Sheldon Kopp

You may remember being a kid, and having someone suggest you write an essay about the person who influenced you most.  With the exception of a musician or two, the person that is likely that for me is Sheldon Kopp.  I was given his most famous book "If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients" by my then "mentor", when I was 17.  It's really a book about principles, an organized way to live our lives and deal with Things As They Are.

He's written something in the way of 18 books, died a while ago not of the brain tumor he had (that required removal 3 times), but of heart failure and pneumonia.  Having heard a rumor about his death, I looked him up on the internet once, and sent an email to a similarly named person, hoping I might find him or learn of his passing.  Essentially my note stated that this was a person who had been extremely influential and helpful in my life, and I wanted to know if it might be him.  I was lucky enough to get a response, that made it clear it was actually him: "Yes Petar, I too have heard rumors of my untimely demise, but I find them unconvincing."

In "Buddha", as became customary in many of his books, at the end was included ideas that he considered truths, or principles.  This was the most famous of them, called, "An Eschatological Laundry List: a Partial List of 927 (or was it 928?) Eternal Truths."  Many of the ideas here have guided me in everything from my own emotional and "spiritual" work, work with my clients.  People that have suffered all of the things here that I'm trying to diminish for as many people as possible- depression, stress, relationship issues, abuse, loss and grief, addiction, self esteem issues and the like.  Hopefully, they will give you as much as they've given me, inspire you to read his books, and of the greatest importance: give you a ways and means of passing the ideas on to others.  Would love to hear what you think of them.  And to the "Truths"...

1. This is it!
2. There are no hidden meanings.
3. You can't get there from here, and besides there's no place else to go.
4. We are all already dying, and we will be dead for a long time.
5. Nothing lasts.
6. There is no way of getting all you want.
7. You can't have anything unless you let go of it.
8. You only get to keep what you give away.
9. There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things.
10. The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there is no compensation for misfortune.
11. You have a responsibility to do your best nonetheless.
12. It is a random universe to which we bring meaning.
13. You don't really control anything.
14. You can't make anyone love you.
15. No one is any stronger or any weaker than anyone else.
16. Everyone is, in his own way, vulnerable.
17. There are no great men.
18. If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.
19. Everyone lies, cheats, pretends (yes, you too, and most certainly I myself).
20. All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation.
21. All of you is worth something, if you will only own it.
22. Progress is an illusion.
23. Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.
24. Yet it is necessary to keep on struggling toward solution.
25. Childhood is a nightmare.
26. But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of -yourself -cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you grown-up.
27. Each of us is ultimately alone.
28. The most important things, each man must do for himself.
29. Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
30. We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that's all there is.
31. How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.
32. We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge.
33. All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.
34. Yet we are responsible for everything we do.
35. No excuses will be accepted.
36. You can run, but you can't hide.
37. It is most important to run out of scapegoats.
38. We must learn the power of living with our helplessness.
39. The only victory lies in surrender to oneself.
40. All of the significant battles are waged within the self.
41. You are free to do whatever you like. You need only to face the consequences.
42. What do you know . . . for sure . . . anyway?
43. Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again. . . .

You Can't Heal What You Can't Feel

We constantly "do" things- behaviors and thinking, that put distance between us and us, us and "others", us and 'god' or the 'universe' as we MISunderstand s/he/them and/or it.  Food, sex, TV, gambling, relationships, rationalizing, avoiding, intellectualizing, alcohol, money, property, prestige, drugs, toys/devices (cell phones, computers, etc), fixing other people, "acting out" etc.  Overstating, when it comes to distance between us and us, we're talking about putting distance between us and our emotional condition.  Simply using a lot of words (Lao Tzu has famously said, paraphrasing, that "many words lead one nowhere") and even certain types of words can put distance between us and our feelings.

To simplify getting in touch with and processing our feelings about things, I encourage using what are sometimes referred to as the "Six Basic Feelings".  These are mad, sad, glad, afraid, ashamed, and/or hurt.  Certainly, we can have one or more of them at any given time, even about the same issue.  I really resist other words if at all possible, for reasons too long to go into here.

If we're engaged in the aforementioned behaviors, we are often mood-altering, and/or simply less or unable to be in touch with our emotional condition (and as a result, others and the rest of the "universe").  If our feelings are indicators of possible realities, if these are altered or stunted, we may not have all the information about a given circumstance.  The idea we're going for is to talk about them in a way that transforms them, and or helps us clarify different circumstances.

So, my suggestion to get in touch with and begin transforming these is this: know the things we do that are mood-altering, let go of those behaviors (a whole other note all together), and as our feelings come up, say the facts of the circumstance, and one or more of the six basic feelings.  For instance, "When my mom (or whoever) said/did/didn't say/didn't do __________, I felt __________."  That's all.  Trying to avoid inferences, interpretations, assessments, judgments, manipulation, controlling, etc., certainly avoiding behaviors we do that ignore or diminish our ability to be in touch with how we feel.

It's been said too that we can't heal what we can't feel.  So the process I'm encouraging is identifying what we do to not feel, letting go of those so that we can feel all of our feelings ("all" meaning each one, in all circumstances, and with 100% of the intensity we're experiencing them...), naming them simply, communicating them in a way that helps us stay in touch with/get help/transform them, then finding ways to live our lives gracefully through what comes up as we process them.  This is a process I encourage with therapists, relationships, as many places as is possible.


It's really important to point out that I'm not advocating for this process to change anyone else's behavior or perspective.  This is not an idea about right and wrong, certainly not about comparing the relevance of our feelings to others.  It's simply a way of getting in touch with what we feel, so that we can change it.  We often say to one another that we should "let go" of things- but you can't let go of feelings you don't totally have.

Utility of Sadness

We do some *ahem* interesting things with sadness.

Often, people ask us how we are.  I think the real question is about how we feel, but we will oft answer "good" or "bad" or "not so good".  All judgments about how we feel.  Most of us would argue that "sad" is a "bad" feeling.  If we can get past that, we may use another euphemism: "depressed".  Our relationship to this thing is often not great.

When I left my office this morning (my second office at the Life Fitness Center, a group that provides a more holistic set of services), I was sad myself.  I'd spent several hours with people who were in horrible circumstances, and had already been suffering.  Mightily, and understandably, I might add.  When I got to the light, I noticed a gentleman, probably 7ish, walking through the crosswalk with his mom.  One of my licensures is in developmental disabilities and other related problems, and I noted his cerebral palsy right away.  They were holding hands, and though his body was having a hard time- his soul certainly wasn't.  He appeared really happy.

Behind my wheel though, I was pretty sad.  For my clients this AM, and for him (though he was probably fine).  Most of the time when we get sad, we find some way to resist it.  We push it away with our minds, set our attention elsewhere, numb it with all kinds of different behaviors, even shame ourselves for having such feelings in the first place.

Would argue though, that my sadness, has great utility.  Not only is it the most effective way to heal my losses, it certainly makes me useful to other people.  Exactly how it heals grief and loss is not quite the gist of this missive, and takes time with a therapist/counselor/life coach to know how to do effectively and gracefully.  Am certain that my sadness today assisted me in being kind and present for my clients, and likely would keep me "softer" when dealing with folk like the gentleman in the crosswalk.

My hope is that I never lose this.  As long as I am sad about the suffering of humans, I have business doing the work that I do.  The point of this though is that this is true not just in terms of my relationship to my clients or other folk in the world, but all of us in relationship to ourselves and one another in general.  Honoring our sadness does more to "cure" "anxiety" (sorry for the consecutive quotes), relieve "depression", and make us available for intimacy than most any other thing I can think of.

Reconciling ourselves with sadness, and finding some "grace" in how we live with it, if the above is true, surely presents some great reasons we should stop treating our sadness as something repugnant.

On a different note: as a reminder, Judy McGehee and I will be on the radio/live stream/podcasting at the link below tomorrow from 1130AM until noon on the "Project Get Well America" show with Dr. Mark.  The link for the show is here.