Confusion

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  I’ve confused introspection with awareness, but they’re not the same. Becoming the world’s leading expert on myself has nothing to do with being fully present. 137 Beginning meditators are often painfully surprised at the tumultuous activity of their minds. Thoughts, sensations, feelings, fears and desires chaotically pursue each other like dogs obsessively chasing their tails. However, as they gain some steadiness in awareness, practiced meditators start taming their restless minds. They begin having extended periods when they are not sucked into the endless swirling vortex of their frenzied thoughts and emotions. In place of this turbulent state a sublime inquisitiveness about moment-to-moment experience begins to develop. They start to investigate the “how” of each arising moment, as well as their reactivity to various thoughts, sensations, feelings and situations. They settle into the mysterium tremendum of “no-self.” In the words of the meditator, “One must be present, and it is not always useful to begin the past all over in order to live in the present.” One of the greatest barriers to being fully present is the habit of accepting what one does deliberately (i.e., “on purpose”) “as the last word” instead of only one mode, rather than including what occurs spontaneously. For growth and development, any live organism and its supporting environment must be in intimate contact. However, because of our cultural conditioning, as well as frightening and aversive events from the past, we have learned to block this organic flow. Perhaps the most concrete reason to pay attention to your body is that it is a ready tool to resolve various physical, emotional and psychological symptoms. However, such a “cure” is not a treatment in the traditional sense. It is not a mere alleviation of symptoms. Rather, it is a descent into the parts of our being that are alien, that we might prefer not to deal with—the parts of ourselves that we have split off from and, at one point, “chosen” to deposit out of sight and touch. They are concealed in the world of “non-experience.” Absent Body, Present Body You walk into the kitchen. There, sitting in a bowl on the kitchen table, is the “perfect” apple. Its color, shape and size make you want to reach out and hold it in your hands. You do just that, and then notice its solid weight, fragrant smell and smooth texture. Already saliva begins to form in your mouth, and your viscera gently gurgle. You bring the apple to your mouth, open your jaws and take a powerful bite. As you start to chew, saliva flows copiously from your glands. The sweet and tangy taste is almost orgasmic. You continue to chew. The apple liquefies, and you acquiesce to the reflex to swallow.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I was getting annoyed with the booksellers who, sensing my foreignness, kept directing me to their piles of battered American paperbacks, and as G. continued not to appear I wondered if my sacrificed afternoon would go to waste. But then he did appear, standing beside me suddenly, and my annoyance dissolved at the sight of him. He stood out here, with his slightly formal clothes, his feathered hair, though in the States he would have been generic enough, an East Coast aspirant prep school kid, maybe not quite the real thing, especially if he smiled too broadly (as he was careful almost never to do) and revealed a lower set of teeth in un-American disarray. He was friendly enough in greeting me, but as always there was something reserved about him, as if he were deciding whether or not to pronounce a judgment he was on the point of making. He asked me where we should go only to dismiss all my proposals, saying he would take me to a favorite place of his own, and then he set off, walking not beside but in front of me, preventing conversation and as if he were ready to deny any association with me at all. I was hardly a newcomer, I had lived in Sofia for two years, but I had remained a kind of dilettante of the city, and soon—though the center is small and we hadn’t gone far from Slaveykov and Graf Ignatiev, the part of it I knew best—I had no idea where we were. My ignorance wasn’t for lack of trying: for months after I arrived, I came to the center every morning I could, walking the streets as the city woke up and returning to mark off my route on a map pinned to the wall. And yet those same streets, even a short time later, seemed almost entirely unfamiliar; I could never understand how they fit together, and only the stray detail (an old cornice carving, an oddly painted façade) reminded me I had passed that way before. Walking behind G., as always when I was with someone born in Sofia, I had a sense of the city opening itself up, the monolithic blank concrete of the Soviet-style apartment blocks giving way to unsuspected courtyards and cafés and paths through overgrown little parks. As we entered these spaces, which were quieter and less traveled than the boulevards, G. slowed his pace, allowing me to come up beside him, and we walked in a more companionable way, though still without speaking.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  We had talked about those writers in one of my classes earlier that week. It was a conversation class, which the Ministry required though it was useless for our students, who were fluent and spoke English all day; we only met for an hour once a week, but it was a struggle to fill the time. I had asked a few of them to choose a short video, anything they wanted, something they could talk about and get the class talking too. We had just watched something about Bulgaria, a promotional clip from the tourism board, which had sweeping aerial shots of mountains and countryside, of fields of sunflower and lavender, and then curious historical reenactments, men in medieval armor riding on horseback, women in nineteenth-century folk dress dancing the horo, all of it to a soundtrack of bagpipes and drums. It makes me feel proud, the student who brought it in said, there are so many problems in Bulgaria, but this, I don’t know, it makes me feel proud for my country. She sat down then, quickly, relieved—she wasn’t in my regular English class, I taught her that single period and didn’t know her well, and she was quiet, one of the students I had to encourage to speak. She had barely settled in her chair when another student started talking, a girl I knew well and whom I never had to encourage; it was the opposite with her, I had to rein her in at times, which was my only job in that class, to hold the reins, not to steer them in any particular direction but to try to equalize engagement. This student was bursting to speak, it was all she could do not to interrupt. I’m sorry, she said, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to diss your video—her English was the best in the class, she was a hair’s breadth from sounding like any American kid—I don’t mean to diss your video, but I’m so sick of this nostalgia bullshit. Sorry, she said, glancing at me, though she knew I didn’t care if they cursed in class, sorry, but all this men-on-horseback crap, what does that have to do with Bulgaria, I mean with Bulgaria now. The hair’s breadth made a difference; there’s a kind of uncanny valley in language, competency can overshoot the mark, so that however perfectly we speak a foreign language speaking it too casually feels like imposture, I don’t know why. I like horses, a boy interjected, getting a laugh, and she rolled her eyes. No, really, she said, this is the problem, when we want to be proud we think of the natsionalno vuzrazhdane, or we think of Bulgariya na tri moreta, we think of Tsarevets. She was right, I thought, though I didn’t say anything; they were at the core of what my students thought of as their national identity, the nineteenth-century liberation and Bulgaria’s medieval greatness, when its borders had touched three seas, tri moreta, a phrase the far right used to stoke nationalist feeling and that adorned tourist T-shirts at every cheap souvenir shop. But that doesn’t say anything about how we live now, she said, it’s all just Kill the Ottomans, it doesn’t tell us anything about what it means to be Bulgarian now. The temperature rose a little at this; some of the students leaned forward in their seats, which were situated around a group of desks we had pushed together to make a kind of conference table, I wanted them to look at each other as they spoke. What does, then, a boy asked, what do you think does tell us about Bulgaria now, and another boy said Berbatov, the soccer star, which made half of the class laugh and the other half groan. Nothing, my student said, raising her voice, nothing does, that’s our problem, that’s why the protests won’t go anywhere, we have no idea how to be Bulgarian in the real world, we have no idea how we should be. The temperature rose still further at this, a number of voices spoke at once, making noises of protest or skepticism, come on, I heard, and gluposti, nonsense, and then my student started to speak again in defense. I had let the reins go too slack, though I wanted to watch things play out the conversation was too hot, a couple of students were looking my way, I needed to intervene.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  206The History of Christianity II õDarwin’s father paid his way. He was a wealthy doctor who first wanted his son to be a doctor too, and then a priest, and now was close to giving up up hope that Charles would amount to anything. õBefore the Beagle voyage, Darwin dabbled in divinity at Cambridge. As a divinity student, he studied and admired the Anglican bishop William Paley’s Natural Theology, published in 1802. The book was required reading for any would-be minister in those days, and even if Darwin didn’t much go in for church or have a deep passion for theology, he loved this book. õThis is a bit of a surprise for people used to thinking of Darwin as the godfather of atheistic evolution. But Darwin himself did not think about his work in that way. Even at the end of his life, he was sincerely torn about the ramifications of his discoveries for religious belief. õPaley’s book is a methodical examination of the natural world for proof that an intelligent designer must lie behind the miraculous complexities of, for example, the air bladder of a fish. Animals’ adaptations are suited to their environments. Darwin appreciated Paley’s careful examination of nature, and he was fascinated by this idea of species adaptation. SCIENCE AND NATURAL THEOLOGY õDarwin returned from the Beagle’s voyage in the fall of 1836, and thanks to a nice allowance from his dad, he could afford to live in London and work on his book. Even though he did not have a formal university appointment, he was embedded in the growing intellectual network of professional scientists working throughout Britain and abroad. õTo be clear about Darwin’s key idea: On the Origin of Species put forward the theory of natural selection. This is the idea that in each generation of a plant or animal species, chance variants make one

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  As I observed many workshop attendees over the years (returning time and time again), I couldn’t help but wonder if they were also inducing their own chemical highs. Their repeated and cathartic dramatizations, screaming at their parents or pounding pillows in endless anger, seemed to be rewarding, bringing them back for further fixes. In my own life, I also wondered whether there was an addictive quality to some of my earlier painful and turbulent relationships that I appeared to be creating and re-creating. While cathartic expressions of emotion in therapy sessions can be of value, reliance on emotional release stems from a fundamental misunderstanding about the very nature of feelings and emotions. The work of Nina Bull provides us with insight, both into the nature of habitual emotions and into why feelings accessed through body awareness, rather than emotional release, bring us the kind of lasting change that we so desire. * A chick or small mammal would respond by scurrying to hide or escape.† This is analogous to the blind sight phenomenon.‡ See episode 74 of A&E’s Intervention (season 6, episode 2), in which a girl named Nicole had been forced to perform fellatio by her next-door neighbor (and father’s best friend) for several years. Once her family found out, they tried to cover it up, and Nicole was forced to live next door to the man for years after. Later, Nicole developed an overactive gag reflex, leaving her unable to swallow anything, including her own saliva. She was placed on a feeding tube.§ Many of Alexander’s principles inspired the work of Moshe Feldenkrais and Ida Rolf.‖ In a study of 150 couples, mostly in their sixties, researchers found that women who behaved in a hostile manner during marital disputes were more likely to have atherosclerosis, especially if their husbands were also hostile. In men, hostility—their own or their wives—was not related to atherosclerosis. However, men who behaved in a dominating or controlling manner—or whose wives behaved in that way—were more likely to have clogged coronary arteries. “The only group of men that had very little atherosclerosis were those where both they and their wives were able to talk about a disagreement without being controlling at all,” Smith said. “So the absence of a power play in the conversation seemed to be heart protective for men,” he concluded (Dr. Timothy Smith, University of Utah, Reuters, March 3, 2006).a In the cases where the placebo did not work, the patients were quickly given the real morphine so that their unnecessary suffering was short-lived.CHAPTER 14 Trauma and SpiritualityIf you bring forth that which is within you, Then that which is within you Will be your salvation. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, Then that which is within you Will destroy you. —The Gnostic Gospels

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  They weren’t ready. Realizing the futility of any more talk, in the months that followed I tried several different approaches, most of which relied on physical interactions rather than verbal ones. I had them lead each other around the room, trying out different arrangements of leaders and followers: cooperation, resistance, and passivity. I had them fall backward into each other’s waiting arms. I had them stand face-to-face and push against each other with their open hands. I had them mirror each other’s movements. The conversations that followed the games became gradually more revealing, less critical, and even more playful. By giving a physical but nonsexual representation to their emotional impasse, they were able to see their patterns of resistance. “I can let him get close,” Laura admits, “but not too close. I trust him, but only so much. I always hold back, don’t I?” “When you doubt your own desirability, it is harder to trust Mitch’s desire for you.” I explain. “It’s far easier to locate the fault with him—and, to be fair, he gives you plenty to work with—than it is to face the depth of your own self-doubt.” Mitch, who had been pointing to Laura’s sexual passivity for years, had some realizations of his own. “I guess I’m not too creative, either. When we were doing the exercise, I felt uncomfortable taking the lead. I hate to admit it, but I liked the passive resistance most. I’m unbeatable at that one.” I reminded Mitch that when he met Hillary, his first love, she too took the lead. “You do indeed express yourself with great eloquence in the physical realm, but you’re highly dependent on a powerful interlocutor to make it safe for you. So far, Laura hasn’t been that.” When Mitch and Laura came to me, I was reluctant to take them on. They considered me the therapist of last resort; I was either the third or the fifth (I can’t remember which) they had consulted in more than two decades. For years, they had been trying to talk their way out of their rut. Evidently, it hadn’t worked. Instead they were engaged in a verbal thrust-and-parry, defensive, hostile, and totally fused. They had had plenty of self-disclosure, but it was far from intimate. I knew enough not to limit myself to the habits of the talking cure—talking had become squawking and was going nowhere. The exercises provided an alternative lens to examine their dynamics. The physicalization of their problems gave us a fresh text to read together. It was novel enough to jar them, and to interrupt their entrenchment. They were stretching into new territory.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  He nods, resigned, his pale forehead and white hair tinted with evening light. “Of course. Of course,” he says as the roach drops into the glass with a sizzle, leaving a thread of smoke that twirls, like a ghostly vein, up his arms. I stare at the brown mash in the bowl before me, now soggy. — There is so much I want to tell you, Ma. I was once foolish enough to believe knowledge would clarify, but some things are so gauzed behind layers of syntax and semantics, behind days and hours, names forgotten, salvaged and shed, that simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it. I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess what I mean is that sometimes I don’t know what or who we are. Days I feel like a human being, while other days I feel more like a sound. I touch the world not as myself but as an echo of who I was. Can you hear me yet? Can you read me? When I first started writing, I hated myself for being so uncertain, about images, clauses, ideas, even the pen or journal I used. Everything I wrote began with maybe and perhaps and ended with I think or I believe. But my doubt is everywhere, Ma. Even when I know something to be true as bone I fear the knowledge will dissolve, will not, despite my writing it, stay real. I’m breaking us apart again so that I might carry us somewhere else—where, exactly, I’m not sure. Just as I don’t know what to call you—White, Asian, orphan, American, mother? Sometimes we are given only two choices. While doing research, I read an article from an 1884 El Paso Daily Times, which reported that a white railroad worker was on trial for the murder of an unnamed Chinese man. The case was ultimately dismissed. The judge, Roy Bean, cited that Texas law, while prohibiting the murder of human beings, defined a human only as White, African American, or Mexican. The nameless yellow body was not considered human because it did not fit in a slot on a piece of paper. Sometimes you are erased before you are given the choice of stating who you are. To be or not to be. That is the question. When you were a girl in Vietnam, the neighborhood kids would take a spoon to your arms, shouting, “Get the white off her, get the white off her!” Eventually you learned to swim. Wading deep into the muddy river, where no one could reach you, no one could scrape you away. You made yourself an island for hours at a time. Coming home, your jaw would clatter from cold, your arms pruned and blistered—but still white. When asked how he identifies his roots, Tiger Woods called himself “Cablinasian,” a portmanteau he invented to contain his ethnic makeup of Chinese, Thai, Black, Dutch, and Native American.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  “Right.” He pauses, mulling something over, then rises to his feet. “Let me just put on my slippers. I’m always cold in the mornings. I swear something’s wrong with me. It’s getting old. Your body heat retreats to your center until one day your feet are ice.” He almost laughs but rubs his chin instead, then raises his arm, as if to strike at something in front of him—and then the click, the lamp goes out, the room now swept with a violet stillness. From the shadow, his voice: “I’m glad you’re here, Little Dog.” — “Why do they say black?” you asked weeks earlier, back in Hartford, pointing to Tiger Woods on the TV screen. You squinted at the white ball on the tee. “His mom is Taiwanese, I’ve seen her face, but they always say black. Shouldn’t they at least say half yellow?” You folded your bag of Doritos, tucked it under your arm. “How come?” You tilted your head, waiting for my answer. When I said that I didn’t know, you raised your eyebrows. “What do you mean?” You grabbed the controller and turned up the volume. “Listen closely, and tell us why this man is not Taiwanese,” you said, running your hand through your hair. Your eyes followed Woods as he walked back and forth across the screen, periodically crouching to gauge his stroke. There was no mention, at the moment, of his ethnic makeup, and the answer you wanted never came. You stretched a strand of hair before your face, examining it. “I need to get more curlers.” Lan, who was sitting on the floor beside us, said, without looking up from the apple she was peeling, “That boy don’t look Taiwanese to me. He looks Puerto Rican.” You gave me a look, leaned back, and sighed. “Everything good is always somewhere else,” you said after a while, and changed the channel. — When we arrived in America in 1990, color was one of the first things we knew of yet knew nothing about. Once we stepped inside our one-bedroom apartment in the predominantly Latinx neighborhood on Franklin Avenue that winter, the rules of color, and with it our faces, had changed. Lan, who, back in Vietnam, was considered dark, was now lighter. And you, Ma—so fair you would “pass” for white, like the time we were in the Sears department store and the blond clerk, bending down to stroke my hair, asked you whether I was “yours or adopted.” Only when you stuttered, your English garbled, gone, head lowered, did she realize her mistake. Even when you looked the part, your tongue outed you. One does not “pass” in America, it seems, without English.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  He wanted answers to the perplexing questions surrounding Scientology. We discussed yet another aspect of Lifton’s criteria concerning thought reform. Is Scientology what Lifton calls a “Sacred Science”? Lifton writes that in a group using thought reform, there is “an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma, holding it out as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence.” He adds, “This sacredness is evident in the prohibition (whether or not explicit) against the questioning of basic assumptions, and in the reverence which is demanded for the originators of the Word, the present bearers of the Word, and the Word itself, while thus transcending ordinary concerns of logic.”956 Singer describes this as a “closed system of logic” that will “allow no real input or criticism” as opposed to education, where a “two-way pupil-teacher exchange is encouraged.”957 Singer also says a legitimate educational effort “is not deceptive.”958 Could Scientology be considered such a “Sacred Science” and “closed system of logic”? Scientologists have said they hope to “clear the planet” through their technology. Cannot such a plan be seen as tantamount to proposing “an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence”? Is there a meaningful two-way exchange during Scientology training? Certainly there is reverence of L Ron Hubbard as the “originator of the Word” as well as considerable deference demonstrated to both the current leader, Miscavige, and the organization as “the current bearers of the Word.” And there is absolute acceptance of the word itself. We also discussed how Cialdini’s principles of influence might be applied in this context. That is, the use of authority, according to Singer, uses “a deep-seated sense of duty to authority figures” to solicit obedience and compliance.959 We watched A&E cable network’s investigative report about Scientology.960 This two-hour presentation, broadcast during December 1998, was the last media interview of David Miscavige. A&E apparently had the full cooperation of Scientology. The producers seemed to make sure that ample time was afforded for Scientologists to rebut any criticism and present the organization’s views and official positions. Miscavige noted, “All of our source materials, original teachings will be taught and practiced the same way fifty years from now, hundred years from now, thousand years from now.”961 Miscavige ultimately concluded, “Scientology, we believe, is a point where science and religion have truly met.”962 Entertainer Isaac Hayes, who was also interviewed for the A&E program, emphasized the absolute nature of Scientology teachings as written by Hubbard. Hayes said, “We will not allow it to become aberrated [subject to an aberration], [and] we will not change it.”963 This sentiment Hayes expressed seems to reflect Lifton’s description concerning “the prohibition against the questioning of basic assumptions” of the group. But then how could Scientology be the point where “science and religion have truly met” if it is such a closed system that is not subject to change? We discussed this issue during the intervention; that is, science is certainly subject to change based on new discoveries and research.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He pulled a few pages from his bag and slid them toward me, saying Here, I’ve been working more on these. I was disappointed to see the slightest of the poems he had given me on top, a generic hymn to a feminine ideal, full of exaggerated praise and capitalized pronouns. It was the same draft I had seen already, the page full of my corrections and suggestions, advice I feel obligated to give even unpromising student work. You corrected so much, he said, but you didn’t correct the most important mistake. I looked down at the page and then up again, confused; I don’t see it, I said, what did I miss? He leaned across the table, reaching his arms toward the page so that his upper body rested on the lacquered wood, a peculiarly teenage gesture, I thought, I remembered making it but hadn’t made it for years, and he pressed his finger to the margin of the page. Here, he said, pointing to a line where the single word She appeared, I made it here and it happens several times, the pronouns are all wrong, and even in his half-prone posture I could see that his whole body was tense. Ah, I said, looking up at him from the page, I see, and then he leaned quickly back, as if released by something, and as though after his revelation he wanted to reassert some space between us. I leaned back too, and pushed the pages across to him again; it was clear that they had served their purpose.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  91 Cervantes’s Don Quixote Lecture 22 In this lecture we arrive at what is unquestionably the most important novel in the Western world. It’s the equivalent of the Tale of Genji in the East and in, some ways, perhaps even more important in the Western world for reasons that we’ll have a chance to talk about. T he novel we will discuss in this lecture is Cervantes’s Don Quixote. While not the ¿ rst novel in history, Don Quixote is one of the ¿ rst in the Western world and has been by far the most inÀ uential. The book is a contemporary of Shakespeare’s King Lear (1608). A novel is an extended narrative in prose that gives a more or less realistic picture of everyday life. It comes from the Italian novella, which has as part of its de¿ nition a correspondence with the way we perceive the world (e.g., the stories of Boccaccio and Marguerite of Navarre). Its contrasting genre in the Middle Ages and Renaissance was the romance, which was also a prose narrative but which could include the fabulous (e.g., The Wife of Bath’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales, which was set in King Arthur’s court and featured a loathly hag who could transform herself into a beautiful woman) and which was usually about knights-errant. The romance was the most popular literary genre of the Middle Ages. The contrast between the romance and the novel is built into Don Quixote. The man who becomes Don Quixote, a middle-aged poverty-stricken aristocrat, reads so many romances that it dries up his brain; he confuses the distinction between reality and ¿ ction and decides to become a knight-errant like the ones he has read about. The genre of the romance is inscribed into the novel through the contrast between the events in romances Quixote has read and the things that happen in his life when he tries to become a knight-errant in the real world. There are two perspectives on everything in the novel. There is the romance perspective of Don Quixote, who sees everything as though it is part of a knightly adventure. Also, there is the perspective of the narrator, who

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lii. 12) The Jews when they understood that our Lord spoke of His own death, asked how that could be: The people answered Him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest Thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man? Though our Lord did not call Himself the Son of man here, they remembered that He often called Himself so; as He had just before: The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. They remember this, and ask, If Christ abideth for ever, how will He be lifted up from the earth; i. e. how will He die upon the cross? CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxviii. 1) Hence we see, that they understood many of the things that He spake in parables. As He had talked about death a little time before, they saw now what was meant by His being lifted up. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lii. 12) Or they interpreted the word by their own intended act. It was not wisdom imparted, but conscience disturbed, which disclosed its meaning to them. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxviii. 1) And see how maliciously they put the question. They do not say, We have heard out of the law, that Christ doth not suffer; for in many places of Scripture His passion and resurrection are spoken of together, but, abideth for ever. And yet His immortality was not inconsistent with the fact of His suffering. They thought this proved however that He was not Christ. Then they ask, Who is this Son of man? another malicious question; as if to say, Do not charge us with putting this question out of hatred to Thee; for we simply ask for information. Christ shews them in His answer that His passion does not prevent Him from abiding for ever: Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you: as if His death were but going away for a time, as the sun’s light only sets to rise again. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lii. 13) Yet a little while is the light with you. Hence it is that ye understand1 that Christ abideth for ever. Wherefore walk while ye have the light, approach, understand the whole, that Christ will both die, and live for ever: do this while ye have the light. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxviii. 1) He does not mean only the time before His crucifixion, but the whole of their lives. For many believed on Him after His crucifixion. Lest darkness come upon you. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lii. 13) i. e. if ye so believe in the eternity of Christ, as to deny His humiliation and death. For he that walketh in darkness, knoweth not whither he goeth.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  DIDYMUS. (ut sup.) As if He said, Although the Spirit of truth proceeds from the Father, yet all things that the Father hath are Mine, and even the Spirit of the Father is Mine, and receiveth of Mine. But beware, when thou hearest this, that thou think not it is a thing or possession which the Father and the Son have. That which the Father hath according to His substance, i. e. His eternity, immutability, goodness, it is this which the Son hath also. Away with the cavils of logicians, who say, therefore the Father is the Son. Had He said indeed, All that God hath are Mine, impiety might have taken occasion to raise its head; but when He saith, All things that the Father hath are Mine, by using the name of the Father, He declareth Himself the Son, and being the Son, He usurpeth not the Paternity, though by the grace of adoption He is the Father of many saints. HILARY. (viii. de Trin. ante med) Our Lord therefore hath not left it uncertain whether the Paraclete be from the Father, or from the Son; for He is sent by the Son, and proceedeth from the Father, both these He receiveth from the Son. You ask whether to receive from the Son and to proceed from the Father be the same thing. Certainly, to receive from the Son must be thought one and the same thing with receiving from the Father: for when He says, All things that the Father hath are Mine, therefore said I, that He shall receive of Mine, He sheweth herein that the things are received from Him, because all things which the Father hath are His, but that they are received from the Father also. This unity hath no diversity; nor doth it matter from whom the thing is received; since that which is given by the Father, is counted also as given by the Son. 16:16–2216. A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father. 17. Then said some of his disciples among themselves, What is this that he saith unto us, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me: and, Because I go to the Father? 18. They said therefore, What is this that he saith, A little while? we cannot tell what he saith. 19. Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask him, and said unto them, Do ye enquire among yourselves of that I said, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me? 20. Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (de Cons. Ev. iii. 4.) Perplexity may be occasioned to some by the great difference, not in words only, but in substance, of the speeches in which Peter is forewarned by Our Lord, and which occasion his presumptuous declaration of dying with or for the Lord. Some would oblige us to understand that he thrice expressed his confidence, and the Lord thrice answered him that he would deny Him thrice before cock-crowing; as after His resurrection He thrice asked him if he loved Him, and as often gave him command to feed His sheep. For what in language or matter has Matthew like the expressions of Peter in either Luke or John? Mark indeed relates it in nearly the same words as Matthew, only marking more precisely in the Lord’s words the manner in which it should fall in, Verily I say unto thee, that this day, in the night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. (Mark 14:30.) Whence some inattentive persons think that there is a discrepancy between Mark and the rest. For the sum of Peter’s denials is three; if the first then had been after the first cock crowing, the other three Evangelists must be wrong when they make the Lord say that Peter should deny Him before the cock crow. But, on the other hand, if he had made all three denials before the cock began to crow, it would be superfluous in Mark to say, Before the cock crow twice. Forasmuch as this threefold denial was begun before the first cockcrow, the three Evangelists have marked, not when it was to be concluded, but how often it was to happen, and when to begin, that is, before cock-crow. Though indeed if we understand it of Peter’s heart we may well say, that the whole denial was complete before the first cock-crow, seeing that “before that his mind was seized with that great fear which wrought upon him to the third denial. Much less therefore ought it to disquiet us, how the three-fold denial in three distinct speeches was begun, but not finished before cockcrow. Just as though one should say, Before cock-crow you will write me a letter, in which you will revile me three times; if the letter were begun before any cock-crow, but not finished till after the first, we should not therefore say that the prediction was false.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as House in Florida You visit her parents’ house in the southernmost part of Florida. You fought the whole way down—at the Dulles airport she made you cry at a Sam Adams–branded restaurant and several strangers looked over with judgment as you pressed a napkin against your face like a consumptive—and you are relieved to be there. She has an ancient cat who immediately tries to bite you. Her mother is birdlike, too thin, and you are worried—for her, for yourself. Her father shows up later, pours himself a generously sized cocktail. Her family is funny and mean. They are different from your family, who you feel have never appreciated your mind. And there is only her and her two parents and you are jealous; there is no other word for it. They feed you. Chicken and Israeli couscous and cookies and kalamata olives and a bean salad with so much dill. Seafood and risotto and fresh fruit. You laugh. “Maybe we should move here,” you say, and her mother smiles brightly, and for a moment you feel like a scene in a movie, a boyfriend being plied by the culinary arts of the mother of your lover. You never see her mother eat, not once. “If you go out for a walk later,” her father says, drinking his third martini, “make sure you watch out for alligators.” “Alligators?” you repeat in alarm. “They probably wouldn’t attack you,” he says. The glass is, suddenly, empty. “Probably.” The next day, you get into a fight about almost nothing at all while sitting on her childhood bed. You decide to walk away, go sit in the kitchen. “I’ll be reading,” you say, and you do, for almost an hour. Her mother is standing at the counter, chopping something fragrant and chatting at you in a bright voice. Your girlfriend comes into the kitchen, and asks, “What are you reading?” as her hand starts to circle your arm. “I’m—” you start to reply, and her fingers tighten. Her mother, still chopping, says, “Are you girls still going to the beach later?” Her knife raps against the cutting board with unnerving precision. Her grip goes hard, begins to hurt. You don’t understand; you don’t understand so profoundly your brain skitters, skips, backs up. You make a tiny gasp, the tiniest gasp you can. It is the first time she is touching you in a way that is not filled with love, and you don’t know what to do. This is not normal, this is not normal, this is not normal. Your brain is scrambling for an explanation, and it hurts more and more, and everything is static. Your thoughts are accompanied by a cramp of alarm, and you are so focused on it that you miss her response. An hour later, you are at the beach, just the two of you. “Let’s go in the water,” she says. You follow her in because you don’t know what else to do.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  It is an approach for reducing harmful postural habits that interfere with both the physical and the mental conditions of the individual as a whole. ‖ At this time the chairman of my doctoral committee was quite dubious, even antagonistic, about my thesis. CHAPTER 9 Annotation of Peter’s Accident F or my final case example, I come full circle from where we began this undertaking, my experience on that sunny, beautiful day. I have chosen to recount my horrific accident detailed in Chapter 1 , with a brief imbedded analysis (in bold) . This annotation serves not only as a review but also as a way to scrutinize the factors that prevented me from ending up with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The event itself—namely being struck by a car, smashed against a windshield, catapulted through the air and physically injured—certainly counts as a traumatic event. But why wasn’t I traumatized? As I walked along that fateful February day, absorbed in happy anticipation of seeing my dear friend Butch to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, I stepped out into a crosswalk … The next moment, paralyzed and numb, I’m lying on the road, unable to move or breathe. I can’t figure out what has just happened. How did I get here? Out of a swirling fog of confusion and disbelief, a crowd of people rushes toward me. (1. Shock in my case was literally about having the wind knocked out of me. All traumas leave us breathless in some way. In the moment of shock people don’t really know what happened to them; they are breathless with a loss of inner and outer orientation.) They stop, aghast. Abruptly, they hover over me in a tightening circle, their staring eyes fixed on my limp and twisted body. From my helpless perspective they appear like a flock of carnivorous ravens, swooping down on an injured prey—me. Slowly I orient myself and identify the real attacker. As in an old-fashioned flashbulb photo, I see a beige car looming over me with its teeth-like grill and shattered windshield. (2. In the shock state images become disparate and fragmentary, and are focused exclusively on the most salient threat features.) The door suddenly jerks open. A wide-eyed teenager bursts out. She stares at me in dazed horror. In a strange way, I both know and don’t know what has just happened. (3. In one of the paradoxes of trauma, traumatized people have a split perception/reception. They are on autopilot, where they act calmly. They also enter into a dream/nightmare from which they cannot wake.) As the various fragments begin to converge, they convey a horrible reality: I must have been hit by this car as I entered the crosswalk . In confused disbelief, I sink back into a hazy twilight.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  That’s the worst thing about teaching, that our actions either have no force at all or have force beyond all intention, and not only our actions but our failures to act, gestures and words held back or unspoken, all we might have done and failed to do; and, more than this, that the consequences echo across years and silence, we can never really know what we’ve done. G. was quiet for a moment, keeping his eyes on the table. When I told him, he went on, it was by accident, almost, I told him all at once and without any plan. We were alone for the first time in weeks, out of the city, at a house my parents keep up on Vitosha. I knew the area he meant, I thought, a band of exclusive neighborhoods built up the side of the mountain, each year climbing farther up; it was just a half-hour drive from Sofia but it was like a different world, with its own climate free of the congestion and noise of the center. This was a few weeks ago, he said, we had gone up on a Friday for a quick trip, we were coming back on Saturday. But we planned to spend the whole day there, and it was still morning, and it had been a wonderful night. G. was quiet for a while, and then, What was I thinking, he said, speaking to himself more than to me. He had waved the waitress away when she approached, the cups in front of us were empty and cold. G. had his cigarettes but I was empty-handed, and suddenly I felt that I should make some gesture of comfort or encouragement, though I wasn’t sure how much encouragement I wanted to give. I had heard enough of his story, I wanted to leave the restaurant and the thick air that made my eyes and my throat ache, I wanted him to stop talking, I wanted to go home. I don’t know, G. said, answering his own question, I wanted it to end, I guess, I didn’t want to go back to being so miserable; or maybe it was something else, maybe I did have some hope, not that he would feel what I felt but that he would let me give it to him somehow, that he would receive it.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Not so many, she said, and not my friends, usually I come alone. Lots of parents are scared, she said, and anyway we have so much work for school, it’s hard to have time for anything else. But this is important, she went on, it’s important for my country, it’s important that the young people are here. I don’t know, she said, some of my friends say it’s stupid to come because we’re leaving so soon, but I don’t feel like that, it’s still my country, she said, even if I’m leaving. Maybe I’ll come back if things get better, I would like to come back. That’s the real problem, I said, agreeing with her, so many people leave, so many of the best people, it’s hard for things to get better when so many people leave. We had crossed onto Vitosha now, where there was more light, I could see her face when she turned to look at me. Do you think we’re wrong to leave, she asked me, do you think we should stay? I hesitated before answering. It wasn’t my place to answer, of course, and I told her this, and also I had left my own country, where there were so many problems, where I had done so little, really, to stand against them. But no, I said finally, I don’t think you’re wrong. You only have one life, I said, and I want you to be happy, I want you to go where you can live most fully, and even as I spoke I could hear the argument against each of my phrases canceling out what I said, I didn’t know what I thought. But you’re going back, M. said, you must be excited about that, to be going home. I’m not going home, I said, what would that even mean, I’m going back to America but I’m not going home. And maybe I won’t stay, I said, I don’t know, I like living abroad. And then I threw up my hands, I don’t know anything, I said, don’t listen to anything I say.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Yes, the past is undoubtedly elusive and undoubtedly shifts according to a patient’s mood, and undoubtedly our theoretical beliefs influence what one recalls, but I still believe that underneath it all there is a valid subtext, a true answer to the question, ‘Did my brother hit me when I was three?’” “A valid subtext is an antiquated illusion,” Ernest retorted. “There is no valid answer to that question. Its context—whether he hit you purposefully or playfully, or gave you a mere tap or a knockout punch—is lost forever.” “Right,” Ron cut in. “Or whether he hit you in self-defense—in response to your hitting him a moment before? Or in defense of your sister? Or because he had just been punished by your mother for something you did?” “There is no valid subtext,” Ernest repeated. “It’s all interpretation. As Nietzsche knew a century ago.” “Aren’t we straying from the intent of this conference?” interrupted Barbara, one of the group’s two woman members. “Last time I looked, it was called a countertransference seminar.” She turned to Dr. Werner. “I’d like to make a process comment. Ernest does exactly what we’re supposed to do in this seminar—report on his innermost feelings about his patient—and then gets blasted for it. How come?” “Right, right!” said Dr. Werner. The gleam in his blue-gray eyes showed that he relished the uprising, the spectacle of grown siblings suspending their rivalry and uniting in a joint patricidal campaign. In fact, he loved it. By God, he was thinking, just imagine! Freud’s primal horde alive and rampaging right here on Sacramento Street! For a moment he considered offering this interpretation to the group but thought better of it. The children weren’t ready for it yet. Maybe later. Instead he responded, “But keep in mind, I was not critical of Dr. Lash’s feelings about Ms. Myrna. What therapist who has ever lived has not had such thoughts about an irritating patient? No, I do not criticize his thought. I criticize only his incontinence, his inability to keep his feelings to himself.” That triggered another round of protests. Some defended Ernest’s decision to express his feelings openly. Others criticized Dr. Werner for not building a trusting environment in the seminar. They wanted to feel safe there.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Not to be dismissed was the fact that he had turned into a really handsome guy. She made sure to leave the party with his phone number, for she knew it would be up to her to make the first move. They started dating, and they have been together for six years. Jed and Coral are wonderfully compatible in most areas of their life, but sexually they have very different sensibilities. “I don’t understand where his motives come from,” she says. “I’ve never come across this before, and I’ve been with plenty of men, and there are plenty of kinky things that excite me. I just don’t get this—maybe because I grew up in this very feminist world of political correctness and respect for women. In a way I feel disrespected. It feels cheap, tawdry, and it makes me feel like…” “Like a slut?” I ask her. “No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a slut. I was a slut for a long time. It just makes me feel less desirable. I don’t feel like it’s about me. It doesn’t have anything to do with me and therefore I don’t feel connected with it or motivated by it or interested in it. Does that makes sense?” “Yeah, it makes sense,” Jed answers, “but for me, I don’t see it as forgetting you, forgetting your identity. For me, I see it as I’m honoring you by being willing to completely step outside my armor of defense and say, ‘Well, I trust you enough to show you this.’” In order for us to move forward, Jed and Coral each need a stronger sense of where the other is coming from. We do an exercise in which they divide a piece of paper by drawing a line down the middle, then separately write their immediate associations of the word “love” on the left-hand side. I give them prompts: “When I think of love, I think of…” “When I love I feel…” “When I am loved I feel…” “In love, I look for…” As soon as they finish, they write their answers to the next set of prompts on the right-hand side: “When I think of sex I think…” “When I desire, I feel…” “When I am desired, I feel…” “In sex, I look for…” This exercise, though simple, is remarkably illuminating. First, because it lays out exactly how love and desire are parsed in each partner’s mind—how separate they are and how interwoven. Second, it enables me to look at the congruence of these arrange ments between partners. As I suspected, Jed and Coral experience sex in opposing ways, and they look to sex for different things. Coral seeks intimate connection through sex, and love charges her desire. She associates love with warmth and security. Being loved makes her feel safe. Being wanted does the same. For her, sex is sanguine, wholesome, luxe. “I’ve connected with every person I’ve had sex with.