Alice Miller is one of my great teachers. John Bradshaw who talks about family systems and adult child issues quotes her extensively, so I looked her up and read Drama of the Gifted Child at a very vulnerable and important time in my life. Reading that book and then attending my first Community Building Workshop (CBW) with M Scott Peck is what precipitated my first poem, The Committee of Fools!
Alice talks about a system she calls Poisonous Pedagogy identified by a couple of primary beliefs. One is that the wife and children are chattel of the husband. The other is that children are born in sin and need to be disciplined and ‘made good.’ Many readers may react to that and say that that sounds awful but isn’t the state that they live in. For most of us, I would beg to differ. The religion I grew up in says it doesn’t believe in ‘Original Sin’ yet it is full of scripture to the effect that the ‘natural man is an enemy to God’ and their actions certainly testify to a belief that we are not okay without adult intervention to help us ‘grow up’ in the way of the Lord! My reading of Alice’s writings in this regard let to my belief in and publishing of my Healthy vs Poisonous Pedagogy Model in the back of our book, and the basis for much of the Playbook Series.
Anyway, in Alice Miller’s book, Banished Knowledge, she states as eloquently as I’ve heard it, my belief about good and evil and the state of the human condition. She writes:
It is not true that evil, destructiveness, and perversion inevitably form part of the human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. Bit it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity awakened, an end can be put to the production of evil.
In our Coaching Class on Tuesday, the biggest obstacle to us expressing our passion was a sense of judgment and proper behavior. There were comments like, ‘that’s so immature,’ or ‘I’m an adult.’ Jamie had us continually focus on being childlike and the more successful we were at being childlike the more we were able to feel passionate. As a society, we educate and discipline the power of God (being childlike) right out of individuals, making them ‘good’ adults.
My passion is to remember who I really am and to invite others to look inside and remember who they are too. I am a curious, innocent, bright eyed individual who loves to experiment and try new things; who doesn’t care how it looks to others. I love the journey and won’t be deterred or dampened by shoulds and oughts. That is what I believe is the natural state that is not only a friend of God, but God’s ultimate joy and desire for each of us. That is what I invite others to share?
I believe that having the courage to look inside for the internal flame planted by a higher source and then trusting that light to be The Light and living according to it, IS the way of Life! With all the pain and all the instructions that I was not okay, there was still a flame inside of me, and as I have turned to it and trusted it I have had increasingly more joy and satisfaction in my life!
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