photo: An Stalpers
Author Biography
Earliest Childhood Choice to be in reality dealing with what is no matter the cost.
Parental Influences Oscar Williams and Gene Derwood were poets but not functioning parents.
Early Childhood Trauma I was sent to a brutal charity boarding school at age six never to return home to live.
Sexual-Relational Life basically with the opposite sex through two marriages and three long-term relationships as well as some significant other relating in various countries.
Children two amazing children who are achieving their own personalities.
Birth Date April 2, 1934, New York City. An Ares with Leo rising which means I have learned to lead well and temper my natural arrogance with love and patience.
Significant Teachers the historical Jesus for spiritual principles. C.G. Jung for depth psychology and working with dreams. Elisabeth Boyden Howes for religious passion and commitment based on the historical life and teachings of Jesus. Dorothea Romankiw for a compassionate heart and the drive to realize significant purpose in life.
Purpose in Life to live a life committed to consciousness and the search for meaning at the deepest of levels.
Shadow vulnerability masked by a strong power-drive and the strength to endure no matter what.
Work to teach, live and write about consciousness.
Greatest Outer Accomplishment the bringing in of the Dream Cards to the world.
Most Valuable Inner Accomplishment healing of my traumatized psyche through fifteen years of Jungian analysis, eight years of bodywork and ten years of on the mat Aikido.
Heart to practice acceptance and sharing openly with compassion and passion.
Death hopefully when I can no longer function consciously with purpose.
I couldn’t find an E-Mail address to send this to you.
This may or may not be of some value to you. It has been sitting in my files for almost 2 months waiting to be sent. I have never felt comfortable in doing something that I feel isn’t necessary and for some odd reason I feel it will be the response. I know longer want to be the judge of purposes that would determine in not sending it. So it comes to you with resistance and the whatever purpose is found.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Banker
This does not require a response. I am not familiar with the information; it is thoughts that flow and I do not always interpret the clarity in which it comes.
It begins with your child hood. Psychologist, etc. You already have a solid understanding. Just pretend everything you learned is wrong. By thinking this, your search for other answers could be open for thought. You were born within the last part of the depression. The parents of this generation were not the sensitive, nurturing type. Without an example. Parenting was not an issue, but respect and honor was. At the time; everybody had a role to follow. The man, brought home the bacon, the woman, stayed at home cooked the bacon, clean and raised the children to be serious, strong and a shining reflection on them as parent. It was never about children. The present is the first generation that focused on equality in “family” a wife and mother have a voice, the children have an opinion and are a reflection on themselves, the men are finding out they can’t pull the same things and get away with it, losing their power of unquestioned control. However having an example of parenting was not and still is not available, prior family only involved the children as extended help in the home, small family owned business’s, or farms. Children had no rights, or voice in their future. If a child had dreams of change, it was just that, a dream. Parents were to take a role with a no nonsense approach of what was expected. Children did not complain or outwardly think for themselves, a well behaved child knew the rules and wouldn’t dare break them. If abuse within the family unit existed, it was a private family matter, which was not any body else’s business. The mother was not honor for having the children; but expected to have them. She was never to question, argue or deny the man concerning anything he wanted. Divorce was unheard of; it was up to the woman to bring pride to the home. Abusive behavior from men was common. A man was allowed anything and everything including other women to child abuse. A definition of a woman was to have children, cook, clean and take care of her man in spite of the resentment. Children rarely experiencing a loving family of warmth, understanding, or love. Society never questioned the emotional survival of the family. The family protected by privacy, and the rules within that unit were socially supported, in spite of the damage that was created. This understanding was past on to the generations followed, Parents had the control, and the know how through fear in keeping a child in line. This was the family structure until around the 60s when children began thoughts of their own, parents were in a state of uproar. Society supported anything that would keep the children in control… Severe treatment from parents and authority was necessary, for the sake of having well behaved children and to keep them silenced at all cost.
This is an over-all understanding necessary to continue.
Your father was a young man with feelings, a poet. His family if he had any could not have been happy with his choice of careers. To imagine the abuse he dealt with, could be painful, unless he came from a family of oddity, creative, or out-cast. By enduring what was his passion, his only goal was somehow proving to his family, or who disapproved how wrong they were in judgment of him. Your mother never knew what is like to be a child. Mentally and physically abused from birth, was the only known parenting. From a young age, she was told how horrible and useless she was from a mother who was repeating the abuse she experienced in her childhood, which created the mental problems. The first person that came into her life that was nice to her was your father. When she got pregnant with you, it was a shock. Never wanting to have children, fearing her childhood and what if she was a mother like her mother, she feared for the life of any child she had, and felt the pain that child would have, from her as a mother. Your father went along with her wishers, understanding her fears. Your mother loved you to much, and she wanted to know you were safe, but away from her, orphanages or other options were not even considered. This is how in spite of the expense, you were placed in the military school. They both loved you enough to spare you, your mother only ended up in mental hospitals to prove why she could not be a mother to you. It was not a conscious thought, but she had to think and believe how undeserving she was to be a mother. Her fear were from her childhood and not knowing the difference of parenting, only knowing her experience… I have a feeling of great sadness from her. However, an assurance, that you were safe, and being able to know it, was her most important purpose of life. She is now telling me to let you know it is time you to heal, in releasing your judgment. Know there was no understanding to why she could not be a mother. She only knew fear. Believing your life would have much more to offer without witnessing her constant feelings of despair; these feelings were part of her, from childhood and a constant curse in her life. What she sacrificed for you was the only choice to save you from her.
There is more, but this is all that is necessary to write. I do not know why I even found your site from the beginning. I always find those situations that lead me to a situation, which I am told to follow through, without thought… intriguing. Your mother tells me how sorry she is, that you never knew how much she loved you. Everything has a purpose, but it can’t only be said and thought about, by all you think you know. It has to be experienced.
Jennifer,
I am deeply moved at my heart level in reading your “voices” one being for or of my mother.
As you know from what I have posted on the Oscar Williams site, there is much material. I continue to struggle and Ineke, our webmaster, wants equal coverage for my mother.
So your response here helps me understand my mother’s inner feelings and soul, helping me get clear inside myself as the “living grave” of Gene and Oscar.
I want to post your “voice” on that blog also with Gene Derwood material.
You give a testament that is true to the period and to what I remember from my many conversations with my mother when I would come home only for Christmas vacations. I give some of what I remember here.
-Gene said that at the family table in Peoria, Illinois for Sunday chicken dinner the father got the biggest, best piece of chicken, then next the mother and then down the line with all of the children to the youngest who got the chicken wing. As we know, there is not much meat left on the chicken wing!
-One time the boys set my mother on a bike which she did not know how to ride and pushed her on it down hill, which was terrifying to her. She fell off, hurting herself and never learned to ride a bike or do sports in her body.
-She said almost nothing about her parents or the deep traumas that must have happened to her. She fought with her sister Florence in letters which I have over their care of me, since I went to stay with aunt Florence during some summers in Michigan. I could not understand the anger and hate and hurt that they gave each other. Without psychology they could not see these as projections, or face their own hurts inside.
My mother got to stay in the library studying and not be in class, I guess because she felt bored or abused there.
Gene ran away to New York City when she was sixteen or eighteen and met my father at a very young age.
She had great perspective on life and loved it for its values, while also condemning the abuses done to humanity.
Those times of our talks have always been precious to me, though sometimes they would end up in anger and sulking between us, which I could never understand why this happened, since we loved to talk together.
I never had these close and exciting conversations together with my father, and never understood why.
With my work as a psychotherapist with many women and men I have learned a lot about how women are abused by men, and how bad it was in my mother’s time and before.
I have worked hard to correct abusive tendencies in myself, and done my best to listen to the women who choose to share parts of themselves with me, or give me feedback for myself, as you are doing here.
My most important teachers have been women. Why? They know so much more about life, it seems, than men do, Jung being one exception. Men are trained to be interested in machines and in becoming machine-like and not to feel or be relaxed and vulnerable.
I like men as well as women and have been able to develop close contacts with a few of them, as well as work with them as clients and students. Yet, what have men shared with me directly? Precious little. Whereas, women have shared their souls, their hearts, their ideas, everything with me, everything possible. I hope I have learned to respect this and give back to these rich sources of wisdom in life. I have learned that to make a connection with a significant woman is to receive wisdom from them. They take you seriously, and want you to take them seriously as well, but also to take yourself more seriously than you normally would with all your work in the world.
So, Jennifer Banker, if you have more to share with me and us, please let us know.
Strephon
Dear Strephon,
I have other information coming through, I will not have time to write it down. I have out-of-town company coming shortly and I’m preparing for their visit. They will be leaving late Monday afternoon. Is there a private connection I can E-Mail this information when I get it prepared to send you. This way you can make your own decision to post it or not.
Thank you, Jennifer Banker
Hello,
I am Stefania Marian, Strephon’s site administrator. He asked me to give you, Jennifer, an email address where you can send your information. Here they are: strephonsays@yahoo.com or greatdreams2000@gmail.com.
I hope this is helpful.
Stefania
stefaniafrumentiamarian@gmail.com
Hello Strephon,
I posted on another site but want to make sure you get this message.
I am impressed with you as a human being, your values, your accomplishments and your mission.
I am age 63, a retired successful businessman and a person who has read extensively in psychology, philosophy, English literature, history, on Eastern and Western religions These interests have been my avocation for decades. I became an atheist/agnostic during my teens and have searched diligently for a way to connect with reality in a meaningful way. My lifelong attempts at meditation, self-hypnosis, at following dozens of self-help books from Carnegie to Nightingale, from Napoleon Hill to de Chardin have resulted in increased understanding but not satisfactory results. Freud is my favorite depth psychologist (minus the psychosexual part, especially the Oedipus Complex). I found Jung interesting but too mystical and literary. Fromm I really liked from a social perspective. On the philosophic front I was spoiled by Plato and mesmerized by Spinoza.
I am a pragmatic, rational, logical indepth thinker with the heart of a poet. I get closer to what is of value by literature, music art and nature than by most other means.
This August, at the tender age of 63, I was blessed with a peak experience (Maslow) which I would describe as enlightenment to Kensho or maybe even brief Satori. It lasted for minutes up to half an hour, faded gradually and is more-or-less gone now. My memory of it and my written notes, three weeks after the event do sustain me. If I never have another PE I believe I will die a happy man. If I have future expieriences I will consider myself the luckiest man on earth.
I am sorry, and perplexed by spiritual teachers who appear never to have been enlightened themselves trying to lead others in this path. I have no problem with spiritual teachers who know they have not been enlightened but I do have great problems with those like Tolle who use massive amounts of words, defying all known logic and who explain their own so-called enlightenment solely in terms of the absence of other things. Of course the Buddha did the same thing by defining enlightenment as the absence of suffering, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt that numerous translations and millennia of misinterpretations may have distored his message.
I can be reached directly at Lmarshallclu@aol.com
Best regards,
Lee