FAITH according to Mom and Maya Angelou

I was thinking about my Mom this morning
and the quiet way she has lead most of her life,
doing what was necessary and what mattered,
even if it only mattered to her children, all ten of us!
I remember being in grade school.
I was in the second grade.  My little brother was in the first grade.
I would look for him and walk through the lunch line and sit next to him in the lunchroom where we would both bow our heads and pray, asking God to bless our lunch, not to show off, but because that is what our Mom taught us to do,
"Come Lord Jesus.  Be our guest ...
And let these gifts to us be blessed.  Amen."

I didn't really think much about it back then,
but on a visit home, I ran into one of my old school teachers.
I wish I could tell you she still remembered what a little genius I was
(okay, quit laughing ... I WAS joking)
but the thing she said when she saw me,
"Taylor, you were my student that always prayed."
and her eyes filled up with tears.
I was moved by her tears even though
I found her comment a little strange.
I wasn't the only child in that little Minnesota town that prayed!
My Mom was standing next to me,
and I remembered one of my favorite quotes
by Abraham Lincoln
and repeated it while I gave my Mom a hug,

"All that I am and ever hope to be,
I owe to my ANGEL MOTHER." 

I have been thinking about the things we pass down to our children and the things our children pass on ...

It wasn't just the Faith Of Our Fathers
but our Mothers too!


There has been a lot of talk here lately
about "those Christians".
Now, I don't know if I'm lumped in with "those Christians",
and depending on the circumstance,
I'm not sure how I would feel about it if I were or if I weren't.
Faith, for me, is as personal and natural
as moving to music, or breathing in the smell of rain,
Fresh coffee or home made bread.
I can't look at the beauty of nature and not say,
"Thank you Lord!"

But if I were to define it in BIG WORDS
eloquently phrased so that you could feel it too,
I would have to refer you to Ms. Angelou,
who has a way of saying EXACTLY the words
that I already feel ...




Christians
- By Maya Angelou



When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin'."
I'm whispering "I was lost,
Now I'm found and forgiven."

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I don't speak of this with pride.
I'm confessing that I stumble
and need Christ to be my guide.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not trying to be strong.
I'm professing that I'm weak
And need His strength to carry on.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not bragging of success.
I'm admitting I have failed
And need God to clean my mess.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not claiming to be perfect,
My flaws are far too visible
But, God believes I am worth it.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I still feel the sting of pain.
I have my share of heartaches
So I call upon His name.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not holier than thou,
I'm just a simple sinner
Who received God's good grace, somehow!




I got this poem as an email today.
It said to ...

Share this with somebody who already has this understanding,
as reinforcement.
But more importantly, share this with those who do not have
a clear understanding of what it means
to be a Christian,
so that the MYTHS
that
"Christians think they are "perfect" or "better than others"
can be dispelled.

I think I just did.

 

 

 

 

 

    

11-11

When my kids were small, we had two things that remind me of them still.

 

The first was a code ... when we were around other people or at school where it wasn't "cool" for Moms to get mushy, we would squeeze each other's hands three times ... the first squeeze was "I", the second squeeze was "love" and the third squeeze was "you".

 

The second was the time 11:11 on a digital clock ... Maybe, we just liked the way it looked all even or maybe, it was because late at night when you can't sleep, 11:11 could remind all of us that we were loved.  When my kids were away at their Dad's, 11:11 was one of the ways we gave comfort to each other.

 

The kids have all told me stories about wrestling with a "decision" and looking down at the clock and seeing 11:11 ... and took it as a sign that every thing would be okay ... Funny how those little things grow.

 

I was walking through Walmart with my grandson and granddaughter.  My granddaughter smiled and took my hand and squeezed it three times.  I looked down at her and smiled and she said, "Do you know about Mommy's code, MeeMaw?" 

I said, "Yes, I am the one who taught it to her the code."

She giggled and said, "And she showed me ... so now, we all know the code!"

 

When we are raising our children, we think we are teaching them so much in those long lectures and deep talks ... but it's in the fleeting moments that sometimes hold the most lasting memories ... that become traditions ... 

 

Wonder if she told them about the 11:11 thing too?  LOL ... Hope you all had the NICEST 11-11 ... and next time you're feeling sad or blue, or you just can't fall asleep and you look at the clock and it reads 11:11 ... someone somewhere is thinking of YOU!

  

As we grow up,

we learn that even the one person

that wasn't supposed to ever let you down probably will.

You will have your heart broken

probably more than once and it's harder every time.

You'll break hearts too,

so remember how it felt when yours was broken.

You'll fight with your best friend.

You'll blame a new love for things an old one did.

You'll cry because time is passing too fast,

and you'll eventually lose someone you love.

So take too many pictures,

laugh too much,

and love like you've never been hurt

because every sixty seconds you spend upset

is a minute of happiness

you'll never get back.

 

A Quick Look At Dr. Jung

 

All this talk of dreams ... A few days I mentioned Freud and told Big Chris I was a Jungian Gal ... Let me introduce you, if you haven't already met him, to Dr. Jung.

Dr. Carl Jung was the son of a pastor, his paternal grandfather and great grandfather were physicians.  He took a degree in medicine at University of Basle, then specialized in psychiatry.  In early papers he pioneered the use of word association.  Jung's addition to modern therapeutic attitudes to dream work arose out of his difference of view with Freud regarding human life.  Jung felt life is a meaningful experience, with roots in something that transcends birth and death.  His interest in alchemy, myths, and legends added to the wealth of ideas he brought to his concept of the collective unconscious.  The subject of symbols fascinated him and he devoted more work to this than any other psychologist.  He saw dream symbols not as an attempt to veil or hide inner content, but an attempt to elucidate and express it.  He saw dreams as a way of transforming what was formless, nonverbal, and unconscious into what was known and understood.  In this way, dreams "show us the unvarnished natural truth."  By giving attention to our dreams we are throwing light upon who an what we really are - not simply who we are as a personality, but who we are as a phenomena of cosmic interactions.

Jung recommended looking at a series of dreams in order to develop a fuller insight into self.  In this way one would see certain themes arising again and again.  Out of these, we can begin to see where we are not balancing the different aspects of ourselves.

                    - This description of Dr. Carl G. Jung was taken from the 
                      Dream Dictionary written by Tony Crisp.

Here are some quote by Carl Jung:


A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment. 

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination. 

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. 

Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk. 

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

Good. There are many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off. 

How indeed? He copes, like everybody else, as well as he can, that's all. And it's usually deplorably enough. 

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves. 

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. 

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also. 

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.

Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us. 

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. 

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose. 

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better. 

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. 

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. 

The greatest and most important problems of lifeare all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown. 

The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition. 

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results. 

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. 

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune. 

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

 

 

Quotes are neither here nor there.  I do not agree with all the quotes I share, even though I usually quote men and women who are much smarter than me!  Even though I do not always agree, it gives me a wonderful view of the way they thought and that view is always wonderful to me.

 

I hope you are having a beautiful November day and counting your blessings to Thanksgiving Day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exploring

You know how we have said all things are connected?

 

Our subconscious mind sees the connections in the things others say and the things we say ... There is a message ... a lesson ... in all of it ... There is a thread that flows through all those words and all those images.  The thread is our personal truth.

I thought I knew the meaning of "all things connected" until I actually begin to see the WAY they connect and even now, I am just a student, watching as life connects and intertwines in the most amazing ways ...

I have been working on two projects that have illustrated that to me in a way I have not seen before ...

The first project was to organize all the pictures and articles that I have saved over the years.  I divided them into categories like home improvement, decorating ideas, gardening, craft projects, self improvement articles, and one is just a pretty picture book of scenes and poetry ... like a narrated walk in the woods ...

 

As I worked on it, I saw in vivid color the things I like.  Of course, we know what our favorite things are, but do we truly know the depths of our desires or the detail?  I didn't until I started working on these notebooks.

I like blue and white dishes ... all kinds!  I have a dozen patterns or more of plates, cups, bowls, serving pieces ... and I mix and match them like a patchwork quilt.  The infinite varieties of blue and white just make me happy.

I like colored glass.  I have three stained glass windows hanging over windows in my home because I like the way the light shines through them.  One is a tiffany looking scene of flowers and hills and a path that wanders through them toward mountains.  One is really big tulips.  One is geometric.  The seasons have different light and those lights reflect differently through the windows and I am content to watch the light change from season to season.  This fall was exceptionally GOLD and the light was warm, like hot cinnamon rolls and coffee, apple butter and pumpkin pie ...

I like old glass the best ... NOT the machined things ... but the things that were fashioned by worn hands.  I like the irregularities of bubbles and dents ... I like unconventional uses like turning an etched wine glass into a candle votive or an old fruit jar into a glass for lemonade.

I have rescued glass ... using old sugar bowl lids for paper weights, old domed cake plate tops for terrariums or as a cover for a really pretty piece of coral ...

But maybe, the message for me in all those things is to be more transparent?  Maybe, the crispness and predictability of blue and white makes it easier to mix and match and play within the framework of blue and white?  Maybe, I like the old glass because it reminds me of my grandmothers warm kitchens?  Maybe, I like the idea of old bottles cast into the sea and the blessed magic of answered (and unanswered) prayers, love notes, wishes and dreams?  Maybe visualizing a bountiful garden will bring me a garden as pretty as my grandmas were?



The second project was to reread the dream journal I have kept for almost 10 years ... while looking up the symbols in a Dream Dictionary.  I found a really good one lately called DREAM DICTIONARY - AN A TO Z GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND by TONY CRISP.  I dream a LOT and sometimes in color.  I forget some dreams within seconds of waking up and I can tell you about some dreams that I had years ago.  Some of my dreams have come true.  I have dreamed of deaths that happened in the exact manner that I dreamed only days later.  I have dreamed of weddings and births. 

I dreamed of an old school chum who was caught in a horrible forest fire.  I called my mom who gave me the number of this girl's mom and after talking to her mom, I learned that she was a fire fighter in Montana and that while I prayed, she was fighting a REALLY BIG fire.

I work things out in my dreams.  Some of my dreams are nonsense.  Some of my dreams are in color.  Sometimes, I fly!  Sometimes, I am not me but different people, doing things I have never done, speaking languages I do not know ... but in the dream, I understand this foreign language?

Do I believe all my dreams?  No.  Do I understand all my dreams?  No.  Can I predict the future with dreams?  No.  How could it be possible to predict anything with something that comes and goes so unpredictably?  Do I think I can learn from my dreams?  Absolutely.

Here is just one thing that I learned ... Almost ten years ago, I had a recurring dream about huge storms and weather patterns that I couldn't understand, like tornados side by side by side like those long pieces of cloth in a car wash, moving over the entire landscape ... In the dictionary, it said, "emotions and urges against which we feel powerless, and which may become obsessive ..." In the same dream, the tornados ripping up the landscape were followed by strange lightning clouds that struck and burned everything for miles.  The dictionary says about lightning, "Unexpected changes, whether through unsuspected events or from sudden emerging realizations or emotions; discharge of tension, perhaps destructively ... and how this discharge can threaten, destroy, or break down old attitudes or lifestyles, so allowing change; expression of wider awareness; intuition; conscience."  I dreamed this dream several times, at the end of my marriage BEFORE I actually knew my marriage was ending ... I wonder if KNOWING and understanding the images would have lessened the impact of that storm on my waking life?

This is the eerie part of my story ... There were breadcrumbs ... little sparks of intuition that happened before I even met some people ... that looking back now, I wonder why I didn't see them or notice them, but maybe, they weren't meant to be warning markers?  Maybe, they were meant to be page markers, so that now, when I do look back, I can see that there was a purpose and a plan in place before I ever walked the path I walked ... that even while I thought I acted alone, there were dreams and messages coming to me to help guide me along the path and even to help bring me back to the path when I strayed too far from it?

As I am remembering the dreams, I am also remembering the conversations that I had along the way and I am seeing connections that I never saw before ... threads of personal truth that flowed through all the events and conversations and actions that happened so long ago.  When the view of our past is free of guilt and regret, it is possible to see things we missed!

I am not putting my faith in one little dream dictionary.  I simply find it interesting to read that some of my dreams are had by women who are going through changes in their lives.  Did you know that end of the world dreams and fantasies are common among women in menopause? 

Listen to this!

"End of the world dreams and fantasies depict the powerful and threatening inner and outer changes that accompany major life transitions and social changes.  The transition from childhood to adolescence, for instance, is the end of the world that existed for the whole lifetime of the individual up until that point.  Such points of transition occur several times in the life of anyone who dares to grow and adapt.  Menopause for women, the leaving home of the children, the loss of a job, retirement, loss of a partner or health, can all be represented by the end of the world, or a world."

I like this sentence best:  Such points of transition occur several times in the life of anyone who dares to grow and adapt. 



Cool!  I'm growing and adapting!

I am living the kind of life I have been reading about!  It's like reading a book about flying and looking up and watching the birds and saying ... "That's nice" ... UNTIL, one day, you get in a plane and actually fly among the birds and "That's AWESOME!!!"

I didn't set out to go on a self-discovery tour.  I really thought I was finally cleaning up all those old articles and pictures ... The dream journal has turned out to be much more introspective than I really imagined it would be.  Dreams are the ultimate form of self-talk, except for that our subconscious and conscious mind don't always make the connection until much later ... and lately, mine are seeing connections they have never seen before!

Life sure can be GOOD, can't it?

 

 

 

 

Dr. Freud Observed

 

Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me.


From error to error, one discovers the final truth.


Men are more moral than they think

and more immoral than they can imagine.


The first human who hurled an insult of stone

discovered civilization.


What a distressing contrast there is
between the radiant intelligence of the child

and the feeble mentality of the average adult.


Children are completely egoistic;
they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.


I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong
as the need for a father's protection.


A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother
keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.


If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling
he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling,
the confidence in success,
which not seldom brings actual success along with it.


Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.


Neurotics complain of their illness,
but they make the most of it,
and when it comes to talking it away from them
they will defend it like a lioness her young.


Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average.
His ego approximates to that of the psychotic
in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.


The ego is not master in its own house.


Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection
of a particular wish operating within us.


Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.


Look into the depths of your own soul
and learn first to know yourself,
then you will understand why this illness was bound
to come upon you and
perhaps you will thenceforth avoid falling ill.


A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes,
but to get into accord with them;
they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.


What progress we are making.
In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.
Now they are content with burning my books.


One feels inclined to say that the intention that
man should be ''happy'' is not included in the plan of ''Creation.''


The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us

-- of becoming happy --

is not attainable: yet we may not

-- nay, cannot --

give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it

by some means or other.


The time comes when each one of us
has to give up as illusions the expectations which,
in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men,
and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain
has been added to his life by their ill-will.


In the depths of my heart I can't help being convinced
that my dear fellow man, with few exceptions, are worthless.


The impression forces itself upon one
that men measure by false standards,
that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself,
and admires others who attain them,
while undervaluing the truly precious thing in life.

The tendency of aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man...
it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture.


Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital
in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us
also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.


Religion is an illusion that derives it's strength
from it's readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses.

The psychoanalysis of individual human beings, however,

teaches us with quite special insistence that

the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father,

that his personal relation to God

depends on his relation to his father in the flesh

and oscillates and changes along with that relation,

and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.


The doctor should be opaque to his patients and,
like a mirror,
should show them nothing but what is shown to him.


It might be said of psychoanalysis
that if you give it your little finger
it will soon have your whole hand.


Analysis does not set out
to make pathological reactions impossible,
but to give the patient's ego freedom
to decide one way or another.


No one who, like me,
conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons
that inhabit the human breast,
and seeks to wrestle with them,
can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.


The great question that has never been answered,
and which I have not yet been able to answer,
despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul,
is ''What does a woman want?''


Flowers are restful to look at.
They have neither emotions nor conflicts.


One is very crazy when in love.


We are never so defenseless against suffering
as when we love,
never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost
our love object or its love.


Love and work are the cornerstone of our humanness.

Civilization is a process in the service of Eros,
whose purpose is to combine single human individuals,
and after that families, then races, peoples and nations,
into one great unity, the unity of mankind.
Why this has to happen, we do not know;
the work of Eros is precisely this.

Dr. Einstein Overheard

 

 

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

 

 

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

 

 

I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.

 

 

The only real valuable thing is intuition.

 

 

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

 

 

God is subtle but he is not malicious.

 

 

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

 

 

 Any intelligent fool can make things bigger,
more complex and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius
-- and a lot of courage --
to move in the opposite direction.

 

 

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

 

 

Science without religion is lame.

Religion without science is blind.

 

 

Anyone who has never made a mistake

has never tried anything new.

 

 

Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition

from weak minds.

 

 

Common sense is thecollection of prejudices

acquired by age eighteen.

 

 

Science is a wonderful thing

if one does not have to earn one's living at it.

 

 

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

 

 

The whole of science is nothing more

than a refinement of everyday thinking.

 

 

Peace cannot be kept by force.

It can only be achieved by understanding.

 

 

The significant problems we have cannot be solved

at the same level of thinking with which we created them.

Insanity:  Doing the same thing over and over again,

expecting different results.

 

  

The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

 

 

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics.

I can assure you mine are still greater.

 

 

God does not care about our mathematical difficulties.

He integrates empirically.

 

 

If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plusz.

Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.

 

 

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity;

and I'm not sure about the universe.

 

 

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of
Truth and Knowledge
is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought,

but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

 

 

In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep

one must, above all, be a sheep.

 

 

No, this trick won't work...

How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of

chemistry and physics

so important a biological phenomenon as first love?

 

 

My religion consists of a humble admiration

of the illimitable superior spirit

who reveals himself in the slight details

we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

 

 

The release of atom power has changed everything

except our way of thinking...

the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.

If only I had known,

I should have become a watchmaker.

 

 

Great spirits have always found violent opposition

from mediocrities.

The latter cannot understand it

when a man does not thoughtlessly submit

to hereditary prejudices

but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

 

 

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.

It is the source of all true art and all science.

He to whom this emotion is a stranger,

who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,

is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

 

   

One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science

is escape from everyday life

with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness,

from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires.

A finely tempered nature longs to escape

from the personal life

into the world of objective perception and thought.

 

 

A human being is a part of a whole ...

a part limited in time and space.

He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings

as something separated from the rest ...

a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us,

restricting us to our personal desires and to affection

for a few persons nearest to us.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison

by widening our circle of compassion

to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature

in its beauty.

Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression;

in order that every man express his views without penalty

there must be a spirit of tolerance

in the entire population.

 

 

Not everything that counts can be counted,

and not everything that can be counted counts.

(Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

 

 

Before God, we are equally wise

and equally foolish!

 

 

I never think of the future.  It comes soon enough.

Truth is what stands the test of experience.

We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent

of what nature has revealed to us.

God reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.

 

 

We should take care not to make intellect our God.

It has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

The value of a man is in what he gives,

not in what he is capable of receiving.

When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint,

something inside always reminds or informs you

that there are bigger and better things to worry about.

 

 

There are only two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle.

The other is as if everything is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If Einstein & Freud Took A Trip ...

This post is dedicated to my friend, Daisy, who would love and appreciate this book even more than me!

The very idea that Einstein and Freud, both German scientists met and had a conversation is intriguing to me.  I would have loved to have been a fly on that wall!

 

 

The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud, and the Search for Hidden Universes
By Richard Panek

Penguin Press  
Copyright © 2004 by Richard Panek,   ISBN: 0-6700-3074-0
Available for purchase at amazon.com

Excerpts

They met only once. During the New Year's holiday season of 1927, Albert Einstein called on Sigmund Freud, who was staying at the home of one of his sons in Berlin.  Einstein, at forty-seven, was the foremost living symbol of the physical sciences, while Freud, at seventy, was his equal in the social sciences, but the evening was hardly a meeting of the minds. When a friend wrote Einstein just a few months later suggesting that he allow himself to undergo psychoanalysis, Einstein answered, "I regret that I cannot accede to your request, because I should like very much to remain in the darkness of not having been analyzed." Or, as Freud wrote to a friend regarding Einstein immediately after their meeting in Berlin, "He understands as much about psychology as I do about physics, so we had a very pleasant talk."

Freud and Einstein shared a native language, German, but their respective professional vocabularies had long since diverged, to the point that they now seemed virtually irreconcilable. Even so, Freud and Einstein had more in common than they might have imagined. Many years earlier, at the beginning of their respective scientific investigations, they both had reached what would prove to be the same pivotal juncture.

Each had been exploring one of the foremost problems in his field.

Each had found himself confronting an obstacle that had defeated everyone else exploring the problem.

In both their cases, this obstacle was the same: a lack of more evidence. Yet rather than retreat from this absence and look elsewhere or concede defeat and stop looking, Einstein and Freud had kept looking anyway.

Looking, after all, was what scientists did.

It was what defined the scientific method. It was what had precipitated the Scientific Revolution, some three centuries earlier.

In 1610, Galileo Galilei reported that upon looking through a new instrument into the celestial realm he saw forty stars in the Pleiades cluster where previously everyone else had seen only six, five hundred new stars in the constellation of Orion, "a congeries of innumerable stars" in another stretch of the night sky, and then, around Jupiter, moons.

Beginning in 1674, Antonius von Leeuwenhoek reported that upon looking at terrestrial objects through another new instrument he saw "upwards of one million living creatures" in a drop of water. Such discoveries were not without precedent. They came, in fact, at the end of the Age of Discovery. If an explorer of the seas could discover a New World, then why should an explorer of the heavens not discover new worlds? And if those same sea voyages proved that the Earth could house innumerable creatures previously unknown, then why not earth itself or even one drop of water?

There is more to the universe than meets the naked eye.

Who knew? For thousands of years, the number of objects in the heavens had been fixed at six thousand or so. Now, there were...more. Since the Creation, or at least since the Flood, the number of kinds of creatures on Earth, however incalculable as a practical matter, had nonetheless been fixed. Now, there were...more.

Because now all you had to do was look. Through the telescope you could see farther than with the naked eye alone and, by seeing farther, discover new worlds without. Through the microscope you could see deeper than with the naked eye alone and, by seeing deeper, discover new worlds within. By seeing more than meets the naked eye and then seeing yet more, you could discover more.

How much more? It was a logical question for natural philosophers to ask themselves, and the search for an answer that ensued over the next three centuries was nothing if not logical: a systematic pursuit of the truths of nature to the outermost and innermost realms of the universe, until by the turn of the twentieth century the search had reached the very limits of human perception even with the aid of optical instruments, and investigators of nature had begun to wonder: What now?

They'd kept looking until they discovered an entirely new kind of scientific evidence: evidence that no manner of mere looking was going to reveal; evidence that lay beyond the realm of the visible; evidence that was, to all appearances, invisible.

When Isaac Newton reached the limits of his understanding of the outer universe, he had invoked the concept of gravity. When René Descartes reached the limits of his understanding of the inner universe, he had invoked the concept of consciousness.

But by the turn of the twentieth century the kind of invisibility that certain investigators were beginning to invoke was new. These were scientists for whom any appeal to the supernatural, superstitious, or metaphysical would have been anathema. But now, here it was: evidence that was invisible yet scientifically incontrovertible, to their minds, anyway.

Although Einstein and Freud didn't initiate this second scientific revolution all by themselves, they did come to represent it and in large measure embody it. This is the story of how their respective investigations reached unprecedented realms, relativity and the unconscious; how their further pursuits led to the somewhat inadvertent creation of two new sciences, cosmology and psychoanalysis; and how in Einstein's case, a new way of doing science has become the dominant methodology throughout the sciences, while in Freud's case, an alternative way of doing science has become the dominant exception, the key to the very question of what qualifies an intellectual endeavor as a science. This is also the story of what cosmology and psychoanalysis have allowed usto explore: universes, without and within, as vast in comparison to the ones they replaced as those had been to the ones they replaced.

And in that regard Einstein and Freud's is a story, of seeing itself-of perception, of how we see. It is also, then, a question of thinking about seeing- of conception, of how we think about how we see. It is a new means of discovery-the significance of which, a hundred years later, we are still only beginning to comprehend:

That there is more to the universe than we would ever find, if all we ever did was look.

©1998-2004 Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved

It sounds like one of those magical trips where one could describe the way all things are relative in the outer world and the other describe the relevance of the inner world ... and perhaps, those two brilliant minds would discover, right before our very eyes, the inter-connectedness of all things?

Do you imagine that we are all separate and unique, like snowflakes?  Even snowflakes blend and melt into a mountain stream, carried to a lake and on again to an even bigger lake and eventually, the sea ... and in that big picture, how do you measure the value of just one little unique snowflake except that it was a part of what we see now and it took all the little snowflakes and raindrops to make this great big sea?  It doesn't take away one bit from or uniqueness ... as long as we remember, occasionally, to protect ourselves from an overly inflated ego ... that no matter how UNIQUE we are, we are still just a tiny part of the BIG PICTURE ... and that is good enough for me!

I'm happy to share the view with all of you!