Are you really born yet, as a real human being, or do you just exist as a mirror image of the expectations of your surroundings?

Introduction. (skip if you want)

In 2009, I was to give a lecture on the publication of a psychological book about relationships in a well-known publishing house in Oslo (Aschehoug publishing house). The book was about the development of the self and self-awareness, and how we are shaped by our relationships and how we in turn influence them.

As I was writing the lecture, I came across how very few of us who truly live an independent and self-differentiated life. A life where we make our choices with a full awareness of what we are doing. A type of independently chosen life, in which we also admit our dependence on others, our parents, the family, the clan, the society around us and the global environment with the air that we breathe.

To my surprise and despairI found, – when I thought about everything I had been working on for the past twenty-five years,-there were few people outside of my patients and some friends, who were actually born yet! Yes, they had come out of the womb, the umbilical cord had been cut, and they had become so-called adults. But was this all?

It should be mentioned that I grew up in a multicultural quite affluent environment, with Americans, Britons, Catholics, Jews and, I believe, an Afro-American moderate Muslim, who worked for NATO. After an economic collapse due to a bankruptcy rider who inflicted great losses on our family’s business, we moved to a somewhat more affordable place in town.

Here our closest family neighbors were Jews. It should be said that my initials are JEW, so I was well received despite my Christian background. Actually religion played little role here, friendship trumped all this. But at least I learned that in Jewish tradition, a human being dies twice. The first time when the heart stops, and the second time when no one is talking about you or remembering your name. What about births then? How many births do we have, I asked myself later.

Each one of us has three possible births.

1. Our Physical Birth:

• Our first birth is when we finally after approx. 9 months comes out of the mother’s womb and the umbilical cord is cut. Then we are physically separated from our mother’s body, but not at all psychologically or psycho-physical. At this stage of our llives we need a lot of closeness, care and skin contact to survive. It’s not enough to be fed.

2. Our Psychological Birth:

• Our second birth comes gradually, after many months and years of interaction with our parents, where we discover differences and similarities, and perceives our psychic existence as different from mother, father, siblings and the others “out there”. The day we look into the mirror, point at our reflected image there and say, “I”,- we are born psychologically. But this our psychological identity is strongly linked to the reflections of others opinion of us. That is the mirror who others want to see us through, by their definitions and expectations. Although we break with this mirror image in our youth, or meet the expectations, – self-perception and self-esteem are still closely tied to the mirror image. In a way, we will live up to what we believe and want others to recognize us for. We can in a way choose, but without the necessary self-awareness.

3. The Existential Birth of Man:

• Our third birth, on the other hand, does not occur until we have understood what push and pulls, what leading threads, what pain, and indeed what history our parents, our family and our relatives on both sides carry with them, and which in turn also has shaped us. We have come to a point in life where we acknowledge our positive and good sides aswell as our mistakes and wrong doings. We have discovered both our strengths and our limitations. And no matter how much we would have changed our negative sides earlier, we must understand and accept them before changing.
• At his point in development history, we have simply understood why our life has become the way it has! This we have done to a point where we not only continue to choose this or that, the one thing or the other. We have come to a point and a crossroads where we can consciously choose what we choose, because we know our background and our history.
• This is nothing less than an existential crucial moment: An existential BIG BANG, I would call it!

• With this knowledge, awareness and will, we can choose us out of a family tradition, or choose to continue most of it, because we believe it to be the right thing. Are there a family trauma we have discovered, we can try to repair the devastating effect of it, and by that avoid passing it on subconsciously to our children. If not we could risk doing, without knowing it, what Alice Miller’s family did to their son, Martin Miller.(http://www.selvuniverset. com/2020/01/29/a-parents-gravest-betrayal-and-deceit/)
• We can also choose to change ourselves, not necessarily because others want it from us. But because we ourselves want it in the depths of our self-knowledge.

Conclusion and new Year’s wish for us:

Unfortunately, most of us are only born twice. We lack the courage or opportunity to undergo the last “cognitive pregnancy”. In that sense, we are like mass produced blueprints, that have never really taken responsibility for realizing our originality.

Let’s hope some of us manage to make that leap in 2020.

A New meaning of Christmas.  2019 yrs. after his birth.

This is a beautiful Christmas song, sung and composed by James Taylor. It can be  played on pc and Mac while you read this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s49gEmTlOTk

(Song and reading will not function simultaneously on Iphone.)

Who ever you are, reading this.  Whatever God you believe in, or religion you have. Even if you don’t believe in any deity at all: Welcome to Psychological Universe’s traditional pre-Christmas greeting!

Both healthy and strong, sick and weak, fit or tired.

You might be very fit and strong, and feel like the  most healthy person on earth! Thank God for that! Or thank Allah, Yahweh, Buddha, and not to forget your parents for you  just being alive. Or thank Nature, and the successful cooperation of cells and organs in your body, and their further collaboration with the nourishing sources in your environment.  A constant collaboration,  that makes your vital cells continue to regenerate.

Sadly enough, you might also be sick and ill for the present. You might be in pain, both emotional and physical. Then it’s no wonder if you don’t look forward for Christmas. You might also be old and feel tired, be young and feel fatigued, or you carry a very heavy burden from some traumatic experiences. Trauma from war, accidents, terror and abuse.

Some of us have you in mind, even if you can’t see us.

Then keep in mind though, that some of us think and pray for you, even more these days, when everyone is supposed to be happy. Especially we think of you, with a very dark view of life for the moment. You who don’t know if you manage to live through the day or Christmas.

I still have my childish faith inside of me. It’s living side by side with a much more scientifically based psychological perspective of Faith and Belief in a Deity. Growing up together with Jews, Muslims, Christians, Jesus Christ Church of The Latter- Day Saints, Mormons, even Hindus, Buddhists and Atheists, has made me unable to rank and discriminate between religious beliefs. It’s always the people behind their beliefs and religion, that differentiates their quality.

Christmas deep symbolism.( see this post)

The core and essence of religious faith, whatsoever.

What is the essence or core of all religious faith, or Deities? I  don’t really know. I am no theologist. But I have my thoughts about it, that you may or may not agree with. Besides being spiritual and not incarnated, I think being Godly has to do with being trustful, good, loving, strong, wise, brave, protective, and forgiving.

To live up to these altruistic principles on earth, as a human being in flesh and bone, has proven to be very difficult. This even when many of us have more food, shelter, money, goods than our forefathers could ever dream of.

Why are we not thankful and happy? Is it because we have lost our faith? I do not have the answer, but I think there’s been a too big gap between those idealistic and perfect almost unattainable qualities of our Deities like God, Allah, Jahweh, and Buddha and our everyday life. These qualities now seem almost like Christmas decorations left on a shelf, a drawer or in the attic. We take them down once a year, and most of all it costs us money, and make the business world happy, sometimes also our children and friends.

A split between  ideals and practical action.

I think we must reconsider this somewhat conspicuous split between values we cherish, and how we really live. Like a plant, love must be regenerated by “watering it and giving it nourishment” almost every day. There is no use of a fairytale Christmas idea, if we don’t try to practice the idea of Christmas constantly. I mean also  the rest of the year.

But how can we do that? First and foremost by rethinking what religion and belief is meant to be. If you are full of ideas and none of them are realized, there is little value in having these ideas. Ideas must be translated into action or else they will be hanging meaningless in the air. Christmas is celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, the birth of hope for a better world. When we celebrate his 2019 birthday we must also re-awaken him from his grave on earth.

Jesus, how can that be possible, we may ask? Again, I do not have the answer, even if think I am close. First, we must try to forget that Jesus is only a Christian. As a spiritual Symbol, he is the brother of all the other Prophets of the great religions. He is even the step-brother of the non-Christians Humanists and their community of non- believers.

If we continue to fight for Christ, Muhammed, Yahweh and Buddha in a way that we persecute, hurt or kill each other, we have buried them together with all their wisdom and hope for us. And if we believe in their values, but never make them come true in our meeting with fellow human beings, it’s like keeping these “guys” on the top shelf. A shelf we hardly can reach with our bare hands.

Is there anything I can do, except buying presents?

Yes, reaching out for your brother or sister, neighbor or colleague, or a beggar in the street, however, that’s manageable. Dropping to hide your fortune and income in a complex company structure, instead making it open for taxation, that’s within reach. Having time for your children, your aging mother and half-senile father or grandfather, that’s also within the reach of realization. Even giving your workers the right to organize and have a proper salary to live on is within your reach, if you’re a company owner.

And as you practice these values and deeds, you revive Christ!  You give him a new birth, you resurrect him, – make him stand there alive in between yourself and your fellow citizens. In his light you will know what Christmas really is about. You will also know why we have celebrated Christ and his fellow Muslim, Hebrew, and Hindu prophets for centuries.

These guys never expire on date!

You may forget their names, but whenever you do something good and helpful for another person, their reason for being will be demonstrated. Whenever you try to figure out how to really give hope to or happiness to another person, you help Christ down from the cross, or lift him out of the cradle.

Have a giving and hopefulle OK pre-Christmas!

I started this greeting with a parable derived from the physiology of the human organism. A healthy mind and body need a successful cooperation of cells and organs in your body. More than so, it demands a good and effective collaboration with the environment and its biological and psychological sources of nourishment. In other words; a healthy and balanced exchange of goods.

That’s the only way to regenerate our cells, regenerate our psychological faith in ourselves. At last you might wonder why we call our Deities Gods. I have an idea: As ideas we call them Gods! As taken down to earth and realized between living people in daily life, – we call them Goods.

Then we might wish each other a happy Christmas by these few words: Christ is good! Christ is God! But his existence relies on the practical realization of his words in the world. So rise him up from the cradle and keep him alive!

You can do it!