Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Human Sexuality -> Astonishing Complexities, Variations And Wonder – October 20, 2009 - MSK

Evolution vs. Creative Design

In a recent discussion about evolution vs. creative design, the point that was being made was that evolution does fit in with the book of Genesis of the bible. I explained that the main point being made in Genesis is that God created the world, as to the exact way this was done is not known. However, the objection remained that creation had to have taken place in exactly the way the bible said it did, “the bible cannot be wrong.” Remembering the problem that the Vatican got into by condemning Galileo, because he said the earth revolves around the sun, which was inconsistent with the bible, I did want to repeat the same. I explained that I am not able to debate what happened millions of years ago. I am fascinated by both theories, but I am more fascinated by what we know in the present time. Something that I learned in grade school was that no matter where we look in the universe we find this precision like order, intricate complexity and eminence diversity how things are put together and function. Under a microscope, we find a whole world not visible to the naked eye. Looking at a cell and the component parts they all function in a precise set order. The earth’s orbit is so precise that if were to run off course by just bit I am told we would burn up. If we next dive to the depth of the oceans and we will again find a whole new world of life, which also has this same precision like order and intricate complexity.

Faith Cannot Be Proven

Therefore, if we study evolution theory we will find that it does not escape this precision like order, intricate complexity and eminence diversity. Although, evolution is greatly debated, I prefer the debate than to ever censor any discussion of evolution. I want to know and learn everything. What must be understood, at all times, is that faith can never be proven, because it would not be faith. Faith is believing in something that we do not know for sure. So, if we place more importance on the literal understanding of the bible, as a means to prove one’s reasons for having faith and not on the deeper meaning, which is always “love” we will continue run amuck (amok - possessed with or motivated by a murderous or violently uncontrollable frenzy). http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amuck The bible expands our ability to love more deeply and completely all people, but never to limit who we love.

Astonishing Complexities, Variations 
And 
Wonder In Human Beings

Even as a psychotherapist, I find that how we human beings are put together is completely fascinating having great complexity and eminence diversity, no two people are ever alike. I have seen a large number of patients and I am struck by the fact that each person is so unique. Because no one experiences sadness in exactly the same way that someone else or any other feeling for that matter. With each patient’s life story that I am privileged to have been told, it is a story I have never heard before and will never hear it again from anyone else, ever. In this frame of mind it makes meeting each new patient with a true sense of dignity and respect, as well as, being honored because I know I will be invited into a whole new universe where I have never been before. And even though I am able to resonate with the patient’s different emotions, again, like the earth’s orbit, it is understanding the precise way that the patient experiences each emotion and the varying degrees intensity that goes along with each emotion felt is essential for the person’s mental health and well-being. Knowing all our emotions gives us greater freedom to use them as signals in our lives, to live fuller lives, lives worth living. This follows the ancient Greek oracle “Know Thyself.” As a priest, I know it follows what Jesus said to his disciples, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Matthew 7:2-4

Differentiating, Verbalizing And Separating All Our Emotions

I have been extremely fortunate in the past to be assigned, Henry Krystal MD, as my mentor, at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Dr. Krystal is “…one of the world’s foremost authorities and a pioneer in post traumatic stress disorder.” In his book, “Integration & Self-Healing” he explains how by differentiating, verbalizing and separating all our emotions, one from the another that are a part of an overwhelming event the more we will be able to use our emotions as signals to help understand the world around us. Any event can be filled with a number of different emotions and each at varying degrees of intensity. An unpleasant emotion can be overwhelming for a particular person and the tendency is to bury the feeling from the conscious mind and separate it from the event that caused it. We do this to protect ourselves, at the time. However, overtime this unpleasant emotion can become disruptive to the forward movement of our lives. Because like any strange disturbing noise that someone hears at night alone coming from the basement and decides not to find out what it is, it can play on the person’s imagination. Any number of frightening or terrifying images and thoughts can come to mind that will continue to fester without end, disrupting a good night’s sleep. Having a lack of sleep can cause unnecessary problems throughout the whole next day. However, if the person were to have gotten out of bed and investigated the noise and finding that the noise is only the normal operation of the furnace, then immediate the person’s fears would have been relieved and then able to fall asleep, and feel rested for the next day.

Unpleasant Emotions Hidden Remain Alive, and Disruptive

When unpleasant emotions have been deliberately kept out of conscious awareness, they will still remain alive and potent. These real but now unidentified emotions will remain unknowingly disruptive to us throughout our lives. They tend to impact our ability to work and to love, and be loved. Situations in our lives can become overwhelming and we will not know why. We might at times overact to an otherwise insignificant situation and wonder why we overreacted with such intensity. We will often misplace the cause or reason onto any number of different possibilities, such as, people, physical ills, or other situations, further disrupting our lives. Causing chaos can also serve a purpose of avoiding facing and dealing with important personal issues for some. However, we will never find relief until we can identify what we are feeling, verbalize it and reconnect it to the event that evoked it. This helps to reestablish our own personal sense of order, so we are able to move forward in life.

Life Time Harm From Lack Of Human Bonding

When a person does not feel loved this tends to disrupt the personal order of that person, especially for a child. There are many ways that a person can feel "not loved" that are caused by explicit and implicit forms of child abuse. From attachment theorists we learn that from the minute we are born we are meant to bond to another and other human beings. The lack of this human attachment can be lethal to infants.

“…according to Spitz (1945, 1946) children between the ages of 6 months to 2 years, even if briefly isolated, would, within minutes, begin crying and screaming for their mothers. This was followed by a stage of despair in which they would cease to cry, lose interest in the environment and withdraw. In the final stage the children ceased to show interest in others and no longer responded to affection. Instead they became passive and unresponsive, sitting or lying quite still with a frozen expression, staring for hours at nothing (see also Bowlby, 1982). If the separation continued there was further deterioration, with children becoming ill or dying. Moreover, Spitz (1945, 1946) found that some children would quickly pass through all three phases, sometimes within a few days, and that those who experienced long-term separations often became permanently emotionally and even sexually abnormal. Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D.

A Child Feels Emotions More Intensely 
Than An Adult

A child feels emotions more intensely than an adult. An adult knows that any emotion has an end. If we bump our knee, we know the pain will go way, in a relatively short amount of time. However, a child thinks that the way he or she feels will last forever and ever without end; to feel even the slightest bit of being abandoned by a parent can be quite overwhelming. The child will do anything to avoid the horror of the fear of feeling abandoned, which for a child can be traumatizing. Depending on the nature, the severity and the duration of a traumatizing event for child it can cause a regression in the child’s ability to manage emotions. This means the child’s emotions remain “undifferentiated, unverbalized and mostly somatic [affecting the body] (Krystal p.166).” A traumatizing event for a child though mostly hidden deep in the unconscious mind will, however, as an adult, continue to be played out and be disruptive in the person’s conscious everyday life, only disguised.

Human Sexuality

In all the world we find immerse diversity, all having precision order and intricate complexity on all levels. It is amazing that when we come to understanding human sexuality, it is so often limited to only two kinds and no other variations. It does not seem right. Our fingerprints are so unique that they are used to identify millions and millions of individuals one from another and with no duplications. Our DNA samples are even more intricate, complex and with no duplications. However, in the case of human sexuality it is limited by many people to only 2 accepted variation, why not the same magnitude of variations as found in our fingerprints or DNA. Yet the research on human sexuality reveals greater complexity and endless variations that I find immensely astonishing, an exquisite wonder about being human that has yet to be fully discovered. The people who refused to accept these findings can no longer use the bible to back their limited views on human sexuality no more than the Vatican can use the bible to condemn Galileo. People who continue to misuse the bible in this regard tend to raise a red flag that their attempts to do so are irrational. Checking further on their efforts to thoroughly study the bible will be found to have been less than minimal. The question then becomes why and why is there so much fierceness to inisit on misusing the bible so irrationally to prove a point about human sexuality?

IMPLICIT FORM OF EMOTIONAL CHILD ABUSE

The importance of understanding the great complexity and diversity of human sexuality is crucial to the well being in raising children in the early childhood psychological developmental years. Sexual orientation is a normal part of human sexuality and is it established very early life either just before birth or very soon after birth. Sexual orientation is the way we bond and form attachments to another and other human beings throughout life. If a child’s sexual orientation expressions are disapproved of by the parents, it tends to create for the child feelings that are overwhelming for the child and can even be traumatizing. All depends on the kind of disapproval and the intensity with which it is expressed.

If it is a male child that has a homosexual orientation, his affections will be shown to the father. At the very early ages of life, the father will not mind his son wanting his affection. But as the child reaches the ages around 4 and 5 years old, the father tends to have many concerns about his son's expressions of affection towards him, his father. The father will then try to shun his son's signs of affections, in an attempt to correct his son's affections. There likely will be other corrections imposed on his son to help his son fit more the acceptable social norms for males in society. I explain this process and the harm that is caused in greater detail in the posting - Sexual orientation is less about sex and more about love, being one with another human being. Attachment Theory - - LOVE & RELIGION

A disapproval of a child’s sexual orientation to the child tends to be repeated numerous times over for an extended duration of time, often for a period of years and by a number of close adults besides the parents. It can cause a regression in the child’s ability to manage emotions. These overwhelming emotions remain “undifferentiated, unverbalized and mostly somatic [affecting the body] (Krystal p.166).”

Sexual orientation is as natural as breathing, a heart beating it does not stop, ever, or we die. Over time, as the child continues to grow, every time the child has a nature attraction to someone the child learns to draw back, forget the feeling, and learn to live being isolated from everyone, even while growing up in the mist many loving people. This is an inhuman form of torture to subject a child to that is unintentionally imposed on the child by his parents. The parents are unknowingly teaching their child to commit the most heinous inhuman form of self abuse, all done as a form of sincere parental love. The child will learn out of fear to suffocate his or her sexual orientation expressions of love, for love and bonding, at great harm to the child’s emotional ability to ever bond with anyone for life. The child will have problems later in life not being able to love anyone on an intimate level and even being loved by another or others. WE MUST START IDENTIFING THIS AS IMPLICIT FORM OF EMOTIONAL CHILD ABUSE THAT IT IS AND BEGIN PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN. At a very young age, the child has absolutely no idea what the child is doing that is so upsetting to the important adults in the child’s life. The child does not understand the meaning sexual orientation. The child only has only the purest, sincerest human intention to show and be loved, to feel one with another and nothing more. This only makes the situations even unintentionally crueler and more disturbing to the child. This is explained more fully on the posting - Sexual Orientation, Breathing and Heart Beating - Operate Automatically and Continuously

There are explicit forms of this kind of child abuse, but here I am describing that which is implicit, only briefly. Since, these overwhelming feelings happened very early childhood they become seamless to any detection on self-observation and remain “undifferentiated, unverbalized and mostly somatic. It is only when the issue of homosexual orientation as an adult is mentioned openly and these feelings arise in the form of a kind of hysteria and immense fear in the range from overtly to covertly expressed. As adults, these people will be void of any logical explanations or descriptions for their objections to a homosexual orientation. What they seem to offer is vague, inarticulate, and dismissively brief explanation in an implicit intense painful expression of fear. Or they may rant and rave obsessively, but beneath the smoke and fire will be irrational content, at best. Again, it is most important to mention that children not raised in social environments influenced by antigay social or religious norms do not exhibit the emotional problems, as those who do.

What I described above is a very small variation on the sexual orientation continuum. It must be remembered that there are other continuums regarding other aspects human sexuality. The variations related to human sexuality are enormous. If only we could all study more and keep safe and alive all human beings so that we can learn without people living in fear more from all people about totality of human sexuality.

Major Perpetrators

The major perpetrators of this implicit form of emotional child abuse are the unsubstantiated antigay religious teachings like those promulgated by the Vatican, Benedict XVI and the hierarchy. It is more than likely these same people are vicitims themselves of this implicit form of emotional child abuse.

Written by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz – October 20, 2009
Revised on October 21, 2009
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2009/10/human-sexuality-astonishing.html


Hate Crime Bill vs Attacks But No Facts ->
 Fear And Ignorance Of The Blind Leading The Blind 
October 27, 2009 – MSK

On Prop 8, it's the evidence, stupid
By Lisa Bloom
CNN.com 
and related links:

Is It Possible to Be Against Same-Sex Marriage
Without Being Homophobic?
Carlos A. Ball
Professor of Law at Rutgers University
August 24, 2010 – Huffington Post

Church of Scotland admits institutional homophobia
April 25, 2007 - Ekklesia

"No sensible person can imagine that the sexes differ
in matters of love as they do in matters of clothing.
The intelligent lover of beauty will be attracted to beauty in whichever gender he finds it." Plutarch

The Quality Of Lasting Homosexual Relationships
Deserve Respect
Roman Catholic -->Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Vienna

Gramick: Equality is a Catholic value
by David Taffet – Dallas Voice

Gay Marriage -> Restores
“Hope of Love”
To Children In Early Childhood

Sexual orientation is less about sex and more about love,
being one with another human being - Attachment Theory
LOVE & RELIGION
Gay Marriage

Gay Marriage - Galileo Condemned As A Heretic -
Misinterpretations of The Bible
Homosexuality?
Natural Law?
Benedict XVI?
Kids Are Being Hurt!!!

The Pope Is Not Gay
Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Dish
The Atlantic

Vatican Asking For Male Prostitutes –
“Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.”
Though you drive Nature out with a pitchfork,
she will still find her way back.

Prop 8 judgment, August 4, 2010 - Gay marriage
“Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.”
Judge Vaughn Walker

California decision pulls mask off fears, prejudice
by Ron Eachus
August 10, 2010 - Statesman Journal.com

“Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.”
Erik Erikson

…whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Matthew 18:6

Important note: No disrespect meant to Pope Benedict XVI or the hierarchy, the one and only concern is the safety and well-being of children.
Kids Are Being Hurt !!!

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