Eternal Optimism – essay for Self & Society’s 50th Birthday Symposium
Fifty years ago I was nineteen and in a mess. The previous two to three years I had been reading Ouspensky, Alan Watts, Krishnamurti, I’d travelled the hippy trail overland to India and been in an audience with the Dali Lama, I’d been meditating, I’d had an amazing “satori” experience which lasted a few weeks. I thought I was part of a societal revolution, which in one way I was, but not quite in the way I thought. However, despite all this I ended up down a negative self-destructive rabbit hole.
At times I felt wonderfully embraced by the historic significant shift in societal consciousness that was happening, as well as naively trying to find a solution to my angst. It seems that in this I was reflecting the zeitgeist of the times. The cultural revolution underway was fuelled by the humanistic “third wave” in psychology, together with an opening to the wisdom traditions of the East. Perl’s, Goodman, Maslow, Rodgers, Assagioli, Laing and many others built the new ground of humanistic psychology. Alan Watts, Krishnamurti, and a whole host of Eastern “gurus” brought the wisdom of the East to the West. It was a powerful revolutionary crucible of change ….
Not sure why this popped up at the top of your blogs unless you have a hand in it. Anyway, I have just read it and it has been immensely helpful. It is helpful to keep an eye on the bigger picture and I take some encouragement from knowing that healing my own trauma helps heal all little by little. So I’m so grateful this popped up, it would seem that it was just what I needed to read. As always Jim, so well written and expresses the depth of your knowledge and own journey.
Debbie