Apology for Panic Attacks

"Apologia" means a discourse about something, not necessarily an apology, but I shall use both meanings, for people have asked me what my post about "Panic Attacks in the Garden of Eden" means, and I just shrug and say, "I-uh-no", which is my dialect for "I dunno", which itself is slang for "I do not know".

It had to be written before I lost it, so there it is. Now I think I should go through and add some "stuff" and try to make it a bit clearer.
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2011/09/panic-attack-in-garden-of-eden.html

(1) "Panic attacks" reproduce the situation of Existential Threats - threats to one's existence: we go into red alert mode, and everything in consciousness is dumped out of our minds, and the focused sense of Self is put away into storage for a while until things cool down; i.e., when someone has a gun to your head and demands your money, you are not aware of your social security number.... probably for a good while of time.

(2) The loss of self experienced in those situtations is very much similar to the loss of self described by mystics and contemplatives when they describe their mystic union with the Holy: a banishing of the individual and merging into something arcane and holy.

(3) Since Adam and Eve were with God in the Garden, the only way God could preserve their sense of self as individuals was to set limits and boundaries for them, causing them to focus upon those limitations and see themselves as entities which are not infinite.

(4) The Original Sin was to know as God knows, to know all things. This experience was equivalent to an existential threat, or a panic attack: a union of the individual with the All, a dropping away of the limits of the self.
If someone is not prepared for that experience, it can be devastating and feel like a violation of self.

(5) The aftermath of the Existential Threat of Knowing All Things (like God) was the Memory of the threat in simulation as a panic attack. Since the individuals, Adam and Eve, were not prepared to see God as God... and we know they were not, because God Himself had seen it necessary to set limits and boundaries upon their lives; they were intelligent beings with a history: a beginning and a future... we know that the Memory would be a Panic Attack, and not something benign like a Mystical Experience.

(6) The Memory - the panic attacks - occur as the images of being driven forth from the Garden, by laboring for one's food, by living East of Eden, by bearing children in pain, etc.

(7) Times of stress lead to existential threats.

(8) Hence, times of stress lead to threats of loss of self and panic attacks later on.

(9) After Nickel Mines (October 2, 2006), the Amish sought to deal with an Existential Threat with a method that seemed contrary to human nature: to forgive. It was difficult, especially for those most intimately affected, but it was a radical attempt to re-structure life going forward, and to limit the bad effects of Memory of the threat.

(10) We seek to deal with present threats and future reminiscences of threats in the best possible way. Compare our response to 9/11 with the Amish response to 10/2.

(11) It seems to me that we seek to "save" the future from the disease of the Existential Threats we have gone through, and to make our lives better. It seems to me that our country as a group appears to think that God will always somehow save us in the last reel of the film.
The Amish, on the other hand, know that God has given them intelligence and free will and expects them to handle things themselves in the best way possible, and not to muck things up for ten years or twenty years of "lost decades" and wait for the heavenly cavalry to come riding to the rescue!

I quote President George W. Bush on this expectation:

 ... Bush and his followers answered to a higher power. “We are not this story’s author, who fills time and eternity with his purpose,” Bush said in his first inaugural address, referring to God. “This story goes on. And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.”

http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/78219/bad-faith/

From my perspective, I consistently say that the Story goes on, and we ourselves are the authors, using the freedom and intelligence God gave us. We are authors of the only story that matters: our own Histories!
God gives us Creation in which to write.
God did not make us mere characters in a Divine Comedy.
There is a basic religious distinction in our society between people who hate the so-called welfare state and yet insist that God will "bail them out" - by The Rapture or by American Exceptionalism or some other bail-out process - when the going gets tough...
and those who believe that State's duty is to protect it weakest citizens and yet who believe that we ourselves determine the future freely by God's will. It is our present responsibility and can not be "kicked down the road" by believing that the Holy will save us from our folly.
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ps
There should be more on this in connection with the Death Penalty, but that will be later.
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