The truth is we haven't a clue about what is really attractive or beautiful. And we miss all the real opportunities for love which have far less to do with plumped lips than we'd like to think. After all, if it were just a matter of a little collagen, that would be a relatively easy fix. No one would actually have to work at intimacy, forgiveness, or sharing.
This disease has American by its chinny-chin-chin. And we're spending a fortune "fighting" it.
"I'm-1-N-1" Virus or the Centerless Self
This is the deepest expression of all the above pathologies. Because of all the others""the distortion of self and body-loathing, the sense of never being or having enough, the constant fear""we've also become exceedingly self-centered. Which is actually much more disastrous than it sounds because in our cultural psyche, there is no self and there is no solid center. We've become painfully insecure AND entitled. And when we don't get what we want""because we have no center, believe that we need that thing to fill up our emptiness, fear what may happen and loathe ourselves without it""we become violent.
The evidence for that is all over the news on a daily basis.
All these diseases, these cultural, collective delusions form a sort of intellectual and emotional breast milk for us and our children. They are the formula for how we think and how we live.
So what heals these delusions?
The first and most important antidote is Love. A spiritual Love. This is not the same as romantic love or Eros. It is the love St. Francis prays for when he says, "Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love." This love is unconditional, selfless, humble, and constant. It has also gone out of style. As if battered by the distant drum of the sixties and self-psychology, love now has to start with "I" and end with "me."
If we are to heal and be de-tranced, we will have to know and learn to experience that we are not the center of the universe. Something else is and that IT centers us. We have no center without a relationship with the creator.
The second is Faith. When we can put our faith in something beyond ourselves, there is nothing to fear. When we can trust that a God who literally loves us is running the show, we can relax in the moment. We don't have to buy anything. We don't have to run away anymore. We don't have to puff ourselves up or repeat empty aphorisms to buoy our sagging sense of self.
The third and perhaps most difficult for Americans is a Correctness of Desire. The medicine for unrestrained want, irrepressible fear, and self-loathing is gratitude.
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