Some Stories About Change

I am in the business of change.  People generally want their lives to change and are looking to me for help.  Ironically, I find change difficult.

My wife likes to ask, how many Dettweilers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Answer 1:  Change?  Change?
Answer 2:  1 but I liked the old one better.
Answer 3:  2.  One to change the bulb and one to administer CPR after he accidentally electrocutes himself.  

Often change occurs slowly in incremental steps.  Sometimes it is rapid.  Here are some stories about change.

In the spring of 1968 I was sitting on the lawn in front of the athletic center at the University of Minnesota with my friend Tom after an enthusiastic afternoon of handball.  Tom’s dad was head of the Presbyterian Church in the US. He had told Tom that he and other religious leaders in the US were trying to convince Dr. King to cancel his tour of the South as they felt his life was in danger.  Between the war in Vietnam, the killing of the Kennedys, the civil rights killings, the assassination of Malcolm X and the specter of Richard Nixon on the horizon, I said, “If he is killed I am going to Canada.” Dr. King went on the tour and was assassinated in April in Memphis.  My wife and I, not wanting to raise our children in a country so racked with hate and violence moved to Victoria, B. C., Canada after I finished my Ph.D. in 1970.

Like many Americans I think I assumed Canadians were a lot more like Americans than they really were.  Also we were not prepared for the hostility toward Americans that many Canadians felt.  I began to get an inkling of this when I was told a joke by a co-worker during my first week as treatment director at the Pacific Centre for Human Development.  It went like this.

There were three Canadian surgeons who each went to study in different countries.  When they returned they sat down over coffee to compare notes.  The first said that in Japan all internal organs are color coded so to do a replacement you just replaced yellow with yellow and so on. The second said that in Germany all organs were numbered so you just replaced a one with a one and so on.  The third said surgery in the US was really simple. American bodies only have two moving parts, a mouth and an asshole and they were interchangeable.  

I don’t think a day ever went by when I didn’t hear what was wrong with America from a person, the radio or a newspaper. This didn’t bother me too much since I probably agreed with their assessment of American foreign policy. What did bother me was the way in which the anger and hostility was directed not so much at the politics and government but rather at the American people.  

And with my loud, extraverted personality and American accent I was often targeted as a typical American.  And, like most stereotypes, there is some truth there.  Canadians often describe Americans as brash, rude and arrogant. When I first went to Canada in 1970, I think I was living proof of this stereotype. Here is an example.

In the early seventies I was teaching at the University of Victoria and they were putting on Saturday courses at a College up-island.  I was asked to teach one and the University thought it would be easier to send the three of us who were doing this up in a limo rather than pay for us to drive up individually.

So the first day the three of us met.  Here is the conversation I had with Carey, one of the other teachers.

L: Hi, I am Larry.

C: Hi I am Carey.  What department do you teach in?

L: Education this year.  But I hate that department.  It is terrible. What about you?

C: Education.  (Dead Silence)

L: Boy I am tired.  My son plays hockey on Saturday at 5 in the morning.  What a stupid sport.

C: I coach youth Hockey.

I had dug a deep hole but if there is one way to connect with a Canadian it is to criticize America or Americans.  It is the second most enjoyed sport by Canadians after Hockey and it runs all year.  Not to mention that there is an endless supply of material for them to work with. 

L: I came here from Minnesota but I really was glad to leave.  The weather was horrible and I didn’t like the people very much.

C: My mother is from Minnesota. 

Sometimes I shudder when I look back at the person I was then, a truly ugly American, but Carey was extremely forgiving and we became close friends on those rides up and down the Island.  He and Judy and I, a Canadian, a Brit and an American, were a bit embarrassed by the fact that we were riding in a limo on that first day.  The next week it was a little easier and on the third Saturday we asked him to wash it during the time we were teaching because we thought it was dirty.  Eventually we began bringing wine and food and we would eat, drink, tell stories and laugh all the way home.  And, more importantly, I began to realize that the Canadian character, emphasizing self-effacement, politeness and interpersonal restraint (a lot like Minnesotans actually) might be something I would want to emulate, eh.  

I soon took it upon myself to be a little less outgoing and developed a Canadian accent, dropped “huh”, added “eh” and began to try to assimilate.  This must have happened somewhat unconsciously because I took my kids to Disneyland in the early 80s and after talking to a woman in line for a few minutes she asked me, “Where in Canada are you from?”  

This led to a lot of funny situations, especially in my private practice. I had become Canadian enough that people couldn’t tell I was a Yank. So clients would come in and rant and rave about Americans and at some point I would have to say, “You know, I am an American.” Often they were shocked as I had become so good at passing as a Canadian.

The truth is that Canada did change me.  It was there that I learned so much about myself from many wonderful friends, teachers and students.  However, as early retirement loomed, we decided to cast our fate to the south. America, with all its faults was our home and we just felt more at ease there among people from our own culture. This is really hard for Canadians to understand.  On paper Canada seems such a better place to live.  But we are Americans and we feel more at home here.

I spent the first 27 ½ years of my life as an American.  I spent the next 27 ½ years as a Canadian.  I have spent the last 20 as a New Mexican, in a state that is an entity unto itself.  I love it here but when I die I want my ashes spread on the west coast of Canada because that is where I learned how to live life.

In the early 70’s I was working as the treatment director of a small residential center for preadolescent children on Vancouver Island. I had recently graduated with a Ph.D. in Child Psychology and was a firm believer in the behaviorist school of psychology.  As you may know, behaviorism holds that we are shaped by our environment and anything invisible to the human eye is not worth talking about.  My wife, Susan Riley, who had a great respect for the mysteries of life, would sometimes recount tales of extraordinary events to me and my favorite response was, “That’s not physically possible.”

In addition to working at the center, I was teaching at the University of Victoria and running around North America giving talks and doing my best to become well known in the behaviorist community.  Fueled by copious amounts of caffeine and putting work before my family, my health and the activities that brought me joy, I seemed to be achieving my goal. I felt quite full of myself.  

The first warning I received regarding the folly of this adventure came from the nurse at the center who said to me, “If you don’t slow down, you will be dead by the time you are forty.”  I was thirty at the time.  I remember one of the teachers at the center giving her class the assignment of writing a short book in the form of “Dick and Jane.” One of the kids entitled his, “See Larry Run.”  In the book were several pages of stick figures. One was pictured with a coffee cup in his hand and the words at the bottom of the page said, “See Larry Drink Coffee. See Larry Run.  Run Larry, Run.”

One morning while I was sitting at home grading papers, drinking coffee and preparing to dash off to work, I was instantly incapacitated by a blinding pain in my chest.  I crawled to the phone, contacted my doctor’s office and was told to immediately drive to the hospital which was about a half-mile away.  When I got there I was put in a bed and connected to a heart monitor.  I, as well as everyone else, thought I was having a heart attack.  As I lay there suffering from excruciating pain, I had a thought that I previously would not have believed I was capable of considering.  I thought, “If I am going to be in this kind of pain for very long, I want to die.”  At the moment I finished this thought, a voice inside my head said, “Stop drinking coffee, spend more time with your family and study Jung, Yoga and mysticism.”  

“Of course,” I answered.

After numerous tests, it was discovered that I did not have a heart condition but that I was suffering from gallstones and a jaundiced gall bladder.  Rather than a traditionally masculine condition caused by overwork, dedication to achievement and general disregard for my own body in service of some greater calling, I was suffering from a condition, according to my nurse, that usually was associated with the words fat, forty, fertile and female.  

Being the rational, masculine achiever that I was, I soon dismissed the voice inside my head as part of a delusional thought process caused by the pain.  The next evening I was again visited by the excruciating pain associated with a stone passing through the bile duct. Uncharacteristically, and with great prodding from Susan, I decided this was a sign and that I needed to pay attention.  In this experience, as in many other significant changes in my life, she has had the wisdom to know what was best for me when I did not.

So I gave up coffee, stopped traveling and began to study Jung and Yoga.  After surgery to remove the gall bladder I also began to experience extraordinary events.  I began to practice astral traveling, experienced precognitive dreaming and generally saw myself as a rather extraordinary fellow.  

One my favorite things to do was to attend yoga workshops on Saltspring Island led by John Robbins.  John was a great hatha yoga teacher and had spent some time at Yashodhara Ashram studying with Swami Sivananda Radha.  I always left these workshops feeling very healthy, happy and centered.  This feeling would usually last until I had to face the realities of marriage, children, work or a ride back to Victoria on the B.C. Ferries.  

It was at one of these weekends that I had an experience that would change my life. John asked us to sit in a meditative pose and then played a record of a woman chanting.  I later learned the woman was Swami Radha.  As she chanted, I began to see myself sitting on a large round circle on top of a hill overlooking a lake.  Across the lake was a snow covered mountain.  Later, I was transported to the other side of the lake and looking back, saw a beach with an A frame and other smaller buildings.  When I recounted this vision to Susan she gasped and said, “I had a dream about that same place!”  

Wanting to make sense of this, we discussed our respective experiences with Elaine Griff, our hatha yoga teacher in Victoria.  We drew a picture for her and as she examined it she began to smile and said, “That’s Yasodhara Ashram. The circle is the foundation for the temple.”  Knowing that this was an important sign in our lives we decided to attend an upcoming workshop with Swami Radha, Life Seals.  Little did I know what was in store for me.  

We arrived at the workshop and at some level I knew that something big was going to happen for me.  In a nutshell, Swami Radha cut right to the quick.  What was exposed would be called, in psychoanalytic terms, a raging phallic narcissist.  I won’t go into the details, but the key words here would be, “It’s all about me.”  At the end of the workshop, I approached Swami Radha and asked her, “Would you work with me?”  Her response was one of the most painful but truthful pieces of information I have ever received. 

In her lovely German accent she said to me, “I think you have been lying for so long, you no longer know the truth.  I think perhaps you are a hopeless case.” These words were not music to a narcissistic ear.  I was shattered.  I lost about ten pounds over the next two weeks and began the process of manufacturing all the rationale necessary to convince myself, and anyone else who would listen, that she was a charlatan.  In retrospect, everything I have accomplished in my life since then probably began at that moment. Most importantly, I believe my 60 year relationship with Susan would have never survived me had Swami Radha not uttered those words.  

One of my favorite concepts from Jungian psychology is the “wisdom of the psyche.”  Over the next year my psyche worked overtime and forced me to see more and more how correct her assessment of me had been.  At the end of that year Susan and I went to the ashram for a visit and all I could say to Swami Radha when I met her was, “We’re doing really well.”  It was as though I had to make a report to my probation officer before I could even say hello or offer up the customary box of Black Magic Chocolates.   

In the following years I had many experiences with Swami Radha but I feel it is only now as I am in my eighth decade on the planet that I grasp their significance.  Looking back, I think I wasn’t ready for her teachings the way Susan was.  I believe that following a spiritual path requires complete surrender. I was not ready to surrender.  I still needed to hold onto the illusion that I was in charge of my life.  Even though my experiences with her were limited, I would like to share some of them with you.  They were profound for me, have influenced me greatly and, I hope, exemplify her ability to be amazingly insightful, brutally honest, incredibly caring and delightfully funny, sometimes all in the same moment.  

I remember being at a Straight Walk workshop listening to Swami Radha when she looked into my eyes.  At that moment I felt an incredible stirring in my heart and a wonderful feeling of well-being.  I asked her if she had done that to me. She replied, “Ja, I give you a little light.  Most times people don’t notice it.  You know, the only things that are really important here are the light and the mantra.”

Stunned, I asked, “But what about all the st?rm und drang, the tears, the confessions and so on?”

“Oh Ja,” she said.  “That is the entertainment. If I don’t do that, you don’t come and pay the money for the workshop.”  I never really knew if she meant it or was just having some fun with us. 

On another occasion I decided to ask her about the experiences I was having. As I told her about astral traveling, visiting other people’s dreams, precognitions and other paranormal events, she listened attentively and then asked, “Do you ever forget to take out the garbage?”

Taken aback, I responded, “Uh….yes.”

“Are you ever unpleasant with your children?”

“Yes,” I replied sheepishly.

“Do you ever fight with your wife?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “Why don’t you work on those things and let these other things go?  Anyone can do those things you talk about but very few can be really good husbands and fathers.”

So I did.  I have never missed a garbage day since.  As for my relationships with my wife and children, it has taken a lot longer to reach the point where I believe I have successfully integrated Swami Radha’s advice.  

From the beginning, I noticed that she treated people differently.  In workshops I sometimes felt like she had it in for me.  Other people who would whine, complain and generally demonstrate what I, in my wisdom, considered a low level of consciousness were not confronted at all.  After one particularly painful encounter I was feeling aggrieved so I decided to ask her about this.  
“Swami Radha,” I asked, “why are you so tough on me while at the same time you let some people in the group off easy?”  

“Ja, I only give you what you can take.”

The incredible gift behind this statement only became clear to me later in my studies of Aikido. My instructor, after being asked why he never praised us but only approached us to correct, replied that in the East, to be corrected by one’s teacher is a great honor.  If the teacher does not think you are worthy, you will be ignored.  When Swami Radha said she gave me only what I could take, she was paying me a great compliment, offering me a great gift and, I hope, was telling me that I was not such a hopeless case after all.  

After fifty years of working in the helping profession, the value of this gift has become clear.  As a helper, I must have a high standard of self-awareness or else I will project my own unconscious complexes and insecurities onto those who I am supposed to be helping.  I must be willing to take all that is given me by my teachers. In essence, those of us who consider ourselves “helpers” must first clear our own psyches before meddling in the psyches of others.  Leo Buscaglia captured this concept perfectly in one of his videos by quoting a Zen monk who said to him, “Don’t walk through my mind with your dirty feet.”  Those of us who want to help others walk through this world with joy and purpose must first cleanse our own feet.  

Swami Radha loved to point out the symbolic meaning of one’s actions and appearance.  Once, when giving a talk with David Bohm at the Victoria YMCA, she was talking about the ways in which we communicate who we are without even knowing.  She was talking about clothes and asked, “What is the symbolic meaning, for example, of someone whose clothes are all brown?” Pondering this, I casually looked down and saw brown shoes, brown socks, brown pants, brown belt and a brown shirt.  I don’t know if she meant this for me but it certainly had an effect and perhaps explains my annual purchase of at least one Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirt.  

On another occasion Susan and I were sitting in the ashram dining room eating with her and a friend of ours.  At the end of the meal, our friend casually cupped his hand and collected the crumbs on the table in front of him and brushed them onto the floor. 

“Look!” she exclaimed.  “Look how you have just created work for someone else with your thoughtlessness.”  She never pulled punches if she thought you could take it.

I think it was very hard for her to carry all the projections and expectations that were laid upon her by all of us.  She once told me this was the hardest part of her work and actually revealed that she wasn’t sure how long she could continue to do her work since it took such a toll on her.  I remember one particularly frustrating moment at a workshop when she sighed and said, “When are you boys going to stop projecting your mother complexes all over me?”

I think this burden weighed heavily upon her and at one point she told Susan, who was planning to go to graduate school in order to become a counselor, “Do you really want to spend your life sitting in a room with someone who is projecting all over you?” 

Fortunately, Susan’s answer was yes and she has had a very successful career and has many grateful clients to show for it. This question reveals the difficulty Swami Radha experienced while helping us travel further down the road of awareness and enlightenment. 

On another occasion she talked about the ridiculous expectations of many of her followers and students.  It was particularly curious to her that many could not reconcile the fact that an enlightened being could have a jones for Black Magic chocolates.  It also baffled her that people in workshops would be upset by the fact that this guru would have to take breaks in order to attend to bodily functions. Apparently she should have been above such mundane needs.  

Fortunately for us, she never stopped her work and, I believe, is working still, even after her passing.

I can give one example of this.  Over the 80s and 90s our contact with the Ashram diminished but our appreciation for Swami Radha and the Ashram did not.  After Swami Radha passed and in the year of the Ashram’s 40th Anniversary, we returned.  I decided to do a weekend program at the Ashram which I translated as “What am I going to do with the rest of my life.”  At the time I was working at a job I did not particularly like and wanted a change but was unclear what that change should be.  

Although we were in a location where cell phones should not have worked, on the day before I was to begin the workshop I received a hostile, angry message from one of the administrators at my work. So I began my workshop at this peaceful, loving Ashram with anger in my heart. 

We began on Friday night and I hardly slept.  In the morning I went to the temple and sat in seiza as we began to chant.  About ten minutes into the chanting, with my thoughts churning about the phone call, I started to heat up. Soon I was sweating profusely and feeling light headed.  At some point I lost consciousness and my head fell to floor. I awoke suddenly to Swami Radha’s voice saying loudly, “You can’t evolve spiritually and change your life while you are angry at the same time!”  Stunned, I moved to a chair and recovered my senses and began chanting again.  

When the chanting was finished I approached the leader and recounted my experiences.  He advised me to do the workshop but let the focus be finding the meaning of that experience.  So I did and the workshop changed from “What am I going to do” to “Who am I going to be” for the rest of my life.  Many changes came about as a result of that workshop and, once again, they began on the foundation of the Temple.

When the temple that Swami Radha worked so hard to build burned to the ground a few years ago, I was struck with horror but also realized that nothing is permanent and the experiences I had involving the temple are still with me.  All of us who have been blessed by Swami Radha and the Ashram now have to help in our own way to rebuild the temple.  Swami Radha always trusted the divine to provide for her in times of need and it never failed her.  I trust that the same will be true for the temple rebuild and for all of us who have been touched by her. 

Swami Radha is gone now and I regret that I was not more mature when I knew her.  I am sorry that in many ways I was a little boy and not the man I am today. Looking back, I believe she was the most enlightened person I have ever met and she may have saved my life both figuratively and actually.  In the years I knew her, I heard many of her students referring to her respectfully and endearingly as Mataji.  I never used this term because I never really felt I deserved to use it.  I had never really surrendered to her. 

I don’t know what happens after death.  Are we are reborn?  Do we move to another plane?  Does Saint Peter meet us at the Pearly Gates?  All I know is that I want to meet her again.  I will be ready this time.  Thank you Mataji.  

During the time we were involved with Swami Radha, we were so enthralled by the practice of Yoga we began to train as yoga instructors at the local YMCA.  I felt somewhat out of place in this endeavor as I was the only man in the training program and I am very inflexible (in so many ways).  On one occasion we were doing a posture and the instructor said, “Where do you feel the effect of this posture?”  No one answered and she said, “In your ovaries.” I said, “I don’t feel a thing.” She said, “I have a special asana for you.  It is called the Steer.”  If you know how a bull becomes a steer, you know the meaning of this communication. No more funny comments from me.

But I persevered and one day I was approached by the program director.  She said that there was a class, Yoga for Teenage Girls that needed an instructor. Apparently several teachers had tried to lead this class but had become so frustrated by the girls they had left in tears.  The director said she had heard I was a child psychologist and would really appreciate it if I would try to teach it. So I did.

The course was taught in the small chapel and the first day I walked in I was greeted by six very attractive young women who probably saw me as their next victim.  As I began teaching the class they would talk to each other and generally act out.  After the second class I was so frustrated I sat down and said, “I am volunteering to teach this class.  I am not getting paid.  Do you want to do Yoga or not?”

In Aikido we talk about and practice getting into harmony with your attacker.  I had not experienced Aikido yet but I decided to follow this path with the girls. They said they wanted to do Yoga so I told them to bring their favorite music the next week and we would do Yoga to the music.  So the next week we did Yoga to heavy metal, Jesus music and crappy pop. They loved it.  They started to warm up to me and fortunately whenever I started to feel sexually attracted to one of them I could look up to the picture on the wall and be reminded that Jesus was watching, even in the Yoga class.

Eventually we started having a little discussion group at the end of the class and they would share hopes and fears and problems they were having.  All in all it was a wonderful experience and for years after, some of the girls would come to my office at the College just to talk.

My experience with the Victoria Family Violence Project required me to learn quickly on the job. When the director, Alayne Hamilton, first asked me to consider the position of consulting psychologist, I dismissed it out of hand as I had no experience with abusive men or group therapy.  She persevered and eventually I went to Ahimsa House, home of the Project to talk to her and Mike, one of the men working there.  I demurred but Mike said, "Well we need a licensed Psychologist working here or they won’t fund our program.  You are the only psychologist in town we are willing to let in this building so we are not letting you out of the building until you agree." 

In order to learn more about the program, I apprenticed myself to a lay leader in what they called Phase I, the entry level to the program. The idea of a Ph.D. Psychologist apprenticing with a lay group leader who installed cable during the day and had never finished high school raised some eyebrows but we worked well together and I learned the basics of the program during my twelve weeks with this group.  At the end of the group I told him I thought he was gifted in this area and I hope I had some influence over his eventual enrollment in and graduation from the Social Work program at the University.  Concurrently, I was accepted into the therapeutic group which was being run for the lay leaders, all of whom had been through the program.

The leader of that group was a professional therapist who had never received a degree but was gifted in his work.  I learned more about leading groups from him than anyone else I have ever known.  After ten weeks I was ready to start my own group.  My partner Wendy and I became so good at sharing this role it often seemed as though we were two heads on the same body.  

We led groups of 6 to 8 men who were attempting to change their lives for the better and to stop the violence that had so dominated their lives in the past.  One of the things we tried to teach them was to change their communication patterns by expressing their feelings to their partners rather than expressing judgments or controlling statements. One night the following conversation took place between two of the guys. I will refer to them as Tom and Jerry.

Tom said, “My wife won’t let me express my feelings.”

Jerry said, “What do you mean?”

“Well I told her I feel she’s a slut and she got mad and told me to shut up.”

“That’s not a feeling.”

“Yes it is,” he said somewhat agitated.”

“No, that’s a judgement and an insulting one as well.”

“No it’s a feeling.”

By this time both guys were getting pretty mad.  As the banter continued and tempers begin to flare I found myself splitting into three people.  First there was fearful Larry who was looking for the fastest way to the door.  Second there was Aikido Larry who was thinking about which technique he would use when one of these guys came after the other. Lastly there was adult psychologist Larry who said, “Let’s examine this interaction.”  I managed to put my fear and distracting thoughts aside in order to focus on the job to be done.  This is a core concept in the Japanese approach to problems known as Morita Therapy.

I asked Jerry to demonstrate a feeling statement to Tom.  With a malicious grin and a gleam in his eye he said to Tom, "I feel you’re an asshole.”  I thought, uh oh, here we go.  

After a brief pause Tom said, “Okay I get it."  That was the closest I ever saw anybody get to coming to blows during my five years working there.  But he did get it and became one of the best communicators in the group.  An unusual way to facilitate change but it worked.

There was one guy in the group who was particularly difficult to deal with but we all really liked him.  In his case, change was slow.  He had a pretty good handle on his anger at this time after having been through the program twice but he really got upset when he thought something was happening to his daughters, both of whom often found themselves in dire straits.

On the last night of these groups that ran for six months, we would meet and discuss how we all had changed and improved over the period of the group. When his turn came he told a story about how he had dealt with a man who was harassing his daughters.  It had angered him so much that he went up to the man’s third-floor apartment, grabbed him by the feet and hung him over the side of the railing and told him to stop bothering his girls.  This was the last night and I didn’t want to open this up, process it and show that, in fact, that it was not completely congruent with the non-violent philosophy of the family violence project.  So I just asked a simple question.

"How is this an example of the improvement and change you’ve experienced as a result of this program?”

“Oh hell, before this program I would’ve dropped him.”

I once had a student we will call Julie whose parents had come from Greece. After she had left for college, her grandmother moved from Greece to Canada when her husband died.  She stayed with my student’s parents and didn’t do much of anything except wander around the house in her black garb, watch television and cook.  After about six months she called Julie and asked her if she would take her out to buy some different clothes. This was quite a surprise to Julie.  Also grandma wanted to know if she would help her enroll in English classes at a local college.  A bit stunned she did both.  Over the next few months she noticed a radical change in her grandmother.  In addition to changing her clothes and going to school she began taking driving lessons.  When Julie asked her grandmother one day why she had made such big changes, she replied, “I watch Oprah.”

Years ago I owned a house in Victoria B.C. that had been built in 1910.  It constantly needed repairs and I had a fantastic handyman named Burt who would do the work.  He always asked me to help, mostly because he liked the company and not for my skills at home repair.  One time he and his wife were with me and my wife at a friend’s house.  I asked him how much it would cost to repair my front porch. He replied, “400 dollars.”  I said, “What if I help?”  His wife answered quickly, “600 dollars.”

Anyway, Burt liked to drink.  He never drank on the job but his binges were legendary.  I called him one day to tell him I was getting new gutters on the house and I just couldn’t get the old ones off.  He said they were going out to dinner and he would stop by afterward to look at it.  Around nine that night Burt and his wife showed up and he was three sheets to the wind.  It was windy, dark and pouring rain but he said, “Bring a flashlight, hammer and ladder.”  He climbed up, looked at the gutter and asked for the hammer. 

I said, “I have been thinking about all the ways to get this down and I just can’t figure it out.”

He reared back, swung the hammer and the whole gutter flew off into the yard. He said, “That’s the trouble with you f…ing intellectuals, you think too much.” No one has ever confused me with an intellectual before or after that incident but it was definitely an example of the superiority of action over thinking, at least in this case.  In Japanese psychology, thoughts and feelings are seen as fleeting and not under your control and the fastest way out of a bad state is to do something.  This is very different than western psychology.

Burt taught me a lot about home repair but that night he was definitely my action guru.

On another occasion I was talking to my mentor in Seattle when he told me he had been to the 100th birthday party of a famous Jungian analyst.  He asked the birthday boy what he had been up to.  After hearing a long list of projects, plans and activities he said, “Joe, how do you do all of that at your age?  I get tired just thinking about it.”

Joe answered, “I don’t think about it.”

So now when I really need to do something I try not think a lot about it.  If I can just get started, it usually takes care of itself. 

A dramatic and fascinating example of change being inspired by a complete stranger was described to me by a former student.  This woman, who we shall call Eleanor, was at a major decision point in her life when this event occurred. She told me about it in a career and life development course I was teaching in which she was a student. The students had completed several inventories designed to indicate appropriate career paths they might follow. She had the most interesting test results I’ve ever seen.  I said to her somewhat jokingly, “It looks like you could either be a CPA or a counselor.”  She told me that, in fact, before coming to graduate school in counseling she had been debating whether to become an accountant or counselor.  She clearly had a wide range of abilities. 

One day while she was in the process of trying to figure out which path to follow she was leaving the grocery store with her hands full when a stranger opened the door for her.  She smiled and said thank you, and he said, "You should become a counselor.”  She stood there stunned and when she turned around he was gone.

She went back to school, completed the prerequisites for graduate school and counseling, and enrolled in a graduate program with a specialty in grief counseling.  Today she works as a grief counselor and is known in hospice circles as the "angel of death.”  She seems to have the ability to walk into a room, sit down next to person who is dying but can’t let go, place her hand on the person and within a half an hour the person has let go and is gone.  She has found her calling thanks to a stranger’s comment.

This is a most remarkable woman.  She suffers from a serious disease but never talks about it or uses it as an excuse to avoid difficult situations.  She has now finished her Ph.D. and will continue with her life’s work, helping the dying and the grieving.  She works a lot with immigrant families and told me she always takes her shoes off when she enters a trailer or small home.  I assumed this was a sign of respect.  She said, "No, I am often the tallest person in the house and I don’t want them to feel small.”

After reading about the importance of action in Japanese Psychology and the importance of starting small I was reminded of a story I heard Bill O’Hanlon tell about Milton Erickson, the famous psychiatrist who was best known for his work in Hypnosis and his somewhat unconventional (at least for his time) approach to clinical problems.

When one of his students heard he would be visiting a large U.S. city where his depressed aunt lived, he asked Erickson if he would stop in on her.  He agreed and when the aunt opened the door he found himself in a musty, dark house with all the curtains pulled confronting a woman who appeared to have nothing to live for and who only left the house to attend church on Sundays.

After speaking to her he found there were two things that gave her life meaning, going to church and growing African Violets.  In his own inimical way he said, “You know I don’t think you are a very good Christian and I don’t think your flowers serve much of a purpose either.”

Stunned, the woman asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well, a fundamental tenet of Christianity is caring for others.  You don’t do anything for anyone else and you are the only person who gets joy from these flowers.  I am going to give you a task but I seriously doubt you can do it.  I want you to look into the church bulletin and see if there is anyone who is suffering or grieving and send them one of your plants. Again, I doubt you will do this.”

I guess the challenge was too much to resist so she did it.  The response from the recipients and the pastor were so positive she did it again.  Soon she was sending violets to anyone she heard of who was in need.  When she died, hundreds of mourners showed up to honor “The African Violet Lady”, a person they saw as a caring and generous woman.  

And it all began with a challenge and one small act of kindness.

Except for one semester, I was a student in University from the fall of 1960 to the fall of 1970.  I saw many changes during that period, one of which was the introduction of drugs to student life. By the end of the decade I was a pretty heavy user of Marijuana and dabbled in other drugs. After I moved to Victoria and took my first job I continued to use drugs recreationally.  

Shortly after Ishiyama Sensei arrived in the mid-seventies and became our Aikido Sensei, he announced we were going to do a demonstration at the university.  We arrived, changed and went onto the mats to warm up.  He approached me and told me I was going to do the knife attacks.  This was fine with me because we had always used wooden knives in practice.  He then went to a small box on the edge of the mats and extracted a long, very pointed metal knife.  As he handed it to me I asked, “How do you want me to attack you?”

“Any way you like,” he responded.

I realized at that point that if either of us made a mistake, I could die. So I did my best to attack at full speed and with lethal intent and he countered every attack.  It seemed like it went on for hours. That night it was broadcast on the local TV station and I realized it was only about three minutes.  But I knew at that time that I wanted to experience every moment of my life with that same awareness and intensity.  I never used drugs again.  

In 1981 I was approached by my Dean regarding a pilot project in Infant Day Care.  In Victoria, B.C. there were no infant day care centers (centres!) and the government was about to initiate a program designed to encourage the establishment of infant day care. The College Day Care Centre was going to be one of the first and he planned to expand our Day Care Worker training program to include infant care.  He wanted me to head up the creation of the program.

I said I would do it but I hadn’t read any research on the subject in 10 years since my graduation from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota.  I asked him if he would send me to Stanford for a month where the author of the textbook I used in my Child Development class was a professor. He agreed.

I contacted the professor and she agreed to mentor me in this endeavor if I would keep a record of my findings and give a copy to her so she could use the information for her next book.  This sounded like a good trade to me.  Summer came and I was off to Palo Alto while my wife stayed in Victoria with our two sons.  Our trade was that she would fly them down at the end of a month and the boys and I would visit relatives and generally enjoy California, Oregon and Washington while she had time alone.  So the time came and I drove down to Palo Alto where I would stay with my good friend Carol for a month. 

When I got there I was suddenly overwhelmed by the immensity of the commitment I had made.  I had not done anything like this in 10 years and I didn’t like doing it back then.  Also, it was the hottest summer in Northern California history and the first time I walked into the Stanford library I felt smothered by the oppressive heat as there was no air conditioning.  Additionally, I was not in the best emotional state as my wife and I had recently reunited after a separation that had really knocked the wind out of my sails.  And, most importantly, being a Cal graduate, I was feeling guilty for consorting with the enemy, Stanford. 

My first visit to the library lasted about an hour and I left frustrated and angry that I had put myself into this situation without really assessing how difficult it would be for me.  I missed my wife and boys, was not really that excited about the research and remembered that after finishing four years of graduate school, I never wanted to see another journal article as long as I lived.

But I had a job to do so the next day I promised to stay until noon. Reading about infant perception in the morning, I found myself beginning to get interested in the amazing things researchers had discovered about infants over the last 10 years.  The next day I stayed all day and soon I was going in at night and on the weekends. I was amassing reams of note cards and when I met with the prof at the halfway point she was delighted to see my work and said I had saved her many hours of work that she could now spend with her three young children. 

This is a good example of some of the principles of Kaizen, another form of Japanese psychology.  I started small, gradually increased my time on the project, kept with it and the project overcame my emotional state.  It really became my life. More importantly, it proved to me that I could do a very good job on a project that had to be its own reward.  There was no prize, no money or pat on the head when I was done.  Finishing the task with thoroughness and integrity was the only reward.

My clinical supervisor in Seattle once said to me, don’t think of the Psyche as part of you, think of yourself as part of the Psyche.  In the same way, this project was not part of my life, I was part of it.  I was an employee of the project.  It had a life of its own.

There were other benefits as well.  I got to know Carol really well and we remained good friends, exchanging letters at Christmas and at our Birthdays.  One of the first things she told me, having been born on December 25th, was, “I will not accept one card.  You have to send two.” We were on a pretty tight budget but occasionally we would go out to dinner.  Her boyfriend had recently left her and she would offer to pay if I promised to walk by his house with my arm around her feigning mad love and affection.  Also, I joined the Stanford Aikido Club and practiced every day there was a practice.  When I finished the project, the boys came down and we had a great vacation together.  

When I returned we set up the program and the Day Care became a fantastic resource for the community.  The people who actually made this happen were the wonderful teachers in the training program and the exceptional day care supervisors at the centre.  Also, I had a lot of new material for my course in Child Development.  I will always be grateful for the experience this project afforded me.  

Sometimes life wakes you up and change is immediate.  My friend Ron is a great example of this.  Ron’s family owned a very profitable furniture store. From an early age Ron showed great ability in art and design and was a genius working with his hands.  He once showed me a report card from a prestigious private boy’s school which he attended.  All the grades were rather mediocre except art. He excelled at art. He also showed me a picture of a beautiful boat he had built while still in elementary school.  It was a work of art. However, Ron’s parents had other plans for him.  They wanted him to become an architect and a professional of whom they could be proud.  So even though his academic record was not astounding, off he went to study architecture at University.  Not surprisingly, he flunked out.

Ron may have been the most introverted and shy person I have ever met in my life.  Upon returning home after failing in University, his parents took him into the business and made him the director of personnel.  There could not be a job on earth for which Ron was more poorly suited.  Fortunately, he married a woman who was very supportive and realized he could not survive in this job. One day, after waking from a terrible nightmare, he resigned his job, sold his stock and begin a business building wooden toys for children.  He would isolate himself in his garage while doing his woodwork and his wife would handle all sales from the kitchen of her house.  She served as the business manager, doorkeeper and was a welcoming presence who always seemed to have something delicious to offer you while you were picking up toys.  At some point they began to build a boat.  After years of work it was a beautiful sight to see. Eventually they divorced and Ron moved to a local island where he now builds boats that have been commissioned by people who value his unique ability.  What would his life have been like if his parents had seen this gift and nurtured it?

If you were to walk into the office that my wife and I use for our psychotherapy practice, you would see lots of turtles. Turtles on the desks, turtles on the tables, a turtle candle holder, turtles in the windows and turtles on the floor.  Not live turtles but every kind of turtle you could imagine. You would even see a turtle painted on a drum on the wall and a turtle night light.  There used to be more turtles but my wife said, “Enough is enough.  We are taking some of these home.”   She has replaced them with shells and stones in the same places.  She has her magic and I have mine.

When I taught and worked with the First Nations Salish people of Vancouver Island they told me the turtle clan was the healing clan and that I belonged to that clan.  This was an incredible honor so I started collecting turtles.  People saw my turtles and starting giving me turtles so I have a lot. People have brought them from all over the world.

I have turtles everywhere to remind me to slow down.  My nature is to go fast, to want to finish everything before I need to and come to closure too early.  There is also a practical issue here.  I do not have the physical abilities I had when I was younger and when I get ahead of myself I tend to break things, harm my person and otherwise cause havoc.  

My mother was the same way.  She fell many times in her 80s because this previously active and athletic woman just could not slow down.  She would stand up from her easy chair, set off at breakneck speed only to trip and fall.  On one Super bowl Sunday I got a call from her residence just as the game was going to start.  She had fallen and they could not stop her nosebleed due to her use of blood thinners.  The woman said that my mother had asked her not to call me because she knew I was watching the game but that they were really worried.  

I drove rapidly to the residence where I found my mother covered in blood and rapidly swelling and darkening around the eyes.  I did not feel adequate to deal with this so I called 911 for an ambulance to take her to the hospital.  When the first responder walked in he looked at the game on the TV, then my mother, then me.  "I gather you are rooting for different teams,” he said.  

We all went to the hospital and she sent me home and said, “Don’t come get me until the game is over.”

At the beginning of the final quarter, the hospital called and the nurse told me I had to come get her NOW.  They needed the bed.  I guess Super bowl Sunday is a high volume day in the ER.   The next week I bought a TiVo box.

I used to take her to the Coumadin (blood thinner) clinic to get her blood tested. One time she registered very high blood pressure.  “I am a nervous Nelly and I always will be,” she said.  “And I gave it to him.”  Then looking at me pensively she said, “He doesn’t seem to be like that anymore.”  

I looked at the nurse and said, “Thousands of dollars in therapy.” She said, “Me too.”

One last story about change.  My brother and I were extremely close. I was five years his senior and from the day he was born I felt responsibility for his safety and well-being.  In 1965 my wife and I were living in San Francisco taking courses at S.F. State and preparing to move to Minnesota where I was to begin my Ph.D. studies.  He was still at home in L.A. with my parents.  Shortly before Christmas my father called to tell me that my brother had acute Leukemia and that although he was undergoing new treatment (a variation of which saves children today), he was not expected to live.  Over the next six months he was in and out of hospital, suffering intensely through repeated relapses and remissions.  My life vacillated between the hubris of entering graduate school and the depression resulting from the impending loss of my best friend.  I think I engaged in a lot of denial.  Susan says we visited him once in hospital while he was sick but I have no recollection of that.  The day finally came when my father called to tell us to come to L.A. to say goodbye. 

It was the sixties in San Francisco and compared to my friends at home and my father’s contemporaries, I had long hair.  Today it probably would not even qualify as long hair but it did at that time and it identified me as belonging to a certain cohort that was not popular with my parents’ generation.  Whenever I would go home my dad would offer me money to get it cut and I always refused. I think that although this was a version of what Erikson calls a negative identity (identity through opposition) it also was symbolic of the emergence of my own identity, separate from my family and the dominant culture.  

As my wife and I were getting ready to go to the hospital to say goodbye to Steve my dad said, “I want you to get a haircut before you see him. I want him to remember you as you were.” 

I was completely paralyzed.  I had to choose between being who I was at the time and pleasing my father, who I knew was in a state of total despair.  So I agreed.  After the haircut, as I drove up the driveway to pick up my wife on the way to the hospital she came out of the house with tears running down her face. “Steve is dead,” she said.  I never got to say goodbye to the second most important person in my life.  Tears form in my eyes as I write this fifty years later.

I was psychologically sophisticated enough at the time to know that the real reason I was sent to the barber was so that I would not embarrass my parents. Although not being able to say goodbye to my brother and my best friend was a result of parental narcissism, in some ways it was a powerful experience in the activation of what is called in Psychosynthesis, my own internal unifying center. 

I vowed that day that no matter how my future children presented themselves to the world and no matter what choices they made in life, I would support them for themselves and not how they reflected on me.  Being my parents’ child, I couldn’t always do that but the two fine men I see today are proof that my wife and I, nutty as we were in those early years, got that part right.  I remember when my youngest son was about eight, my wife said to him, “You really like yourself don’t you?”  He looked at her like she was the dumbest person on earth. 

“Of course,” he replied.  She looked at me, smiled and said, “If he only knew what we have had to go through to get to that place that he takes for granted.”

Although I held this against my father for years, when he was dying my mother asked us to come to L.A. to say goodbye to him.  She said she didn’t want the experience with Steve to be repeated and that she was the one who wanted me to get a haircut and had regretted it ever since.  She knew I blamed my Dad and that she didn’t want him going to his grave with that between us.

I think that my wife and I, coming out of very different but equally dysfunctional families, have been our own best parents.  Even during our worst times together we often have been able to sidestep our own narcissism and support what is best for the other.  My wife sometimes says that I saved her from her family but I often wonder about it when I see the humane society bumper sticker, “Who rescued who?”