God and Humans

(Infant Anxiety Discussion)

Mahjong

Hello John. Did you ever read my blog on Infant Anxiety? It relates closely to your theme.

Metta.

John Dishwasher

Yes I have Gary. In fact, I was just working up this response to it: The thing about it for me, as you saw in The Cold River Boy, is that I've really begun to think that the source of most unhappiness is the fact we are trying to get away from that anxiety. The idea that my story suggests is that if we stop "fighting" the anxiety, then it won't hurt so much; that actually that anxious feeling is our natural state, and that we suffer only because we fail to embrace it; that, in fact, what we interpret as "pain" is not pain at all but a natural feeling that we have become unaccustomed to. The caretaker in your blog who warms the cold child, is the equivalent of the woman in my story who first builds the bridge to protect the child from the cold. And it is her, and her unwitting tenderness, who first teaches us away from the "pain." Away and away until finally we have learned from her and others so many protections, (so many "bridges," as I call them; or "psychological structures" as you call them) that we don't recognize the "anxiety" or the "cold river" anymore, it is something foreign and threatening. And it's only because we don't recongize it that it hurts us.

You say the relief of the anxiety is the primary motivational factor in the child and the adult, and I agree, but I think we are taught to seek that relief. It think it's possible that the great teachers were simply people who were strong enough to not turn away from the "pain," and that in that "rawness," that "cold," that "anxiety" saw the truth. They saw the truth simply because they were strong enough to look at it.

We're really talking about exactly the same thing, I think. But at the end you suggest we should be ready "to take care of that infant, to give it our attention and affection." I think however we should experiment with agitating it even further. I think we should try to learn how to not give it affection, to not care for it, for all of that is just a bridge that separates us from the truth.

Mahjong

You said earlier that you believe we should "try to learn how to not give (that infant, anxiety) care or affection" but should experiment with agitating it even further. Your view is that such care and affection is just a bridge that separates us from the truth. We seem to understand this anxiety in quite similar ways, but have different ways of dealing with it.

I just say that i seem to suffer less when i give that care and affection. If i try to imagine agitating it further, it just feels very uncomfortable, as if i'm tempting an unpleasant fate. - That is much less comfortable, to the point of even greater suffering. I just stay with the approach that i sense as involving less suffering. (With some consideration of the possible suffering of others.)

Metta. - Gary