discoveries that someone can make and assimilate, but it is still purely personal. Many times writing these articles and indirectly describing something I have experienced myself or noticed or want to express, I realise that other people may have experienced or noticed the same, opposites or different things. So I often wonder how much we actually allow ourselves to hear something outside of ourselves and how much we think we know or understand others. If, for example, while listening to someone describing one of their experiences, it reminds us of a similar experience then it is highly probable that we will not hear that piece of information shared by the other that will not be in line with our own respective experience. What ςe know of ourselves (as research from the field of consciousness informs us) derives from our memories, as our present moment is a continuous invention of ourselves. Obviously speaking from a specific position and experience that of a psychotherapist (and of a person with the interest and temperament to become one ), I frequently have the honour of being a witness and a participant in the hidden and profound worlds of people. Of the things they fear, those that they have never been revealed before, those that were never recognised as desires, meanings and dreams, those who seek to be resolved by the entanglement that have been wrapped around over the years. Every time I am amazed at the uniqueness with which life is expressed through each person. When a person simply narrates, describes, expresses, communicates with sincerity and truth the complexity of all that she feels, experiences, thinks, lives there there is no ugliness but only beauty and art, there is no judgement of good and evil but only love, there is no right and wrong but only understanding. It's like someone is watching a rainbow and consciously trying to forget that it's not related to the rain that just preceded it. How one becomes aware, connected and manages the uniqueness of himself and others, is yet another personal question... With Love, Panos Dear Reader,
This article rather arises from a deeper need to understand and express what is related to heart and love. Perhaps everyone to some extent has experienced a deep enthusiasm, falling in love with a person (or maybe with one thing, activity etc). We see in that person something that interests us and we want to get in touch with him and to a degree to make it our own. We recognise in him qualities that we appreciate and we fall blindly in a game of revenge, risk, connection, effort, battle, naivety in the new unknown territory that attracts us. Of course, like anything else in our lives we do not choose it randomly. We may not be fully aware of the reasons why we chose it, but there are always reasons.It's like going to school, if we knew how to write, we wouldn't have to go to school. So we live things, precisely because we have to learn from them about ourselves, about others, the world and life. Just like at school, there are lessons that we follow and learn from them with more pleasure than others depending on our temperament and interests. From my own experience in life, the biggest lessons (mainly those concerning our own existence) are learned with a lot of pain and the reason is simple. When someone's going through a surgery to fix something in his organs, he needs anaesthesia so it doesn't hurt. The exact same thing is when someone 'grows' emotionally or spiritually, he passes through the respective 'surgery' procedure where something is being removed, something is added and incorporated in order for the person to incorporate the lesson, this new information. Thus, it acquires what I call 'new (emotional) body)' or ' shell', until the next time it breaks again. This is the perpetual movement, change and evolution of life. I am among those people who believe that the canvas of our lives consists of lessons that we learn through experiences.Everything we do we do it because we want to feel good, to fulfil a need, to feel in a certain way, etc. So when we fall in love with a human being, we are voluntarily willing to experience ourselves differently in our lives, in a way that we are not accustomed to being and doing. While we wore a certain costume and played a few specific roles, all of a sudden we can change costumes, scenery and play various roles together with someone else. Like in a free fall, we become a perpetual stranger along with someone else whose adrenaline derives from the experience of self flexibility. Like all things in life (pleasant and not) they end some time and there begins the question whether the 'game' will continue or not. For some people the answer is automatically 'no' because they continuously want to have this intense adrenaline rush. So they're going to orient themselves to finding the next partner for the experience. Other people may perceive this experience as random and unexplained and let it perish as mysteriously as it came struggling to find a balance between their sanity and logic and this frantic feeling. Other people may feel that these experiences do not happen to them very often and want to continue the contact and emotion with the person for whom they felt them. It's not an easy thing to accept, but a characteristic of falling in love is that we like the other's desire for us and the effect we have on him. If a relationship remains in this aspect which is the bait,the stickiness of the honey, then it will not be able to sustain itself in this form for a long time, because at some point the person who is falling will meet the ground. If people want more than this adrenaline, then falling in love can be transformed into love. And that's where most relationships end because we expect them to be maintained on the same terms. To love someone does not have the goal to make the other who we want them to be and vice versa. Loving someone means being free as adults to love one another for who they are, to ask for what we want and to have the option to accept or refuse and vice versa, to continue to evolve in parallel with the other and to deeply share the lessons and journeys of our lives. Love calls for much more vulnerability, maturity, enquiry, honesty, dedication than the party of excitement of falling in love.This is why it is much more difficult to achieve. Love calls for continuous voluntary surgeries to cure and evolve ourselves within the safe environment of a trusting relationship. But Let's not misunderstand love with flattery. Love does not keep anyone free and limited, does not judge and criticise anyone for his past, present and future, it does not condemn anyone for his choices and actions in moments of strength and weakness. Love appreciates, understands, forgives and embraces seeing beauty in everything because it knows that perfection and imperfection are two sides of the same coin, that of existence. The heart as the vehicle of love does not make mistakes and always chooses someone that it can learn from. I am wondering how often do we let ourselves listen to and follow our hearts? With Love, Panos Dear reader,
Some time has passed since the last article and this was because sometimes it requires silence and time for assimilation rather than expression. In this article I want to discuss something that it concerns me and a lot of people, it's the 'letting go' of something. This may be an idea, a situation, a job, a dream, a person, a relationship, a habit etc. I believe that everything that we 'hold on' start from an interest, a bit of curiosity for something that moves us and interests us. Let's not forget that we are primarily made up of energy that is either spent, either stored in our system. If we follow this interest and get the information or experience that we want from it, then we create what the corresponding therapy says, a gestalt, a comprehensive total that is more than just the sum of its parts. So, having experienced this whole for something specific, we can go on to the next interest. These interests could be whatever we do in our lives be something very complex to something very simple. Imagine, in other words, while we brush our teeth at the same time to attempt to cook, try to dress up and talk on the phone. We would probably feel frustrated and dissatisfied that maybe we did not do any of the tasks with the competence and pleasure that we would have liked because we were trying to squeeze them all in at the same time. The completion, that is, of any act, energy etc that we do with relative sufficiency, brings satisfaction and pleasure. There are things we cling onto intensely or for a long time e.g. a job, a relationship, a goal. Over time (as much or as little) we may forget or lose our attention from the reason why we were initially interested in that particular thing. This reason (or reasons) is more related to us and less to the thing itself. It Is our gestalt that, of course, concerns something external but its home is within us. If, therefore, the external circumstances, information, and responses that are being received change, can our original interest change? For some things, maybe so, for others, it maybe not. If, for example, we just got our first job as a lawyer and the company we work for doesn't appreciate us, then it doesn't mean that the law profession doesn't suit us but maybe we either have to ask for changes in our working terms and conditions or change company. The principle is the same for any area we are concerned with, of relationships, work, goals, etc. Each one of us is unique in the world and it has his own value and shines on her own, whether we recognise it or not, whether it is recognised by others or not. This glow looks like a spotlight when we show who we are,what we want, what's important to us. We cannot control whether the others recognise it, but we can control whether we recognise it. If we do not recognise it then we will remain in jobs and situations that will not appreciate us for whatever reason, in relationships that will ask us to change (or we will ask the other to change), in projects that we will never be enough to fulfil. Our individual value and preciousness is not relative depending on the environment. This is the external view of the preciousness through the eyes of someone else who will always be relative. Here I'm talking about the worthiness and preciousness of someone's existence. The process of 'letting go' is a complex and painful process, as we must opt out or transform something that has been of interest and of value to us. We often get prematurely disconnected from people and situations because it feels almost impossible for us to enter a vulnerable position and say how we feel, what we think and what we want as responsible adults (not so much for the other but to ourselves because it shows who we are recognising ourselves the rights to ask for what we want from our environment – and maybe we get it or maybe not). If we have not tried enough to achieve healthy interdependence or understand enough about what we are attached to and why we want to 'let go', then attempts at detachment will be unsuccessful and will bring more pain. If, for example, we remain in the job that we do not feel appreciated, after we have expressed what we want, waiting to be appreciated and feeling angry when it is not done, then we suffer in utopia waiting for something to change in the other, while essentially we need to change how we look and behave towards ourselves. On the way to adulthood we often transfer the responsibility to the other for the things we do not do for ourselves. Along with the pain of loss (real or mental separation from a part of ourselves), when 'letting go' is done consciously and from the heart, is essentially based on the longing for freedom, on the choice towards a healthier relationship with oneself and with others and on the acknowledgement of his preciousness. With Love, Panos Dear Reader,
In this article I want to discuss a topic that on its basis is simple but also difficult to understand and assimilate (or at least I found it hard enough). Since childhood we get used to the idea that there is always a person who knows something more and we are the students who will learn from him. Indeed, someone is toilet train us, teaches us how to write and read, how to play a sport or a musical instrument or how to speak a foreign language. A teacher essentially transfers knowledge (a bunch of organised information) about a particular subject to someone else, in the same way that he himself learned that knowledge from someone else. This knowledge can lead to the acquisition of a skill or not. How many of us have tried as children to learn something new and for whatever reason we did not continue it enough to take this knowledge and perhaps develop that particular skill? But what happens when the field of knowledge is life itself, how we manage ourselves, situations, others, etc. ? Who is our teacher then and on what knowledge we will base our life skills to live the life that we want? The first teachers in our lives are our parents and the immediate environment in which we are being raised. We copy their behaviours, we learn from them what is considered to be good or bad, what is permitted and what is not, what is beneficial and what is harmful, how much to trust ourselves and how much others, what we can do and what we can not etc. So we consciously and unconsciously create a first internal handbook on how we can live our lives. Certainly, a great role is played by the temperament, the qualities of the individual for what exactly manual he will create; twins growing up in the same environment they will have different reactions to it and will write different chapters about it. This manual contains information (opinions, ways, etc.) that we may agree on or not agree with but we likely use in our everyday life without realising it, like the grammar rules in our language that we do not think about but we apply them daily. As we grow older and getting to know ourselves through our experiences, we begin to realise what is in our handbook and if we no longer agree with what it says we start to erase and write something else, a new information in its place. This can be done consciously or unconsciously and from that moment onward we can see that by rewriting our book we create and awaken the teacher within us. This is the inner voice, the competent authority within us that in conjunction with our soul (deeper existence) it draws from our experiences the lessons that are personally useful for us and our lives. For example, if we have learned from our various experiences that 'it is not good to fully trust people because they will betray you', then in our relationships we will always keep a part of us out of the relationship for fear of trusting the other completely and letting go. In fact, every relationship, everything with which connect reflects our relationship with different parts of ourselves (which is not static). With whatever colours, shapes and scents we depict the external world, we use the same for some parts of the internal. It Is a profound relief (for me it was at least) to realise that every action involves simultaneously a reaction. When someone listens to or helps someone does not just do it for the sake of the other-that may be the original motive-and also for his own benefit. Similarly, when one seems to 'take only' from others then he tries to fill in some empty space and at the same time he gives the opportunity to the other who mainly gives to find out for himself how much he gives, if he appreciates them and if he also wants to himself to take respectively. Continuing these thoughts, we discover that a teacher in the sense of the person who shows us something new, can be anyone and anything around us precisely because it shows us another side of the world, another side of ourselves. We may not like this parts of us, we may not be accustomed to, we may feel uncomfortable about them and they may be conflicting with what is already written in our manual, but yet they are as true as any other part that we know of ourselves.. With all the new methods of self-exploration, personal development, self-search, healing etc I feel that we often forget that the main 'critic', teacher, priest, companion and supporter who filters his experiences for his benefit lives deep within us, can take any form and is capable of anything. With Love, Panos Dear Reader,
I wanted to write this article a long ago and relates to my observations and experiences living in the greek reality. It certainly contains my own perceptions and feelings based on my own experiences and my innate interest in 'why' people do the things they do. Growing up in Greece I was always finding it difficult to understand how in such a country with rich natural beauty and resources can live people who often grumble, are not happy, do harm to themselves with smoking, drinking etc and often show lack of respect for their neighbour and their environment. This reality was the only thing I knew of and I always had objections with and only when I experienced another reality, that of England I saw that things could be different. To clarify that by the term 'reality' I mean the creation, structure, organisation and operation of a society and its prevalent mentality. Every constructed reality, a society consisting of some people who gathered to compose a whole base of certain rules, has its qualities, strengths and lessons to improve. England has its own and Greece has others, just like two children in one class, in a school we call Earth. In England I learned that people can advance professionally based on their value, knowledge and skills rather than on who they know, I learned that people from all over the world with any differences such as religion, skin colour, sexuality etc. can coexist peacefully and respect one another, I learned that there can be dialogue between people and that the truth never belongs to one but there are many truths, I learned that the assumption of 'I can't' hides in it either the 'I don't want to' or the 'I don't know how' and I've learned that if you don't try, you'll never know the outcome. Certainly the list of the things I learned is much bigger and consists of soft and hard lessons. Returning to Greece I knew I was leaving behind this reality and some of those rules that I would so miss because they put my life in order. Also, I knew that all these lessons would go through tests on whether or not they were assimilated, sort of like a a surprise test in the classroom I mentioned above. So I had to confront and manage a self in an internal Greece, as I remembered Greece to be and one self as I am now in an external Greece that exists now. I am interested in focusing on the micro-cosmic space of man and not on discussing complex social phenomena. It is with great interest that I often try to decode or give an adequate answer to the question on how the modern greek man chooses to live like this and manage his country in this way. Clearly the reasons are many but I ended up with one that I think is among the main and it is that of trust. If we think for a moment on the dynamic of a (forgive me but I refer to the norm, not the mediocre) Greek family then we find that a child does not learn to trust himself, his neighbour, the society. Since one's parents provide everything, and on the other hand, society is manipulated for the benefit of the child, then the child learns to create external egocentric bases wherever he can. Behaviours such as parking on disabled ramps, driving without a helmet, appointing and priority of acquaintances, overriding waiting queues, tax evasion, etc. indicate that the person has not learned to stand within his own boundaries, in his responsibility towards himself and towards the other, to respect the concept of law and society. In a society where its citizens do not follow the laws made to survive and live together that have been created by those who they have elected, it is a society of teenagers who does not know where to go and what it wants, it is blindly angry with the other as a cause of its misery, does not see a bigger picture and is ultimately not stable in its development. As long as the mirror remains covered and becoming an adult is a work only for others, then we will continue to live in a jungle where one will throw their banana peels to the other and wait for someone else to pick them up. With Love, Panos |
Panos GoumalatsosCounsellor/Psychotherapist, Archives
March 2023
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