"ECHO OF NARCISSUS" by Sha-Ron Kushnir  iTunes & Amazon.

    According to ancient psychology as was presented by the Greeks in their mythology, Echo was the dependent lover of Narcissus. According to the myth, Echo falls to the charm and spell of the egocentric youth Narcissus. The love Echo develops for him does not weaken but consumes her even when Narcissus displays clear signs of rejecting her. Nonetheless, Echo persists after Narcissus, unable to relinquish her attachment to him, fading into oblivion longing for him. Giving up her own sense of identity, she mirrors every word and action, opinion and desire, never contradicting but succumbing to mirroring Narcissus back to himself, increasingly leaving herself behind.

    Echo Personality Disorder (EPD), was first used by British psychoanalyst Patrick Hurst to describe a variant of Dependent Personality Disorder (DPD). Besides possessing the fear of self that disables the dependent personality to live, move and breathe freely without depending on another for giving them reason to enjoy their lives, a central feature of EPD behavior is a pervasive habit of attracting individuals that are unable to requite their love. EPD individuals by default mirror, echo, and compliment all the desires of another individual continually sacrificing their own desires, self-worth, value and dignity. The nucleus of the EPD is most intensely revealed when the attraction is toward a Narcissistic individual, or one with NPD.

    The tragedy of Narcissus and Echo © 2012 is a Ballet/Film work in progress with music by Sha-Ron Kushnir.  on iTunes & Amazon.

Insights into Adam Lanza's psychopathology.

It is clear that Adam Lanza's mother, as well-intentioned as she was, smothered him to the point where she felt she needed to accompany her 20 year old boy to the bathroom. She utterly robbed her son of his own sense of control and self-worth. It was during this time she sought to transfer her boy, who was reportedly brilliant, to a different college. This case is strangely reminiscent of British Brian Blackwell (2004) who slaughtered both his parents, and then went on a nice date that evening. Brian's mother smothered him to such a degree, that she bathed him through his teens, totally demasculating and depersonalizing him. He was diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, making NPD the first diagnosis used in a court of law to excuse the insanity of an unfeeling, unempathic. chronically self-absorbed criminal. Adam Lanza was reported to feel a lack of emotion or physical feeling to such a degree that college football coaches sincerely warned team players to be careful falling on him, since he was known not feel pain. It was told that if a fire hit him, he wouldn't feel it.

This smart Aspergers autistic boy had symptoms comorbid with Cluster A and B personality disorders, Antisocial and Avoidant exacerbated by an Adjustment disorder. By the fact that he was in a public school system indicates he was forced to adjust his disordered genetic disposition to a norm, one that clearly traumatized him. The traumatic force of adjustment and enculturation was most probably his mother's will, one that he slaughtered. The root of this pervasive, unresolved, residual trauma occurred when he was around the age of 5, which is the group of kids he also slaughtered. During puberty, during the critical and potent Oedipul mechanisms operating to assert his masculine aggression, he was exposed to terrible, turbulent interactions between his parents, that consequently resulted in a nasty divorce when he was 17. During, before and after, his dominating mother exposed him to many guns she collected as a hobby. His mother's "gun" hobby, he internalized together with the rejection he experienced from his peers, the trauma he underwent in integrating himself with society, and the volcanic aggression he had toward his rejecting mother, for failing to value and prize his differentness in first stages of life. The violence he externalized is an expression of pervasive rejections he experienced from the beginning of life coupled with exposure to acceptable violence modeled by his parents and media. The event's painful externalization reflects a painful internal fracture within his personality, rooted in a desperate desire to annihilate his existential torture, hence an externalization of violent annihilating mechanisms projected onto children around the age his own development was traumatically arrested. 

His core was surrounded by a core belief that he was absolutely worthless rooted in the first stages of life, first precipitated by a mother failing to prize him, and instill in him a firm foundation for the development of a solid and healthy autonomous personal identity, and second, pervasively by people around him affirming his self-loathing beliefs. Absolutely tragic on many levels.

Sha-Ron Kushnir

MS Clinical & Counseling Psych. (2013)

Capella U.

The Narcissist vs. Antisocial.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder NPD is rarely comorbid with Antisocial violent conduct. However, if in childhood, violent conduct tendencies, and unempathic self-absorption behaviors are apparent, then yes, the NPD person can be extremely dangerous. Antisocial Personality Disorders ASPD previously referred to as psychopaths, are always Narcissistic, but unlike NPD have no regard whatsoever for the overseeing general value system or the Law, similar to NPD no regard for anybody around them. ASPD are absolutely primal, governed by drives and impulses and lives with the sole purpose to feed these instincts. NPD individuals however, may have internalized the general Law or their cultural value system that is abstract and coldly thus comfortably distant from them, however they utterly disregard the values and principles of people directly thus uncomfortably around them. So, there is a thin line between Narcissism and Antisocial Personalities. Murder is quite different from merely breaking the law, and  may of course be terribly hurtful to someone. But taking someone's life is the ultimate in exerting control over someone, utterly disregarding their life and in fact become exhilarated in removing it . Taking someone's life is exerting the utmost control over them in annihilating their existence, in this very way APD experience a godlike mania in extreme beyond a shadow of any doubt. They have no one to answer to, no guilt what so ever, completely unempathic, devaluing existing laws and creating their own they feel are much superior and surpass any other that interferes with their own, since these their own laws are in place to directly feed their own instincts, drives and desires.  They are utterly selfish and self-involved and of course extremely dangerous. But their most dangerous characteristics of all is not the obvious, but the unobvious. They are very often strikingly attractive individuals.

PROPORTIONS OF IDENTITY AND TRUE SELF

The amount of hatred or dislike is directly proportional to a falsified identity threatened. Amount of love is directly proportional to a true identity embraced. Obsession is a result of hatred and love in conflict with solidifying and defining themselves. It seems to me that the epitome of hatred would be Hitler, and love a self-actualized figure such as one I know of in one own culture, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The hypothesis is that the truer one is to ones true self and identity, meaning the stronger the embrace between ego self-gratifying instinct and the inner altruistic self, the more love one is able to impart toward another, whether on one level a partner, next level up family, with the next levels of community, society and ultimately world. A level beyond that of course could stretch beyond the uni-verse into inexplicable realms of G-dliness. The danger here however is that ones relationship with the undefinable can result to lower levels of self absorbment cutting off family, partner, and ultimately self.  

The more one is distanced from ones true self, the more one is limited in their capacity to love altruistically. One could view this aspect of the inter-relationship between ones identity and ones self to be directly proportional to ones socialization, in other words the amount of love one imparts to ones family, next level community next level society, then world, nature, earth etc.  Hot and cold variant behavior is a trait of the borderline personality, where identity for some reason experiences difficulty in being established. It is a luke warm identity where a master once said, is really the most hellish of any type of existence. I hypothesize that obsession is directly proportional to the in-acceptability of love in ones own self that results from early abandonment. In other words, the object of obsession is an outward manifestation of the abandoned fragment of ones own self, in fact a truer more significant part of ones identity. It clothes itself in love to an external object, only because it is the most lovable part of ones own identity that one has turned against long ago for some or other reason. The more intense the obsession, the more intense is the self abandonment. 

In light of the above hypothesis then, Hitler would be a figure of extreme self abandonment. His pathology of hatred therefore is a direct result of his turning against an internal self-concept that in fact aches within him to be recognized and embraced, however, whose persistent ego and constructed identity finds itself unable to dissolve and resolve the issue of self abandonment. In other words, simply put, the Jew within Hitler's own self is abandoned by him to such an extent as to seek to annihilate it even in the external environment. Such an hypothesis also lends itself well to issues of homophobia where the homosexual is hated because of what he reminds or represents in the haters own inner self that has failed to be recognized and has been left abandoned, the hater seeking to annihilate the homosexual in the external environment what has failed to be annihilated or rather resolved within. Indeed, the resolution is simply too threatening, yet all it requires is an embrace that totally dissolves it into non-existence freeing the ego and the false identity.

Love acts in the same way, and truly the figures exemplary of love from ancient to modern times do not seek to annihilate at all, but rather to embrace and welcome. The figure of G-d has all too often been used for power, and has been corrupted and distorted to resemble more the variable of hatred rather than love. Truly loving human beings find themselves unthreatened and freely giving regardless of race, color, sexual orientation, culture, or creed. Their outer self identity is in accord with their true inner core, their Self of selves. Their personality and individuality are in embrace rather than disgrace. The proportion between that union of true self and identity manifests itself in their altruism and effect on their social as well as natural environment. A figure such as Moses is utterly in embrace with his true Self, thus we find he argues for the well-being of lives of even the gravest of all sinners, whose sin is to an extent so unimaginable to us. A figure such as Jesus, I find more difficult not because I am a jew, but because his is a story of the most complex variables that differs from Moses who possesses an almost limitless capacity for forgiveness, even though the founders of Jesus' faith have attributed to him the quality of an even higher order of forgiveness and limitless capacity for love. Unfortunately, it simply hasn't manifested that way with thousands and thousand of years of blood shed, particularly against the Jew whose loss of life culminated in his holocaust of global proportions. In other words, the evidence of that love and forgiveness is lacking in the epic of Jesus, as much as it gleams with beautiful and profound concepts of an ultimate forgiving and altruistic man, it falls short in its admixture with undeniable idolatrous falsehood that has lent its support to exercise its hatred and slaughter of countless Jewish lives. 

Yet, yes, Love in its ultimate form is all of our destiny, that is to say that ultimately all false identities will dissolve and the ego and the true self will eventually arrive at an all-time embrace. The proverbial "on that day G-d will be One and His name One" is synonymous with the hypothesis laid down above. That the proportions between the relationship of identity with true self will be experienced to such a degree that there can only be imagined an abundance of such proportional magnitude immeasurable by the altruistic kindness that will be spawned of such a union. In other words, a time when all human beings will absolutely without a doubt will be their own true shining identities, the only identity that ever desired to exist within them. There will be absolutely no filter or guise to hide that true identity, for it is the life of lives, the Self of selves, one and unique within each and every one of us, as unique as the sum total of all of existence.

~ SR.

Rogerian Client-Centered Therapy and Self-Actualization
	Date: May 14, 2012 12:30 PM

This quarter has been one of the richest and rewarding educational experiences for me here at Capella. I was eager to delve deeper into the writings of Carl Rogers ever since I was initially exposed to his orientation in my 1st quarter while I was enrolled in the counseling course. It was also a pleasure to discover that indeed his ideas penetrated basically every realm of the psychotherapeutic approach that exists today, namely the ingredients of the optimal therapeutic environment consisting of genuine congruency, reflective listening, empathy, trust and unconditional-positive regard that is elaborated upon in our text (Cormier & Hackney, 2011).

My greatest inspiration that hopefully will be sustained throughout my psychological career is to slowly go through all of Carl Rogers writings and professional career, gleam and learn as much as possible. I find, as he has expressed in his book "On becoming a person" (Rogers, 1961) that the therapeutic relationship is a genuine friendship where both client and therapist are affected and transformed. My greatest difficulty with this concept is my own negative experience of the transference and counter-transference dynamic that has always seemed to throw some of the more potentially rewarding relationships right off the tracks. This can manifest to various degrees whether the client (or friend) is physically attractive or not, or simply liked or not, and whether I have my own self egoic desires invested in the relationship. The true healer, as much as they can take on the sufferings of another and transform another's darkness into light, has to be truly whole, comfortable and grounded in their own self. The work of developing a transparent non-identity while still emanating genuine empathy for another is as much scientifically viable in the field of psychology as it is in every true spiritual or religious work. In fact I think that any person in a religious (and political) setting that does not develop a transparent non-identity in dealing with another may ultimately cause havoc in another individual whose malefic effects may spread into their community, and eventually society at large and the rest of the world.

Although I am observant of ancient Jewish law, I am continually strengthened by the force of my individual power that I am simply a human being like any other, a member of the human race and not some marginalized community. Given the quest, every individual through a series of trials and tribulations that come from confronting the make-up of ones internal and external environment, will discover that the only G-d that should rule over them, is ultimately within their own self, perhaps the light of that one self, the life thereof. In this sense, Carl Rogers rose to become the president of the APA to establish this very truth in scientific jargon yet, as one can observe in his writings, strongly maintain a humble voice that only simply points toward something quiet and magnificent that for a lack of a better word, means "soul".

Every organism has a tendency to self-actualize. This profound statement is the beginning and ending of existence, circumventing every creature regardless if somewhere arrested or accelerating in their process. Every organism is carried and maintained by a life force way beyond its comprehension. Indeed, so is the entire universe, together with time that accompanies it. Since our own life force is beyond our comprehension, when we enter into a therapeutic alliance with a Rogerian therapist, the therapist makes comprehensible what is not, meaning, the therapist is the manifestation of what exists internally within the client itself. That is why the process of congruency and reflection and especially non-identity in the therapist is supremely important. Within the client itself is the incomprehensible, non-idenity that allows for freewill, genuine and unconditional positive regard, all accepting etc. The therapist is simply the external representation of that undying soul of the client filled with love, compassion, empathy, unconditional positive regard, total acceptance that presents itself, reflecting genuinely back the client back to him/herself, mirroring in order to facilitate change and growth and above all, a choice that only the ego must by itself make. But just as those special qualities in the therapist continue in non-judgment, to allow the client to unfold and realign with their truth, so does the supreme self within the client allow for that process to occur - only if the client knew that it was so, but then again that's why a therapist appears to make what is unobvious obvious, and incomprehensible comprehensible. On a yet deeper level, that is the reason there are relationships, societies, communities - to allow the unmanifest to be manifest and what cannot be experienced when hidden, experienced with another revealed.

It is indeed a profound process, where as Rogers (1961) states that the therapist itself is changed. Given the right conditions and genuine heartfelt approach, this process allows for a what we can for a lack of a better word call a "religious" experience. Which really only means, a celebration of the union between self and non-Self, and re-ununification of the fragmented into the whole, an experience of experience as Rogers (1961) expounds upon.

Sha-Ron Kushnir

REFERENCE

Cormier, S. and Hackney, H. (2008) Counseling Strategies and Interventions (7the Ed). Boston, MA; Pearson Education, Inc.

Kirschenbaum, H., & Henderson, V. (Eds.). (1989). The Carl Rogers Reader. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Containing 33 of Rogers' most important articles and book chapters from 1942 to 1987.

Rogers, C. (1961) On Becoming A Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotheraphy Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Jacksonville, FL. Feb 17 - 23, 2012.

Jacksonville, Florida. February 17-23, 2012.

Capella University: Clinical Residency, Track 1.

There are very few stages in your life marked by an event that causes a collapse and dramatic shift in the ongoing progression of your life. My Capella University Track 1 Residency was such a momentous event. For the first time in my life I was surrounded by hundreds of students from across the globe, from diverse lives and life-styles within a humanitarian psychological context, amongst influential humanistic clinical psychologists who oversaw our training. My class consisted of 3 white males and 8 females, (2 of whom were white, 1 Asian Pilipino, and 5 African-American). 

During the residency, besides being exposed to one another's remarkable cultural and experiential differences, we were exposed to various clinical in-take techniques and modules, ethics of multi-cultural diversity, role-playing, questioning, and chances to apply our chosen theories of therapy resonating most closely with us. Mine of course was the revolutionary Client-Centered Therapy introduced and developed by Carl Rogers. Rogers introduced a non-directive mode of mental healing where the client themselves within the dynamics of their own inner locus of control dictate the direction of the session, the therapist merely reflecting, paraphrasing, closely attending to that locus of control within the client through endless empathy, genuine acceptance, complete non-judgment,  and unconditional positive regard.

At the core of Roger’s theory is the belief in the client themselves, that given an environment of true total acceptance, genuine love, and non-threatening judgment, the client may unravel their complexes by becoming totally aware of them, and in time, discover the truth about who they really are in their midst, and embrace themselves, free their inner natures, and realize their individual (for a lack of a better word) soul, or locus of control. The therapist never advises or directs, but attends fully to the locus of control flickering within the client, a locus that perhaps hides behind the guise of stubborn egoic and self-destructive constructs, and more often than not persists in the life of the client with them totally unaware of it. The truth is, it only seems that the Rogerian approach to mental healing is indirect on the surface, but on the contrary, it is highly direct and potent in a very non-directive way. It's not about the therapist to diagnose, advise, direct, but rather, its all about the client. During therapy, in time, all the elements of the clients psychological constructs are fully presented to them, the true, the false, the profane and the profound. The endless warmth, compassion, understanding and total acceptance projected by the therapist, and one that is experienced by the client, facilitates a relationship unlike one ever before experienced, - one of complete and utter love. On a deeper level, the therapist is the outer representation of the clients inner most core, one that the client sometime somewhere in their evolution for whatever stubborn narcissistic reason was forced to abandon, but a core that aches for a peace, and harmony to reverberate through out the field of the persons life, through out all their physical, psychoemotional and sociological realms on every imaginable and unimaginable level. Rogerian therapy, in the hands of the right practitioner, is deeply spiritual, humanistic, transformational and transcendental. It is not surprising that Roger contemplated a career in ministry, but the light of his contribution to secular psychology eventually will find its way back and penetrate even the most stubborn and resistant of religious practices.

Which brings me to my momentary visit at the Chabad of Jacksonville, under the Shliach Rabbi Shmuel Novack. Rabbi Novack, himself Hassidic and observant from birth, at one time confessed he too contemplated getting a degree in Psychology, an idea I advocate for all rabbis and other religious community leaders, and if not, at least they should familiarize themselves with various theories since they are readily exposed and confronted with many souls in their communities, perhaps seeking salvation, or perhaps even mentally disordered individuals struck with pathology, or maybe simply individuals seeking solace. Whatever it may be, if not to heal, religious leaders should at least be equipped with knowledge to be able to detect dangerous psychopathology that may be life threatening in its variety of forms.

Within the context of what seemed to be the spiritual nature of the residency, in the respect that we all collectively and unconsciously entered a healing environment of education and advancement in our psychological careers, the Juxtaposition of Chabad to my residency added a dimension that injected my experience with Authentic Orthodox Judaism. My meeting the Jacksonville Shliach, Rabbi S. Novack, I was thrust into a subconscious pool of unresolved dynamics in my own religious life from my youth, and the variety of complexes that became a product of it. The emotional power of it was simply overwhelming, nearly drowning me amidst a resurrection of profound unresolved paternal and fraternal longing. The process was not made any easier by the well intentioned Rabbi who followed his daily duties by inviting me to ingest kosher meals, a delicious cuisine of his own making in the company of his holy children and beautiful wife. I mention that the psychoemotional process I was undergoing was not made easier, for the reason that Rabbis, as wonderful and as well intentioned as they are, and as profound the camaraderie they feel towards members of their familial tribe (and global community), they simply have no knowledge nor sensitivity to the real needs of the people they are confronted with. They are not healers of psychoemotional or social complexes, and perhaps they are not meant to be. Or perhaps they are meant to be. If not them, who else? Rabbis, or other religious leaders, at present are rather instructors and service providers for the learning and practice of divine law, which in my cultural context is Torah. Of course, it would serve Rabbis a great good fortune if they do graduate to the high seat of truly understanding not only the spiritual obligation of the human being, but also possess the knowhow and the skill utilizing those tools to direct man to cleanse and purge of those dis-eases that plague him, and hence, realign that human being with his ever healthy and vibrant internal nature, his innermost being, his soul, his G-d, may He be eternally blessed. 

The most kind and sincere Rabbi Novack, as all divinely inspired G-d fearing Rabbis, was merely an instrument through which staggering revelations were conveyed to me. Indeed, the Rabbi’s seemingly clairvoyant insights into my life reminded me not to forget, but remind myself of the enormous contribution the multi-dimensional timeless Torah must necessarily make to the scholarly secular mind of psychology. Indeed psychology and all its branches is the revealed changeable and evolving plane of mans existence, and the Torah is mans soul, the hidden body of all that is, was and forever will be.

Revelation upon revelation followed my Friday night Shabbat at the Jacksonville, Chabad house. After couple futile emails I had sent to a few Jacksonville Chabad houses a week prior to my visit, I was faced with a conflict on how I would spend my upcoming Shabbos, a holy day between nightfall Friday and nightfall Saturday. Late Thursday evening in my small Jaclsonville Plaza hotel bed on the 16^th of February, 2012, falling slightly asleep, I woke myself up, and made the effort to email just another Chabad house somewhere, in hopes that I may, instead of spending it all by myself, find a nice family with whom to observe this awesome, celebratory day in an authentic orthodox Jewish fashion. The next day, I got an email “We’d love to have you”, of course, based on a recommendation on a reference I attached, Rabbi Levi Cunin of Malibu California, one I included in my email the previous night. And so, I was all set. Indeed I was happy, and yet reserved about what I was getting myself into. I had been struggling with constantly being an over-staying stranger at these generous peoples homes to observe religious obligations. Nonetheless, my faith is great, and so is theirs, and as orthodox Judaism encourages, stepping way beyond ones comfort zone, making that leap is met by a treasure of true enlightenment, a gift given to those that perform acts of self-sacrifice, subjugating their animal natures to divine will, and the divine ordinances, the observation of Shabbos being the most important.

Besides meeting the Rabbi on his secular birthday, February 17, he also happened to share the Hebrew birthday of my nephew living in Toronto, erev Purim. Second, a song  so dear and close to my heart was sung at the Shabbos table, one that has never been sung in all my religious experience, that haunting melody by Carlebach “Hitnaari”. Thirdly, days later while enjoying the Rabbis fine cuisine, I demonstrated a recorded piece of my music I had composed a couple years earlier, a song without words. Rabbi Novack, after listening to about a minute of it, guessed its name almost entirely. A piece of music I titled “Victory Street”, he titled “Road to Victory”. Now, I’m not sure what the odds would be in correctly guessing one word, but it seems to me highly unlikely to guess 2 words or a sentence unbeknown to one, both in content and structure, i.e. what I saw as a "street" to victory, Rabbi Novack saw as a "road", to victory. I thought that was profound. For whatever reason, even the most profound is momentary, and we can never be sure what they represent. But in my case, it seemed to me that the universe gave weight in all m explorations to my associations with Torah life rather than secular life, a revelation that appeared to me with immense light and emotional pulsations, in the midst of tremendous, effortless warmth and love.

In time, exactly 7 days after coming back from Jacksonville, Florida, on March 1, 2012, the ground began to appear beneath my feet. A series of self confrontation and acceptance sessions brought some quiet earth into my restless and bewildered fire.  No doubt, the first residency changed me, and the intense exposure to multi-cultural diversity, acceptance, non-judgment on the one psychological side, juxtaposed pure Ahavas Yisroel or brotherly love, religious affiliation, obligation, music, and mysticism on the religious side were grand extensions and projections of my own Self propelling me toward a redefinition beyond my then-present self concept. Beyond my expectation, I was made to confront very serious abandoned and unresolved aspects of myself that potentially threatened my evolution as a human being, and as an eternal child of the universe destined for self actualization and realization.

Needless to say, I was overwhelmed with the love of G-d and His divine people. Of course, as it is with all things, in the first few days of my return, that love sustained me, but it began to wane. Why? Because of the lack of cleaving to a living example living and walking the path of truth. One of the most important discussions with Rabbi Novack, was the importance of having a Rabbi, or Rebbe to guide you. It could have been him, it could have been his Rebbe, my Rebbe, the late Lubavitche Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneersohn. But the more I pondered and obsessed upon these gnawing questions, the more I lost my autonomy, and further opened myself to fragmentation, psychological and social dismemberment, and a loss of peace, a recurring visitation in my life. The more I sought the intervention of some other human being, the more I lost view of my own human being. The more I sought the presence of another to inspire me, the more I lost sight of my own well of inspiration. The more I lost sight of myself, the more uncomfortable, plagued, possessed and broken I became.

Our leaders, our magnificent guides handed to us by the Creator of all life, are here to remind us that our destiny is to become self realized, actualized, one and whole just as they are. We are not to substitute ourselves with another self, for that would be synonymous with having an image of someone other than the vibrant, endless no-image that exists within our core oneness, that extends entirely singular all around us. There are to be no bounds between the inner most self, and the outer most self. The intermediary of all worlds is ones own mind. The only way to perfect and free that mind is by allowing it to truly become imageless.

To be subservient, and lower yourself, even out of your immense love, to another human being or object is a sore mistake that will come to haunt you until you stop. Indeed we can love and fall in love with awesome individuals or concepts, and become utterly inspired by them, but in the long run, we have to be very mindful that these are merely projections of feelings that bubble inside our own hearts. They remind us of things that are living forever within us. To grasp and run after their representations in the external world is the root of all pathology. But  to disassociate the image attached to the feeling, and to allow the emotion, free of image or object association, is to align oneself with ones core, ones G-d that eternally communicates with each human being uniquely and individually. And ultimately that feeling or emotion is Love and Oneness. 

I met some very inspiring individuals at the Capella Residency. I made some remarkable psychological breakthroughs and have also set myself up for deeper and more challenging questions and difficulties, only to stand humbly higher what I ever could have imagined prior. Primarily, is the question of what to do with revelation? Where to place the magnificent plutonic love for humanity, family, culture? All I can say at the end of the day, certainly at the end of each day, no matter what is presented under its sweet light, or withdraws coldly into its shadows, is thank you L-rd G-d, thank you HaShem, thank you for these tears in my eyes, for the aches in my heart, for the visions in my soul, and for shaking me up to get up from my sleep. But above all, thank you for your Torah. For, we are not thrown into this bottomless abyss blind with no rope to lift us up out of the depths of despair into the light of heaven, but by your Torah, an overarching triumphant and victorious tree of life for all those that hang steadily onto it….

Blessings,

Sha-Ron Kushnir. 

1^st March, 2012.

Los Angeles, CA.

CULTURE AND THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

In RESPONSE to a CAPELLA UNIVERSITY Learner:

Amanda,

Great point.

If a case has gone as far as have the courts intervene, then it is a question of abuse rather than culture. In a counselors situation, meaning to be one of the first exposed to such a case, it is to assess whether the situation is one where a loving parent exercises cultural rites of discipline, or the parent is simply exercising a perpetual model of abuse, (meaning, inherited aggressive abusive disciplinary actions stemming from their own childhood being passed down on to their children, and children's children etc.). If the latter is the case, then indeed it would have to have further intervention, in this case, social or family services taking it up to the courts for the protection of the child. 

Its interesting to note that whatever truly malefic behavioral tendencies not arrested and rehabilitated early in life either before puberty, or later in adolescents, by parents or the childs school, will eventually be aggravated and thrust into the social scene of the outside world, into the immediate community and ultimately into society, coming to heads with the authorities set in place that dominate the subsidiary authoritative systems beneath it/ At the end of the day everything trickles down from the government, and in the light of todays world, where cultures are increasingly dissolving and secularizing due to the advent of technological advances, and primarily to the evolution of consciousness, we are heading towards a world culture and world government united under a single constitutional idea. In the context of our discussion, therefore, those communities whose cultures are rooted in the past, and with that, a conscious order peculiar to the time it represents, carry within them outdated aggressive disciplinary measures that were viable in their day, but no longer. 

The world is increasingly moving toward conflict resolution through the means of intellectual reason rather than physical punishment (corporal or chemical). The world is increasingly moving toward the love of one and anothers self, whether at home, school, or community. And the American system, as well as the European system and all forward thinking governments, must remove any notion that reflects violence in any shape or form, as a means to an end. Because at the end of the day, that violence is a force of proselytization, a means to convert another to conform to ones idea of what's right, when in fact that victims behavior, such as a rebellious child, is purely a manifestation symbolic of something wrong in the system itself, whether personal, cultural, societal or governmental. 

Every disturbance should be addressed and truly listened to under the law of acceptance, empathy, and unconditional-positive regard, and we'll find the answer to the problems in our system (macro or micro) in the language of the problem itself. And the more we accept them, listen, allow and love that person disturbed (to whatever degree) express to us whatever disturbs them, layer upon layer, the more those will simply dissolve and disappear, the person its self coming to the awareness of their core, and be self-actualized. 

~ Sha-Ron.