Category Archives: Psychology

One Basic Purpose for Living: To Thoroughly Experience & Completely Understand The Mystery of Being Both Alive & Human

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One Basic Purpose for Living:
To Thoroughly Experience & Completely Understand
The Mystery of Being Both Alive & Human

In spite of being largely unconscious, and usually based on assumptions, beliefs, feelings and ideas that we absorb from our social environment, everyone’s life is to some degree structured by purposes.  For the top 10 percent of our species, the purpose for living is to accomplish, acquire, and be recognized.  In other words, money, power, pleasure and fame are our primary motivators.  For the vast majority of us, however, we simply want to have enough accomplishment to acquire physical, financial, and emotional security.  As a result, our first purpose is to have a secure job, satisfying mate, a house and cars, and probably children.  Then, we want entertainment and friends.

At the lower end of the social/financial scale, we just want to live with some kind of decent and dignified survival and peace. Wherever on the scale we happen to be, there is no education or social awareness to show us that mastering the ability to thoroughly experience and completely understand human life is necessary to fulfill our potentials, feed our needs, complete our development, and create lasting happiness.

For all our technological advancements the development of self-awareness, and our understanding of the mystery of being both alive and human, is pitifully meager. This observation only means that it is now time, perhaps way past time, to learn about ourselves and life with the purpose of understanding the mystery of being alive and human.

It just so happens that I have spent a lifetime pursuing the answer to one question—”What, if anything, is necessary to make human life satisfying and meaningful?”  First understanding the question, then exploring life and the minds and experiences of other people has been necessary for me to discover that the invisible internal world of human experience is the source for layer upon layer of complex answers to my simple question.

 I first asked my question and defined my purpose at the age of five when my grandmother died. She was my favorite person, and really the only one who actually cared about and nurtured me. Even at the time, I could see my grandmother had had a very difficult life—married to a sphinx of a man with the tenderness of a stone—four children, all girls—hence one source of her interest in me—going thru World War I, the depression, then world War II, and finally, dying in 1950 at age 55 having experienced little joy and no fulfillment, seemed to my young mind an exercise in futility.

My response was to see that I too would go through a lifespan and die. Given my grandmother’s experience, this made me fervently wish I had never been born.

Since it was apparent that I was already alive and there was only one way out—much like being pregnant—I decided to make the most of it and spend my life figuring out precisely what would make this mystery of being alive worth effort and suffering, knowing in advance, the inevitable end to the story is my personal extinction!

In response, I spent my life gathering information about the mystery of being alive and human.  I have read endless biographies to learn how famous people chose to live.  I read literature, and studied the lives of writers.  I also studied music and musicians, painters, sculptors, actors, and other artists to see how artistic people chose to live.

Eventually, I studied scientists, naturalists, artists, businessman, politicians, soldiers, teachers, doctors, psychologists and lawyers, and anyone I met to learn how they responded to life and to what degree they were developed, fulfilled, and truly happy.  First with themselves, then with relationships, and finally, with their careers and professions. I discovered that people were more likely to be happy with their careers, than with themselves and their most important relationships.                                    

Ultimately, I could see that no matter how smart, successful, rich, or famous someone might be, no one knew how to thoroughly experience and completely understand the mystery of being alive. Most were honest and admitted that for them life began and ended a mystery, which meant in part, they never did understand their own internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks—or how to create emotionally bonded long-term intimate relationships that were satisfying, equal, and reciprocal.

This information helped me see that I needed to clearly define, “thoroughly experience” and “completely understand” in relation to first fulfilling ourselves, and then loving life and other people. In exploring the meaning of thoroughly experience, I learned that we needed to be innocent, curious, and grounded in accurate observations of reality—  rather than be disconnected by vague beliefs, assumptions, and feelings. I also saw we needed to gather the information provided by our senses, and we needed to learn about Nature, how to experience and express love, how to explore life and discover what is worth loving, and how to use every experience and insight to slowly develop wisdom.

During this process, I learned that experiencing love begins with innocence and curiosity, while expressing love requires learning and nurturing. Wisdom, I discovered, comes from using information gathered from our observations, and connections we make using reason and experiments to learn how life works until we completely understand and thoroughly master our internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks.

I have written down much of what I learned in the seven books currently available on my website, and use all of it in the individual sessions, videos and workshops that I offer. If this blog has awakened some innocent curiosity, consider exploring CMED.

Creating a Conscious Context Necessary For a Completely Fulfilled & Meaningful Life

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Creating a Conscious Context Necessary
For a Completely Fulfilled & Meaningful Life

Everyone’s life is structured, and often limited by its context. By context, I mean we live with purposes and priorities that in normal life, are often unconscious. Generally, we limit ourselves to external purposes and priorities that are material, tangible, and physical. As a result, we typically pursue lives we hope will be safe, comfortable, pleasant, and somehow, without ever creating a single clear definition, fulfilling.

The primary problem with a normal context for human life is that we have no clear definitions or detailed understanding of a single internal need, potential, purpose, goal, or developmental task. In addition, even our ideas about external fulfillment are built on assumptions, beliefs, and feelings that we unconsciously adopt, rather than consciously explore and clearly understand. In stark contrast, a conscious context for everyday life is built on detailed definitions for both internal and external fulfillment and meaning.

In order to create detailed definitions, we need to learn how to concentrate on one topic at a time, then accurately observe the facts of everyday life, and finally, apply reason and experiment until we can clearly define and thoroughly understand our topic. This is the process necessary to think for understanding, which is the basis for creating the conscious context necessary for a completely fulfilled and meaningful life. Thinking for understanding is also necessary for taking the next step in our internal evolution.

The primary challenge of the 21st century is that the power of our technology has far outstripped the power of our understanding. The tragic consequence is that as a species, we have not developed either the love or the wisdom necessary to use technology to enhance everyone’s individual life, and protect the planet. Instead, we use technology to dominate and exploit both the planet and each other, with the inevitable consequence of destroying the quality of life for both ourselves, and our ailing planet.

To nurture the planet and fulfill ourselves, we must expand the context of human life to include the entire internal world of our mental and emotional needs, potentials, and developmental tasks that we have heretofore allowed to remain unexplored and undefined. We also need to clearly define the physical and material needs and potentials that are pre-requisites to fulfillment in the external world we are more familiar with, but still don’t really understand.

What everyone needs to see is that we normally think and talk relying on generalized conclusions, and never create clear and experiential definitions of our topic. Without clear definitions of every significant word and issue, understanding is impossible.         

Of course, without understanding we can never become loving and wise, or internally competent to create fulfillment, meaning, and lasting happiness.  As a species, we have learned that clear definitions are required to advance science and technology, but we still rely on vague feelings and beliefs, or generalized conclusions and assumptions when it comes to defining our internal development, level of consciousness, and the internal competence required to fulfill ourselves, and nurture other people and Nature.

Awakening a burning desire to master the complex task of thinking for understanding for the innocent purpose of learning how to become a source of love rather than a needy recipient changes the context of our entire life experience.  Now, we commit to becoming conscious, caring, and competent in the internal and external dimensions of human experience. A genuine understanding of the fact that learning how to think for understanding is an evolutionary step in human development is needed to awaken a burning desire, which is a pre-requisite for creating whole-hearted commitment.

Even in this short discussion, is it becoming evident that mental and emotional development is a step-by-step educational experience, not a simplistic one-step conclusion, or quick technique that will magically solve every problem and leave us happy ever after? If so, then your observation is accurate and follows common sense, because just like our advances in science and technology have grown over time fueled by the concentrated effort of many people, so the internal evolution of our species will require the same or even greater degree of concentration, time, and effort.

Time is of the essence. The problems and conflicts that plague every culture on the planet, along with the global changes in climate and ever-increasing demands on ever-decreasing resources means that we live in a world that is becoming ever more fragile and uncertain. At the moment, we just assume that technology will solve our problems. We fail to see that as a species, we lack the consciousness, caring, and internal competence to understand both ourselves and the issues with enough clarity and detail to see what is needed, agree on a plan of action, and then work together to create a conscious world capable of sustaining a quality life for all its inhabitants—human and animal.

We have already proven that technology alone will not save us, simply because fear, greed, and a lack of understanding motivate us to use technology to dominate and exploit rather than nurture and protect. This means our only real hope, individually and as a species, is to master the internal development that is our uniquely human, but heretofore, unfulfilled potential.

The education provided by CMED offers a detailed step-by-step process for first mastering thinking for understanding, and then the internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks required for the next step in our mental and emotional evolution.

Contrasting Licensed Psychotherapy & Unlicensed Coaching With Education In Mental & Emotional Development

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Contrasting Licensed Psychotherapy &
Unlicensed Coaching With Education In
Mental & Emotional Development

Since the middle of the twentieth century “therapy” has become a staple of normal American life.  It may be a surprise to people outside the field that in fact there is no agreed upon definition for what constitutes “psychotherapy.”  In fact, once a person has a state issued license—whether as a Marriage & Family therapist, Clinical Psychologist, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, or Psychiatrist (MD licensed in Psychiatry)—whatever he or she decides to do, is now legally “psychotherapy”.

This means there is no agreed-upon protocol for treatment, and no objective criteria for measuring effectiveness.  As a result, in this highly-regulated profession pretending to be scientific, in real-life practice it is in effect the wild-west where almost anything goes.

So if a therapist believes in reincarnation, and that we carry inside ourselves memories of past lives, then he can offer “past life regressions” where the client is induced into a hypnotic state to help her remember who she was in the past.  The theory is that our experience in past lives affects our mental/emotional states in the present, and that connecting the two will help us understand ourselves and make needed changes.

Less fanciful but no more substantiated are more traditional forms of therapy that range from Behavior to Reality therapy, from Psychoanalysis and Ego-psychology to Neuro-linguistic programming and Positive Psychology, to advice giving and problem solving that we could get from an insightful friend.  To date, there is no therapy style that can experientially define and objectively measure precisely what it offers, or even define specifically what is gained if the therapy is successful. 

The consequence is that as a healing profession, “psychotherapy” is strictly a faith-based enterprise—just like religion.  Of course, in our feeling-based world, for most people, this is not a problem.  Often, all we want is a therapist who makes us feel good, so real-life effectiveness is not a consciously defined criteria.

Mostly, we are hungry for energy and attention offered in a context of real or feigned interest by someone who at least pretends to know more about life, living and intimate relationships than we do, and mostly that is exactly what we get!  Feigned interest, and the pretense our therapist knows more than we do.

Coaching, in a sense is more honest.  It is un-regulated, and anyone who has the balls to pretend they know more than other people, or who simply offers some level of warm interest and undivided attention, or perhaps is a charismatic “know-it-all” who makes people feel special just because they know him/her—much like Jim Jones who got nine hundred people to “drink the Kool-Aid” based solely on his personality and say-so—can virtually, literally, or figuratively “hang-out his shingle” and be a coach.

The problem is that as individuals, and as a species, we need objective training in all the “internal” dimensions of real-life human experience so we can fulfill our potential to become consciously content ourselves, and developmentally competent to first understand, and then effectively respond to the complex problems of modern human existence.

Anyone can review the major issues of modern life—whether the personal happiness of each individual, or the well-being and even survival of our species—and see that the global problems of resource depletion, climate change, economic inequality, political strife, religious conflict, species extinction, etc. etc., are far beyond our developmental capacity to either understand, or resolve.

Clearly, as individuals and as a species, we need the mental and emotional development necessary to think through complex problems until we understand what is both true and needed—for ourselves, mates and children, as well as the global healing of Nature, and the well-being of all people.

We need an objective and measurable level of training that clearly defines our own and everyone else’s universal internal needs and potentials, as well as developmental tasks, so we can embark on an educational process to acquire the skills and awareness necessary to think for understanding, build emotional bonds, and master the ability to express love, pursue truth, experience beauty and develop wisdom.

Neither therapy or coaching can offer a single step toward objective internal development, and while each may feel good emotionally, like a body massage can feel good physically, if we observe the objective results there is no real change in our ability to think for understanding, or master internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks that occurs because of a mental and emotional massage, i.e., psychotherapy or coaching.