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Life Arts    H4'ed 3/20/15

The Pursuit of Happiness (REVIEW ESSAY)

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Dr. Rankin claims that our hidden fears are locked up in the prison of our soul cages. In theory, I would say that our souls are coterminous with our bodies. In the imagery of her conceptual constructs, we carry our portable prison cages around with us wherever we may go.

As a medical doctor, Dr. Rankin is concerned about "fear [as] one of the leading predisposing factors of disease in our culture" (page xxx). Nevertheless, "fear can be a blessing, not only because it can protect you from danger, but because it can wake you up" -- provided that you pay attention to it (page xxi).

Even though I have no medical expertise, I was able to follow Dr. Rankin's accessible explanations of our human physiology and of neuroscience and of a wide range of medical ailments. But because I have no medical expertise, I really cannot adjudicate the various claims she and the authors she discusses make about healing.

However, the Jungian psychotherapist and homeopathic physician Edward C. Whitmont, M.D., also explores how psycho-spiritual healing may help alleviate certain medical conditions in his book THE ALCHEMY OF HEALING: PSYCHE AND SOMA (1993). But he does not focus specifically on "fear [as] one of the leading predisposing factors of disease in our culture," as Dr. Rankin does in her new book.

Dr. Rankin claims that "The Fear Cure is not so much about curing fear; it's more about letting fear cure you" (page xxxii).

Fortunately, Dr. Rankin says that "there is no single 'one size fits all' prescription that will help liberate you" from being locked up in your portable soul cage (page xxxii).

Dr. Rankin's equivalent to John Bradshaw's reassuring mantra that grief is the healing feeling is the following statement, which is printed in boldface print in her book:

"Courage is not about being fearless; it's about letting fear transform you so you come into right relationship with uncertainty, make peace with impermanence, and wake up to who you really are" (page xxix).

As Dr. Rankin intimates, the process of letting fear transform you requires an enormous inward turn of consciousness and paying careful attention, to the best of your ability, to the various impulses that arise in your ego-consciousness. But her book is not about how to go about making this inward turn of consciousness. Instead, her book is about what to attend to in your inward turn of consciousness.

In the final analysis, I think that John Bradshaw and Susan Anderson move to a deeper account of how to resolve our unhealthy fears through the felt experience of mourning, than Dr. Rankind does in her book about coping with fear. However, I also think that the final resolution of unresolved traumatization requires a certain psychic readiness.

In the meantime, while we wait for such psychic readiness to emerge in our psyches, Dr. Rankin prescriptions for coping with our unhealthy fears strike me as sensible and useful.

In connection with the inward turn of consciousness, I want to discuss Jesuit training. The Jesuit religious order for men in the Roman Catholic Church was founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, who also compiled a short book of instructions for meditating known as the SPIRITUAL EXERCISES. As part of their standard training, Jesuits make two 30-day retreats in silence (except for daily conferences with the retreat director) following the instructions in the SPIRITUAL EXERCISES. In theory, anybody could read the instructions in the SPIRITUAL EXERCISES and try following them. But I really do not recommend doing this. Instead, I recommend making a directed retreat following the SPIRITUAL EXERCISES with a Jesuit or somebody else who has had experience in following the instructions. In this respect, I would say that the book is not a self-help book.

You could argue that Jesuits are slow learners and that that is why they are required to make two 30-day retreats. Perhaps it is the case that Jesuits are slow learners.

But my point in mentioning Jesuit training is to say that it takes time and effort to learn how to make the inward turn to consciousness. So if it is the case that Jesuit are slow learners, I suspect that they are not the only slow learners in the world.

Incidentally, in Jesuit parlance, Jesuits are supposed to engage regularly in reflection and discernment of spirits. In effect, Dr. Rankin is urging people to engage regularly in reflection and discernment of spirits. She does title chapter 3 "Discerning Fear" (pages 47-81).

For an accessible introduction to Jesuit spirituality, see Fr. James Martin's book THE JESUIT GUIDE TO (ALMOST) EVERYTHING: A SPIRITUALITY FOR REAL LIFE (2010).

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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