Wean Thyself
Dr. John M. Dorsey, in his later writings, develops his idea
of emotional continence. In his book Illness
or Allness, he had not yet coined this image. He shows awareness of the distinction between
infantile narcissism and adult self-love throughout his writings, noting that
the latter depends on an individual’s conceiving of self as comprehensively one
all-inclusive meaning (life). “Every
individual is an all.” Emotional
continence – neither over-reaction nor under-reaction – is an indicator of the
well-integrated self. Understanding that
I am one, neither less than one nor more than one as my imagination may momentarily
tell me, is self-continence: self-contained, self aware, self-renewing
individual being. In several of his works he uses the metaphor of a little
child for the well-integrated self-conscious adult living his/her all as
his/her self within, and he uses the word “God” for such a one. He explores these themes in his 1971 book Psychology
of Emotion: Self-discipline through Conscious Emotional Continence.
At the Laird seminar in Evanston, 1966, where Dr. Dorsey was
invited to speak, he tells of his roll-calling at the beginning of his classes
addressing each student of self, as “God,” “Mr. Jones-God”, “Ms. Smith-God,”
etc. In a quick exchange between Dr. Dorsey and Mrs. Laird, he is about to pay
verbal homage to Mrs. Laird and her pioneer spirit and asks her not to
listen. “There’s many a wonderful person
(will you close your ears for a moment please Margaret). She has a darling sturdiness in her devotion
to the divinity of her world of self, which everyone who lives as Margaret
Laird can…” She responds with unabashed childlikeness: “…go ahead. I don’t have
to close my ears. I know I’m
divine. Can God be flattered?”
Now emotional continence such as the above has nothing to do
with blocking emotion. That’s why I like
his use of the word “continence.” It
tells me not to try to hold my feelings, breath or urine indefinitely which
would be growingly painful to me. It
tells me that I need to learn how to express my emotions consciously through sublime-ating them and outgrow
the habit of denying them. That’s my
word for it. “We feel the energy of Spirit
and rise into newness of Life because Spirit is what we are.” (WATW, pg. xx) Through Science, I can learn how to move with
the energies of my Spirit and rise myself into newness of life, if I can
understand that each emotional event is all and only about itself. It is always now and always new. And this awareness of my Self-allness is
“childlike.”
“I consciously am. A little child accepts this fact
naturally. It had nothing to do with being
Self-conscious and takes no thought about it.
Self-consciousness Is; I am. I am
I by being conscious identity and not-I as someone or something to take thought
about. Self-consciousness is Mind and
the existence of all that Is or seems to be.
When there is no I-taking-thought, then there is I-being-thought. This is the meaning of the statement, “Except
ye become as a little child, ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (L.L. Jan./Fe. 1976, pg. 1)
D.T. Suzuki, the renowned Zen master describes what happens
in archery when the “thought-taking” no-mind takes control:
“As soon as we reflect, deliberate,
and conceptualize, the original unconsciousness is lost and a thought
interferes…The arrow is off the string but does not fly straight to the target,
nor does the target stand where it is.
Calculation, which is miscalculation, sets in…Man is a thinking reed but
his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. “Childlikeness” has to be restored with long
years of training in self-forgetfulness.
Newness and nowness are coordinates in Scientific
metaphysics which Descartes did not imagine. Keeping thenness and thereness in their place,
the back and forth of human ruminating thought is left behind, as one rises in
the scale of being – the vertical veridical –UP. Dr. Dorsey in his writings states over and
over that all human defensiveness including disguising one’s feelings as not-I
(“my body is sick”) are necessary self-help for an individual who feels
overwhelmed by living and trying not to sink down in to the abyss of unhappiness. Every human is treading water, trying to keep
head above water, staying afloat. This
is the human condition.
In working this article up, I reminded myself of a phrase I
picked up about aging which correlates with the statement of Mrs. Eddy
(Overcoming age is not renewing our youth but is thought going into new
channels which history has not yet recorded), and the phrase I remembered was
“hardening of the categories.” A play
on the phrase “hardening of the arteries,” I like the description of it given
in Yahoo Answers describing how we remember things:
“Memory process tends to work with
generalized categories. If people do not
have an appropriate category for something, they are unlikely to perceive it,
store it in memory, or be able to retrieve it from memory later. If categories are drawn incorrectly, people
are likely to perceive and remember things inaccurately. When information about phenomena that are
different in important respects nonetheless get stored in memory under a single
concept, errors of analysis may result.”
After first drafting this article, I realized that the above
description is a good one for “point of view” or attitude. Not the altitude attitude that Science
provides, but the basic human, trying not to sink into abysmal unhappiness
manic attitude.
Mrs. Laird is quite clear on the fact that a Scientist who
is the Science will lose his/her vision of divine/human Selfhood if that one
refuses to wean him/her self from Oldness - “organization” mentality
(memory-basing) - when the signals come to do so. Ignoring the signals of impaired spiritual
growth and progress “incontinence” and indicates a long-standing habit of
refusing to sublime-ate all of one’s emotions, that is identify all emotion
with Love, the awareness of perfection. It also indicates a lack of spiritual
self-understanding.
Mrs. Laird has much to say in her works about the false
human emotions: gratitude and humility, which represent not a fully matured
spiritually conscious self, but a leveling off at a developmental impasse. Again, trying to not sink in one’s own
downerness.
In my research these past few months, I came across this
wonderful statement of Mrs. Eddy’s written to the New York Herald on May 15, 1908, following the report of her
demise. The same message was repeated in
stronger language for her followers on the next day, when this notice appeared
in the Christian Science Sentinel:
Since Mrs. Eddy is watched, as one
watches a criminal or a sick person, she begs to say, in her own behalf, that
she is neither; therefore to be criticized or judged by either a daily drive or
a dignified stay at home, is superfluous.
When accumulating work requires it, or because of a preference to remain
indoors she omits her drive, do not strain at gnats or swallow camels over it,
but try to be composed and resigned to the shocking fact that she is minding
her own business, and recommends this surprising privilege to all her dear
friends and enemies.
(Source: Mary Baker Eddy,
Gillian Gill, pg. 529)
Sarcasm, a cousin of wit, indicates growing emotional
continence. Today, I might advise my
self: “Don’t have a cow.” But I find the
important point of minding my own business is to feel the energy of Spirit and
rise into NEWNESS now! This is the
demand of Truth pressuring me to be Love, the energy of Spirit, the male and
female of Mind, functioning as newness and freshness of life. (WATW, pg.
204) If I have not minded my business (my back and
forth thinking) into the integration of my maleness and my femaleness in my
one/allness, I lack the regenerating force of my own Soul – Self-recognition as
absolute Good-being – which acknowledgment opens the way to rise UP. The human coordinates of now/then,
here/there, must be put in the framework of Science: omnipresence, omniscience,
omnipotence to stop the ruminating human mind and open the way for new
self-insight.
I find my 95-year-old Margaret Laird babysitting a
five-month-old baby. Reminding her that
“the human is human because it is divine and not human for the same reason” as
she observed the baby doing itself divinely, she writes: “I saw her do all
sorts of things that she had no way of “learning” how to do, and I realized
that she knew without knowing that her original Nature is Self-responsibility
and Self-fulfillment.” (L.L. Jul/Aug.
1980, pg. 1)
We all know that wonderful quote from The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint- Exupery that what is essential is invisible to the eye and
that it is only with the heart that one sees rightly, but suppose you could
actually become invisible?
Mrs. Eddy’s comment on “being watched” reminded me of a book
by Cambridge biologist and psychic explorer Rupert Sheldrake – The
Sense of Being Stared At -- in which is asserted that “our minds
are not limited to our brains, but rather stretch outward to touch the beings
and objects that we perceive. Once this
extended influence of the mind is taken into consideration, many puzzling
phenomena being to make sense, including telepathy and phantom limbs.” Dr. Dorsey sitting in analysis with Freud
spoke of the feeling of being watched and Dr. Freud exclaimed – “That’s the
whole of the trouble!”
Two diametrically opposed points of view of the same Mind
phenomenon, just like the “unillumined human mind (SH 573) versus John who “saw the human and
divine coincidence,” …”divinity embracing humanity in Life and its
demonstration – reducing to human perception and understanding the Life which
is God. In divine revelation, material
and corporeal selfhood disappear, and the spiritual idea is understood.” (SH
561) This spiritual continence –
self-discipline through owning one’s individual allness -- resolves all human
emotion in the understanding that is Self-Love.
“Know thyself, live your divinity (Spirit) self-consciously
and you will be humanly what you are divinely – the male-female of Mind
continually expanding into newness of Life…It will be a great day when Sex is
given its nobility as Soul and restored to Love as the act of integration – the
bond of cohesion. In that day the human
race will possess a morality, an ethical culture so pure, so virgin, that
crime, poverty, way will be words without meaning.” (WATW pg. 207)
“Dr. Dorsey found the confirmation
of his life work when he “grew” one or two Christian Scientists in his world
who interpreted and demonstrated that living the God-Nature Self consciously is
God “doing” the living. (L.L. Sep./Oct. 1980, p. 4)
P.S. I was recently
contacted by a student of Kathryn Breese-Whiting, founder of the Phoenix
Institute (http://phoenixinstitute.us)
offering me 5 boxes of Dr. Dorsey’s books.
Seems that Mrs. Dorsey and Mrs. Breese-Whiting were friends and Mrs.
Dorsey gave the books to Mrs. Breese-White over 30 years ago. These were entrusted to the new friend who
contacted me to see if I would like them.
Traveling to Nashville to see our grandkids, Laura and I stopped in
Kansas and picked up these books. So, if
any of the IMS newsletter readers would like a copy of the following books of
Dr. Dorsey, shoot me an email –rob_craig@hotmail.com
- and I will mail them to you. The
Psychic Nature of Physiology, The Psychology of Ethics, The Psychology of Language, American Psychiatrist
in Vienna and His Sigmund Freud.
