From the Introduction The following chapters recount several types of altered-state experiences. One category is memories of actual altered states that occurred during childhood. An example is my discovering meditation in second grade. Another type includes visions of childhood experiences that I witnessed during an altered state as an adult. These may be memories of real events. While I do not devote a chapter to this particular experience, I mentioned it in the previous chapter. In it, I relived one day on a psychedelic drug as an adult an allergic reaction I had to a chocolate cookie as a toddler. Later on, my mother verified the truth of that memory.
Reexperiencing my forceps delivery in the previous chapter, however, "The Beginning," may straddle the line between real and imagined. Some "childhood visions" I saw during an altered state in adulthood are unlikely to have occurred in real life. Rather, they are like dreams whose contents represent a condensed symbolic representation of one''s mental state. A case in point is my vision of suffering sexual abuse that appeared while meditating in "Prayer Wheel." Here, the vision''s contents and associated emotions corresponded to how I felt about my relationship with my parents when I was an infant. In addition, a vision may convey normally suppressed thoughts and emotions linked to being part of a larger historical and cultural universe without actually having undergone the events in question. The chapter describing past lives and deaths in "The Beginning" describes my sense of what it must have felt like for my ancestors in Eastern Europe during a particularly deadly phase of anti-Semitism. THE EARLY MIND What is our nature and how have others nurtured it? As these chapters deal with infancy and early childhood, I wish to briefly introduce models that help us address and understand these issues.
Infant temperament is the earliest precursor of adult personality. It''s what the baby is like, its attributes or characteristics. While differences exist among classification systems, temperament usually falls into four broad categories: (1) warm, optimistic, social; (2) relaxed, apathetic, slow-moving; (3) analytical, quiet, nostalgic; and (4) irritable, quick to react. Temperament is congenital, present at birth. It is the product of a confluence of multiple biological functions: hormonal, immunological, gastrointestinal, cardiac, and nervous system/brain. If you include past lives, our new body resonates with that previous consciousness, which now influences and is influenced by a new set of biological parameters. Attachment style is the intermediate stage between infant temperament and adult personality. It is a general pattern of interactions between the infant/toddler and caregivers.
The newborn has its unique temperament, and this temperament mediates its interactions with the world. And the most important interactions are with people. The responses the infant elicits in those around it feed back onto the child, encouraging certain responses and discouraging others. As with temperament, attachment style classifications vary, but four types that researchers regularly cite are (1) secure, (2) insecure, (3) avoidant, and (4) anxious. We sometimes come across (5) disorganized. The quality of the "fit" between caregiver and infant influences this behavioral shaping, especially its emotional aspects. If the fit is good, the degree of stress is manageable for the child; otherwise, fundamental attachment interactions--such as feeding, discipline, and bedding down--become traumatic. For example, an insecure infant may respond well to a highly attentive and doting mother, while a secure independent one may find such a parent uncomfortably intrusive.
Adult personality is the final result of the process that begins with biological temperament and then interpersonal attachment style. Now, structures and processes are in place and modifying them is less likely. Contemporary psychology research has characterized five factors constituting adult personality: (1) extraversion, (2) agreeableness, (3) conscientiousness, (4) neuroticism, and (5) openness to experience. Psychoanalysis also proposes a model of personality with roots in infancy and toddlerhood. For example, newborns and infants progress through psychophysiological stages: oral, anal, and genital. In each, the psychic-life force, or libido , concentrates upon and develops within one set of biological structures and functions before moving on to the next. Later, young children''s interactions make their way through more-or-less hardwired interpersonal milestones; for example, the "Oedipal phase." * Adult personality finally forms--healthy or disordered to various degrees, including obsessive, hysteric, depressive, narcissistic, schizoid, and borderline.
Maimonides--the thirteenth-century rabbi, physician, and philosopher-- suggested that character is what God gives us to overcome. This doesn''t mean we must change our character, whose essential building blocks of temperament are biological. Rather, the idea is the following: We are what we do by choice, and not who we are by nature. We can modify our behavior--behavior that our inborn traits make likely--for good or ill. For example, we may be stingy by nature, but we can learn to practice generosity, thereby neutralizing a negative temperamental disposition. By virtue of our generous behavior, we become a generous person, even though our nature remains the same. My temperament at birth was social, inquisitive, and intensely engaged. At the same time, I was irritable and quick to react.
I was alert and responsive, restless, curious, and easily frustrated. If I didn''t like something, I knocked it over. If I didn''t get my way, I cried and threw a tantrum. These temperamental features also resulted in unpleasant sensitivity to sounds such as noisy eating or breathing. My parents'' personalities were less than ideally suited to deal with my temperament, leading to an attachment style with significant insecure and anxious features. The flip side of this elevated reactivity was my responsiveness to positive influences, such as friends and teachers, as well as the beauty of the natural world. Finally, I possessed strong powers of concentration, both regarding objects in the external as well as internal worlds. While time and inner work modified these early temperamental features, attachment styles, and personality, the broad outline of my adult character and behavioral style was, like most of us, apparent at an early age.
From Chapter 1 1 FLYING BABY I have always enjoyed being high, but how far back does "always" go? The answer comes to me surprisingly late, in my early sixties. A month after my sixty-second birthday, my life takes a turn for the worse. Two near-fatal infections and two failed relationships, both within a year, prompt my beginning a course of weekly psychotherapy that lasts more than four years. I am committed to finding out how things have gotten so off course.* Once the acute phase of psychotherapy is over, my therapist and I begin to dig deeper. As my sickness resulted from an ill-advised trip to visit a woman I met online, examining these events gradually segue into discussing my former marriage, stepchildren, and divorce. The death anniversary of my stepdaughter reminds me of having so few photographs of life with my family. At the end of our marriage, my ex seemed to have taken every photo.
"Why did she take them all?" I ask rhetorically. "What photos do you have from then?" Merle asks in her casually incisive manner. "Good question," I reply. "I haven''t looked in a long time." Returning home, I search for photos I might have tucked away in an obscure corner. I find a manila envelope in the back of a drawer of an ancient file cabinet, behind the "House refinance" folder. I open it and out spill dozens of mostly black-and-white photos. One catches my eye.
On its back is my mother''s handwriting, "September 1952. Rick, 8 months." I was born in February, so the date or my age is inaccurate. I wonder what she was thinking. I am lying on my abdomen on a blanket on the lawn in our backyard, wearing a white T-shirt and a white diaper. My legs splay out froglike behind me. I am stocky, healthy flesh, no visible bones. A full head of dark hair, neatly cut, short bangs covering a half-inch of my prominent forehead, which takes up half my face.
I am lifting my chest, my head is four-to-six-inches off the ground, and my chin is parallel to it. My right arm fully extends behind me, and my left must be as well, but it''s not visible. My right palm faces outward. I''m in the yoga cobra pose, but not using my arms for support or balance. This position requires great muscular exertion; however, it appears effortless. It looks as if I am flying, my arms behind me.