JULY BLOG
Illustration by Miki Howenstein
Stand up and express yourself
July 10 (in the book “Jumbo Jumble”)
Hate and punishment never cured anything, only love can cure.
If humans were born with an instinct for criminality, there would be as many criminals from fine middle-class homes as from slum homes. But well-to-do people have more opportunities for expression of the ego. The pleasures money buys, the refined surroundings, culture, and pride of birth all minister to the ego. Among the poor, the ego is starved.
The youths who are called delinquents are trying to express power that has been suppressed. I have generally found that the antisocial child, the leader of a gang of window breakers, becomes under freedom a strong supporter of law and order.
It is only thwarted power that works for evil in a child. Human beings are good; they want to love and be loved. Hate and rebellion are only thwarted love and thwarted power. (Alexander Sutherland Neill, Albert Lamb, and Alexander Sutherland Neill, Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 48.)
JR: In many spiritual writings, it may be mistakenly assumed that the ego is bad. On the contrary, a healthy (not inflated) sense of ego is necessary for spiritual growth. The disempowered person whose ego has been thwarted is more likely to express his frustration in destructive ways. Through finding ways of constructive expression of himself and empowering his life, his ego is fed and his desire to “fight against” is changed into “living for.”
PP: When did you feel completely powerless? How did you feel? Try to understand that this is the road on which many of today’s poor and rejected are stuck.
PA: Watching my younger brother die from a terrible cancer was one of the most devastating things I experienced. Absolutely powerless to do anything except be there. Some may say that’s the most important thing of all, being there. And important to keep in mind that the poor and rejected of today’s world often have nobody to be there for them, which makes their powerlessness even worse. Can’t even fathom how that would feel!