zrovna jsem si objednala tuhle knihu
Amazon.com: Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth (9780970693846): Brad Blanton, Marilyn Ferguson: Books
http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Honesty-Transform-Telling-Truth/dp/0970693842
Níže zkopírována recenze jedné čtenářky, která mi přijde tak dobrá, že sama o sobě stojí za přečtení.
Autor je podle všeho trochu kontroverzní postava, a jeho myšlenky místy extrémní, ale základní idea vypadá velice podnětně. A i kdyby člověk nutně neříkal každou pravdu všem okolo sebe, ono by stačilo umět ji konzistentně říkat sobě :)
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His premise is very scary: tell the truth as you experience it, no matter how it reflects on your identity. Use language to its natural limits to describe what you feel as you feel it, even if you fear it is childish or illogical. I like this. I like the idea that our feelings often don't make any sense at all. We might feel them to be ugly, selfish, wicked.
There's a part where he outlines all the secrets he is ashamed of. It was one of my favourite parts, and I started laughing because of how funny and truthful his admissions were. I imagine the first time he wrote them down on paper he might have been afraid, even though to me they were charmingly self-involved and innocent, like my own secrets. I wrote mine down too, and it hurt to do so. Some of the things I came up with sounded hideous and twisted, like they'd been decaying in the dark for too long. Things I know to be true, but never consciously acknowledge. I'll share one of them with you:
I imagine myself as some kind of person who will eventually "get it". I will learn to be totally and radically honest, I will become a liberated sexual being, I will read lots of books and become very intelligent, I will travel the world and learn new things and tell people they are perfect. I will perfect one day if I do all of these things, and no bad feelings will ever be able to touch me again. I believe that even in telling this to myself I am becoming more of a liberated being, someone special. I never want to miss people or feel like I need others, so this is how I am trying to escape those feelings of needing to be validated externally.
The act of writing these down as he had brought up much fear and self-hatred. It may feel like one is dying to admit that some of who you are is performative. It is a way of navigating the world because you think it will keep you safe. It goes back very far. From a young age we learn that love, in some families, is a limited commodity. There is a right and a wrong way of being. If one can appear to be following the rules, you can access the benefits and resources you desire. It feels as though you are using people - it's not a good feeling.
For Blanton, truth-telling is a means of humbling yourself. What is left behind is a simple sweetness. He talks about the "being that you are", the base awareness that appeared like a dim light increasing in intensity, in the womb. I think this is the part that people feel is too New Agey. It resonated with me though. It is the place where you are only watching, feeling, experiencing. Then we come along with our little post-it notes about what it all means. I feel that quality - which I am finding impossible to relate in words - when I am in deep sleep, listening to a very beautiful song, sleeping in the park and getting goosebumps from the wind, kissing, being intimate, singing, painting. The last two I no longer feel that way about - I feel too jumbled up and critical to enjoy creativity without evaluating the worth of what I am creating (which, of course, makes creativity impossible).
I like the chapter on wellness and taking care of yourself. I like this idea so much that I would like to study it anthropologically. I think the cultural ideas we have about what it means to lead a good life in the West are just totally fucked up. Ideas about morality, responsibility, being selfless and kind, blah blah blah... it's awful. It's a trap. It hurts so much. This book makes a case for forgoing moralism completely. Judgements, evaluations, all of it. According to Blanton, taking arbitrary meaning-making seriously is an example of your mind controlling your being, rather than simply being and using your mind as a tool to make being easier. It's something you knew when you were a kid, and then at some point your identity became so critical, that losing it feels like suicide.
He makes some pretty contentious statements about how deep this goes. He says that suicide is a result of this battle between mind and being, where the mind has won. I don't know how I feel about that that, but I can see where that might be the case sometimes. When I am observing without creating meaning, there is no desire to die because the weight of assessment is not present. It's like getting out of bed. Sometimes you just can't because there's all these layers sitting on top. I heard something similar from Byron Katie, who said that she would have the thought, "get up", and then other thoughts would tumble out: "I can't", "I'm so tired", "what's the point", etc.
So prioritising wellness is just another way of saying prioritise experience. Live from the body. I can't really express how radical an idea this is for me. I don't understand the mechanism behind this, but perhaps from the age of eight onwards I have felt cramped. My body has felt crumpled in on itself, contorted, very rarely at ease. Right as I am typing this I notice my shoulders are hunched in, my fingers ache from the odd way I am writing, my neck is bent. I am hungry but have forgotten to eat. It's this constant neglect that peters out each day, and takes conscious and concerted effort to attend to. I am getting better at it. It is learning to be selfish, to fully own the space you move about in, to make your arse as comfortable as you can. In some ways it is coming to see that you deserve to exist.
I like the story about that voluptuous woman who came to him for therapy. She was very meek and smiley, and they found that this was an all an act because she thought that she had to be sweet for some belief she had.
If you can, listen to the audiobook version. It's adorable! The author reads it, occasionally stumbles, or giggles somewhat wickedly when he says something a little controversial. I don't think it would have had the same effect if I'd just read the book without his voice. He's very warm and it felt a little like having a therapy session.
While I like his theory about how Western models of health focus on illness healing rather than prevention, and how lying to ourselves and others can increase destructive behaviours - particularly through socially sanctified poisons such as neglecting movement, not listening to your body, overeating or eating things that feel bad, alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs - I disliked his judgement that obesity is a form of abuse. Perhaps for some it is, but it doesn't feel to be a particularly helpful evaluation, as it seems people can be classified as obese and still feel physically well. It's a minor point as it's not central to his book at all, but it was something I disagreed with. I think it is more useful to consider loving the body as it is, and focus on wellness rather than weight reduction. If weight reduction is a side-effect of that increased attention, great. Otherwise I fear "becoming better" might become another way of perpetuating self-judgement, or the idea that you are broken.
He address this too: he says that a lot of his clients come to him just looking for more homework to do. They don't really get that the whole point is to give yourself a break, to have no more homework, to have no identity to keep defending and killing yourself for. I relate to this as I seem to twist the whole model of being well, "fighting" depression, being happy, etc as something that I absolutely must achieve, or else... or else what?
It seems to me most of the bad reviews for this book are indignant about the actual work he suggests: telling the truth to loved ones, no matter how much it may hurt them. I have to agree with them - I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon. I think in the context of relationships you actually want to preserve, or where there are unresolved issues, this could be very effective. I also think something that can be useful and that you can incorporate with a policy of total honestly and openness is the ability to just admit when you feel like shit. You don't have go around screaming it from the rooftops (if you don't want to!), but sometimes just being honest with yourself can be helpful. Like I have moments sometimes where I am standing with a group of people and I will get an overwhelming fear response, and feel the desire to leave immediately. I have been saying to my friends, "I feel really nervous right now, because sometimes I have thoughts that other people are judging me. I don't know what to say, that's why I'm being quiet." It really takes the pressure off. Really, they might think I'm crazy and find me to be a downer. But so far the only thing that's happened from this honest admission of how shit I am feeling is support, maybe a hug, a smile. I don't say it for the reassurance, although that is nice. Then I can tell them that I appreciate them being so kind to me, and I hope I can do the same for them when they are feeling bad, and to speak up about how they're feeling if they can.
Phew. I think that's all I have to say. I did really like this book, even though I don't know how practical it is. It's also not scientific at all, if that's what you were looking for. However, I really respect his ideas and I love the simplicity of living from the body and recognising evaluative thoughts as they arise. (less)