If Sabina Had a Child
You say you are married, you have a nine year old son you are devoted to and you cheat. You say your husband is clueless. In conversation you easily express attractive values as though a mirror unaware of conscious expression.
A person might have the three dimensions of no sense of guilt, no shame and no fear of outcomes and be either psychopath or highly evolved, depending on a peculiar circumstance… the absence or presence of a fourth dimension.
Going to the difference between morality and ethics or, sympathy versus empathy, there exists a typical social lie most of us are unaware of; the idea because we can express values and sympathy, we are doing something right. This does NOT mean we are whole or complete beings. Values are meaningless without ethics or, the applied principles which is the power actually to care for someone other than ourselves, and to be aware of the effects we might have in outcomes in other peoples lives, those responsibilities we incur with making of life choices, when taking decisions impacting others.
Family, and children especially, in order not to become emotional deserts, rather to be strong, require in the beginning, exercising a self-principled stance precluding any emotion of sympathy. Sympathy is a robber, enabling feeling sorry for oneself. People who express sympathy enable themselves and others to feel sorry for themselves and are the ones contributing to the cycle of people dying inside, expressing and enabling sympathy only reinforces behaviors which are self serving and shallow.
Empathy empowers. What is empathy? Empathy is the ability to set aside any self serving emotion or motivation and know in some sense a compassion for the circumstance of another. Empathy, as a capacity to care for another, can only be acquired via the discovery of principled behaviors or, better said, a dimension of ethics which precludes any sense of real guilt, shame or fear, in a positive sense of self that is a positive sense of self-acceptance.
Fear, guilt and shame, taken together with sympathy, have been used to manipulate and control in the negative sense of shaming, the shaming of children particularly. This teaches feeling sorry for the self, inculcates a blindness to positive outcomes and perversely too often creates a self centeredness numb to morality motivated expectations in behavior. Here is created the emotional desert of no real personality, a seeming wasteland devoid of the fourth dimension of empathy and ethics; equaling what might be the psychopath. A psychopath born of the failed negative motivated morality concept, knows no authentic sense of guilt for harming others. No sense of shame in a shallowness void of any real caring for any person outside their own self-centeredness. No sense of fear of consequences in relationships, and incapable of genuine feeling or taking responsibility for damaging the emotions of people whose lives must rightfully depend on them for example of stability and a future, especially children.
Morality’s combined negative effects absent principled behaviors and sincere empathy, demonstrates a profound lack of caring first; for oneself. This negative self-centeredness only can only come across as a life lived as a lie. No matter how strongly values are expressed with language, the negative motivations of fear, guilt and shame, absent the lessons of principled ethics, only develops a heightened sense of self worthlessness, often to a point of numbness. Without applying a discipline to the self, a practical decision taken without regard to self-pity, to conform oneself to a principled stance, taking responsibility for those whose lives you must impact, absent this, negative reciprocity must be the outcome. I am not expressing any concerns for your many lovers. I am speaking of your relationship to your nine year old son. A child is a sentient being and any child’s awareness is capable of detecting, or absorbing a lie, no matter how one might lie to oneself as realtes to a honest caring for that child..
Can what seems a psychopath become a light, a beacon, a depth, a beauty? I believe so.
No sense of fear to look at the shallowness of the self, can open one to grow inwardly, to initiate overcoming a sense of worthlessness, even nothingness.
No sense of guilt turned on the self rather than projected onto others, might enable a honest self-examination.
No sense of shame turned to the self-examination can enable self-forgiveness in a sense of letting go… AND THEN:
A principled stance applied to the self in relation to ones behavior can open the door to know empathy, to discover caring for another and watering the seed of a healthy emotion; in society where we lose our children most often because of emotional disconnect. Otherwise the spirit of the child must become severed from the parent who may have been there in every superficial aspect but was not there in the most important way; the ability to model caring for the self inside. The self inside that knows to be both kind and principled in example to the child, the self inside that knows to care for a child in the empathy of a relationship of peers that breeds a sense of loving admiration, the self inside that shares with a child the development of self respect. The self inside that empathetically models taking responsibility.
Without these, children can wither and become lost… a child’s spirit knows what a child’s mind cannot; we so often lose these kids because we have provided no healthy love in a principled and practical sense, they are dying inside themselves and suddenly we may not see them again; because they have no sense of being protected, no solid basis within to fall back on, they’ve not learned to care about themselves in any healthy way, they make poor decisions, and consequently meet life tragedies far too often.
I wish to introduce to you the lie your behaviors can only bring demise in your relationships with yourself and family when in actuality you are but a short step away from great ability of knowing what it could mean to discover to be alive inside, to know a sense of being loved such as only a child can bring to you. Your child could give you a life inside, a sense of self respect, an opportunity to grow deeply, to discover and to develop a real personality. It would only require a sustained applied ethics, a simple, new habit you sustain for no other reason than to make a difference for one person with whom you should know the most sacred of all binds, yourself (for the sake of your son.)
Principles which are applied to the self, no longer values superficially espoused, can serve to sustain life for your son who must otherwise despair in ways he cannot know how to express to you, except to one day become lost for having felt cast adrift, the emotional desert of having died inside. If this strikes deep, perhaps you are not a psychopath, not dead at all, and a past altogether lack of guilt, shame or fear can become your great strength with a self examine of behavior and subsequent applied self discipline, because you actually are capable of caring despite any sense of worthlessness that may have been inculcated and manifest in a destructive desire. Because when you cheat, the environment you create is self-perpetrating; a lie of self.
It is a simple, sustained act of self discipline that can lead to your birth inside, to have a genuine personality. And your child will respond to your principled caring for you.
To be a child again, to explore in small and simple ways together the marvels of our existence, to know your child will love you unconditionally because you become open to the idea you are valuable to him beneath the surface of having become numb to real emotion. To know what it means to really be free, to explore the world anew with a friend that desires to know your presence intimately, deeply, truthfully. To give life again, to be a mother in a sense so important, following on the physical birth of your son. To allow your son opportunity to water a seed in yourself for the sake of yourself, to be generous in your new, authentic and positive desire to live for another.
I wish to introduce to you the lie of your worthlessness, shallowness, and incapability of becoming valued and deeply considerate in a reciprocal love knowing the real meaning to care.
I wish to introduce to you to the lie of you are a psychopath.
The preceding inspired by conversations with a married woman with a nine year old son; looking for interesting men (online) to have casual sex. She had been inspired by Anias Nin.
My position is, you cannot cheat your way through life, there must be a principled stance. Related to this, taking responsibility for making choices, setting example, is critical-integral to raising healthy children. If she was not satisfied with her marriage, she should have gotten out with honesty or toughed it out with self-discipline, to set example. Children are like a sponge, they absorb their environment. Dishonest parents will, almost without exception, raise dishonest children. Or worse.
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Ronald Thomas West 