I want to write something, keeping in mind (and atoning for?) my last, impenetrable blog, about thought experiments, the willingness to conduct them, and the necessity of participating in them. Thought experiments encourage us to imagine in completely new, previously unrecognized ways. By imagining I don’t mean fantasizing or daydreaming, but rather tapping into the autonomy of images, the Mundus Imaginalis, the imagination of the world. This is simply one more way of describing the independent nature of Psyche, a nature not subject to individual control or will. The images appear to spontaneously present themselves to us, and this is one aspect of what Jung called an archetype.
To truly imagine is to invent oneself, and because I do believe we are all unique, imagining makes one an inventor by pointing to a something, or the place within one where the something may be apprehended, which is revealed for the first time in history! Invention means that something has been found for the first time, and though the invented thing or idea may be reproduced ad infinitum, there will never again be a first time. Our usage of the word, invent, over the centuries has led to its diminution, its evisceration, so that not very long ago–indeed, when I was yet in elementary school–we were able to say, with no sense of irony, that Columbus invented the Americas, or that Franklin invented electricity. Invention, in this sense, amounts to discovering something that has already existed, but not the creation or discovery of the existence of the territory named America, or the energetic force of electromagnetism.
Just so, we often speak of inventing or re-inventing one’s self, as if the mere thought of it creates the happening, and we needn’t do anything more. We commonly link the invention of a self to mechanisms of production so that if I do manage to successfully re-invent myself, I will become more productive in terms of money, time management, or interpersonal effectiveness. This kind of reinvention is only useful to one as long as one insists on no other reality than the physical, with no other goal than material success. But I am reminded of the alchemical dictum, As above so below. As within, so without. What this means is that the same influences that order the heavens, also order our individual lives, and what we experience inside ourselves, we will experience in the world. Again, very close to Jung’s idea of projection–whatever we cannot connect to within ourselves (what we are unconscious of) we project into the world and encounter it “out there.” Alternatively, as an old martial arts master put it to me one day, “what you give your attention to is what you become.” This is also an idea currently in play on the cutting edge of neuroscience: belief literally creates matter. (This also happens to be a part of the topic Dr. George Breed and I will be addressing in our April seminar: Spirit Matters.)
Now I arrive at the principle thought experiment I wanted to suggest. Remember the notion that what we remain unconscious of in ourselves, we project into the world and encounter it there? I am suggesting that whatever we encounter in our lives that seems to be external to us, from the incomprehensibly huge, like war, to the absurdly small, like frustrating traffic, be located within one’s individual psychology. In other words, instead of getting frustrated with the traffic, ask the question, “What is snarled within me?” Instead of railing against the panhandler that approaches you, ask yourself, “What is impoverished within me?” I’m not suggesting that one ignore the external world, or that the external world has no value. But ignoring or devaluing the external world is generally not an issue that most of us struggle with. We do, however, often ignore the internal world, and by internalizing external events and locating their imaginal or psychic counterparts within ourselves we can begin to approach wholeness, or as Jung termed it, individuation. We undertake, in this fashion, to live symbolically, and a life lived symbolically is more poetic, more meaningful, more interesting, and certainly more enjoyable. The poet, John Keats, said, “I am certain of only two things: the holiness of the heart’s affections and the power of imagination.” A powerful statement, and, as I imagine it, only too true.
Imagine That…
Thoughts, perhaps too confusing, about confusion
My mentor, David Miller, wrote a paper, At the Edges of the Round Table, in which he shares an anecdote about his first visit to the Eranos conferences in Switzerland. In the story, he turns to his neighbor after the end of a lecture and asks if there would be a Q&A afterwards. She responds:
“You see…the presenters are invited to speak at the very edge of their disciplines. If they manage this edge, they are in no better position than the audience to answer questions. It would be premature. On the other hand,” she concluded decisively, “if they do not manage to speak at the edge, then they are not worth questioning in the first place!”
But doesn’t this sound more like a confusing lack of clarity or understanding? After all, any kind of knowledge inherently purports to know something, doesn’t it? Proficiency should be able to answer questions, should be accountable, and should offer direction. Expertise should know.
Is it fair to say that nearly the entire theo-philosophical tradition of the West is based on what one may know? Perhaps that may be overstating the case, but certainly traditional theology suggests we can know the mind of God; conventional science suggests that we can unmistakably know the natural world. Is it fair to say that the positivistic orientation of the Western World finds confusion to be an undesirable state of affairs, and a situation to be avoided? I think it is. But it is precisely there, within the experience of confusion and chaos seething beneath the surface of accepted rational, linear thought, that one encounters the essential opportunity that confusion offers us: when one is confused one sees things that would be otherwise overlooked or missed when one thinks one understands a given situation.
Jacques Derrida suggests that confusion and perplexity are hidden, “a priori” elements of any text, roiling around barely contained, threatening the reader under the apparently straightforward and logically unified text: “What comes to pass in a sacred text is the event of a pas de sens, a step of meaning/no meaning […] Pas de sens: this does not signify poverty of meaning but no meaning that would be itself, meaning beyond any ‘literality.’ And right there is the sacred ” (italics are mine). When Derrida suggests that meaning beyond any literality is made, meaning itself becomes a superfluity–meaning may be found everywhere, exactly the fate of language in the Babel myth wherein one tongue becomes many and is, ever after, irreducible and incomprehensible. There can be found no literal meaning, no one-thing or set-of-things that through their knowing may impart the experience of meaning, but rather an exponentially proliferating set of non-literal meanings arise, meanings which may be sensed or intuited, but probably not articulated.
One may, I hope, begin to catch the faint scent of paradox in the air around this argument and it sets up a situation that is as if true homelessness and confusion will only be inflicted on those who do not desire it, as if learning to love one’s perplexity is the only way ever to be free of it. Homelessness creates a multiplicity of homes–if one is not wedded to a particular image of home, confusion creates order (because without confusion order is meaningless), and in the many there is much more of a capacity for relationship than exists in the One. The presence of apparent paradox is an important factor to keep in mind, for in the acceptance of it, one may discover an enhanced consciousness that provides one with some understanding of the mystery of life, the mystery we all would like to solve, the end of our confusion. In the writing of Frederich Nietzsche, truth is illusory, perhaps even impossible because, he writes, life itself has a primary aim of creating illusions in order to “organize a world for ourselves in which our existence is made possible” . Paradoxically, he also insists that it is necessary to pursue the idea of truth, and that such a pursuit isn’t futile. In fact, such activity leads one to authoritative grounding: “Each perspective exposes some limitations of others ,” and are therefore less influenced by any single perspective. Remember, Nietzsche believes that perspectives are illusory–that is to say, false–representing only the “merely apparent” character of our perspectives, so that if one can make one’s beliefs more independent from one’s perspectives, the resultant beliefs will be truer or “less apparent .”
Nietzsche urges us to accept, even to love, every aspect of our lives: the whole thing, every experience, every phenomenon, however good, bad, or confusing. One’s ability to love one’s own fate is what Nietzsche calls the “holy yes.” Such an affirmation of one’s life inspires a reconceptualization of one’s history and leads to the development of a substantially different narrative of events, which is told to the self and ultimately valorizes the past. Catastrophic, painful, frightening, and traumatic aspects of one’s past may be redeemed by being re-told and re-experienced within a complete narrative one can embrace and value. If one can accept, even love, the whole story, then the “meaning” of its individual parts are transformed as well.
Such redemption requires honest self-reflection; one cannot simply choose to believe a convenient lie or substitute a comforting fantasy for an authentic “saving illusion”. Living in an unactionable fantasy is a psychologically dangerous situation in which only pretense and pretending dominate the activity of psyche and fails to honestly redeem one’s actions or life. Effective redemption requires imagining at the edges of oneself and the courage to see oneself honestly, and still more courage to invoke the “holy yes.” If we can follow this remedy, we then become the “poets of our life,” and if the art is successful, we don’t need to pretend our lives are beautiful, the art has already made them so .
This is the beauty of Nietzsche’s directive: saying yes to every aspect of one’s life allows the multiplicity (aka: our thematic of possibilities and confusion) to interact with itself, thus creating a state of chaos, and out of that chaos, cosmos (literally meaning “good order”) is born. Healing, the anodyne to our confusion, then emerges organically without artifice or force. The healing energy does not arise from outside oneself; rather, a continual healing unwinds before us as trajectory; it is a movement, which is lived into and claimed as one’s right, as something one has, in some manner, willed. Healing in this way necessarily changes one’s self talk and the way one regards oneself without the risk of narcissistic inflation, and it is precisely this change in self-perception that invites the redemptive moment and allows one to act in harmony with “the better angels of our nature,” finding the clarity we need while in the midst of bewildering possibilities.
The movement of the Soul
Hello everyone:
Time seems to go faster and faster, and the little eruptions of chaos that result serve to remind us how important it is to center ourselves in the moment and love each other. We at Mountain Waves are blessed with another year of health, challenges, and opportunities for growth and feel so fortunate for that.
Indulge me in an innocuous family anecdote that betrays its mundane appearance and really does convey the essential, elemental experiences of life, the growth of consciousness, and the soul’s movement:
There are the new additions to our family in terms of pets. It all began at last year’s county fair when Lili won a small feeder fish at a sideshow game. On the way home we stopped at Pet Land to get a fish bowl, a relatively easy (we thought) solution to the not-entirely-welcomed-by-mom-and-dad fish. The pet store manager thought we needed another fish in the bowl and gave us a gold fish to keep the carnie fish company. Eventually the two fish started to grow on us and we thought Shang and Mulan needed better accommodations and got a nice 8-gallon biocube for them. A month or so later at a local art festival, Lili wins an African Dwarf Frog in an eerily similar fashion. Of course we couldn’t let that lone frog be a singleton either, so we purchased another before the afternoon was out, and joyfully placed the frogs, who are completely aquatic creatures that surface occasionally for a breath of fresh air, in the tank with the fish. Roxanne and I hadn’t anticipated the steep learning curve regarding caring for these creatures, nor the apparent suicidal and ranacidal (literally means murderous frogs) tendencies of these creatures. One day, upon peering into the tank, Shang is nowhere to be seen. Soon, we find one of the frogs has gone missing as well. After several days we find, each in its turn, the frog and fish in the filtering mechanism. The fish had apparently jumped into it and was surviving only by the merest flow of water washing over it, while the frog must have been sucked through the intake. Believing that Shang had been rehabilitated by the nasty reality of his near death experience and loving him even more for his will to survive, he was returned to the tank and to Mulan while we put the frogs in the original bowl we bought for Shang. Not long after this, we found one of the frogs had gone to the great lily pad in the sky, and upon closer inspection it seemed that the other frog had hemoglobin on its hands–a dwarf-frog sized Macbeth, no doubt compulsively scrubbing its webbed hands and muttering to itself, “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly…” We thus discovered how territorial these tiny creatures were and realized we needed a bigger tank for the frogs. One of Lili’s grandma’s came to our rescue and gave a 10-gallon tank into which we installed the remaining frog, plus one new frog, and four new fish. Eventually, due in part to our ichthyologic inexperience, Shang and Mulan floated off this mortal coil and we bid a surprisingly sorrowful farewell to them. We now have another five fish in their tank, and four more in the frog’s tank; we are swimming in fish, all healthy, and to our surprise we love it. These creatures are wildly entertaining and surprisingly personable…who knew? But these incidents have indeed captured the nature of this past year: simple decisions and insignificant events seem to unravel into terribly complex and sometimes painful situations; joy becomes sorrow and sorrow leavens and becomes acceptance, finally, acceptance drifts into contentment, and all the while, a deeper, more soulful, precious relationship to life and to each other is evolving for all of us.
Life’s little, constant challenges are gifts that so often turn out to bestow upon us riches beyond our imaginings particularly because of the leave-takings they initiate. This leave-taking is the soul’s movement. The soul is always, and in all ways, drawing oneself away from comfort, clement familiarity, safety, and plunging one into situations filled with risk, psychic danger, and utter confusion. The leave taking movement of the soul defines life and living, in fact, leaving the safety and comfort of the womb is the first activity of a life in the world, the first experience any of us has of our elemental nature, the first experience of our humanness. One’s birth is simply the first egress of a lifetime littered with leavings.
I will end this longish post with the last lines of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Eighth Duino elegy:
Who has turned us around like this, so that
whatever we do, we find ourselves in the attitude
of someone going away? Just as that person
on the last hill, which shows him his whole valley
one last time, turns, stops, lingers–
so we live, forever taking our leave.
Hello
Greetings to you, friends of Mountain Waves. This is my first attempt at blogging, and at this point, I’m not sure how often I’ll post here, but I’m hoping to post something at least once every week or two. As Paul mentioned in his post, we believe one of our most important missions at Mountain Waves is to create a community, a healing community, based upon the idea that when individuals join together with common beliefs and common desires, a consensus of consciousness is created that, in turn, elevates the consciousness of all the community members. In future blogs I would like to explore a range of topics including, but certainly not limited to, psychology, Freud and C. G. Jung, mythology, poetry, and culture. Any topic in which consciousness is of concern.
But right now, in the limited space that I have, I want to address the upcoming seminar that Dr. George Breed and I are offering on March 14th, at 7:00 pm. As many of you know, George and I have been offering these “explorations” each month of the year. These seminars are not designed to answer questions or tell you how to live; in fact, we often raise even more questions than those with which we started. These are lively, unprogrammed, and for the most part, spontaneous treatments of various subjects that interest us, such as the embodiment of spirit (our first dialogue), our examination, prior to Valentine’s Day, of love, and the upcoming exploration we’ve called, Noir Crime Novels and the Metaphysics of Being: You and Your Shadow. Whenever George and I get together, the conversation and speculation we engage, the exchange of ideas and the creativity that is triggered in each of us, provides me with such a feeling of fun that I can’t fully describe it. We improvise, we geek out, we transgress intellectual and spiritual boundaries, just like, we realized, the protagonists in Noir Crime novels. So we thought it would be fun to explore how these characters are marvelous models of spiritual seekers and existential adventurers who are, by the very nature of their pursuits, no longer swimming in the collective cultural stream. They are alone and often overwhelmed–the very experience of anyone who tackles the mysteries of spiritual growth and living in general. George calls these characters “noiriors,” individuals who demonstrate mastery in darkness. We are all potential noiriors; we have it in us to dig into the mysteries of life and confront the ontic questions that vex us all at one time or another as we search for Truth. It cannot be an accident that Dashiell Hammett’s most famous detective is named Sam Spade, a suitable moniker for one digging into and turning over mysteries, or that Raymond Chandler called his protagonist Phillip Marlowe, calling to mind Shakespeare’s only real, contemporary, rival as a playwright and poet, Christopher Marlowe, who was also a spy for the Crown and a man intimately familiar with the darkness of both the world and the human soul.
So that’s where we begin. Where we end is up to you. Please come and join us for what is sure to be an enjoyable, if hard-boiled, evening of discussion.
See you soon,
Brad Olson
