hodayot [thanksgivings] for today

8:27
My Body, my Partner, my God
I give thanks to your ability
- by breathing stronger and eyelid movements-
to vibrate whatever pain & shame arise in our soul

I'm grate-full, that it is me, who is considered "ridiculous", and not another!

I am grate-full for Immanuel's help with several computer problems.
I'm grateful for Efrat's indirect response [obviously proud, that I sent my letter to her job-address for all her team to see how I appreciate her,
and not insulted - as my son feared - that I replaced "monolog" with "story"]
I'm grate-full for Ronnit's words: "Shalom, Imma - glad you enjoyed it",
[unlike Micha's: "Got it, thanks"] and especially for Yael's SMS:

I'm grate-full for remembering (applying?) Frankl's "Paradoxical Intention"
I'm grate-full that this time Mika longed for me and received me wholly.

During his time in the concentration camps,
Frankl developed his approach to psychotherapy known as logotherapy.
At the core of his theory is the belief
that humanity's primary motivational force is the search for meaning.

Even in the degradation and misery of the concentration camps,
Frankl was able to exercise the most important freedom of all:
the freedom to determine one's own attitude ...
One of the ways he found the strength to fight to stay alive and not lose hope
was to think of his wife.
"He who has a why for life can put up with any how." (Nietzsche)

Frankl's first book in English "Man's Search For Meaning"
was written while in a Nazi prison camp during World War II.
.(According to United States Library of Congress poll,
that book is one of the ten most influential books in America.)
...
In using the term, "man," Frankl is referring to the "Human Race"- male and female. Logotherapy forms a chain of interconnected links;
(1) freedom of will, (2) will to meaning, and (3) meaning of life.

1. FREEDOM OF WILL:
Man has freedom of will which remains even when all other freedoms are gone because he can choose what attitude he will take to his limitations. ...
Freedom means freedom in the face of three things:
(1) the instincts, (2) inherited disposition, (3) environment.

2. WILL TO MEANING:
The basic striving of human beings is to find and fulfill meaning and purpose.
People reach out to encounter meanings to fulfill. ...

3. MEANING OF LIFE;
Logotherapy leaves to the client the decision
as to how to understand his own meaning ...
The therapist can help an individual to discover his/her meaning,
but it is the individual's responsibility
to come to understand the meaning of his or her life...

... the creativity of man which is oriented toward values and meaning.
It is Frankl's contention that the pleasure principle is self-defeating.
The more one aims at pleasure, the more his aim is missed. ...
Pleasure is missed when it is the goal
and obtained when it is the side effect of attaining a goal.

Humans are ultimately self-determining.
What one becomes within limits of endowment and environment,
he has made for himself.
Frankl wrote, "In the concentration camp, we witnessed
some of our comrades behaved like swine while others behaved like saints.
Man has both potentialities within himself:
which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.
Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is.
After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers
and he is also that being who entered the gas chambers upright,
with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

[From my knowing and perspective in 2008,
this view of Wo/Man is still terribly limited, but I do honor Frankl for his view then!]

It was Frankl's contention that the pleasure principle of Freud is self-defeating. The more one aims for pleasure, the more his aim is missed.
The very "pursuit of happiness" is what thwarts it.
Pleasure is missed when it is the goal
and attained when it is the side effect of attaining a goal....
the Law of Reversed Effect:
"The harder you try...the more difficult it becomes."

The therapist's role consists
of widening and broadening the visual field of the client
so that the spectrums of meaning and values become conscious & visible to her. Meaning to life may change, but it never ceases to be.
Meaning can come through what we give to life (creative values),
by what we take from the world:
Listening to music, reading, enjoying sports, etc. (experience values),
and through the stand we take toward a situation we can no longer change
such as the death of a loved one (attitudinal values).
there are no ... aspects which cannot be .. translated
into a positive accomplishment.

It is commonly observed that anxiety produces precisely what the client fears.
Frankl called this "anticipatory anxiety."
...the client reports that she has been having trouble going to sleep at night.
The fear of not going to sleep only adds to difficulty of trying to go to sleep.
Fear of test taking, sexual problems (impotence, failure to experience orgasm)
are intensified by anticipatory anxiety.
Frankl developed the technique of "paradoxical intention."
For instance, when a phobia client is afraid that something will happen to him,
the Logotherapist encourages him to intent or wish for, even if only for a short time, precisely what he fears...
There can also be a bit of humor involved with paradoxical intention.
I used this method with a lady who ate two bags of popcorn each night
and wanted to stop or cut down.
.. say to yourself, 'Well, I have been eating two bags of popcorn each night.
Tonight, I am going to eat four bags. I am sure that if I can eat two, I can eat four." She began to laugh and said, "That is ridiculous. I don't want four bags.
Two bags are too much also. I can be satisfied with one or less."

... there can be a touch of the ridiculous and humor in the approach.
Paradoxical Intention allows the client
to develop a sense of detachment toward her problem by laughing at it. ...
problems are caused as much by compulsion to avoid or fight them
as by the problem itself.
The avoiding and fighting the problem focuses on the problem
and strengthens the symptoms.
Another part of paradox intention is to exaggerate the problem.
By exaggerating the problem and then letting it go,
one may observe that the symptom diminishes
and the client is no longer haunted by them (circle therapy).

"Driving Backward into the Future" = "Closeups to the Past" = Healing&Harvesting my Past

While lying awake in my bed at night , breathing and healing my shame,
torturing myself with thoughts like:
'I shouldn't have added all these details',
or worse:
'Why can't I ever talk or write in a way,
which is acceptable to people in general and to my family in particular',
suddenly the name of Viktor Frankl popped up in my mind.
It took me some time to remember the exact wording of his method of
"Paradoxical Intention".
And when I found it, got up from my bed, opened the computer,
sculpted my desires and then searched for Paradoxical Intention,
I came across a stub in Wikipedia, modified only 8 days ago,
and across an article with the first sentence:
"I wish to pay tribute to one of my heroes".
This is exactly what I would like to do too,
and not only because of his inspiration during the plight of this night.
"Apply the 'paradoxical intention':
Bat-Adam adumah ad eimah: the daughter of Man is red to threat!"

For small as its reasons may seem to people with "real" problems,
for me the feeling of shame has been overwhelming all my life:
SHAME ,
Fear of SHAME,
Fear of causing others SHAME,
Fear of causing others
to feel SHAME for my sake,

Frankl was my hero also concerning two other messages:
His theory of therapy concerns what I, too, believe
to be human's deepest predicament:
He called it "lack of meaning", I call it "lack of excitement and full-fill-ment."
His little book: "Man in search meaning"
was written with his experience of Auschwitz in the background.
Who else could , can claim to have found the true "crux" [=cross=suffering]!?
I remember him quoting Nietzsche,
that Man can bear almost anything , if he has a purpose.
This is "Logo"-therapy: to find the purpose!
I think of so many people, especially young and youngest people,
who either settle for a life-style, which at least grants them
the recognition of other conformist contemporaries,
or they invent actions and life-styles, which provoke every conformist.
I ask again and again:
Where are the thinkers and psychologists and artists and scientiest,
who make it their life's "meaning", or "excitement and full-fill-ment"
to discover and propagate the conditions for "excitement and full-fill-ment"?
Last year I started to do some systematic research:
* FULL-FILL-ment in WORK

* 2007_07_11 Conditions for Heaven-on-Earth (1)

* 2007_08_04-Conditions for Heaven-on-Earth (2)

*2007_08_14 - Conditions for Heaven-on-Earth (3)

* 2007_08_16-FULL-FILL-ing-Fountainhead

* 2007_08_17 Conditions for Heaven-on-Earth (4)

* 2007_08_31-FULLmoon-FULL-FILL-ment

* 2007_09_17-Mika's_FULL-FILL-ments (1)
* 2007_09_18-Mika's_FULL-FILL-ments (2)
* 2007_09_19-Mika's_FULL-FILL-ments (3)
* 2007_10_02-Mika's_FULL-FILL-ments with Abba
* 2007_10_03-Mika's_FULL-FILL-ments with Imma
* 2007_10_05-Mika's Small Creations with Nature
* 2007_10_08-Mika's FULL-FILL-ments with Playing
* 2007_10_09-Mika's FULL-FILLments_with Parents
* 2007_10_10-Mika's_ FuLLFillments_with_Siblings
*_2007_10_11-Mika's_ FULL-FILLments_with Family
* 2007_10_12-Mika's FULL-FILLments with Yael

* 2007_10_13-Exploring&Creating_begets_Fullfillment

Another great gift I received from Viktor Frankl,
either from his book "Man in search for Meaning",
or from his lecture in Tel-Aviv some 30 years ago,
was the way he related to aging.
Instead of being sorry for each year that has passed,
I am joyous, he said,
I relate to each day as to a page in a calender:
each day another page is filled
and I can add it to the harvest of all former pages.
This image of the "Kalenderblatt" is so imprinted in my mind,
that it caused me to start my 365 day calender in 1979,
with reports in text and images, and thoughts and feelings,
and it's this image which is behind "K.i.s.s.-Log" up to this day

See a video with Viktor Frankl
"despair is suffering without meaning"

From last year's quote:
"Don't force yourself to change"
"When you try to change,
you manipulate and torture yourself…
it is much more useful
to simply become deeply aware of yourself
as you are now.
Rather than try to change, stop or avoid something
that you don't like in yourself,
it is much more effective to stay with it
and become more deeply aware of it…

[how much more is this true,
when I look at something I do like in myself,
but which makes others judge me as weird and ridiculous!]

"When you really get in touch with your own experiencing,
you will find that change takes place by itself,
without your effort or planning.
With full awareness you can let happen,
whatever wants to happen,
with confidence that it will work out well.
You can learn to let go and live and flow
with your experiencing and happening
instead of frustrating yourself with demands to be different.

All the energy that is locked up in the battle
between trying to change and resisting change
can become available for participation
in the happening of your life
that is both passive and active.

"This approach will not provide you with answers
to the problems of your life.
It does provide you with tools
that you can use to explore your life,
simplify and clarify your problems and confusions,
and help you discover your answers – what you want to do"

Problems with staring at the computer screen,
an article in "Clalit"

continuation on Sept.22