Scrooge did not transform his life by talking about his problems or working on his “issues.” His transformation occurred while he slept and dreamed of four ghostly visitors.  These ghosts are metaphors for what happens in real life.

The psychological insights expressed in A Christmas Carol correspond to the insights into personal growth provided by quantum psychology, which is a combination of Eastern philosophy and Western science.  Perhaps the most revolutionary insight is that talking about problems does not bring about transformation but hinders it. Dreams are produced solely by the unconscious mind and just as we dream in pictures, fundamental change emerges from communicating with the unconscious mind in the language it prefers – pictures. When we do, the brain responds immediately.

Another shared insight is the connection between personal growth and higher consciousness. Scrooge’s first ghost, Jacob Marley, who is Scrooge’s diseased business partner, introduces the subject of higher consciousness.  He warns Scrooge that success in business is not enough: “Man was my business, charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business.” So also the changes that emerge with the practice of quantum techniques both improve our ordinary lives and bring about higher consciousness. For example we become courageous, enjoy life and have satisfying relationships; we also become compassionate, spiritual beings, which are characteristics of higher consciousness.

Ghost #2, the Ghost of Christmas Present, shows Scrooge the negative aspects of his present life. So also Quantum Technique #1uses the “negative feedback” of our current problems, such as job stress, to stimulate rapid personal growth.

Shades of Sigmund Freud, Ghost #3, the Ghost of Christmas Past, shows Scrooge scenes from his youth. So also quantum techniques free us from the past, both our traumatic personal experiences and the beliefs and concepts about life we acquired from our cultural indoctrination, which is a form of brain washing.

The last ghost is the Ghost of Christmas Future, who gives Scrooge a preview of what his future will look like – if nothing changes. Based on the basic principle that we only get what we ask for, although not always, quantum techniques require us to look to the future and choose what changes we want to make in ourselves and our lives.

Scrooge and quantum psychology reveal that the secret of your happiness lies within you, specifically within your unconscious mind, which contains a personal-growth learning program that knows how to transform your life– with a little help from you.

Tags: A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, spiritual, transformation, psychology, Christmas, personal growth, brainwashing, mind, dream, happiness, secret

We were all shocked when we learned of the brutal gang rape of a 15-year- old girl on school property, while other teens watched and took pictures; no one called the police.   What can we make of all this?  The only way to make sense of heinous acts such as this one is to – look in the mirror.  When you do, looking back at you will be your own image.  Look deeper and you will see the human nature that we all share.

At the deepest, most fundamental level of our human nature is something we share with all life forms on this planet – survival instincts. These instincts tell us how to find food, reproduce (sex), and compete to the death for survival of the fittest. We must credit our survival instincts with allowing our species to defeat all competition and dominant the planet.  The reason these instincts are so effective is because they are not moral or immoral. They are amoral and underlie our potential to do evil. Psychologically, they manifest as wanting to control, which is the driving force underlying rape.

The rapists acted like animals – Homo sapiens variety.

We find it easy to point the finger at a few individuals and wonder how people can commit such horrendous acts, such as gang rape.  We don’t like to acknowledge that the actions of both rapists and spectators were not unusual. Nor can they be attributed to mental illness.

You might recall a time when, for years, rape, torture, and murder were the order of the day, and the perpetrators were – ordinary people.  And who were the watchers who saw people being beaten in the streets, saw their neighbors being dragged away from their home, and moved into the now empty houses? Who were the French/Italian/ Hungarian policemen who rounded up the victims, and the Polish farmers who saw the skeletal victims peering through the barbed wire of concentration camps. Throughout Nazi occupied Europe, “normal” people, bakers, housewives, judges, and bankers participated, watched – and did nothing.

In America, the government watched and did nothing.  In Italy, the Vatican watched and did nothing – except help Nazi war criminals escape to South America and pray for the Jews – to convert to Catholicism.  Compared to the rape, torture and slaughter of millions, what’s’ one more rape?  It’s not as though women and children are not raped every day America. As for the pictures the teenage spectators took of the rape, the Nazis took tens of thousands.  Why should this rape matter?  Poet John Donne:

Each man’s death diminishes me,
for I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.

In letters to the editor about this gang rape, some people suggest that morals and compassion should be taught in the schools.  However, morality and compassion cannot be taught; they emerge from within the individual. Our cultural indoctrination gives us a code of ethics, which tells us what is right and what is wrong. The problem is, as Shakespeare said:  “It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Slavery, burning people alive, and the subjugation of women, were once considered ethical by men who appointed themselves society’s moral arbiters – religious leaders.  Not that long ago, the Catholic hierarchy judged it morally correct to protect child abusing priests.   If we can’t trust the moral judgments of other people, if we consider”I was following orders” a moral cop out, whom can we trust? The answer is simple: look in the mirror.

When we look at our human nature in depth, we see that in addition to our amoral survival instincts, we have a higher potential, a level of psychological maturity Abraham Maslow called “self-actualization. “  Individual freedom, individual power, courageousness – and   morality, are among the abilities that characterize this state.  When we become self-actualized, we become moral animals, who can live in a society that finds torture, racism, theocracy, and environmental destruction “normal,” and decide for ourselves: “this is wrong.”

If we don’t become self-actualized as part of the normal maturation process, our DNA s gives us a simple way to achieve this “enlightened,” state, which is really only the beginning of a mentally healthy, mature, adult consciousness.

When you bring your true self into being (self-actualization), when you look in the mirror, you would see a self image that is half dark and half light, reflecting your potential to do evil and your potential to do good. Paradoxically, only when you accept your potential to do evil do you access your higher potential and have the courage to bash a rapist over the head with a tree branch, call the police, and testify in court.

The problem is not that we have a dark side to our human nature, but not being aware of it. No matter how “enlightened” we become, from day to day, the best any of us can to is lean toward the good – which is all it takes to tip the balance.

Although we are presently not as bad off as the thirties, our problems are more complex. America’s failing schools, imploding financial system, growing poverty, environmental destruction and the takeover of government by big corporations requires fundamental change. Gearing up to fight the Second World War ended the Great Depression. The two wars we are fighting today are driving us deeper in debt.

The fundamental problem is that we are living at a time when our technology has created an environment on this planet that has never before existed; our former solutions to problems no longer work – they are what created our present dilemma. This is a period of transition between the end of the Industrial Age and the beginning of the new age of… who knows?    The fundamental question for our times is: can we get smart enough, fast enough, to progress to another Age of Enlightenment – or will we regress to another Dark Age?

Positive or negative, change is stressful: losing a job or starting a new one, winning the lottery or losing your savings, are all stressful. Change is synonymous with uncertainty; like getting married, we can’t know ahead of time, for sure, what the outcome will be.  What we do know is that change we must, if we are to avert catastrophe – on a global scale.  President Roosevelt brought America into WWII against great popular resistance. President Obama has accurately defined the problems we face and is carefully laying the groundwork for new solutions; the resistance he faces is formidable.

We cannot stop the world from changing; what we can change is how we respond to events. Instead of stress, we can respond with courageousness, calmness and peace. We are already on a roller coaster ride into an uncertain future;we can’t get off, but we can enjoy ride.

You, and only you, can change how you respond to life; if you are interested, quantum psychology tells you how.  If you do the work, not only will you be able to enjoy life, exactly the way it is, but you will acquire the open mind that is needed to create new ideas, nudge events in the direction of social progress – and go to the movies.

By Jean Boyd 

I was supervising some student nurses, caring for Joseph, an old man in his eighties, when the doctors stopped by on their rounds. We had to keep the head of Joseph’s bed upright so he could breathe and stick a tube down his throat to suction out copious amounts of brown liquid from his lungs so he wouldn’t drown in his own secretions.  Joseph’s eyes were full of dread, his face tight with fear.  The doctors looked at his urine bag, which was hanging from his bed frame; his urine was also brown.  “We better get a urology consult,” one of them murmured as they left.
 
This experience was the last straw for me. In my career as a medical-surgical nurse I have cared for many patients like Joseph, who suffer while their dying is prolonged by medical procedures and good nursing care.   My objection was ethical: no one had asked Joseph, or his family, what they wanted.  “I’m no different from the Nazis who excused their behavior by saying, ‘I was just following orders,’ ”I thought. In my case, I was following doctor’s orders.  Shortly thereafter, I left medical-surgical nursing for good and entered the mental health field where dying patients were rare.  That day, before I left Joseph’s bedside, I did something we nurses sometimes do in such circumstances. I held his hand and silently, in my mind, I gave him permission to die: “Joseph, it’s all right to let go now.” He died the next day.

The present angry debate over health care reform has brought the issue of end-of-life-care into the mainstream media. Although it’s a lie, opponents of President Obama claim that one of the proposed changes would require people on Medicare to receive counseling that told them how to end their lives sooner. In an Aug. 7 Facebook quote, Sarah Palin, would-be president, coined the term, “death panels,” which would decide who lives.  The truth is that the House bill, which increases Medicare coverage to include counseling about procedures such as ventilation, feeding tubes and other measures, is nothing more than informed consent, something surgeons do routinely before they can operate.

 Looking at how our attitudes toward birth/death have evolved over the years gives us insight into why there is such resistance to changing a medical care system that has been failing for some time. 

During the Middle Ages, Europe was a theocracy. Because the Bible said, “with pain will you give birth to children,” if a woman did not have sufficient pain, she could be tortured for a “confession” and burned alive as a witch, along with the midwife who attended her.  Death by suicide was considered such a great sin that those who killed others could be buried in the church yard cemetery, but not those who killed themselves.

Slow forward to the 19th century.  When male doctors began to deliver babies in hospitals, they paid no heed to evidence that more women died in hospitals from childbed fever than poor women who gave birth in the streets or their slum dwellings. One contributing factor was that to pass the time while the mothers-to-be were in labor, doctors would dissect cadavers and then, without washing their hands first, go directly to deliver the baby. In 1847, when Doctor Ignaz Semmelweis postulated that if doctors were to wash their hands they could cut the maternal death rate from as high as 35% to 1%, he was ignored. Hand washing was not widely accepted until twenty years later, when the medical establishment accepted Louis Pasteur’s germ theory of disease.

At the same time, in addition to suicide being a sin, it became a crime and those whose attempts failed were jailed.
 
Next came the medicalization of birth and death. Having accepted the germ theory, doctors turned childbirth into a “knock–em-out, drag-em-out “   surgical procedure.  Family was barred from the delivery room, women were strapped down with leather restraints  on narrow gurneys and doctors,  gowned and masked, pulled the infant out of the women’s body using sterile forceps – oftentimes causing the infant to emerge with a pointed head. The mother was given drugs that caused a mental fog, which prevented her from being an active participant in the process. Similarly, death moved from home to hospital, as doctors developed medical procedures to prolong life.
 
Suicide, meanwhile, was also medicalized and became a mental illness.
While our views on dying stayed in the medicalization phase, in the late 20th century our views on birthing progressed to what we know today as “natural childbirth.” Although mothers still gave birth in hospitals, it was no longer viewed as a surgical procedure. Child birth classes prepared the expectant mothers to participate and, supported by family and friends, she gave birth in a cheerful room, in a comfortable bed, music playing.  Fathers could cut the cord and various pain relieving medications were available, as well as emergency care for complications.
 
The Semmelweis effect explains why it took so long for us to create a medically safe, humane way of helping women give birth. It describes human behavior that is characterized by automatic rejection of new knowledge because it contradicts entrenched norms, beliefs and paradigms.  Believing in their own world view, people twist the facts, ignore the obvious, focus on the irrelevant details and create a fabric of self deception to justify their preconceived ideas, no matter how false. While doctors will eventually respond to scientific studies, religious beliefs are immune to scientific evidence, reason, compassion or the notion of individual rights.
 
Sarah Palin and her ilk no doubt believe in the untruths they propagate, that the government will create death panels, ration services and intrude on the doctor patient relationship. They don’t notice that the insurance companies have panels that deny treatment to sick people all the time – and people die.  Medical care is already rationed; those who can’t afford insurance,or lose their insurance with their jobs, do without – and people die.  Concerning the doctor-patient relationship, what your insurance covers influences the treatments your doctor orders.

Whom do you want to make your end-of-life decisions: politicians, doctors – or you and your family?  Do you want the choice to die sooner, rather than later, because you have suffered enough? Would you prefer not to end your life diapered, bed ridden and dependent on the kindness of strangers, nurses and also doctors, who have an appalling history of allowing people to die in agony?
 
The historical view that suicide is a sin, a crime and a mental illness make it hard for some people, especially religious people, to view self-termination, physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia as humane, moral choices, which have long been practiced – in secret.  Above all, these are individual choices – nobody else’s business.
 
Physicians, family and friends ease our way into this world; why not allow physicians, family and friends to ease our way out of it?

Why did Jaycee Lee Dugard, held captive for 18 years, not leave, or even use the phone, when she had the chance? Why do battered wives keep returning to the husbands who beat them?  Kidnapped by domestic terrorists, why did Patty Hearst help them rob a store?  Why did Stalin’s brutal dictatorship produce good Communists and the Inquisition produce good Catholics?  Why did so many people cooperate with the Nazi’s?  Why do people who are taken hostage by terrorists quickly identify with them, a phenomenon known as the Stockholm Syndrome?  All these events have a common denominator: our human nature.
 
We are primates, and like other animals we have survival instincts that tell us how to find food and shelter, reproduce and compete for survival of the fittest. They also tell us how to respond to dangerous situations: physically, we can flee or fight; psychologically, we can get control of the situation or seek the approval of those who have control.  If you are the one with a gun, then you control the situation and decide who lives and who dies. If you don’t have the gun, but get the approval of the man with the gun, he may shoot the person next to you, but maybe not you.  These powerful instincts are unconscious and are not moral or immoral, but amoral; our normal human nature allows us to do anything to survive. 

Physically weaker, confined, isolated, dependent and brutalized, Jaycee’s only survival option was to seek the approval of her captors and accept her life as “normal.”Just as Muslim women, who live in similar circumstances, accept their lives as “normal.” Just as, when Western Europe was a brutal theocracy, from the Pope on down, people came to accept the burning alive of people in the village square as “normal.” Just as, for centuries, we accepted slavery as “normal.” Just as the “bad cop” creates fear in a suspect, who then bonds with the “good cop” and cooperates. Just as today, politicians attract supporters by warning people of imminent terrorist attacks or losing their health insurance.

Our survival instincts are all-inclusive.  Not only do they help our bodies survive, they also help us survive mentally.  To prevent a mental collapse, when our experiences are too traumatic, last too long and we can’t make sense of them, the brain automatically separates out information associated with the experiences and stores it in our unconscious mind — out of sight, out of conscious mind.  We shut down emotionally, adapt – and survive.

And then the police find  the kidnap victim, the gates of the concentration camp are opened,  a prisoner is released  from jail, soldiers return home from the war and an abused child grows up and leaves home – with heads full of repressed memories, what quantum psychology calls unintegrated information.  Because this information concerns our survival, our brain has red flagged it as too important to forget. If phase one is managing to survive, and phase two is adapting to the situation and accepting it as “normal,” phase three, which completes the experience, is retrieving the information – and the body gives us a simple, efficient  way to accomplish this.
  
To remind us that we have unfinished business and to motivate us to take action, the body generates stress and causes us to repeat the past.  Then, rather than talking about our problems, we retrieve this information in the form of pictures, which is the preferred language of the unconscious mind.  When we do, the brain responds immediately, producing immediate results in freeing us from the past and stimulating normal personal growth, which includes enjoying life, accessing our individual power and achieving higher consciousness.
 
When a bone fracture heals, the new bone that is generated at the site of the break is stronger than undamaged bone. So also, we can emerge from traumatic experiences not only stronger but also wiser. Like psychiatrist Victor Frankl, who survived three years in Nazi concentration camps, at some point, as we progress, we also will conclude that we would never have chosen the experience, but we don’t regret it, because of what we learned.  Now that Jaycee’s “normal” has changed, and she is free to begin the healing, within her are the means to turn something horrendous into something magnificent.

By Jean Boyd

Click here to view the embedded video.

As a child, you may have played with a puzzle, the pieces of which consist of the individual states that make up the United States. As you put each piece in its proper place, a picture of the whole country gradually emerges.  So also, a new psychology has emerged, Quantum Psychology,  which puts together “puzzle pieces” from philosopy and science, in particular quantum mechanics. From this synthesis emerges  new insights into our behavior and our ability to transform ourselves, our society and our planet. For example:  

Zen Buddhism teaches us that, living in a universe that ultimately consists of enery and information,  being able to perceive reality, “just as it is,” requires a mind that is free of preconceived ideas and emotions. Einstein tells us that in the realm of energy, the realm of photons, atoms and subatomic particles, the presence of an observer influences the event being observed. Quantum Psychology tells us that in the realm of enery that exists inside our heads, we have a psychological function of pure awarness, an Observer, who is as objective as a TV camera. As your go about your daily life, your Observer, who is free of all preconceived ideas, beliefs and desires, observes you, and influences  immediate changes in you,  at the level of transformation. 

Our bodies are a lot smarter than we have previously imagined and our expectations of what is possible have been way too low. Encoded in our DNA, and hard-wired into our brains, is a brilliant learning program that knows how to produce rapid change — with  a little help from us. This program gives us a simple way to heal our psychological wounds, free ourselves from the past, enjoy life, have satisfying personal relationships and evolve to higher levels of consciousness, including achieving spiritual enlightenment.

What has long been known in the East as the Tao, with the addition of Western science, has become the Quantum Path of personal growth. Following the Quantum Path involves the practice of two techniques that are simple, but not always easy.  Quantum Technique #1 frees us from the past, not by talking about problems, but by communicating with our unconscious mind in the language it understands – pictures. When we do, the brain responds immediately. Quantum Technique #2 gives us the open mind we need to accommodate an expanding consciousness by freeing us from the preconceived ideas we acquired from our cultural indoctrination, which is really a form of brain washing. Both techniques wake up Observer.

If you should choose to follow the Quantum Path, after you get over your initial surprise that rapid personal growth is possible, you would soon come to accept the new abilities that emerge as normal - which of course they are. Quantum psychology views such abilities as courageousness, individual power, creativity and  thinking for yourself  as characteristics of a healthy, mature, adult consciousness. Equally normal is that you would transcend the illusion of separation that characterizes everyday life and experience your connection to all things. At  some point, you experience the tree in your back yard, the bird in the tree and the person who stands in front of you as being both you and not you. When your awareness expands to include the whole, holistic, holy realm that exists just underneath the surface of our ordinary lives, you would discover how you are a piece of the biggest puzzle of all – the universe.

Our failing social institutions attest to the fact that “business as usual” is no longer good enough. We have failing schools, ecological collapse, a huge national debt, a deep recession and two wars we are charging on our Chinese credit card – and that’s just for starters. The fundamental problem is that our technology has created an environment on the planet that has never before existed, creating new problems that require new solutions. Philosophers and scientists have long recognized that change is the only constant in the universe and we have elected a president who campaigned on the promised of change. And yet, resistance to change is formidable – why is that?

Change means doing something different from before and that requires letting go of the past.

Martin Amis, in his book about Joseph Stalin, said: “Before humanity can move forward, all crimes against itself must be given their day in the sun, their victims mourned, and proper conclusions drawn.” News commentators, historians and philosophers bring the dark side of our society into the light of our mainstream culture; moral confrontation is how we draw proper conclusions and stimulate social progress.

When Indians morally confronted the British Raj, India achieved independence. After WWII, when Jews morally confronted the Holocaust, the former victims became Israeli warriors. In the sixties, when African Americans morally confronted the modern version of slavery, Jim Crow, they made great strides in civil rights and began to transcend their victim status. Feminists morally confronted their inferior status and made significant progress toward social equality for women. Morally confronting the fact that millions of Americans can’t pay for health care gives us insight into what direction health care reform should take.

Modern communication technology is accelerating social change by quickly bringing information associated with the dark side of our society into the mainstream culture, including, most recently, the dark side of Christianity. For example, the word “inquisition” is no longer limited to the infamous Spanish Inquisition, but has become part of the modern lexicon, referring to any harsh investigation. When a reporter for the Boston Globe printed an expose of sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests, almost immediately, victims around the world came forward, empowered themselves and prompted changes in Church policies. Jews morally confronted the inaction of the Vatican during the Nazi years and decreased the institutional anti-Semitism that has characterized Christianity for centuries. In recent years, the Vatican acknowledged some responsibility for its part in the subjugation of women and pardoned the scientist, Galileo, for saying that the earth revolved around the sun. That people are still so reluctant to morally confront not religious beliefs, but the behavior those beliefs engender, like opposition to birth control, indicates that much work remains to be done.

Albert Einstein said: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Albert Schweitzer said: “Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.” Jean Boyd says: “Moral confrontation is the key.” What do you say?

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

- Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, AD 121-180

Here is a reality check into what it means to be old in America, and it doesn’t look good. According to the US Census Bureau, more of us are living longer. Our present life expectancy is 76 – 80, and by 2030, people 65 and older will make up 20% of the US population (71 million). When you reach 65, you will have an 80% chance of acquiring at least one chronic condition (most probably arthritis), and a 50% chance of having two. In addition to short term memory loss, there is the dreaded Alzheimer’s, which affects 10% of us over 65 and 47% of us over 85. When you get old, you can expect unrelenting deterioration of your physical health, mental faculties and quality of life – and soaring medical expenses.

So, is there anything good about getting old? Based on my recent experience at age 73, my response is a resounding, “Yes!”

By 72 I fit the aging profile (arthritis, two hip replacements) and shared my displeasure with my friend, William, then 87. “I’m younger than you,” I grumbled, “but now I have your symptoms: short term memory loss, can’t concentrate and I’m depressed and preoccupied with death. All I do is read novels, watch Netflix movies and eat ice cream. Remember, when your mother was on her death bed and told you: ‘Sonny, life is ‘bullshit?’ Well, she got that right. Do you think maybe we have Alzheimer’s?”

Now a year later, I discovered that rather than Alzheimer’s, I had been experiencing a normal life passage, one of several that occur throughout our adult lives. The first passage is adolescence, when, at about age 13, we begin to leave childhood behind. The second passage, which occurs around age 35, is the infamous midlife crisis, when we leave youth behind. The third passage occurs around age 50, when we confront the imminence of old age. When we actually reach old age, at around age 70, the challenge is to leave everything behind and confront death.

Each of these passages is a window of opportunity, which opens the way for us to progress to higher levels of maturity; when we do, we acquire new knowledge and abilities. When we successfully navigate “The Last Rite of Passage,” we achieve the highest level of a mature, adult consciousness – peace.

Ideally, we should proceed through these four tumultuous stages of personal growth in a timely manner. Two things hold us back: unresolved childhood traumas and holding on to the beliefs and concepts we acquired from our cultural indoctrination. Until we overcome these impediments, we remain psychological children, compelled to repeat the past, acting out the roles assigned to us by our particular culture, unable to think for ourselves.

When I freed myself from the past and self-actualized myself during the late middle age passage (early fifties), I did not anticipate another psychological crisis. Consequently, twenty years later, when I began to experience The Last Rite of Passage, I had no idea what was happening. I spontaneously began to review my life, from childhood to the present, my successes and failures, times when I was happy and times when I despaired. I recalled the significant people in my life, the good guys and the bad guys. Most of all I grieved. When I looked in the mirror and saw the old woman looking back at me, I grieved for the loss of my youthful good looks and physical strength. I grieved the loss of my work with clients and that my brain was too old to come up with new insights. Most of all I grieved the loss of my daughters; whether they died first or I did, I would inevitably lose them. No wonder I was depressed.

The epiphany that caused my symptoms to disappear occurred when I was watching one of my Netflix films, an Argentinean movie, Common Ground, which is based on a novel by Lorenzo F. Aristarain. The main character is a university professor named Fernando, who is forced into early retirement. Throughout the movie, Fernando philosophizes about life. His soliloquy about death exactly described my state of mind for the past year. “A ha! It’s not Alzheimer’s! It’s not a clinical depression! It’s not even personal! It’s just another life passage!” How silly of me not to realize that, of course, there must be a passage that marks the end stage of life!

Here is Fernando’s soliloquy: “The lucid man can live as long as he has a drive for life. That dark instinctive force can be lost. Then it’s necessary to call on something like faith, and to invent a reason, a goal, to replace that lost animal impulse with a cold, rational will. But that will is hard to keep up. Suddenly, for no reason, it burns out, it disappears. It’s then when you go on or quit. When you can or you cannot. And if you can’t, there is no guilt. The love of others, our love for others, it doesn’t matter. If we can’t go on, things go on without us. Everything passes, absence passes. We know death before we die. It’s an ancient routine, a common end. A wish-for end awaited without fear, for we have experienced it many times before. Nothing matters.”

My “depression” disappeared the instant I read Fernando’s words translated in the movie’s subtitles. My normal high-energy sense of well-being returned, deeper and stronger than before. Thoughts of death receded from the forefront of my mind into the background. My behavior changed. Instead of not purchasing anything because “I will be dead soon,” I bought some new clothes and a new computer, became more physically active, began to write again, and hired a tech to upgrade my computer skills.  The increased individual freedom and power that emerged produced subtle changes in my relationships. Emotionally, I felt at peace, a spiritual experience that I will not attempt to describe.

You may think it strange that simply being able to make sense of an experience could have such a big effect. However, our brains are programmed to try to interpret our experiences in a way that makes sense. When we cannot, we acquire repressed memories that bind us to the past. After three years in Nazi concentration camps, Victor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, instituted a new method of psychotherapy that is based on helping people make sense of their life experiences. You could say that Fernando was my therapist, who helped me make sense of the confusing experiences associated with The Final Rite of Passage.

We are born naked and, for sure, we take nothing with us when we die. When we let go of everything during The Final Rite of Passage, we prepare ourselves for death and before we die, we get to enjoy the new abilities that emerge. Having nothing to lose puts us in the most powerful position of all to deal with life’s challenges. We acquire an empty mind, the Zen mind, which enables us to experience reality in a way that is beyond words – what is, is. Paradoxically, when we experience death, we enjoy life more than ever before, even though it consists of “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (There is more to “nothing” than meets the eye.) Of all my new experiences, the one that affects me the most is a new kind of love that emerged, which is deeper and more profound than I can possibly describe. Although I experienced this love first with my daughters, I notice it spilling over into other areas of my life.

When we make the last passage, like a ship that has cast off the last line that secures it to the dock, we are free to sail away.