My Blogs (Inspirational Transformative Insights)

Why Good Communication is the Foundation ofEnduring True Friendship

Dr. Barry Hammer

Agreement or disagreement is much less important than good communication as a way of enabling people to deeply understand each other, and, thereby, gradually develop the ability to feel inwardly close to each other, as caring good friends. Good communication, as the basis of true friendship, means that one does not keep one’s innerexperience to oneself alone, but, instead, actively reaches out to share one’s experience, feelings, thoughts, and needs with another person, as openly, honestly, directly, fully, constructively, and non-judgmentally, as possible. Good communication, as the basis of true and enduring friendship, also involves being open to considering another person’s viewpoint and needs, and constructively exploring differences that may arise between oneself and the other person, without trying to win an argument, but, rather, only exploring together into the truth of those issues, without blaming, abusing, or trying to intimidate and control each other, and without insisting that one is always totally “right” and the other person is always totally “wrong”. Without that kind of good communication, actively reaching out to share one’s heart and mind with another person, one’s inner being remains hidden, disconnected, self-enclosed, so real understanding and close, caring, feelings cannot grow, as a deepening friendship.

So many friendships and romantic relationships fail because people permit themselves to “grow apart”, or gradually drift apart, without ever taking responsibility to deeply reveal themselves to the other person, and deeply tune into the other person, empathically, and intuitively, in order to directly experience what the other person means by the particular words that they say, or write, “reading between the lines”, so to speak, or tuning into an even deeper level

of another person’s being, beyond all definable words and images. Thatdeepest level of empathic/intuitive communion is the Source from whichall true love and friendship arises, and that is what enables true love and friendship to keep growing deeper, closer, and grander, instead of gradually drifting apart because of lack of good communication, producing lack of mutual understanding, and lack of inner closeness. What makes people true friends of each other, rather than strangers, most essentially, is not outer physical contact, shared activities, and superficial social interaction, by themselves alone, but much more importantly, arises from development of substantial inner connection, by giving deeply, generously, unselfishly, of their energies to each other, and openly, honestly, directly, revealing their actual experience and true essential core being to one another.

Many relationships fail when individuals seek to be heard and nurtured, but have not developed a sufficient ability to be unselfishly, empathically, tuned into, aware of, and caringly responsive to, the other person’s need to also be heard and nurtured, in terms of their particular needs, feelings, and experiences, in a given moment. It takes a rather high level of unselfish caring, empathic sensitivity, and emotional maturity to be able to put aside one’s own needs and train of thought (or inner mental monologue) for awhile, in order to empathically tune into what another person is feeling and needing, in a given moment, and respond in a way that enables the other person to feel truly heard and deeply nourished/nurtured. Like a couples dance, both partners (or individuals in some other kind of relationship) need to learn how to flow together in empathic harmonious communion with one another (“in step” with each other’s dance movements, metaphorically speaking), and, relatedly, also flow in harmonious attunement with the “dance music” of love, or caring friendship, that seeks to lead both of them into greater attunement with each other, as a related “we”, rather than a separate “you versus me.”

My own experience has shown me that if one is overly invested in preserving the ego’s sense of separate self-awareness, willful selfishdemands, and inner monologue fantasy (being overly absorbed in one’s own train of thought), then it can become difficult to self-forgetfully tune into what another person is experiencing, feeling, and needing, regardless of whether or not the other person verbally communicates that, or which can also be empathically intuited, as a kind of nonverbal communication. I find that when I hold certain presumptions or preconceptions about another individual, and about my relationship with/to them, then those presumptions can function like akind of overlay, opaque filter, or smokescreen, that I, consciously orsubconsciously, project upon them, preventing me from directly contacting their actual experiential states, because I am, instead, projecting my own preconceptions upon them.

I find that even negative feelings, such as, frustration, or even anger, can be expressed in a constructive, nonjudgmental, non-blaming,open, sincerely caring, non-evasive, manner, which usually leads to greater understanding of each other, and of whatever issue has been blocking us from being in harmonious caring attunement with each other(preventing us from being “on the same page”, so to speak), and once those issues are constructively explored into and deeply understood, then they can be truly resolved and transcended (rather than merely being covered over, buried, or suppressed), enabling emotional closeness and caring feelings in the relationship to grow. I find thatbeing honest with myself, in terms of being willing to openly admit tomyself when I am permitting previously unrecognized, non-constructive,insincere, ego “games” to undermine the relationship, such as, evasiveness (talking or chattering without really saying anything), letting myself become emotionally shut down (engaging in emotional abandonment, which can function as a way of subtly trying to punish the other person, by withholding caring, affection, or attentive listening), giving in to wounded pride, as a resentful attitude, or adopting an overly selfishly demanding attitude. I find that when I amwilling to acknowledge and let go of such egocentric habitual patterns, then those obstructing factors that tend to block caring

feelings and mutual understanding tend to fall away, naturally, effortlessly.

For a relationship to endure and grow, it is important for both individuals to be good friends in each other, willing to confide in each other, be there for each other emotionally as well as physically in times of need, and be willing to share difficult times, and patiently work through persistent problems in the relationship, ratherthan being quick to abandon the other person, and the relationship with them, when discomfort arises. That is what it means to be an unselfishly devoted “friend for all seasons” rather than a selfishly fickle “fair-weather friend.” When I do not understand how to constructively understand and resolve, disagreements and other problems, in a relationship, then I find it helpful to invite the spirit of unselfish pure love to interpret the situation, which can enable me to see beyond, and not be myopically, exclusively, locked into, the ego’s interpretations of those situations, which are often based on incorrect presumptions and non-constructive, unrealistic, selfish wants.

I find that when I let go of the ego’s overly controlling, willful, prideful, selfish, narcissistically self- absorbed tendencies (as in the ancient Greek Myth story of Narcissus), that I find that the flow of love, or sincerely caring friendship, is no longer blocked, and then harmony and mutual empathic understanding arises automatically, effortlessly, spontaneously. When those ego “coverings”, “filters”, “overlays”, or “smokescreens”, are removed, then there is no longer any blockage to good communication and deep empathic communion with each other. That reminds me of one of my favorite songs, “On a clear day, you can see forever….” Along these lines, I find the philosopher Martin Buber’s distinction between I-Thou relationships (genuinely caring) and I-It relationships (egocentric, selfishly exploitative) relationships helpful, as described in some of his writings, such as, “I and Thou”, and “The Way of Response.”

Anyone who wishes to read more of our inspirational/transformational insights should see our two published books, 1) Psychological Healing Through Creative Self-Understanding and Self-Transformation. (ISBN: 978-1-62857-075-5) and 2) Deepening Your Personal Relationships: Developing Emotional Intimacy and Good Communication. (ISBN: 978-1-61897-590-4). The primary author is Dr. Max Hammer, with contributionsfrom secondary authors Dr. Barry J. Hammer and Dr. Alan C. Butler. These books can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or our author/publisher website, http://sbprabooks.com/MaxHammer. The latter website also posts our other blogs, and describes our books and us as authors.

The Co-Creative Muse

Dr. Barry Hammer

I find that the best kind of creative inspiration, in any field of endeavor, comes from communing deeply with other life presences, in heartfelt, open-minded, empathic attunement with them. The more deeplywe invest our heart, mind, and senses, in communion with other life presences, experiences, and activities, in the world, the more does the co-creative heart core of our own being become stirred, and revealgreater gifts of creative inspiration and meaningful insight, as the source of great artistic expression, heart-full living, and enhanced performance in any area of endeavor. When individual hearts resonate in deeply invested attunement with each other, they energize each other, like magnets, releasing the co-creative process of synergy, like electricity flowing only when an electrical plug and socket, or positive and negative electrical poles, are connected to one another.

However, as long as the heart remains egocentrically, narcissistically, selfishly, self-absorbed, or self-possessed, we willbe able to make only rather shallow contact with others, with only thesuperficial levels of our awareness. Without heartfelt communion, the mind and senses, by themselves alone, can contact, understand, and appreciate, only rather superficial aspects of reality, and provide only a relatively shallow, mechanical, level of creative artistic functioning. That is why I agree with what St. Exupery wrote, in his book, “The Little Prince”, “It is only with the eyes of the heart thatone can see what is most essential in life….Only the heart sees clearly, because what is essential is not visible to the eyes”. I might add, what is essential in life is also not available to the analytical intellect, functioning independently of the deeper, relational, insight of the heart, because the analytical mind tends tobe self-absorbed in its own thought, rather than making direct contactwith other life presences, experiences, and activities, in the world.

To make direct, deep, empathic, contact with anyone or anything, and to tap into the relational source of co-creative insight and inspiration, one must let go of pre-committed mental presumptions, preconceptions, and abstractions, which function like an opaque filter, barrier, or distorting mechanism, keeping the mind self-absorbed in its own thought, and blocking direct contact and heartfeltempathic communion with actual life experience in the world, which thephilosopher Martin Buber describes as the I-Thou relationship, in contrast to the I-It relationship. In Biblical terms, this is the difference between experiencing reality as though through a “poor reflection”, or “a glass darkly” rather than “face to face” (I Corinthians 13:12). Communing with the enduring living presence, or living spirit, that the author of any creative work has invested in a particular creative production can empathically reveal the meaningful intention and originating inspirational experience of that author or producer. The reason why the highest source level of creative insight,inspiration, and production, comes from relational communion is because it is a relational reality nature, rather than a solo, divisive, dualistic, or separate individualistic nature. Therefore, introspective processes that produce greater self-involvement, and break off heartfelt communion with others, cannot reveal and release the highest level of creative functioning.

Caring human relationships can also facilitate creative transformations of individual people and global society by enabling the power of love to gradually transform individual hearts, and the collective spiritual heart of humanity, from selfishness, fear, and brutality to unselfish caring about others.

Anyone who wishes to read more of our inspirational/transformational insights should see our two published books, 1) Psychological Healing Through Creative Self-Understanding and Self-Transformation. (ISBN: 978-1-62857-075-5) and 2) Deepening Your Personal Relationships:

Developing Emotional Intimacy and Good Communication. (ISBN: 978-1-61897-590-4). The primary author is Dr. Max Hammer, with contributionsfrom secondary authors Dr. Barry J. Hammer and Dr. Alan C. Butler. These books can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or our author/publisher website, http://sbprabooks.com/MaxHammer. The latter website also posts our other blogs, and describes our books and us as authors.

Manifesting Inner and Outer Peace

Dr. Barry Hammer

The reality of peace must actually be lived, by being expressed to others with unselfish caring, and responsive harmonious empathic attunement, along with indivisibly related qualities of goodness such as love, happiness, and beauty, because it is not truly real if it is only a static, abstract, presumptive, thought in the mind, without being lived, or expressed, as a dynamic, responsive, energy, through everything that we say and do, in every here and now present moment. Ifind that inner peace naturally leads to outer peace, meaning that when the heart is deeply relaxed, with an attitude of non-judgmental unconditional acceptance of oneself and others, so that we are fully at peace with ourselves, then that inner peace will naturally be reflected outwardly by bringing peace and harmony to our experience inthe world. The key to inner peace, which brings peace, harmony, and love into the outer world, is to experience the deep sense of fearlessness, security, and well-being, that comes from unselfishly expressing caring, or love, to others, and, thereby, being forgetful of the fearful, selfish, prideful, deficient-feeling, ego, a false or unreal sense of self that is the basic source of lack of peace, harmony, and goodness in our inner experience and in the outer world.

We cannot find inner and outer peace by turning inward, in any kind ofselfish self-awareness, because introspective self-awareness blocks our conscious life energy from naturally flowing outward to others, and that blocked energy contracts or clenches the emotional heart center level of one’s being, producing fear, tension, hostility, and other related forms of negativity. The role of narcissistic self- awareness in producing inner and outer conflict, or lack of peace and harmony, can be understood in metaphorical terms represented by a Black Hole in space, recoiled upon itself, in a powerful inward suction, producing a destructive momentum of self-confinement and

disintegration, that traps light, warmth, and energy, unnaturally blocking energy from flowing outward, contrary to the naturally radiant energy of love, epitomized by sunshine, light, and water naturally flowing outward, rather than pulling inward toward their source of origin.

Some people seek a false sense of peace and security by introspectively turning inward, often through introversive practices such as solitary meditation, abstract contemplation, or living the isolated life of a hermit, as a means of avoiding the risk of possiblyexperiencing rejection, loss, disappointment, anger, conflict, and other forms of emotional pain, hurt, or negativity that may come from being deeply invested in heartfelt caring or loving relationships withother people. The sense of calm that comes from isolating oneself in that way is not true inner peace, because it involves escaping from fearful feelings, and a fragile sense of insecurity, which one anticipates might arise if one comes out of one’s egocentric self-protective, isolated, detached, psychological “walls”, “shell”, or “bubble.” The false inner peace, or solitary calm, of emotional detachment reflects a numbed, death-like, static, timid, stony, cold-hearted, dispassionate, rather uncaring, contracted, sense of indifference, whereas real inner peace and outer harmony reflects the living energy of unselfish, expansive, warmhearted, love, that arises from an openness to letting be, flowing with, learning from, being strengthened by, and, thereby, finding true goodness in, uncomfortable, or unpleasant, feelings and situations that might arisefrom being deeply invested in caring relationships with other individuals.

Although peace and harmony cannot be found by turning inward, in any kind of introspective self- awareness, inner and outer peace finds us when we are self-forgetful as ego, by being deeply invested in unselfishly caring about others around us, and then, in being forgetful of the ego, as a false sense of separate self-awareness, we find our real self as love and goodness, which is a relational self,

an unselfishly, generously, giving nature, not a separate, selfish, self-awareness. Only when people connect to one another in loving harmony can spiritual love blessing power flow through them into the world, and transform this world for the better, eliminating conflicts,and manifesting the unconditional peace, harmony, and goodness that isinherent to the permanent being of love.

One cannot reach enduring peace from a position of holding inner and outer conflict, disturbance, and deficiency, or lack of well-being, tobe reality, and then trying to find some way to overcome, resolve, or eliminate that negativity. Struggling against negativity, and viewing it as the true reality nature of oneself, others, and life as a whole,perpetuates and magnifies that negativity, pulling one’s conscious energy ever deeper and deeper into that negativity, which energizes, feeds, and amplifies that negativity, like trying to fight fire with fire only makes the fire hotter and more destructive. Trying to overcome conflict, brutality, and oppression by struggling against perceived injustices and oppressors, expressing a blaming, judgmental,antagonistic, attitude toward such perceived wrongdoers, can fan the flames of negativity by arousing even greater hostility in those beingblamed, and reinforcing their view of themselves as actually having the malevolent qualities attributed to them by those activists who denounce them. Much more powerful and enduring change for the better can come from expressing the intrinsic permanent being of relaxed peace, harmony, love, and goodness as already being the true reality nature of oneself, and viewing that as also being the inherent true nature of other individuals, and of life as a whole, now already.

Conditions of conflict, suffering, oppression, and injustice, are mostlikely to enduringly subside if one views that negativity as being only a temporary, dreamlike, illusory, experience, like a nightmare, not the intrinsic true reality nature of anyone’s permanent being. Recognizing and expressing that permanent being of peace, harmony, andwell-being, is what most profoundly, and enduringly, dispels temporaryillusory experiences of individual and societal disorders, like waking

up automatically dispels dreams, and like bright sunshine effortlesslydissolves dark clouds, whereas antagonistically struggling against negativity often makes it worse, by immersing one’s conscious energy ever deeper into the negativity that one struggles against, like beingobsessed with darkness keeps it always in mind, instead of turning on the light, which automatically dispels darkness, or like making muddy waters muddier by stirring them up, instead of permitting the mud to naturally fall back down to the bottom of the pond by not agitating the water, which restores the natural purity of the water. Sometimes one can work to change the status quo if some other alternative would be more compassionate and beneficial, but still remain grounded in relaxed inner peace, so that that inner peace can produce, and be reflected by, greater harmony, justice, and abundance in the outer world.


Special Message for Christmas and Hanukkah(Bringing Out the Best in One Another)

Dr. Barry Hammer

Festivals of light such as Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa (African American), Diwali (India), etc, symbolize the rebirth and awakening ofthe sacred flame of love in the hearts of individual persons, as well as in the collective heart of humanity. This living flame of love and goodness can serve to transform this world for the better, in many ways, from the inside as well as from the outside, as a kind of limitless spiritual blessing power. The gifts that people give to one another as part of the celebration of festivals of light such as Christmas or Hanukkah also symbolize how opening ourselves to the spirit of love and goodness gifts us with significantly greater levelsof co-creative insight and transformational development. Viewed in metaphorical terms, the holiday (Holy Day) commemoration of events such as the birth of Jesus, the liberation of the Jewish people from oppression, or other events of redemption, can be seen as representingthe birth of the loving light of “Christ-consciousness” or holistic/unifying peace consciousness in the hearts of individual persons, as well as in the whole human family (The Hebrew word for “peace”, shalom, is linguistically related to the word for whole [shalem] or wholeness [shlemut]).

When we permit the spiritual energy presence of love and goodness to flow from us to others, then it has a kind of alchemical effect upon us, them, and the world as a whole, gradually transmuting various kinds of negativity into a more constructive, wholesomely functioning,regenerative rather than degenerative, energy. For example, various interpersonal, social, and international geopolitical conflicts can becompassionately resolved by a reconciliation process in which contending parties explore, with open hearts and minds, how they can realign their particular perceptions and goals with what would be

truly constructive rather than destructive, or productive and liberating rather than counterproductive and depriving, for everyone concerned, as the basis of finding mutually advantageous win-win solutions, that would also contribute to the continued advancement of the indivisible reality network of life as a whole. When we follow thecall of love, or connection, rather than the voice of antagonistic separation and judgment, then the inclusive energy of love helps us toincreasingly find common ground with one another, and gradually softenthe “rough edges” that cause unnecessary conflict between us. United in love, individuals, social groups, and nations can help one another to build themselves up, as a co-creative, synergistic, expansive, growth-oriented, cohesive, principle of limitless, inexhaustible, abundance for everyone, whereas divided by antagonistic “blame games” and the predatory principle of fighting over presumably scarce, limited, resources, we all fall into an opposite momentum of greater contraction, dis-integration, scarcity, or lack of resources, opportunities, and vision.

Just as the power of electricity can flow only when electrical plug and socket, or other electrical wires, are properly connected to one another, similarly, the energy of love can flow more abundantly into the world only when individuals permit their hearts and minds to be deeply connected or attuned to one another, in loving communion, or genuine friendship. When we are willing to open our hearts to let the spirit of love-goodness flow between ourselves and others, then we bring out the best in one another, and, thereby, co-create the “sweet life” together, as symbolized by the beautiful glow of Christmas tree ornaments and Hanukkah Menorah candles. The process of bringing out the best in one another involves being willing to let go of presumptive definitions, demanding expectations, and judgmental blaming of other people, so that the spirit of love can illuminate ourvision and hearing with insight into how each particular individual who we encounter is, truly, beautiful, lovely, or intrinsically precious, in their own special way. The more that we permit the energyof love, or warmhearted empathic connection, to guide our perception of and response-able behavior toward other individuals, the more does

that energy bring out the best in us, as well as in those others whom we encounter. Just as two or more magnets can energize one another, but cannot energize themselves, separately, similarly, when we tune into, and, thereby, arouse and magnify, the “life-juices” of other individuals, then the most sublime, or grandest, energy of our own being becomes amplified, like a process of vibratory resonance or magnetic energetic attunement between oneself, other individuals, and the relational energy of love-goodness that connects us to one another. To propose another metaphorical analogy, just as flowers cannot pollinate themselves, but must wait to be pollinated by bumble bees or other insects, which also cannot pollinate themselves, similarly, the core level of our being cannot manifest and experience its own essential beauty, sweetness, and fragrance unless we unselfishly share that sweet “sap”, “elixir”, or “nectar” and “ambrosia” of life with others, as well as permitting others to share theirs with us. When we deeply connect our hearts and minds in loving empathic communion or non-dualistic attunement with one another, then we energize the “living waters” of “magical” enchantment to flow like a fountain, or from its hidden source, wellspring, or reservoir, in the inner core level of our being, and, thereby, become more accessible to us in our experiencing and functioning in the outer world.

This limitless, inexhaustible, transformational power of love (functioning like a veritable Horn of Cornucopia, Fountain of Everlasting Youth, and source of limitless co-creative/synergistic transformational possibilities) brings to mind the following wonderfulquote from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time, in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”


LOVE IS A SHARED ENERGY OF BLESSING

Dr. Barry Hammer

Love is an expansive connective energy that enables individuals to experience the sublime grandeur of the core of their own being by sharing that relational energy with others. Empathically tuning into what is experientially genuine, naturally good, or fully alive in another life presence arouses similar qualities in our own being, through a process of sympathetic vibratory resonance, or compatible energy attunement. In deeply invested empathic communion, heartfelt experiential attunement, caring energetic connection, or true love, wefind our fulfillment by reflecting each other’s essential qualities oflife energy, such as, generosity, compassion, courage, beauty, goodness, sweetness, or enchanted richness of being, which “magnetically” arouses similar noble, exalted, or sublime qualities inourselves. Any qualities of true greatness, genuine sincerity, and natural goodness that we empathically contact in another life presencearouses similar qualities in ourselves, because the “seeing” and “being” of the shared energy of love are interrelated processes. When we view others and ourselves through the “eyes” of love, or the perspective of nonjudgmental empathic attunement, the energy of love intuitively “sees” or recognizes (re-cognizes) its own loving, lovable, lovely qualities of flawless purity, integrated cohesive wholeness, regenerative life energy, or blessedness, in whoever or whatever it gazes upon. That is why true love naturally brings blessing by revealing its own blessed energy presence as the true being of the lover, the beloved, and the relational energy that flows between them.

Sublime qualities of love such as true inner and outer beauty, sweetness, wonder-full enchantment, joyful vitality, and total security reflect an exalted or very high vibratory frequency of relational life energy, which give our consciousness the experience of

being filled full to overflowing with a fully satisfying life energy presence. The relationally shared energy presence of love also involves the experience of full blessedness, or being united to the source of everything that contributes to full satisfaction, total security, and overflowing fullness of being. The sweet or juicy qualities of love are what satisfy and nourish our inner being, metaphorically represented by tasty treats that stimulate our materialtaste buds with vibrations that are experienced as sweet and succulent. The energy of love naturally seeks full energetic and experiential union or deep communion with the beloved so that we can experience the blessed essence or relational core of our own life energy being as love. The vibratory energetic pattern, evolutionary blueprint, “song”, “dance”, or “story” of our own heart, soul, or essential core of being is inherently relational to other individuals,and, therefore, is naturally aroused through our loving empathic communion with them. Our empathic appreciation of the truly lovable, noble, or blessed qualities of other individuals is reflected or resonated back to us as the blessed experience of our own individual form of the being, energy, “electricity” or “electromagnetic pulse” oflove. Being in the presence of and in deeply invested empathic communion with someone who we deeply care about arouses and releases the essential “juices” and related vibratory energy pulse of our own individual being, as naturally matching, compatible, complementary, resonating, vibratory energy pulses. That is why true love or warmhearted caring is the greatest natural tonic, elixir, succulent sweetness, or ambrosia and nectar of life energy.

The urge to connect to another individual at a sensual, sexual, mental, emotional, experiential, and/or energetic level is part of a natural urge for full union, unrestricted communion, empathic attunement, or deep vibratory resonance of our individual energy fields. The deeper our level of communion with the wholeness of another individual’s living energy presence, to the very core of theirbeing, the more deeply, fully, or greatly the energy of our own whole being is “magnetically” amplified, or enhanced in its pitch or rhythmic pulsation, to the very core of our being. The process of

empathic communion or energetic experiential attunement is the relational connection of true love that reveals the blessed love-beingof each of the participating individuals, through an “electromagnetic”process of sympathetic, congruent, compatible, complementary, or harmonic vibratory resonance. The relational energy of love makes us extremely open or “superconductive” to contacting, experiencing, expressing, amplifying, and limitlessly expanding all of the shared qualities of love, sublime grandeur, or blessedness that are inherent to the shared being of love.

We must unselfishly, generously, abundantly share the blessed qualities, capacities, and gifts of love for them to grow more abundant, richer, more vivid, or more fully developed in our own experience, because the expansive process of sharing our caring energywith others releases or elicits the source, or reservoir of that energy to unfold deeper and deeper levels of itself, like pumping water from a limitless fountain, or like the heartbeat pumping blood to circulate throughout our individual body. However, any kind of egocentric, narcissistic, self-seeking sets into motion a greater and greater accelerating momentum of contraction of energy, producing increasing levels of scarcity rather than abundance of the inner and outer riches of reality. Any kind of selfish self-seeking is grounded in an implicit premise of inner deficiency or lack of wholeness of being and well-being, for which we try to compensate by trying to fillourselves with something that we presume that we currently lack. That selfish premise of inner deficiency naturally produces an increasing momentum of inner and outer experiences of deficiency, limitation, scarcity, or lack of material and experiential abundance. However, unselfishly sharing our caring energies, talents, and gifts with others implicitly reflects an opposite premise that our being or energies are limitless and inexhaustible, so we do not fear being permanently depleted or deprived through the process of giving of our energies. This premise of limitless abundance of being must actually be lived or expressed through the expansive process of sharing our caring energies to be experientially valid; theoretical affirmations of abundance that do not involve an expansive flow of energy to others

are likely to set into motion an opposite contracting momentum, producing increasing levels of inner and outer deficiency and scarcityrather than true abundance. When we set into motion the expansive energy of love by unselfishly sharing our warmhearted caring, investment of empathic attention, and other resources with others, that expansive momentum reveals the blessed or limitlessly renewable, regenerative, fully satisfying qualities that are intrinsic to the expansive, inexhaustible, energy of love.

There is a natural rhythmic oscillation between the giving and receiving of the expansive relational energy of love, like the naturalprocess of inhalation and exhalation within the greater whole process of breathing, or like the rhythmic in-beat and out-beat of the heart. This rhythmic flow of energy between receiving and giving, or between self and other, is naturally meant to occur spontaneously, guided by what intuitively feels “right” to our core integrity from moment to moment, and is not meant to be managed through volitional control, which interferes with the unpredictable pulse of love’s natural flow. Conscious control tends to be one-sided, exclusive, imbalanced, restrictive, rigid, divisive, whereas the energy of love is a natural integrated seamless wholeness and spontaneous flexibility that arises from the mystery core of our being, sometimes beyond what the conscious mind can measure, predict, and control. The “perfect pitch” or rightful harmonic integrated coherence of our core integrity can gradually emerge and reveal itself when we no longer try to impose preconceived patterns or predetermined agendas upon the relational energy of love and the individual energy of our own being. Having plans and preferences is natural and should not be relinquished or suppressed, but we need to intuitively align those with rather than against the natural spontaneous flow of our individual being and relational connections.

Genuinely caring relationships or loving empathic connection propels the two or more participating individuals to a very high vibratory speed frequency of conscious and unconscious energy, the level of full

cohesion, integrated coherence, or permanent integrity wholeness, which cannot be disintegrated, the supreme source level of reality or creative intelligence. That integrated wholeness or core integrity level of reality integrates the individual, relational, and unity or universal levels of reality. Optimal health of all levels of our being, including body, mind, energetic heart, soul, and spirit, involves attunement to the integrating wholeness of reality, which is the energy of individual integrity and the connective energy of love, uniting the inner and outer (or subjective and objective) levels of reality into a greater integrated wholeness of being. Thus, the experience of true wholeness and fullness of being or overflowing abundance of life energy comes from the relational union of subjective and objective reality, or inner and outer reality, in fullyinvested self-forgetful communion with another individual. Perhaps theco-created blessed energy of love can also magnetically repel malign inner and outer forces. The expansive energy of love should be able todisplace and replace contracting energies of fear and negativity that naturally attract malign predatory forces of all kinds, inwardly and outwardly. When we are full of true love or genuine warmhearted unselfish caring, then we are free of fear; and then evil negativity has nothing of its own nature to attach itself to in us, so it automatically gets reflected back to sender as a principle of justice,as epitomized by the principle, “as you sow, so shall you reap.”

Any qualities, gifts, or treasures of love, goodness, or spirit we unselfishly, generously share with others naturally grows more abundantly developed in us, too. As we give deeply of our warmhearted caring energy, time, talents, insights, and material resources to other people, we thereby access, elicit, or “pump out” correspondinglydeeper, richer, grander levels of energy from the inner wellspring orbottomless, inexhaustible reservoir of our own individual being. This involves a veritable ontic gift exchange, bringing out the best in ourselves by bringing out the best in others, through a process of vibratory resonance or empathic attunement. We are not necessarily limited only to exchanging material gifts, resources, and ideas (although that can also be very valuable and necessary, at times); we

can also enrich one another’s inner being and transformational development with a higher or grander vision of what we can be at our best, as a blessing, true vision of excellence, or what the ancient Greeks called Arete. When we view others with the “eyes” or perspective of love, it can give us a true vision of their realistically attainable greater levels of unfolding fruition, transformational development, and limitless abundance of being. When we invest our whole being in empathic communion or heartfelt attunement with another individual, to the core of their being, that enables us to see beyond their surface appearance (such as their physical features, illusory acquired psychosocial masks of ego-personality, and current level of development) to a deeper level of their permanent being and of what they are naturally meant to become. This ability of empathic loving communion to see beyond the surface appearance and the sometimes disagreeable, acquired, personality traits of other individuals brings to mind St. Exupery’s insightful observation, in The Little Prince, “only the heart sees rightly; what is essential is not visible to the eyes.” True love, or warmhearted caring, is a great co-creative transformational blessing power to bring our deeper hidden or latent inner resources to the surface in more developed form. Furthermore, the energy of caring warmth or true love is like a soothing lubricant, ointment, or balm to release whatever energies, habits, or patterns have become stuck, misdirected,distorted, and toxic in us. As we develop greater discernment, alertness, responsibility and accountability to self and others, we can thereby increasingly align ourselves with the vibratory energy pulse of love, as integrated wholeness, which enables it to gradually transform us into its own blessed nature, while transmuting or transforming our “shadow” or negative qualities. We must learn to follow the winding vibratory pulse of integrity, beauty, love, to its source in our own limitless power source, our inexhaustible core being, metaphorically like following the Yellow Brick Road in the Wizard of Oz story.

People should experiment with various ways of producing soulful, heart-inspired products that are made with love, saturated with the

living energy presence of love. Such products would be highly blessed living products, imbued with regenerative love-life energy to enhance the vitality, well-being, and creative functioning of people who come into contact with those blessed products, and the regenerative relational or connective energy field transmitted by such products. That would be a meaningful contrasting alternative to “dead” products that are produced exclusively through mechanical means, without much investment of the producer’s inner being or heartfelt caring. Such products are basically deadening or numbing, shallow, sterile, dry, without real juices of life energy, like a body without a soul. However, love-inspired, love-blessed products can serve to revitalize contemporary society, as well as enrich individuals, dyadic relationships, families, groups, and social networks, with a greater quality, stature, nobility, blessedness, enchantment, or richness of being, beyond the more easily measurable, quantifiable, material benefits that can exist without such infusion of love-blessed energies. At their best, social and professional networks can functionas synergistic/co-creative platforms, thereby providing opportunities to exchange empowering energy, liberating new options, expanded resources, and a transformative blessing grounded in a true vision of one another’s untapped potentials. Through the process of fully investing our conscious attention and caring energies in heartfelt empathic communion with other individuals, we make contact with the core of their being where those untapped latent potentials abide, and we energize those potentials to become activated, like seeds that sprout or eggs that hatch when exposed to warmth of sunlight. We are meant to serve as energy transformers, inner and outer resource magnifiers, amplifiers, or elicitors, for one another. The best way togenerate a sustainable momentum for our individual lives, personal relationships, social networks, and global society is to deeply explore how we can minimize energy draining or toxic energy processes,while maximizing energy gaining or regenerative energy processes, in our inner and outer lives. Such co-creative synergistic partnerships would be guided by win-win mutual benefit principles rather than Social Darwinism, involving zero sum game destructive predatory competition, grounded in win-lose scenarios.

Warmhearted individuals around the world should unite as a veritable “tribe” or community of embodied human seraphim, outlets for divine love flame. Uniting together in this way would greatly amplify the energy power of love, enabling the force of love to bless, heal, and transform this world, and distressed individuals in this world, from the inside as well as from the outside, as a regenerative inner atmosphere. Perhaps such a community of love-awakened individuals would be relatively rare in the universe, since purported extraterrestrial visitors to our planet earth are usually depicted as being basically mechanical, robotic, technologically advanced but without heart and soul, without energy feeling, and therefore, apparently lacking the ability to create and appreciate true beauty and joyful vitality. Those who contribute to awakening the love-heart and soul of humanity should be respected and rewarded for their contributions, even if they lack the technical skills necessary to contribute to the material needs of humanity. The more readily quantifiable, measurable, skills and contributions of more technicallyor mechanically oriented persons should also be respected and rewardedwithout devaluing, marginalizing, and impoverishing those who lack such skills but who are naturally meant to serve the nourishment and development of the “inner being” of humanity through the relatively advanced level of their own inner being, their heart and soul.


THE LITMUS TEST: FOLLOWING THE WINDING TRAIL OFOUR CORE INTEGRITY

DR. BARRY HAMMER

“Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”

Spencer Johnson

Many years ago, when I was in high school chemistry lab, I was assigned to do a litmus test to determine where various chemicals fellon the continuum from acidic to alkaline or other base composition. I now view that litmus test as a metaphor for learning to discern how tolive in harmonious alignment with my individual and relational core integrity from moment to moment. I have found that relying exclusivelyon analytical reasoning and apparent factual information of the mind, along with sensory data, cannot always provide me with the best possible insight into the experiential truth and energy flow of the moment, and how to appropriately function or flow in flexible, dynamic, rightful attunement with it. Instead, I have found that sometimes I feel intuitively guided to go beyond basing decisions entirely on available factual information by discerning what options of perception and action seem relatively consistent or inconsistent with an invisible subtle energy pulse of rightful integrity, involvingnonselective integrated openness to my whole experiential truth and mynaturally self-consistent indivisible whole real being, recognized as a distinctive energy tone of inner peace, warmhearted caring, empathiccompassion, regenerative life energy, and lightness of spirit, in contrast to an antithetical energy tone of queasiness, biased presumptions, selective viewing, lack of self-consistency with the

intrinsic wholeness and rightful goodness of my being and everyone’s being, inner agitation, coldhearted callousness, degenerative discord,as well as heaviness and darkness of spirit. When my perception and action is rightfully aligned with my heartfelt intuitive core integrity, then I feel that I am truly honoring the intrinsic goodnessand preciousness of life or reality in myself, other individuals who Iencounter, and the all-inclusive whole of being, rather than distorting, degrading, or cheapening my own truth and the truth of others by divorcing or distancing my perception and action from the real energy and experience flowing within and around me. Our core integrity is naturally inclined to be empathically understanding of and compassionately responsive to the legitimate needs and concerns ofothers because it is a relational self, a relational center, in contrast to the ego as an illusory, dualistically separated, divisive,narcissistically self-preoccupied sense of self or inner voice.

Attunement with my intuitively discerned core integrity heightens my receptive openness to limitless expansive possibilities and flexible creative insights, whereas my energies, options, and resources feel more blocked, fixated, contracted, constricted, and restricted when I permit myself to be distracted by narcissistic ego mind chatter, biased preconceived presumptions, demanding expectations, as well as rigid, fear-oriented modes of perception and action. Core integrity makes me feel more alert and grounded in real life energy experience, like following an inner GPS, compass, or beacon, whereas preconceived presumptions make me feel cut off from the actual flow of energy experience. We intuitively know that we are living in core integrity when we are willing to relate to, and cherish, what is actually experientially real in self and others rather than pursuing some kind of presumptive “ought to be” or desired “should be,” distorting our view of self and others by projecting various kinds of extraneous definitions, interpretations, idealized or disparaging images, and judgmental demanding expectations, and exploiting others to aggrandizeour own narcissistic egos, as in Martin Buber’s distinction between I-Thou and I-It relationships.

When I am expansively connected to the relational flow of energy experience within and around myself, then I experience greater caring warmth of heart and vitality, whereas when I step out of that connective relational flow into narcissistic mind chatter, then I experience more inner coldness, inner numbing or deadening, and more blockage, constriction, or contraction of my own energies. This reminds me of melting/defrosting ice in my refrigerator, many years ago, (when the refrigerator needed to be cleaned out in preparation for the next tenant of a rented apartment that I was vacating), by repeatedly pouring hot water on the ice until large chunks of it suddenly came loose, all at once. Metaphorically speaking, I find thatthe warmth of expansive, empathically caring connection to other individuals and undistracted attentiveness to situations happening around me melts away much of the fearful , contracted, coldness and heavy denseness of my energies.

When I am abiding in the flow of my own core integrity, then I sometimes become more attuned to the joyful “song” and “dance” or vibratory rhythmic pulse of my own essential being, my own heart and soul, my true “perfect pitch.” However, resistively trying to escape from the natural imperfections or “rough edges” of life experience only produces an unhealthy process of inner and outer conflict, whereas I find that inner and outer healing naturally takes place whenI show flexible loving compassion for the stuck and sticky places within and between us. I find that the best way to bring healing to myown inner pain and negativity is embrace it with love so that it can be consciously restored to the natural wholeness of my being and thereby healed, whereas when I negatively judge, blame, reject, and oppose my own fear, pain, and negativity, it fights me back, exacerbating disruptive inner and outer discord.

I believe that the best way to compassionately transform for the better our individual lives, personal relationships, local

communities, particular social networks, and the whole world, is to select options that reflect alignment with our own distinctive, dynamically flexible, energy pulse of core integrity and ethical responsibility. For example, this involves selecting or developing lifestyles, careers, shared relational activities, consumer spending patterns, and voting behaviors that promote compassion, equity, sustainability, and expanded opportunities for everyone, rather than depleting individual and shared resources, opportunities, and freedomsin an unsustainable, contracting, manner. Like exercising a muscle tostrengthen it, the only way to develop our intuitive core integrity, so that it will be available for us when we really need it, is to gradually practice tuning into the distinctive energy feeling tone of the “heart” core, center, depth, or essential level of our own being when the analytical calculations and apparent factual information of the mind and the sensory data of the body do not seem able to provide us with sufficiently clear, penetrating, and reliable insight into a particular situation, encounter, or decision that we are considering.


The Ego as an Addictive “Energy Vampire”, inContrast to How Our Real Being Functions as a

Limitlessly Abundant “Energy-Giver”

Dr. Barry Hammer

Although the ego is often the loudest voice speaking within oneself, vociferously arguing for its own viewpoint, and vehemently demanding limitless, immediate, sometimes inappropriate, recklessly impulsive, potentially addictive, gratification of its insatiable desires and cravings, it is not one’s most essential, inherent, intrinsic, trustworthy, true inner voice, not one’s true self, not the source of one’s true happiness, security, maturity, self-understanding, and overall well-being. The individual selfish ego is strongly influenced by a collective negativity nature, which can sometimes function in a rather delusional, abusive, predatory, addictive, self-defeating, self-conflicted, self-contradictory, problematic, self-disturbing, narcissistically self-absorbed, even autistic, manner. The ego continuously urges one to become addicted to various kinds of false cravings, often for unhealthy, unwholesome, toxic, substances, attitudes, and habits, as a way of escaping from a deeper, but unreal,sense of basic deficiency, inner emptiness, and fearful insecurity, which the ego tries to cover over by superimposing a distracting falsefaçade of artificial pleasurable sensations and self-definitions, which can become rather grandiose and unrealistic, sometimes accompanied by destructively demonic energies and rather insane urges in the most extreme forms of selfish egoism. These various forms of ego-gratification are basically designed to provide quasi substitutes for the euphoria, excitement, vitality, security, well-being, and divine grandeur, that are intrinsic to our real being, and only imitated by the various intense, often addictive, compulsive, unhealthy, and unwholesome, sensations, substances, habits, and

attitudes that the ego or separate sense of self-awareness urges us topursue.

It is important to distinguish between “healthy appetites”, that are truly natural, life-given, urges, and that can actually enhance one’s overall enjoyment of life, in contradistinction to unhealthy, addictive, unnatural appetites, or false cravings, that can be detrimental to one’s overall well-being and functioning, including potentially having serious negative, degenerative, toxic, effects uponone’s physical health, psychological stability, moral character, personal social relationships, professional career, etc. With addictive false cravings, one becomes “possessed by one’s possessions”, so to speak, so that one’s heart, mind, and body, becomes burdened with heavy “psychological baggage”, and related blocked energy clogging, which can greatly diminish one’s ability to satisfy one’s real, natural, life-given, needs, as well as impairing one’s overall level of well-being, security, happiness, genuine freedom of choice, constructiveness, as well as one’s overall health, vitality, and productive functioning of heart, mind, and body. In addition, extreme forms of narcissistic, selfish, self-absorption can produce psychological disturbances, contrary to optimal sanity, in terms of diminished investment in contact with objective reality situations in the world, as the mind, heart, and body become increasingly narcissistically self-absorbed and self-deluded by unrealistic egocentric presumptions and false assumptions, as a continuous inner monologue, or fantasy pseudo-life, which can diminishone’s ability to tune into the actual experiential truth of oneself, other people, and situations around oneself, in the objective world.

The only reliable way to distinguish between healthy real appetites, or constructive natural urges, and addictive, toxic, false cravings isto, at least at times, tune out the loudly demanding, argumentative, voice of the selfish ego, so that one can intuitively “hear” the “still small voice” of the soul, one’s true self, one’s inherent, intrinsic, original, nature, as a life energy presence, communicating

to one’s conscious awareness from the heart core, source integrity, level of one’s being, like a soft “inner beacon”, gently guiding one away from dangerous pitfalls and hidden traps, and leading one toward what is truly most beneficial to oneself, and, truly, compassionately,unselfishly, helpful to other people in one’s life. Goals and aspirations that come from the soul, the real self, are consistent with one’s natural, life-given, spiritually empowered, higher purposive destiny in life, involving the actualization, and ever growing fruition, of one’s fullest range of seed-like individual potentials, and personal relationship potentials, whereas goals and desires that come from the selfish ego often tend to lead one astray from the true reality nature of one’s own being, and away from one’s true potentials, abilities, natural inclinations, and genuine needs, overlaid, covered over, and obscured by the superimposition of false presumptive ideas and beliefs about oneself, such as, the ego’s idealized, unrealistic, unattainable, positively value judged self-images, which the psychologist Sigmund Freud referred to as the superego. Many of the superego’s goals, desires, and value, are basically attempting to validate a competitive sense of superiority incomparison with other people, in order to enhance the ego’s tenuous, conditional, sense of worth and self-esteem, and deny deeper feelings of presumed worthlessness, inferiority, and other negative feelings, whereas the soul, our real self, is an unconditional self-acceptance and intrinsic well-being, beyond all divisive positive and negative value judgments, or conditionally “good” and “bad” self-evaluations. Therefore, the soul has nothing to prove about oneself, so it has no need to put itself on trial, belittle other people, as a way of feeling better about itself, as well as defensively try to control andinfluence what other individuals say and do, in order to protect a fearful, fragile, sense of self, like a tenuous, collapsible, house ofcards, or engaging in various other kinds of insincere, manipulative, exploitative, ego mind games, as a way of denying and compensating forthe ego’s basic sense of deficiency and insecurity.

One’s intrinsic real self is primarily a relational self, a relationalcenter, which can experience its inherent true nature as love and

happiness only by unselfishly sharing that pure nature with other individuals, and by expressing unconditional love, or sincere caring, to other people, unselfishly serving them to the best of one’s ability. Paradoxically, our greatest real hunger is to give deeply of our caring and energies to other individuals, rather than seeking to gratify basically selfish, hedonistic, egocentric, cravings, because the spiritual presence of real life energy, love, happiness, beauty, and goodness, grows more consciously awakened and substantially developed in oneself only when one unselfishly shares it with others, because it is a relational nature, not a narcissistically self-absorbed nature. In fact, excessive narcissistic self-absorption blocks and clogs one’s real life energies, trapping them within the selfish ego, when our energies do not naturally flow outward to other people, as we express unselfish caring to them. That unnatural blockage of love and life energy, trapped within the selfish, self-contained, narcissistic ego, rather than naturally flowing outward to other people, perverts, distorts, or twists, our naturally pure, wholesome, regenerative, life energy into its opposite nature, so thatour energy becomes increasingly toxic, foul, unclean, degenerative, and ultimately self-destructive. In addition, that blocked life energy, trapped within the selfish ego, produces feelings of tension, fear, anger, self-confinement, self-imprisonment, as well as various other forms of inner and outer negativity. It is only by unselfishly, deeply, caring about others that our energies can be released from narcissistic self-confinement, which makes us feel, and be, much more alive, joyful, secure, regenerative, creative, and productive, than what we could otherwise experience, as a higher overall level of well-being, or greater inner and outer positivity.

In its most extreme forms, the selfish ego functions like an “energy vampire”, so to speak, sucking ever more of our conscious attention, energy, and passion, into itself, like quicksand, or like the strong inward pulling suction of a Black Hole in outer space, as an escalating, addictive, self-perpetuating, momentum of inner and outer negativity that can be very difficult to undo, whereas the maturely developed and consciously awakened unselfishly giving, loving, nature

of the soul is like an ever shining sun or star, which can never be depleted by endlessly giving of its inexhaustible warmth, light, and energy through the process of perpetual shining. That is why we naturally feel much better, in a genuine rather than artificially contrived way, as we unselfishly express our caring-energy to others, and, thereby, experience its limitless abundance, inner substantiality, joyfulness, and overflowing fullness of being. However, the more that the selfish ego tries to fill itself by functioning like an energy vampire, feeding of the energy of others, or feeding off of the energy of addictive substances and sensations, the more inwardly empty, deficient, and insubstantial, it feels, because trying to incorporate energy, vitality, or any other desired experiential state from outside of our own being reflects a presumptive conviction of limited scarcity, inner deficiency, lack of wholeness, lack of well-being, inertia, or lack of energy, etc. The unselfish spiritual nature of the soul, our real being, is a principleof “united we stand”, sharing a cohesive, coherent, relational energy that cannot be easily divided and thereby disintegrated, whereas the selfish ego is a principle of “divide and conquer”, or “divided we fall” ever deeper and deeper into self-disintegrating negativity.

Whichever nature and motivational intention we express to others becomes increasingly more strongly reinforced in our inner and outer experience, because we can express to others, and, thereby, objectify,only whatever nature we hold ourselves to be, most essentially. Ego-related thoughts, desires, feelings, and sensations, are fleeting and vacuous, like temporary shadows, or passing clouds in the sky, whereasthe spiritual nature of the soul is everlasting, like the sun, or stars. Whatever psychological or physical possessions that the selfishego seeks to acquire in time can be lost in time, whereas whatever true love, caring, and goodness, we unselfishly share with others remains with us forever, because it is an objectified expression of our intrinsic permanent being, and we can never lose what we inherently be, and we can truly give or express only energy that we hold ourselves to be, or that flows from our actual being. Perhaps this is what is meant by passages in the bible such as, “For how does

it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul?”, and, “those who drink from my well will never thirst again”, because the fountain of true love, goodness, and pure life energy is fully satisfying and inexhaustible.

We are each particular individualized forms of God’s pure, immortal, Spirit, unfolding as our individual fruitage of actualized potentials of real intelligence, which includes our real relationship potentials,as well as our real individual talents and natural abilities. Spiritual intelligence is the one, all, only, ever present reality nature. Spirit has no opposite nature, in reality, but it needs an illusory opposite shadowy ego nature to challenge, exercise, and, thereby, strengthen, our real nature. When we fully maturely develop and awaken our individual spirit of love-life energy by unselfishly sharing it with others, or expressing it to others, it becomes like aninexhaustible flame or fountain that is never depleted through its endless giving, as a veritable “immortal flame”, symbolically represented by the “Eternal Flame”, or Torch of the Olympic Games, theStatue of Liberty, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the lights on a Christmas tree or Hanukah Menorah, etc., whereas the selfish ego is only illusory, dark, shadowy, cloudlike, empty, vacuous, self-talk, like daydreams, hallucinations, or unconscious hypnotic suggestions. The individual and collective unreal ego nature tries to influence us by fusing with our real energy-being nature and our natural real experiential states, and by pretending to speak as our own inner voice, our own heart, mind, and body. But the unreal will naturally fall away from the real if we do not react to it, identify with, or express, the unreal, and, instead, keep expressing only our own real nature, as a natural goodness, unselfish caring, and flawless purity of being nature.

Anyone who wishes to read more of our inspirational/transformational insights should see our two published books, 1) Psychological Healing Through Creative Self-Understanding and Self-Transformation. (ISBN: 978-1-62857-075-5) and 2) Deepening Your Personal Relationships:

Developing Emotional Intimacy and Good Communication. (ISBN: 978-1-61897-590-4). Primary author: Dr. Max Hammer, with contributions from secondary authors Dr. Barry J. Hammer and Dr. Alan C. Butler. These books can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or our author/publisher website, http://sbprabooks.com/MaxHammer. The latter website also posts our other blogs, and describes our books and us as authors.

Anyone who wishes to read more of our inspirational/transformational insights should see our two published books, 1) Psychological Healing Through Creative Self-Understanding and Self-Transformation. (ISBN: 978-1-62857-075-5) and 2) Deepening Your Personal Relationships: Developing Emotional Intimacy and Good Communication. (ISBN: 978-1-61897-590-4). The primary author is Dr. Max Hammer, with contributions from secondary authors Dr. Barry J. Hammer and Dr. Alan C. Butler. These books can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or our author/publisher website, http://sbprabooks.com/MaxHammer. The latter website also posts our other blogs, and describes our books and us as authors.

TAMING WILD PASSIONATE ENERGIES THROUGH LOVE;UNITING PASSION AND COMPASSION; LIVING IN

INTEGRITY

Dr. Barry Hammer

Coping with our intensely passionate emotions and desires can be like riding a wild horse, or being inundated by a turbulent river, overflowing its banks, producing havoc for us, and for others around us. We become driven by demanding, insatiable, energies, that have a counterproductive, disruptive, impact on our lives. As suggested by Rakesh Sethi1,

“The mind is like a river flowing, full of emotions, good and bad, thrusting every which way wildly, like raging water. The riverbanks are like your intellect; they must be strong to hold and channel the water (emotions) properly. Otherwise, the water will overflow the banks, causing a disastrous flood, like a mind out-of-control that creates havoc in your life and in others’ lives. What was supposed to be your blessing then has become yourcurse.”1

1[Rakesh Sethi, Cruising Through Turbulence: An Inspirational Guide for Your Wealth and Well being in Difficult Economic Times and Beyond (San Ramon, California: True Wellness Group, 2012), page 28]

(Rakesh Sethi’s website: http://www.PromoteHealthWellness.com/cruising-thro… and Amazon

purchasing page: http://www.amazon.com/Cruising-Through-Turbulence-… ).

However, when we unselfishly share with others the energy of love, or caring experiential connection, it functions like a relaxing, easeful,cohesive, unifying, force that calms our passionate energies and focuses them in constructive, productive, harmonious, directions. Our passionate energies are meant to be united with the calming, compassionate, energies of love, as part of the indivisible wholeness of our being, rather than functioning apart from our inner center of love, relaxed peace, harmonious equilibrium, and holistic cohesive integrity, in resistive opposition to it. The only way for the passionate energy of desire and sensuality to not become overly turbulent, frantically desperate, and chaotic is for it to be groundedin and balanced by the energy of relaxed peace, harmony, and cohesive integrity. The greatest, or perhaps the only true, source of that cohesive, harmonizing, force, is love, or warmly caring energy flowingfrom oneself to others, whereas lack of loving connection to others keeps one’s energy bottled up within oneself, producing tension that makes one’s passions chaotic rather than calm, dissipated and disintegrating rather than cohesively integrated, degenerative rather than regenerative. The absence of the shared relational energy of life, as love, inevitably produces the experience of inner emptiness, deficiency, dissatisfaction, and self-rejection rather than contentment, self-acceptance, and the experience of inner wholeness and proficiency of being.

That sense of inner emptiness and deficiency arising from the absence of the essential energy of life as love produces an insatiable hunger to fill oneself with intense, dramatic, sensations, feelings, desires,and fantasies, in order to experience a substitute, quasi, sense of passionate inner aliveness. We feel frantically driven to constantly fill ourselves with some kind of false substitute for the natural passionate intensity and vibrant life energy that love truly, intrinsically, is. The frenetic pursuit of a substitute sense of inner

fullness and passionate euphoria produces chronic tension arising fromthe attempt to grasp and hold onto a continuously fading, vacuous, shallow, sense of energy arousal, in contrast to the calm, enduring, deeply satisfying, energy passion of love. That, often subliminal, tension, anxiety, and desperately “hungry” continuous craving, prevents us from feeling comfortable with ourselves, and prevents others from feeling comfortable with us, or around us. Many people naturally seek to feel intensely alive by generating passionate desires, arousing sensations, dramatic emotions, vivid fantasies, and frenetic or kinetic activities, but that intense energy needs to be grounded in the presence of unselfish love and relaxed peace so that it becomes more productive rather than counterproductive; more harmonious and cooperative, and less demanding, disruptive, and debilitating. The expression of unselfish caring or true love to others produces a deeper and more enduring sense of inner satisfactionthan what seeking other forms of intense excitement can provide, because the warmth of unselfish caring arises from, and arouses the experience of, our ever-present permanent being, in contrast to the conditionally acquired, continuously fading, often addictive, quality of other states of excitation that are pursued as substitutes for the more genuine and deeper experience of satisfaction, inner aliveness, and wholeness that only true love can provide.

We intuitively recognize that we are not meant to reject any aspect ofour indivisible whole energy flow, including being open to experiencing, and, thereby, embracing, but not inappropriately expressing, our temporarily arising feelings, sensations, desires, thoughts, and fantasies, which are all part of our energetic natural unitary wholeness of being. However, we may need to find a way to calmdown some of our turbulent wild passions so that they become more constructive, responsible, creative, and empowering, rather than chaotic, addictive, disabling, and self-defeating, in their mode of expression. If we reject our natural passions, arising as expressions of the indivisible wholeness of our individual and relational energy flow, we may experience an unnatural, uncomfortable, sense of self-division or lack of wholeness of our energy-being, but we also do not

wish to let our passions drive us, run away with us, or lead us in wrong directions, which, if not tamed by the soothing force of gentle love, contentment, and relaxed peace, could eventually produce a disaster, like riding an unruly wild horse without first having a firmhold on the reins and saddle. We need to tame the “wild horse” of our intensely passionate energies through the power of love, rather than through aggressively repressive oppositional force, so that all of ourenergies are harnessed in the service of love, life, and goodness, rather than working against what is truly good for us, and for others around us. The cohesive integrated wholeness of our being as love naturally seeks to incorporate even our unruly, wayward, passions so that they become transmuted or transformed in a manner that is truly consistent with, rather than violates, our intrinsic unitary wholenessand indivisible integrity of being, as well as our natural sense of ethical responsibility toward others, as a reflection of the natural compassionate goodness and empathic relatedness of our being as love.

The spiritual process of loving service, ethical virtue, and living inintegrity, does not necessarily involve sharing only total “positivity”, and never sharing anything else. Sometimes, when appropriate, as an expression of the heartfelt experiential truth and the adaptive requirements of the moment, being truthful with oneself and others can also involve constructively, compassionately, sincerely, sharing experiences, struggles, difficulties, and challenges, coming from the “darker”, “wilder”/more turbulent, uncomfortable, undesired, “negative”, polar side of one’s being, energy, and experience. It seems to me that a more restrictive, narrow, idealized, rigidly predetermined definition of loving service,spiritual living, and ethical virtue, especially defined as the exclusive sharing of idealized “positivity”, and never sharing anything else, especially, never constructively sharing the more turbulent, uncomfortable, aspects of our experiential truth, would really violate and distort the variegated, “many-splendored”, indivisible wholeness and glory of what our own individual energy field and the whole relational energy field intrinsically is, and whatit naturally needs to evolve, mature, or develop into, by wrestling

with, constructively embracing, transforming, and integrating, its owndarker side or seemingly antithetical shadow. I believe that the intrinsic wholeness of our being, energy, and functioning, needs to befreed from all unnecessarily and overly restrictive, exclusively partial, rigid, static, predetermined, self-definitions, so that we can be fully at peace, or flowing in harmonious attunement, with the indivisible wholeness of our own individual being and of our relational connection to other experiential energy fields, as the basis of relaxed self-acceptance, unified cohesiveness, coherence, andtrue integrity, rather than perpetrating self-division, self-conflict,and self-constriction, by defining ourselves, others, and spiritual reality in exclusively, unrealistically, “positive” terms, and rejecting, devaluing, evading, and exiling, the more difficult, challenging, unpleasant, or seemingly “unworthy”, aspects of our own experience, other individuals, and of the universal/collective field of energy as a whole. Until and unless we are truly compassionate withourselves, by first constructively, appropriately, embracing the indivisible wholeness of our own individual and relational experiential energy field, it will be difficult for us to compassionately embrace the indivisible wholeness of other individualsas well, as the basis of being truly kind and helpful to oneself and others, and constructively resolving various kinds of inner and outer conflicts caused by rejecting and thereby entering into conflict with part of the wholeness of the energy experience of oneself and others. The spontaneous flow of our undivided whole energy-experience is much grander and more productively functional than is any kind of idealized, exclusive, restrictive, predetermined, self-definition, which divides us from any experiential truths in ourselves and in others that are beyond the parameters of those idealized self-definitions. When we reactively value judge or selectively evaluate some aspects of our own energy experience as being only conditionally “good” and “acceptable” to spontaneously arise to our conscious awareness , and others as being conditionally “bad” and “unacceptable”to be embraced or lovingly unified with by our conscious awareness, asknower, then that process of selective self-approval and self-disapproval unnaturally divides and distorts the intrinsic natural wholeness of our energy experience, whereas when we take an attitude

of nonjudgmental unconditional self-acceptance, then we are able to embrace, or consciously unify with, the whole field of our energy experience, without acting upon, or inappropriately expressing, non-constructive urges, which would violate the greater integrity of our whole being.

Anyone who wishes to read more of our inspirational/transformational insights should see our two published books, 1) Psychological Healing Through Creative Self-Understanding and Self-Transformation. (ISBN: 978-1-62857-075-5) and 2) Deepening Your Personal Relationships: Developing Emotional Intimacy and Good Communication. (ISBN: 978-1-61897-590-4). Primary author: Dr. Max Hammer, with contributions from secondary authors Dr. Barry J. Hammer and Dr. Alan C. Butler. These books can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or our author/publisher website, http://sbprabooks.com/MaxHammer. The latter website also posts our other blogs, and describes our books and us as authors.

Transformational Life Coach and RelationshipCounselor

Dr. Barry Hammer

I can help you explore any kind of interpersonal relationship issue, including marriage and family counseling, or enhancing other kinds of significant personal relationships. I can also help you gain insight in regard to any kind of vocational, psychological, spiritual, or societal, issue that may be important to you, e.g., clarifying your basic goals in life; actualizing your natural individual potentials; enhancing your level of creative functioning; coping with difficult life circumstances; facing opportunities for constructive personal transformation; helping other individuals and contributing to positivesocial transformation through one's career, volunteer work, and personal life, and so on. I will show you how to deal effectively withthe necessary challenges of life that one has to face.

In my relationship counseling services, I help you learn how to develop open, honest, constructive, meaningful, communication with other individuals, as a way of producing greater levels of mutual empathic understanding, constructive conflict resolution, and co-creative transformational empowerment, in your personal relationships.I can also help you understand how connecting to other individuals, inunselfish, deeply caring, relationships, can enable one to tap into a regenerative level of life energy, for enhanced vitality, psychological transformation and spiritual growth, optimal well-being,creative inspiration, as well as holistic healing of heart, mind, and body.

In addition to providing counseling dealing with issues pertaining to enhancing one's own personal relationships and individual life, I am also able to provide counseling for issues related to contributing to the constructive transformation of contemporary society. This involvesunderstanding how the synergistic/co-creative power of love can gradually, constructively, transform the collective heart of humanity,

from a predominantly selfish, fearful, abusive, predatory, addictive, toxic, orientation, to a more unselfish, compassionate, relaxed, secure, wholesome, orientation.

My Credentials: I have interdisciplinary PhD in Religious Studies/Spirituality and History of World Cultures, and have also taken extensive graduate level coursework and supervised practicums inPsychology and Counseling. I have many years of experience in counseling, mentoring, and have published two books, one focusing on developing true experiential psychological self-understanding and constructive personal transformation, and the other dealing with developing deeply caring interpersonal relationships, involving good communication, emotional closeness, co-creative/synergistic empowerment, and holistic transformation of one's consciousness and functioning.

Contact Information: Email: [email protected]

Please also see my two published books, 1) Psychological Healing Through Creative Self-Understanding and Self-Transformation. (ISBN: 978-1-62857-075-5) and2) Deepening Your Personal Relationships: Developing Emotional Intimacy and Good Communication. (ISBN: 978-1-61897-590-4). Primary author: Dr. Max Hammer(my beloved late father), with contributions from secondary authors Dr. Barry J. Hammer (me) and Dr. Alan C. Butler. These books can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or our author/publisher website, http://sbprabooks.com/MaxHammer. The latter website also posts our other blogs, and describes our books and us as authors.

My books and blogs will be very valuable for anyone who is seeking to compassionately transform their individual life, personal relationships, and society. This involves developing true experiential self-understanding as the basis of liberating self-transformation, healing emotional pain and inner conflict, developing inner peace, happiness, creativity, spiritual awareness; as well as developing psychologically healthy, deeply

mailto:[email protected]

satisfying, successful, personal relationships, with true love, empathic emotional intimacy, and good communication; and extending similar principles as a way of transforming social networks, local communities, and global society for the better.

My Blogs (Inspirational Transformative Insights)

Documents