I will listen for that voice of God and it will tell me of life, love, and unity. We live in a pluralistic culture. Every individual and every institution participated in the World in a different way. These differences of perceived experience, understood events and intended function must be taken into account in coping with the crises of our time. People who come seeking help make up only a tiny tip of the iceberg showing itself above the ocean of human suffering. Below the surface, out of sight—invisible to ordinary viewing—are the lonely, the lost, the unfeeling, the cut off, the crippled, the alienated. There is simply too much sand—sand and sand and sand, everywhere—stretching on and on and one. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 12

Time, tragedy, and turmoil has taken as sane has proved to be crazy; crazy in the sense that assumptions are unstable, reason is chaotic, emotions are eruptive, behavior is reactive, consequences are destructive. Our whole society is sick and desperately in need of healing. Only 15 to 20 percent of populations studied were relatively free of crippling psychological difficulties. Original sins abounds! Too much sand. Not enough mops. Even as needs are overwhelming, resources are inadequate. Conservative calculations suggests that the need for mental health helping outstrips formally measured demand by a factor of at least several hundred percent. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 12

We lack both maids and mops! The people who are really helped tend to be all of a pattern. The kind of people we respond to most often and most attentively: the young, the attractive, the verbal, the intelligent, the successful. These are the ones we help, yet these are precisely the ones who have enough resources to make it somehow whether we specifically respond or not. In contrast, those who are elderly, unattractive, tongue-tied, unable to score well on standardized school exams, skilled with hands and feet instead of books and mouths—these are the people who tend not to be the recipients of helping attentiveness. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 12

While I have been politically alert through the years, I have also tended to be more spectator than participant. The larger problems loomed so large and my own resources looked so limited. I am finding that in many cases effective help for the individual can come only when the system of which the individual is part of can be changed. Our understanding of abnormal psychology has undergone and is undergoing basic change. Problems have been increasingly defined in broader and broader ways: from the organic roots to intrapsychic dynamics to interpersonal interaction to systemic dysfunctioning, the scope of abnormality has grown.  #RyanPhillippe 4 of 12

Whereas people previously saw only the disturbed individual, as in the encounter of Jesus with the demon-possessed man in Gerasenes, now we are seeing the disturbing setting in which such an individual lies and moves as has his or her being, namely, the marriage, the family, the neighborhood, the school, the organization, the community, the nation, the culture, the whole World. With so much sand, no wonder there are too few mops and not enough maids. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 12

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail. Not dissimilarly, we in the helping professions have tended to view human crises primarily in individual terms. In some instances, we have simply put on blinders, shutting out the larger context of pain and the deep sources of disruption. Much of the failure to cope effectively with these social and cultural crises must be attributed more to the nature of our institutions and approaches than to the attitudes and activities of isolated individuals. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 12

We are being compelled to expand our concerns to reckoning with settings as well as selected individuals. We are being called upon to enlarge our goals to enhancing human potential as we as repairing human damage. In this time of transition, we need different perceptual tools, more varied problem-solving skills, and a more inclusive vision of values. Basically, if we are to respond to full human hurt, we must see differently and act differently. By looking at a concrete solution, I may be able to convey to you the substance of the re-viewing I am calling for. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 12

It is this situation in which sand and mops and maids became transformed for me from a confused and overwhelming muddy mess into a clearer and more manageable creative task. We block receiving what we want from others by our expectations or resentments of them. It is very effective to surrender our expectations of others before we enter into a particular situation with them. Emotions are really subtle attempts to force others and impose our will on them, which they unconsciously resist. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 12

The way to facilitate satisfaction in relationships is lovingly to picture the best possible outcome. Make sure it is mutually beneficial. Let of of all the negative feelings and merely hold the picture in mind. We can tell if we are really surrendered when we feel okay either way; it is okay with us if it happens, and it is okay with us if it does not. Therefore, to be surrendered does not mean to be passive. It is being active in a good way. There is no longer a pressure of time. Frustration comes from wanting a thing now instead of letting it happen naturally in its own time. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 12

Patience is an automatic side effect of letting go, and we know how easy it is to get along with patient people. Notice that patient people usually get what they want in the end. One resistance to letting fo is the illusion that, if we let go of our wantingness and our expectation, we will not get what we want. We fear that we will lose it if we do not keep pressuring for it. The mind has the idea that the way to get a thing is to want it. Actually, if we examine the issue, we will see that events are due to decisions, and choices are based on our intentions. What we get is the result of these choices, even though they are unconscious, rather than what we think we want.  #RyanPhillippe 10 of 12

When we surrender the pressure of wantingness, we are clear to make wiser choices and decisions. We think that our happiness depends on controlling events, and that facts are what upset us. Actually, it is our feelings and thoughts about these facts that are the real cause of our upset. Facts in and of themselves are neutral things. The power we give them is due to our attitude of acceptance or non-acceptance and our overall feeling state. If we get stuck in a feeling, it is because we still secretly believe that it will accomplish something for us. The implications for traumatized people were obvious. A patient with a horrendous history of childhood abuse, who was now struggling with bulimia—basically spent much of his life bingeing and purging. #RyanPhillippe 11 of 12

I gave the bulimic patient a prescription for fluoxetine on Monday, and by Thursday he said, “I have had a very different last few days: I ate when I was hungry, and the rest of the time I did my schoolwork. I am now able to create good memories. You have a drug that helps people to be in the present, instead of being locked in the past.” This was one of the most dramatic statements I had ever heard in my office. Maybe this reward is only the attention I paid to him, the opportunity to respond to questions about how he feels and thinks, but maybe a hug that soothed his childhood heartache was just a placebo as well. I doubt it. Prozac (fluoxetine) worked significantly well. However, on combat veterans, Prozac had no effect at all—their PTSD symptoms were unchanged. #RyanPhillipe 12 of 12