We started with obeisances to the theories of some favorite shame gurus:

• St. Paul: The readings from I Corinthians gave us a good laugh and made the point that notions of what is shameful shift with time and place.
• Freud (via Fenechel): Psychoanalysts have strong evidence that shame is based in "urethral eroticism" — i. e., control issues around the flow of urine. The male "penetrative" and female "letting go" drives become sources of pleasure in the child, but can get tricky when contrasexual drives arise. The underlying bisexual feelings can become quite threatening particularly in boys who extrapolate castration from a desire to let go. Bed wetting is associated with this and the invariable punishment is "pillorization" (Fenechel's word) or public shaming — so reminiscent of queer-bashing later. The member who brought us this theory kindly provided us the scientific translation: male female drives are an indication of completeness. "Let the 'male and female' of God's creating appear," (see Science and Health, p. 249: 7). Note how Mrs. Eddy then proceeds to describe each energy in the following two sentences, and shows them to be one in the marginal note "Renewed Selfhood".
• John Bradshaw relates shame to the dysfunctional family system. It grows out of how the person as a kid was treated. It's an overwhelming sense of worthlessness, far more debilitating than guilt, which is event-oriented. Indeed, those afflicted with shame may use guilt as a defense against feeling shame. They'll seek ways to evoke guilt in order not to be sucked down into their shame.

It seemed a good idea at this point to get a Christian Science view of shame. A couple of members felt the Adam and Eve story depicts it perfectly. This fable operates on two levels — first there is the whole set-up of a material Jehovah and his mortal offspring. There is no chance of a happy outcome here. That could be seen as the underlying problem of shame and its immense influence, albeit quite unconscious. The second level is the guilt level, where our dualistic deity dictates rules to the mortals, they break them and the whole issue quickly becomes their guilt and punishment. The shame background is whisked out of sight and is addressed again only intermittently until the New Jerusalem descends and wipes it out.

A member brought up a testimony he had heard on Wednesday in which the testifier was healed after reading an article in a June 1950 issue of The Christian Science Sentinel which asked the question, "Who told thee that thou wast naked?" (Genesis 3: 11). She used this on a disease diagnosed by a doctor and could see it was not God's verdict. Our member felt we could question shame's deleterious effects by asking, "Who says? God?"

Now we felt ready to go around the room and see how members who wanted to share saw shame's impact on their lives:

• One member said her feelings of shame and worthlessness evolved from her mother's attitude to her which she summarized with the expression, "Ech!" She got in the habit of feeling something was terribly wrong with her and brings this into all adult relationships.
• Another spoke of fractured relationships with parents and other adults, incorporating neglect, incest, extreme criticism, alcoholism and spells in mental institutions for one parent. He often feels the downward pull of shame particularly around issues of how to relate to people.
• Another talked about how his family shamed him constantly about his individuality which in time came to include homosexuality. He felt under attack all the time. His coping mechanism was to fight back and this has left him with little peace and relaxation based on any assumption that people will accept him as he is.
• Another described a recurrent pattern in his life of getting something going in say a business or romance area only to see it fall apart soon thereafter. He wondered whether this was somehow related to shame. We didn't have time to explore this very far but there were some childhood issues hinting at things set up then that could bring this kind of result today. He is working on his problem in another format which he described to us and we'll look at it below.

One member then read some statements from Mark Thompson's book Gay Body describing specifically Gay shame. Here's a small example from page 223: "My shame, I've discovered, is heaped in a room near the bottom of my soul. It's where every deceit, secret, and denial of my life ended up and is stored. It's an ugly, embarrassed, and wounded place... the stench is overwhelming... All gay men, whether they know it or not, are being called to examine that wounded inner-place. The cost to our well-being is simply too high if we do not."

Some examples of Gay-based shame came up.

• The new English movie, "Get Real" about Gay teenagers trying to forge intimacy in a constantly homophobic setting was recommended. The ability of one character to deal with shame was very moving.
• The Gay connection in the Littleton and other high school shootings is now coming to light. Apparently the shooters were almost always called fag or queer whether they were Gay or not. These taunts are the common currency for disrespect. The underlying shame is horrendous.
• We discussed Abraham Lincoln's homosexuality and the fact that it took only 130 years to become part of his history. Maybe a bit of shame there? Let's watch the scholars go at it on this one. We also noted the tendency of Gay people — ourselves included — to latch on to famous people's homosexuality to shore up our own low self-esteem. This can be only a quick fix and no substitute for the hard work — but is it really all that hard? — of reflecting the Light in our own lives.
• A non-attending member called in an observation that all the hiding, costuming, clone-like behavior in our community bespeak huge shame about being just who we individually are. In this vein another noted that over-achievement is a defense against feelings of worthlessness. The greater the success, the worse the problem since the sufferer is more and more convinced that his worth depends on his achievements and the bleeding wound beneath is unaddressed.

Once we had sunk deeply into the problem of shame some healing ideas emerged:

• Shame could be used as a "centering technique". Better to let oneself down into that than to take desperate flight in some mania. "When thou art bidden, go and sit in the lowest room; that when he who bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher," (Luke 14: 10).
• One could practice egoism as opposed to egotism. In Unity of Good, page 27, Mrs. Eddy describes the difference as used in Science. Included is this statement: "...evil is egotistic, — boastful, but fleeting like a shadow at daybreak; while God is egoistic, knowing only His own all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power."
• One member is putting into practice the teachings of Mark Thurston's book Discover Your Soul's Purpose. The student works to come up with a so-called "chief feature", embodying his major life problem. Our member feels he has a good handle on this now — his recurrent fizzling of business and romantic prospects, discussed above — and wants now to carry the problem to a scientific conclusion. It's clear that his "chief feature" is a mortal version of his Christ-identity .

Several healings were reported:

• One member found her therapist, with whom she was trying to forge a mother-like relationship, making "helpful" remarks that merely indicated she wasn't paying attention to the underlying thrust of the therapy. Our member was hurt but saw clearly that the lapse was the therapist's fault, not hers — as she always felt before in such cases. She "got it at a gut level, not just in her head." This facilitated turning to Truth and feeling the Motherhood of God right at hand.
• Another member became quite irritated when a non-Gay person told him, "I have nothing against Gay people, but..." There followed a string of less than lovely stereotypes. This member attended the Romancing the Shadow workshop two weeks ago — as described in our two previous meeting summaries. He quickly worked to evolve an inner figure embracing his own homophobia as well as a load of it from world thought. It virtually shouted its own name: "The Homophobe". Our member asked The Homophobe, "What do you want?" " I want you to be straight." "Why?" "Because it's so painful to be gay." "Yes, but that's what I am, painful or not." "I know..." Our member then broke into deep sobbing. Eventually it dried up and he found himself able more fully to accept his homosexuality as a natural part of God's love expressed in and as him.
• A member who fractured a bone in his leg two weeks ago is now getting around on a cane. He has been treating himself with large doses of gratitude to crowd out any sickly thoughts and fears and fantasies (see Miscellany 210: 1-17).

We'll look at True Happiness next week.