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. . . .

Space.

So many of us are looking for self esteem, happiness, "God" (if one believes in such), good relationships and etc.  These ideas come up a lot in my work, from all kinds of people, all different kinds of age groups and backgrounds.  They're understandable, and common efforts, much of what make our lives worth living.

We do a lot of... interesting... things to get these. We "socially engineer", we try to bolster our sense of self with our egos, we do all the prescribed things that religions or spiritual traditions or philosophies (or therapists) encourage us to do to get a sense of "spirit" or "God", we buy things, try to get him or her to be interested in us.  We use drugs, alcohol, money, property, prestige.  We even use a lot of methods we've gotten from other therapists or self-help books (or programs) to get these things as well.

More and more, I think that these things, if we're to have them at all, are far less about "getting" them than they are about making space for them.  If we've been told all our lives that we'll never amount to anything or have had things happen to us that have made us feel "less than" or broken or defective, no amount of the above ideas (and more) will be sufficient to bring us self esteem or happiness.  The ideas I'm suggesting about "God" or relationships etc are much the same- we have to make space for these things, that are usually occupied by some loss, hurt, anxieties and etc.

The how and why of this is beyond the scope of a blog, but it's certainly an idea worth pondering.  Overstating, learning how to let go of hurts, losses, shame, ego- these will go much further in bringing us healthy relationships, a healthy relationship with ourselves, a sense of connectedness to "God" or others or the "universe", than any amount of money or anything else will ever provide.