View source | |
# 2022-06-21 - There Is A Way by Sat Santokh | |
# Chapter 1, My Roots | |
When my grandfather was over 60, he was severely burned in a fire. | |
After being in the hospital for a month or so, they told him that he | |
would never walk again. He immediately asked to be sent home. Then, | |
whenever he was alone, he would flop himself out of bed and crawl | |
around the house and up and down the stairs. Within a month he was | |
back on the truck with my father. | |
The Oz books were so real to me that when I decided to be a pilot at | |
age eight, it was so I could cross the uncrossable desert and take my | |
place in Oz along with Dorothy, Trot, Captain Bill, and Buttonbright. | |
At ten, I became an atheist, but, I know realize, a Jewish kind of | |
atheist, where I frequently lectured the God I did not believe in for | |
the world's ills and disasters, alternating back and forth from | |
denial of God to anger with God. | |
I felt an ever increasing degree of franticness within the peace | |
movement in our responding to one crisis after another, which, for | |
me, peaked with the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, when it | |
became appallingly clear that we were at the brink of World War III. | |
I felt this possibility so strongly that after taking part in an | |
8,000-person protest march to the United Nations at the height of the | |
crisis, I solemnly bade goodbye to my friends, telling them that we | |
might not see each other again, and went home to prepare for the end. | |
Most of my friends felt that I was being excessively melodramatic. | |
However, many years later, in 2006, at a meeting of the ministers of | |
defense of the various countries involved in the Cuban crisis | |
convened by Robert McNamara, who had been the US Secretary of Defense | |
at the time of the confrontation, it was revealed that the situation | |
had been just as dire as I thought. McNamara himself had bid his | |
family goodbye that night, telling his wife that they might not see | |
the morning. It turned out that the decision whether or not to fire | |
the Soviet missiles that were based in Cuba was entirely in the hands | |
of the Soviet captain in charge. If the United States Navy had fired | |
a shot to stop the Soviet vessels cruising towards Cuba from crossing | |
the line in the ocean that President Kennedy had stipulated, the | |
Soviet captain would have opened fire on the United States with | |
nuclear missiles, and the unimaginable Armageddon would surely have | |
begun. | |
# Chapter 2, From Psychedelics to Spiritual Practice | |
By 1966, I felt burned out. I had been working over 70 hours a week | |
with no breaks, maintaining regular daytime office hours, and then | |
going to meetings, or speaking opportunities just about every night | |
and on the weekends. From my perspective, there was no progress at | |
all. Yes, the Peace Movement was growing exponentially, but so was | |
the war. | |
Michael Rossman, one of the founders and important leaders of the | |
Free Speech Movement at University of California Berkeley began to | |
speak of LSD as potentially the most revolutionary way to shift our | |
collective consciousness. I attended the big "Human Be-In" that took | |
place at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park, with Alan Ginsberg, | |
Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass), the Grateful Dead, | |
Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver, and other beat and hippie notables. | |
Having become disillusioned with my role in the Peace Movement, I | |
resigned from the WRL and became the treasurer, chief cook, and | |
bottle washer for this committee. I was given an office at 715 | |
Ashbury, the Grateful Dead office building. Our committee began to | |
organize frequent free concerts either in Golden Gate Park or the | |
Panhandle, and as I was our (unpaid) staff person, I became the | |
liaison with the San Francisco Park Department, arranging for permits | |
and all the other details. | |
We must have talked for at least six hours straight that first night, | |
staying up until the early hours of the morning. Somewhere in the | |
course of the night, I asked him what I should do with my life. He | |
said "Shine, one must let one's light shine." I asked, "What do you | |
mean?" And he replied with one simple sentence that I have carried | |
throughout my life ever since: "Be a radiant example of how to live | |
on the planet." | |
... when I took my last acid trip... in May 1970. This experience | |
was very different from all that had preceded it. Every direction my | |
mind would go would result in my perceiving the same message: "There | |
is nothing further to be gained in this direction, everything depends | |
on your daily action." It was time for a change. I decided that I | |
needed to find a teacher. | |
There is an old spiritual teaching that when you are ready to find | |
your teacher, your teacher will come. I attended an event called | |
"The Holy Man Jam at the Family Dog on the Great Highway." It was a | |
transitional event at the close of the hippie era, with many | |
spiritual leaders including Yogi Bhajan, Swami Satchidananda, Pit | |
Vilayat, Rabbi Shlomo Cattebach, Baba Ram Dass, Stephen Gaskin, and | |
others. Just prior to attending the event, I had concluded that in | |
order to do the work before me, I needed to find a way to allow great | |
power and energy to flow through me without the energy being wrongly | |
directed by flaws in my ego or personality; to not crave or seek | |
power, but have it flow through me in service of humanity. When Yogi | |
Bhajan spoke, I felt the immensity of the energy flowing through him, | |
and how easily it flowed without seeming to be distorted by his ego. | |
One day I was sitting alone on a couch with him when he said, "Why | |
don't you give up all this nonsense?" I said that I would like to. | |
He placed his hand on my head and I felt very comfortable and secure, | |
like a little child with his father. I asked him what to do for the | |
morning practice, and he told me to chant Sat Nam... | |
In this short period, I stopped smoking cigarettes and grass and | |
stopped eating meat. | |
Then there was the continuing experience of my early morning sadhana | |
practice. Robin and I were at the point that the simple act of | |
sitting down to do sadhana was profound in itself. | |
# Chapter 3, How I Came To Be A Healer | |
About half a year after returning to the Bay Area in late 1970, I Was | |
in charge of a large 17-bedroom Kundalini Yoga ashram overlooking Mt. | |
Tamalpais, with 25-40 residents. For some years afterward, I wholly | |
immersed myself in yoga practice--morning sadhana with everyone, one | |
or two yoga classes during the day, and an evening practice as well. | |
I had jumped onto the "Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan" (as | |
we described it in those days) practice with both feet, as it were, | |
with the result that I was a bit of a fanatic in the early years all | |
through the 70s and into the 80s. I had decided that Yogi Bhajan was | |
my teacher and that I would do what he said in pretty much all | |
things. He named our yoga organization "3HO," which stood for | |
"Healthy, Happy, Holly Organization," telling us that if we followed | |
the practice, we would first become healthy, then happy, and then | |
holy. | |
As the name Sat Santokh, which was given to me by Yogi Bhajan, | |
translates as "true contentment," I had thought that my work was to | |
find contentment in whatever circumstance I found myself. Yet, | |
clearly, I was not content... | |
Towards the end of that winter, I decided that if even emulating | |
Ghandi would not make me feel "good enough," then there was no hope | |
of ever feeling that way, and the only solution was to find a way to | |
accept myself as I was, flaws and all. Finally, after going over all | |
this every day for months, I was able to accept myself as "good | |
enough" with all my faults, flaws, needs, and desires. Later, I Was | |
to discover that this was just the beginning of learning to accept | |
myself. | |
I wanted to be pulled forward by my vision of service rather than | |
being pushed by my fear of failure or need for personal benefit. I | |
had observed that for the most part, as an energy-dynamic, "pulling" | |
works much better than "pushing"... Another way of saying this is | |
that I was learning to "be in the flow," which is generally not | |
possible when struggling or in fear. | |
Through the influence of Joanna Macy, who was on our board and helped | |
lead workshops in the first year, and her Despair and Empowerment | |
workshops, we started to ask deep questions at Creating Our Future | |
workshop sharing sessions, such as: | |
* How do you feel about yourself? | |
* How do you feel about your parents? | |
* How do they feel about you? | |
* What do you like about yourself? | |
* What do you not like about yourself? | |
* What are your fears about the state of the planet? | |
For many years I thought doing a strong daily yoga or other spiritual | |
practice would heal and clear up these wounds, but I have not found | |
that to be the case, either for myself or for most people of my | |
acquaintance, and I know very large numbers of people who are | |
committed to such work. Spiritual practice is profoundly helpful and | |
important, but it is not enough, in most cases, to heal the wounds of | |
life. | |
# Chapter 4, Self Worth | |
I do not know of any way to raise a child and never make a mistake | |
There will be wounds. The best a parent can do is let the child know | |
that they are loved without condition, that they do not have to prove | |
or accomplish anything to be loved and listened to. | |
I recognize that "self-demoting feedback loop" is a challenging | |
phrase, but it is the most apt and concise one that I can come up | |
with to describe an all-too-frequent phenomenon. The term applies to | |
almost all addictive behavioral patterns, whose root cause is a | |
subconscious wound-story resulting in a compulsion to punish | |
oneself... | |
The wounded self stays present in the subconscious indefinitely | |
unless there is some form of intercession or healing. | |
The subconscious exists only in the present "now." When a person | |
believes that they do not deserve to be happy, to do well, to be | |
well, or that they deserve to suffer, they set out to prove and | |
justify that belief over and over again. This is not a consciously | |
made choice, but is directed by the subconscious. | |
There are many defense-mechanisms that develop in childhood that may | |
be needed for survival at the time, but might become serious | |
impediments as one matures. | |
Wherever our wounds may come from, they leave us with a story we | |
believe about ourselves, and it is that story that determines what is | |
and is not possible for us. | |
It is important to understand that the wound is not the event that | |
happened, but its impact on our sense of self. The wound is to our | |
psyche, our sense of identity. In healing work, we cannot change or | |
take away what happened. What we can change is the story that was | |
implanted in our subconscious as a result of what happened. | |
For each of us, there are habits, jobs, and relationships that are | |
demoting and ones that are promoting. | |
Why go to such places? Why bring up such horrible memories? The | |
reality is that the wounds are there. They have been planted in the | |
subconscious. For healing to take place, there needs to be some | |
context within which to access the wounded self in the subconscious, | |
so that the story that the wounded self came away with can be heart | |
and changed, and the person can feel healed. | |
These wounds, then, are stories, conclusions we come to believe about | |
ourselves that are based on wounding circumstances, and also based on | |
the ways in which we seem to be programmed to react. | |
# Chapter 5, The Human Condition | |
Insofar as I can tell, we are all wounded in one way or another, | |
generally with multiple wounds. Yet it seems that most people do not | |
seem to be aware of their inner wounds, but instead there are beliefs | |
about the self and what is possible or not possible in life that are | |
results of being wounded. These beliefs generally become axiomatic, | |
meaning, "obviously true and therefore not needing to be proved." | |
One of my prime reasons for writing this book is to establish and | |
make clear the role and importance of inner wounds in our lives, and | |
to show that these wounds can be healed. It is important to know | |
that the wounds are stories, and as such they are mutable, for | |
stories can be changed, and one's quality of life can change | |
dramatically. I hope to create a shift in our collective | |
understanding about the possibility of healing our wounds, and our | |
collective understanding about what we can aspire to in our lives. | |
# Chapter 6, Healing the Wounds of Life | |
One of the things I say quite often to prospective journeyers at the | |
beginning of the workshops is: "If you are thinking of something that | |
you do not want to share, something that you do not want to mention, | |
that you do not want anyone to know about, then that is the most | |
important thing for you to bring up at this time. It is what you are | |
here to deal with. This is the place and time. You may not have | |
this opportunity again." | |
They may have tried to say these [positive, uplifting] things to | |
themselves many times in the past, but there is virtually no | |
connection between the cognitive mind and the subconscious self, it | |
does not help much. I have found that generally one cannot do this | |
by oneself. To simultaneously be in your conscious mind trying to | |
guide yourself, and in your subconscious mind being guided, is a big | |
stretch, and it is very rare that one can lead oneself into such a | |
deep place. | |
One of the critical elements of the healing is the creation of a | |
space in which a person can say virtually anything that they are | |
deeply ashamed of, and have it received with love, understanding, and | |
compassion. Most of us have something in our past, or present, that | |
we are deeply ashamed of, about which we feel that if others ever | |
knew this about us, we would be judged and rejected. One of the | |
results of holding such beliefs is that we conclude within our | |
subconscious that we are no good and that we must hide this | |
no-goodness from others. So when we say these things in a group of | |
peers and there is no negative reaction at all, but only a palpable | |
love felt by all, this in itself is profoundly healing. | |
This tender new plant is their new sense of self, a self that | |
deserves to love and be loved, to trust and be trusted, and to | |
succeed in life. The weeding, feeding, cultivating, and nurturing is | |
usually done by adopting a yoga and/or meditation practice in which | |
they regularly repeat to themselves the phrases that they record. In | |
addition, I ask them to practice self-forgiveness, and to talk about | |
its profound importance in cultivating their inner garden and keeping | |
it healthy. This homework is really a critical part of the process. | |
# Chapter 7, About Myself as a Healer | |
I have not yet found any meaningful answer to why God allows bad | |
things to happen. I have seen many attempts at providing that | |
answer, from within myself and from various religious and spiritual | |
perspectives, but for me none of them hold up to examination, the | |
reasoning is always flawed. I have come to accept simply not knowing | |
and not understanding; it is as it is, and I do not know why. | |
Some twelve years later I found myself in an interesting discussion | |
with two long-time friends at the 2005 Kundalini Yoga Summer Solstice | |
Celebration, in which one of them said, "Sat Santokh, here you are a | |
devoted leader and practicioner of what is essentially a form of | |
Bhakti Yoga, yet you are quite angry with the object of your | |
devotion. How can you ever realize the fruits of that devotion if | |
you continue to harbor that anger?" [Better to be angry with God | |
than to be angry with a human being. God can take it.] | |
I realized that sitting in judgment of God pretty much throughout my | |
life profoundly limited my capacity to love God, and also, perhaps, | |
my capacity to love myself. | |
I led the first training on how to guide Self Worth workshops in | |
Ireland in late 2007. By the end of that training, I saw that I | |
could pass on this work; that it was not just going to be confined to | |
me. Second, just before the end of the training, I was led on my | |
first true Self Worth journey by two of the students, which deepened | |
and expanded the healing I had previously experienced. | |
I thought, "If you cannot trust, you cannot really be open to life or | |
be present in life. I would rather trust and be betrayed than never | |
trust at all." | |
# Chapter 8, Anger and Hate | |
I wish to assert here that from my perspective, any corporal | |
punishment of children is physical abuse. | |
In most children, the first and primary reaction to being physically | |
punished is fear. | |
The fear becomes internalized, and the belief that the world is not a | |
safe place becomes entrenched. [Is the world really such a safe | |
place though?] | |
I have been studying and thinking about hate and anger in society for | |
a long time, their relation to war, xenophobia, and the mostly | |
dysfunctional ways we govern ourselves, live our lives, and conduct | |
business around the planet. I have come to believe that... any | |
doctrine that preaches hate of some group of "others"--are all rooted | |
in the fear, anger, and hatred activated by abusive childhood | |
experiences. And I believe that the abuse of children and its | |
expression as anger and hate in adults has profound implications for | |
the state of the world today. | |
# Chapter 9, Consequences | |
There seems to be not a single exception. From Sumer to Egypt to | |
China, from ancient India to pre-Columbian America, from Athens to | |
Rome, children were hit. Oral and then written traditions | |
universally came to postulate this behavior in proverbs that are | |
found on every continent. | |
Between the seventh and sixth centuries BC, about 2,500 years ago, | |
Spartan boys were taken from their homes at age seven to begin | |
military training. It was believed that they needed to be removed | |
from their mothers' care in order not to be "coddled." Instead, they | |
experienced a very harsh discipline. They were regularly flogged and | |
taught not to cry out. The older boys beat the younger boys as a | |
regular part of the program. They were required to steal food and | |
clothing in order to have food to eat or shoes on their feet, and | |
would be severely punished if caught; punished, not for stealing, but | |
for being caught. | |
The example created by the Spartans at Thermopylae giving their lives | |
in sacrifice while only 300 of them were able to hold off the huge | |
Persian army for several days, has resounded through military history | |
throughout the world ever since. Over the 2,500 years since then, | |
military leaders and heads of state, wishing to have the best | |
possible soldiers so they could win their wars, have frequently come | |
to the conclusion that they needed to emulate the Spartan way of | |
training men and boys in order to create Spartan-like soldiers, even | |
to this day. | |
Sparta was the only Greek city-state that had a professional army; at | |
the time of this battle, the only occupation for Spartan men was | |
warfare. A slave class called "Helots," composed primarily of the | |
conquered people of neighboring city-states, did all the farming and | |
artisinal work to provide food, clothing, and material goods for the | |
Spartans. | |
Prior to Napoleon, Frederick the Great had developed the most | |
powerful and well-disciplined army Europe had ever seen, and had made | |
Prussia into a great European power. However, Napoleon easily | |
crushed the Prussian army in two major battles in 1806, a humiliating | |
defeat for King Frederick William III, grandson of Frederick the | |
Great, which led to the subjugation of the Kingdom of Prussia to the | |
French Empire. Casting about for how to rebuild his armies, | |
Frederick William III, impressed by the discipline, competence, | |
fierceness, willingness if not eagerness to sacrifice their lives, | |
and patriotism of the Spartan army at Thermopylae, decided to modify | |
the Prussian Corps into a training program for boys and young men | |
modeled directly upon the Spartan Agoge. | |
Interestingly, we find that both Britain and the United States | |
modeled their education systems on this Prussian education system. | |
Many educational pioneers throughout Europe and the United States | |
thought that the Prussians had developed the best education system | |
for disciplining and educating students so that they would become | |
efficient and obedient workers and soldiers. Even the idealistic | |
Herman Mann (1796-1859), "The father of American public education," | |
went to Prussia to study their system. | |
[ | |
It sounds as though the Prussian education system was the only model | |
available at the time: | |
> The Americans were the first other people in modern history to | |
> follow the Prussian example in establishing free common-school | |
> systems. | |
> | |
> From Anti-Intellectualism In American Life by Richard Hofstadter | |
] | |
Spartans believed that they were descended from the Dorian tribe, | |
which is generally thought to have conquered most of what we know | |
think of as Greece, between 1100 and 1000 BCE. The Dorians were not | |
considered to be a particularly cultured people, but they did | |
introduce the iron sword, with which they conquered the Minoan and | |
Mycenaean peoples. The Spartans, who were dedicated to being a | |
warrior people, took pride in their presumed Dorian ancestry. In the | |
mid-1800s, the belief began to enter into the culture of the Germanic | |
and Prussian peoples as they began to idealize and mythologize | |
Sparta, that they too were descended from the Dorians, a belief which | |
was tied to their developing notion of Aryan superiority. | |
Around this time in Prussia/Germany, a fascination with the "noble | |
savages" of the New World also began to develop. Their Spartan | |
mythology expanded to include the belief that these "noble savages" | |
were actually descendants of Dorian tribes that had emigrated to the | |
New World, and that, they shared the same racially pure warrior | |
bloodstream as the Germanic people. This fantasy about Native | |
Americans was catapulted throughout Germany via the novels of Karl | |
May (1842-1912), a very popular German author whose books have sold | |
200 million copies, and to whom we are indebted for the Germanic myth | |
about "An Indian brave who knows no pain." | |
Native Americans in German popular culture | |
Cover for Winnetou the Apache Knight | |
Winnetou the Apache Knight (English translation) | |
Perhaps the most common inner wound-story is the sense that one is | |
"no good" and/or "not as good as others" which, for many people, | |
results in a life spent in trying to prove that one is okay. This | |
often results in trying to prove to oneself that one is better than | |
others, and all too frequently manifests in finding whole classes of | |
people to be better than, such as: women, children, other races, | |
nationalities, and/or religions. This does not take place on the | |
cognitive level, but within the subconscious mind. This "being | |
better than others" combines with the anger and hatred that arises | |
from physical and emotional abuse, and then we have anger and hatred | |
towards women and children, plus anger, fear, and hatred towards | |
other races, nationalities, and/or religions. | |
There is one more component that when added to the mix takes things | |
over the top, which is: economic displacement, job loss, real | |
financial insecurity with the threat of hunger and loss of shelter. | |
For the "man of the family" not to be able to "provide for his | |
family" is a huge blow to his sense of personal dignity and | |
self-worth. This needs to be the fault of someone else or some class | |
of others. When all this comes together for a whole community or | |
country, then we have rampant xenophobia. | |
# Chapter 10, The Work is Clear | |
After asking myself all these many years, where is the place to find | |
the leverage to move the world so that we can bring an end to war, I | |
have become convinced that ending corporal punishment of children in | |
schools, seminaries, madrassas, and in the home, is the most | |
important task facing humanity, so that we can make the great journey | |
from an immature desert-building species, to a mature species capable | |
of living in harmony with our environment and one another. | |
# Chapter 11, Working Effectively for Change | |
The subject reminds me of when my anti-war activist friends made it | |
clear that they would not talk with pro-war people because they were, | |
well, pro-war, and therefore they were "others." But these "others" | |
need to be recognized as fellow human beings who are, to the best of | |
their understanding, acting with integrity in relation to their | |
beliefs. The hard question, to which I do not have easy answers, is | |
how do we effectively communicate with such people, with OUR "others"? | |
It is quite clear that if we are unwilling to listen to those we | |
consider "others," and do not take them seriously as fellow human | |
beings, then there is no possibility of fruitful communication. Good | |
communication begins with really listening. | |
I began to study both Appreciative Inquiry and Chaordic Process, and | |
subsequently learned of the National Coalition for Dialog and | |
Deliberation (NCDD). | |
Appreciative Inquiry | |
Chaordic Path | |
Chaordic Organization | |
National Coalition for Dialog and Deliberation | |
# Chapter 12, Whole Being Training | |
It seems to me that most people [who] enter the realm of social | |
change do so as well-intentioned amateurs, wishing to do good, and | |
hoping to make a difference, but often without having thoroughly | |
prepared through study, research, and training to undertake such | |
critically important and challenging work. | |
Good communication begins with good listening, and developing a | |
rapport with the object of one's communication, so that if we feel | |
that we are not being understood, our response is not to say, "you do | |
not understand," but to tell ourselves that we have not yet been able | |
to speak in such a way as to be heard. | |
If we care to play a meaningful role in rising to meet the needs of | |
the times, we must commit to deep inner work and intelligent, | |
strategic outer work at a level that is vastly beyond what we have | |
witnessed in our lifetime. I look back at the sixties as an | |
elementary school for social change. Now it is time for graduate | |
work. Now is the time to apply our whole beings, our full attention | |
and consciousness, to the work before us. | |
# Bibliography | |
* A History of Children, A.R. Colon | |
* A Short History of the Weimar Republic, Colin Storer | |
* Beating the Devil Out of Them, Murray A Strauss | |
* Centuries of Childhood, Phillipe Aries | |
* Childhood in the Western World, Edited by Paula Fass | |
* Children and Childhood in Western Society, Hugh Cunningham | |
* Conquest of Violence, Joan Bondurant | |
* Economics and Politics in the Wiemar Republic, Theo Balderston | |
* For Your Own Good, Alice Miller | |
* Gandhi: An Autobiography, Mohandas K. Gandhi | |
* Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis, | |
J.D. Vance | |
* Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, John D'Emilio | |
* Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, George | |
Lakoff | |
* On War, Carl Von Clausewitz | |
* Physical Punishment in Childhood: The Rights of the Child, | |
Bernadette J. Saunders and Chris Godard | |
* Spare the child: the religious roots of punishment and the | |
psychological impact of physical abuse, Phylip Greven | |
* Sparta's German Children, Helen Roche | |
* The Child in Human Progress, George Henry Payne | |
* The Handbook of Family Violence, Vincent B Van Hasselt | |
* The Harvest of Hellenism, Francis E. Peters | |
* The History of Childhood, Lloyd de Mause | |
* The Spartan Tradition in European Thought, Elizabeth Rawson | |
* The Ties That Bound, Barbara A Hanawalt | |
* The Weimar Republic, Eberhard Kolb | |
* Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin, | |
edited by Devon W. Carbado | |
* Winnetou, Karl May | |
author: Sat Santokh S. Khalsa | |
detail: http://www.satsantokh.com/summary.html | |
tags: book,gender,spirit | |
title: There Is A Way: What the World Needs Now - and How to Bring It In | |
# Tags | |
book | |
gender | |
spirit |