25
April
2011
Narcissists and Sociopaths live to dominate and thrill to win. They can excel marvelously anywhere ruthlessness is rewarding.
And recent research brings us new understanding of just what these serious emotional disabilities are; what causes them, how prevalent they are, and how studying them helps us to draw the connections between psyche and society.
Join host/producer Jari Chevalier as she talks with experts Dr. Nina W. Brown, Dr. Linda Martinez-Lewi, social worker Lisa Charlebois, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Gabor Maté, MD, Dr. Sandy Hotchkiss, Dr. Scott Baum, and Dr, Martha Stout. Narration includes in-depth research and synthesis of the work of these and many other researchers and healers.
Learn just how and why narcissists and sociopaths might be a bigger part of your life than you imagine. We focus on the many factors of unreality inherent in these personality structures and how they spin unreality into the world.
jari 
psychology, consciousness, maturity, human development, narcissism, parenting, conscience, love, mind-body, feeling, addiction, mental health, empathy, self-esteem, health, reality, childhood development, early childhood, human nature, societal health, abuse, dysfunction 
8 Comments » |
27
November
2010
Liberal/progressive uprising is a fantasy. I've written a response here to Living Hero Morris Berman’s November 23 blog article "Taking It Up a Notch." Berman speaks truth about American cluelessness, but there’s even deeper cluelessness to consider.
I heard Ted Rall speak about his new book, The Anti-American Manifesto, at Revolution Books the other night. I was just walking by after an art gallery opening and stepped up to the bookstore and saw there was an event in progress. Rall’s talk was well underway by that point.
During the Q & A I asked/commented, “So, we’re talking about a shootin’ revolution here? I have wanted to see revolutionary change in the world since I was 14 years old, but, seriously, how are we going to change things? How? We are well-educated, yoga-meditation-latte types.” (Rall had said something to this effect about himself, being someone who lives in a nice place and drinks lattes). I said, “I am a peace-loving person. You won't see me picking up a gun to shoot anybody.”
Rall said, with a bit of a laugh, that he’s actually been doing target practice and that maybe we should be taking up arms now. The bookstore owner, who was also up there on the dais, said I should come around more often to talk about this. Meanwhile, this tiny independent book shop is trying to raise enough money via donations to stay in business. You see the paper thermometer chart on the wall by the cash register showing how much they’ve raised so far and what the stay-alive goal is and I can tell you there was a long way to go.
What do we think the gouging of the middle class is all about? Nighty night!
Since that night I have actually inquired about a bullet-proof vest, helmet with face shield, hand-held body shield. What do you mean the best offense isn’t a good defense? Where are my comrades anyway? We gots to get a hold of some police and military equipment without joining any forces or spending time or money to learn how to use them--but maybe after some yoga and deep breathing we can meet up in a community room somewhere to learn how to twirl a police stick and administer CPR? Who’s bringing the cappuccino machine and the organic milk?
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of happy." (Ted Zatlyn, my dear friend and editor of the L.A. Free Press in its heyday.)
Well, it certainly has been a lot of talk, talk, talk, hasn’t it? -- panel discussions, books, blogs, conferences, articles, interviews, speeches, media opps, videos, drafting and crafting new manifestos, charters and constitutions, articulating where it hurts, naming names and identifying the slew of betrayals, shackles and daggers of man's inhumanity, most of which never touch the radical underlying causes in child-rearing practices and false human concepts of what life's all about.
Not to mention we actually seek some cashola to pay the bills (and from each other?!—right?) for all this valuable research and cultivated eloquence. Ivy grads with a personal brand who likely had their own rooms as teenagers and never knew hunger or got their hands roughened by any heave-ho work, who smoked their share of weed and kicked back to songs of resistance, are real good with the insights and outrage. But aren’t we also highly sensitive people who would not hold up too well to enhanced interrogation techniques in military detention centers nor keep a steady hand on the trigger to shoot molded, pointed chunks of metal into those we call idiot and asshole and who, in truth, are just confused and bullied children who know not what they do?
Speaking here is one who takes a spider out of the house rather than crush it and one who doesn’t smack mosquitoes between her palms. I could not become a psychologist because I could not stand to read about rat and monkey experiments. This one is not in the habit of eating animals or dairy products. These are all creatures that look around, smell and feel the rain, bristle, fly, fight or freeze at danger, tuck their tails, feel life energy, feel fear, peace, pain and satisfaction; they are expressions of the great all and deserve our reverence, gentleness and respect.
Well, count on both the predicable and the improbable. What is going on here is what we can’t think about because we don’t have the capacity.
It’s really the ecological collapse that is the big-picture game-changer. We are becoming collectively overwhelmed, dazed, dismayed and daunted globally, as a species. The end of the American way is exactly what is required for species survival and it must not only come down or have its foundations dug out from under it: it needs revolutionary realizations, you know, as when we realize something, as in we had it all wrong, we were clueless.
This is the real common ground of the real WE to which we need to pay credence. Right here is the truth we share and have shared all along, one and all: we exist without knowing why we exist. And if one retreats into saying “we exist for the glory of god” or “there is no why about it,” then one needs to explain why is it we even think in terms of why. Who is up to the task of meeting existence on its own terms?
We vigilantly protect our existence without understanding what we are. Bring me someone who really knows the first thing about what the basic elements like chromium, calcium, selenium, iron actually are, what matter is, what energy is, how they flow one to another, how electrons got to spinning around protons, and how things blink in and out of existence.
We tremble. We hunger. We must obey our bodies and their endless demands. Opinions, philosophies, theories, speculations, fall-back positions, self-concepts--and nobody knows!
The great, obvious leveling fact is that we are all just exactly as mortal and clueless about the big things to which we are all, also, reverently or irreverently bound. And so we busy and bolster ourselves with mutable details.
The best shot that I see for peace, love, freedom and happiness is not a bullet-shot between the eyes of our enemies. It’s not enumerating superficial truths of who’s done what to whom and who is situated where on the arc of history or the IQ bell curve. It’s not proving who’s got the stoniest heart of hearts.
The only real threat to “power” is revelatory truth, the tree of the mind with its synaptic branches suddenly lights up a whole new shape and the old, in that brain, is thereby fried, obsolete, over: a more compelling set of pathways has been forged.
We, the big collective we; we, as in the presently living human beings, could at any time experience and witness a profound change in view. May or may not happen.
The mind is a fertile place, when we can be made expectant of the unexpected. This is the perennial attitude of the creative artist and the contemplative. It doesn’t take more than one mind, really, to experience a new synaptic tree of lightning, to electrify and exemplify fresh perception.
And yet, if the whole living humanity cannot outgrow our toxicities, it’s really okay, you know.
Sad for those who perceive and feel what could and might be, but essentially it is all right if our species is just not up to the task of self-actualizing en masse before self-destructing—
—all right because the universe has forever and we, as mere temporary conglomerations of waves and particles fluxing in the immortal transmutations of matter and energy, combining and recombining, membering and remembering—we come and go as this and that. And we are that endless process. We have forever too and chance after chance.
As I see it, there may very well be a tumbling out of new integrations in the short time ahead, neuro-bio-psycho-social-cosmological-aesthetic . . . integrations that will be startlingly revelatory, that will bring holistic vision that makes obsolete a great deal of what we have taken for reality and spoken of as the ground of our shared existence.
No one should be so sure of himself/herself. The worldview that people take for reality now certainly does not make the Earth spin on its axis and that worldview has already been superceded in many of us; it’s already over, gone, finished, vanquished.
So, let’s see what oozes and seeps from the interstices as things crack open, as the pressure continues. The public eye is useless. Give mind a place to rest and challenging leaps to make in silence. The fragmented, dissociated mind may yet come together, in some few, and that is no small endeavor.
Neuro-bio-psycho-social-political-cosmological-aesthetic . . .
it’s all in the hyphens above.
©2010 Jari Chevalier
jari consciousness, integrate, meditation, future, human potential, human development, books, holistic, mind-body, self-destructive, vision, power, reality, America, early childhood, peace, civic engagement, introspection, radical, activism, capitalism 3 Comments » |
24
November
2010
Living Hero Gabor Maté, MD appeared today on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. This conversation focuses on the explosion of ADD and ADHD in children within the past ten years.
Follow this link to the interview.
And here, again, is the interview we conducted for the Living Hero program earlier this year and the article we published about Dr. Maté's live appearance in New York at The Rubin Museum of Art in July.
He delivers a crucial message to all of us about how the structures of contemporary Western society are doing damage to the developing brains of children, injuring our humanity and causing rampant mental/emotional disturbances.
jari psychology, interviews, education, maturity, human potential, human development, wisdom, books, stress, parenting, addiction, mental health, values, empathy, America, childhood development, early childhood, human nature, societal health, civilization, abuse, dysfunction, capitalism Comments (0) » |
18
July
2010
Living Hero Gabor Maté, M.D. appeared on July 7th at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City to kick off a seven-part series of live events related to The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Dr. Ramon Prats, curator of the contemporaneous Bardo exhibition, conversed with Dr. Maté on stage and then invited questions from the audience.
Dr. Maté is author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. He explained that the hungry ghost realm is a symbol for a state of being, part of the Wheel of Life, described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. This is a state of unquenchable longing and craving, a state well-known to the addicts Dr. Maté treats in Vancouver, British Columbia’s downtown eastside.
Maté began by stating that 2500 years ago Buddhism presaged almost every discovery of contemporary neuroscience. For example, it has been scientifically corroborated that neurologically there is no abiding self to be found in body or brain. This is one of the central teachings of the Buddha. What we perceive as a continuity of self is but a stream of micro-second mind-states, which can be remembered; electrical information that follows patterns conditioned by former mind-states.
These brain circuits were fundamentally conditioned by our earliest experiences. Maté says that the “anti-infant North American ethic,” which permits a parent to just let their infant cry and cry to exhaustion, conditions that infant to become a human being resigned to a world that “just doesn’t give a damn.”
The addicts he works with have all been severely abused, and without exception all the women have been sexually abused. These people’s minds and brains have been deeply conditioned to expect to live in a hostile, dangerous, uncaring world.
Gabor Maté says there are two fallacies currently operating in the treatment of addicts in our society and that both of these fallacies erroneously take society off the hook of responsibility. The first one is the fallacy of choice, the idea that addicts choose to be addicts. They don't, he says, and the whole legal structure, the systems that punish them would have to come apart if you correct this fallacy.
And the second fallacy is the genetic disease fallacy. Addiction is not a result of genetic potentiality, but of the combination of nature and nurture, of genetic potential and the conditioning forces of the environment.
All of Dr. Maté’s various books underscore the importance of early attachment relationships in the formation of human lives. A healthy attachment in early life brings about a self-regulated, satisfied, and socially connected adult. In the abused child, these circuits don’t form properly and the person is then likely to replace those necessary healthy attachments with self-destructive ones.
The Buddha taught that habit energies wrestle the untrained mind. And so, strengthening the mind with the training of concentration, of self-observation, gives people an opportunity to perceive their own thinking-and-feeling processes and thereby realize that there’s more to us than our conditioning.
The consistent observation of one’s own mind can have the power to create new neural circuits that can override the conditioned patterns established in early experience. Based upon actual self-awareness, such mindfulness helps to create emotional balance, spiritual ease, and an increased capacity for self-regulation.
Dr. Maté reminded the audience that Christ had said: you can do everything I can do; and that Buddha nature and Christ nature are actually human potentials. What makes these potentials realizable is getting the conditioned mind and false attachments out of the way.
One of the questions posed by an audience member was about free will. “Freedom of choice is relative and it’s conditioned,” Maté said. What promotes free will? What liberates people? When it comes to individuals working on their own, what promotes choice is awareness; among people it is compassion. Stress hormones, on the other hand, interfere with our power of choice.
In the spirit of compassion, Dr. Maté acknowledged the difficulties people, especially Westerners, have in cultivating mindfulness. He confessed that he, himself, has not sustained a meditation practice and admitted that he is actually terrified of his own mind because of the traumas he endured as an infant.
Speaking further of Western culture, he referenced Sogyal Rinpoche, who wrote The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, based on the traditional Tibetan Book of the Dead. Sogyal Rinpoche says that Westerners, in general, have an active form of laziness, one in which they cram their minds so full of stimuli that there’s no time at all to confront their relationships.
Maté turned things around a bit and asked the audience a question, “What would you think if someone in your life kept on boasting: ‘I’m the greatest; I’m the most creative; everyone wants to be like me’? You’d think this person is really insecure! At the heart of the American dream there’s a terrible insecurity.”
Can we get over our vain insecurity? Both Dr. Prats and Dr. Maté spoke of how the term “rebirth,” found in Buddhist literature, refers to a process of recreating ourselves (our patterns of thought and perception) moment by moment. The Buddha taught humanity how to not rebirth that same pattern of self; how to free our minds; how to die without dying, to let the painful conditioning of our minds die back as our bodies live on, so that we may realize a liberated state and live out of our deeper nature.
How common it is to live without living. But to die without dying is rare.
©Jari Chevalier
jari consciousness, insight, meditation, human potential, human development, stress, parenting, mind, mind-body, addiction, self-destructive, mental health, empathy, freedom, health, reality, America, childhood development, early childhood, neurobiology, neuroscience, human nature, societal health, civilization, abuse Comments (0) » |
3
May
2010
"We used to have wisdom without science; now . . . we have science without wisdom."
—Dr. Gabor Maté
Physician, activist, author, educator and public speaker, Gabor Maté, MD, is widely recognized for his contributions to the field of mind-body medicine. He has eloquently and persuasively called for a reevaluation of our most pervasive and debilitating ills in light of whole-systems stressors so often borne in utero, infancy and early childhood and the attendant, recurrent patterns of suppressing emotions of hurt and anger into adulthood. Gabor Maté is a compassionate doctor whose 20-year career as a family physician and his current work with HIV-positive addicts in Vancouver, BC, equips him with direct knowledge and empathic experience. He is the author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction, When the Body Says No: Understanding The Stress-Disease Connection and Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates And What You Can Do About It.
We talked about:
Whole person nourishment and attunement ● Why early life quality is so critical to society ● Stressed parents, emotional repression and disease ● What is the role of addiction? ● The mind-body supersystem and why modern medicine won’t recognize it ● Maté’s definition of addiction ● Free will and free won’t ● Denial and our addicted society ● Consciousness-raising and the miracle of a healing path ● The divine feminine and gut feelings ● Sensitivity and resilience or hardening and rigidity ● The Bully Syndrome and the truth about bullies ● Stuck where our needs were not met ● Ayahuasca and the swift road to healing and liberation ●
Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or you may listen to it right here by clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 46 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)
Download this episode (right click and save)
Click through to buy Gabor Maté's books right from this site in the Amazon sidebar widget to the left.
Visit:
Dr. Maté's website.
jari psychology, holistic health, consciousness, interviews, insight, maturity, human potential, human development, feminine values, wisdom, holistic, parenting, mind-body, addiction, self-destructive, environment, empathy, self-esteem, power, health, childhood development, early childhood, neurobiology, science, societal health, civilization, abuse, recovery 2 Comments » |
1
August
2009
Sex and pleasure expert, Stella Resnick, PhD joins us to encourage, inform and delight you! Dr. Resnick is author of The Pleasure Zone: How We Resist Good Feelings and How to Let Go and Be Happy.
She is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Beverly Hills, CA and currently serves on the faculty of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. Formerly President of the Western Region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Dr. Resnick is a Diplomate of the American Board of Sexology and an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, CE Provider, and Clinical Supervisor, Stella has appeared many times on TV including the Oprah, Leeza, and Montel Williams shows, CNN Live, The O’Reilly Factor, KCBS’ Morning News, and UPN’s Evening News. Her seminar on The Pleasure Zone is featured in the PBS television series Body & Soul in the segment "Ode to Joy".
Stella is frequently quoted in popular magazines; such as, Reader’s Digest, Women’s World, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Playboy, Self, Redbook, McCall’s, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Health, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Family Circle, Parenting, and the Utne Reader. She has written numerous professional papers, and authored cover stories for Self, New Age, and Psychology Today magazines.
We talked about:
Demonizing pleasure in a history of domination ● Fear of peace, fulfillment and pleasure programmed in our nervous systems ● The 8 Core Pleasures and how we resist them ● Pleasure and the stages of human and societal development ● Infant needs and our tenacious early experiences ● Societal health and childhood sexuality ● How we learn to be human ● Two kinds of discipline and your pleasure ● Relearning how to be sexual ● Of what is sexuality an expression? ● Bridging the gap between heart and libido in adult partnerships ● A role for conscious breathing in your life
Visit: drstellaresnick.com
Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 52 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)
Click through to buy Stella's book on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.
jari psychology, holistic health, interviews, human potential, human development, feminine values, stress, parenting, love, fear, relaxation, feeling, freedom, health, sex, fitness, childhood development, early childhood, libido, pleasure, societal health, childhood sexuality, conscious breathing 1 Comment » |
1
December
2008
The Living Hero show is honored to present an interview with author, speaker and thought leader, Riane Eisler. She is recognized as one of the most original minds of our time, and has been included among the world's 20 great thinkers and peacemakers. She is president of the Center for Partnership Studies and is best known for her international bestseller The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. Riane holds degrees in sociology and law from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and has done pioneering and transformative work in the fields of human rights and relations, history, sociology, economics, psychology, and education. She is the author of over 200 essays and articles and five books.
We talked about:
• The redistribution and redefinition of power
• What is the real wealth of nations?
• Political ironies and transformation
• Playing economics with a full deck
• The psychological underpinnings of domination and control
• Gender relations and notions of male and female power
• Is human nature fundamentally flawed?
• Riane's own path of transformation
• The neurochemistry of pain and pleasure
• Creativity as a force for leadership and change
Visit Riane Eisler's websites at www.rianeeisler.com and The Center for Partnership Studies (partnershipway.org)
Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only--sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is 50 minutes)
Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)
Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.
Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.
jari psychology, language, interviews, education, future, human potential, feminine values, culture, philosophy, politics, books, creativity, parenting, love, economy, global forces, values, power, sex, reality, early childhood, neuroscience, human nature 1 Comment » |
1
September
2008
The Living Hero show is very proud to present an interview with Marcy Axness, Ph.D.
Dr. Axness is an early development specialist who writes and speaks internationally on parenting, society, and the needs of children. She is an authority in such wide-ranging fields as neurobiology (brain development), prenatal and developmental psychology, attachment theory, and consciousness research. Marcy’s particular specialization is in very early development--beginning even before conception--and she is one of the world’s few experts in prenatal / neonatal issues in adoption. She is a professor at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute and has a private practice in Los Angeles, counseling parents and prospective parents.
We talked about:
• Raising generation PAX
• Quantum parenting
• The fundamental question every human is always asking
• The peace-creativity connection
• P-A-R-E-N-T-S, Marcy's parenting To-Dos
• The surprising single strongest predictor of a child's healthy attachment
• The dominant reality engine of our time
• How to behaviorally reduce ADD and ADHD
• What drives the viscious human cycle
• Tapping into the unseen dimensions of experience
Visit Marcy's website at http://www.quantumparenting.com
Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only--sorry no transcripts at this time!
You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about an hour.)
Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)
Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.
Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.
jari psychology, consciousness, interviews, education, future, maturity, human potential, human development, feminine values, wisdom, parenting, love, mind-body, mental health, values, empathy, vision, health, America, childhood development, early childhood, peace, neurobiology Comments (0) » |
(17 ratings) 
