Ultimately, we are not dependent on anything external to us for feeling good and for our peace of mind and sense of well-being. Only we, and not the environment, have the final power and freedom to determine whether we will feel good or bad.
The realization that we can feel good in spite of our surroundings, no matter how horrible our circumstances, is dramatically illustrated by Nazi concentration camp survivor, Dr. Frankl and Vietnam prisoner of war survivor, Captain Coffee. Even though these two men had contrasting prison experiences, the results were similar. Frankl reported living in overcrowded conditions where prisoners were herded like cattle to their work sites. In contrast to Frankl, Coffee described his situation as being in solitary confinement with no contact with other prisoners and interrupted by random interrogations by the captors. The only communication between prisoners came after they eventually worked out a code by tapping on the walls of their cells.
Both of these men showed us how it is up to us and not the environment to determine what our mental focus will be and how we are going to feel. They also revealed to us how it is up to us to find peace and well-being within ourselves instead of in the external world. Their experience is truly a testimony to the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. Their experiences provide a glimpse of the power that resides in our heart. Only by discovering the power and freedom to choose their focus, were these prisoners of war able to transcend the horror around them and successfully survive their bleak circumstances. In order to survive, they were forced to uncover the treasure of love within their hearts and they realized that this is what makes life worth living.
They both discovered that you can strip a person of everything except the most fundamental of the human freedoms. In his beautiful book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl defined the final freedom as “the freedom to choose your attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
As evidence for this, Dr. Frankl related the example of men who did not get caught up in the biological struggle for survival, but who accessed the love within them. He had this to say:
"Those men… who, even though starving like the rest of us, took it upon themselves to go from hut to hut comforting others and giving away their last piece of bread."
From this, Frankl concluded that humankind can retain some “vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.” Frankl’s observation demonstrates the truth that who and what we are most essentially is love. It attests to the tremendous power of our capacity to love and care. Focusing on what they loved is what enabled them to survive in such hostile, deprived and bleak environments. I'll say more about how holding a love focus instead of a fear focus saved them in the next posting.
• Today, remember that, like these two men, you have the freedom to think about whatever you choose to focus on, instead of letting the environment dictate the focus. In this way, both men chose to heroically grapple with their extremely stressful circumstances. They maintained the freedom to direct their thoughts to whatever they wanted to think about, instead of remaining helpless victims. This way, they transcended the horrible conditions they were forced to live under in their powerless position as prisoners. [Portions of the above were taken from 8 Steps to Love. See www.drsrj.com].
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