What patriarchy means to me from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
Tuesday 31 December 2013
Let us call evil "fate"
Thing about Rhodes is at least he was making statements referring to the outside world and to reality. Nowadays, there is no strategising, just expendiency when things start to fall into chaos. Strategising is politically incorrect, because then it immediately becomes apparent that power relations are involved. Even now, when things fall into apparent madness, power relations are always still involved, but we are not to talk of them. The chaos, madness or revolution is supposed to seem all incidental. Even the violent oppression by the authorities is incidental and "can't be helped". In the end, those who can dominate others continue to do so and the poor continue to be crushed. But at least there are no longer any obvious strategies for domination. Rather than being in the hands of humans, everything now is in God's hands. Let us not refer to human agency at all, as it signifies evil. But let evil continue, in whatever way it does, and let us call that "fate".
Monday 30 December 2013
This closely reflects my ongoing initiatory experiences
The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Known to Humanity | Unsettling America
In addition to the weak and defenseless, vampires seek out people who are on the verge of a quantum, evolutionary leap in consciousness, but have not yet fully integrated their realizations and come out the other side. These individuals are in an energetically sensitive and “charged” condition, and their openness and vulnerability invites the vampiric entities to help themselves and gorge on the light of their expanding awareness. The strategy of these predators is to distract us so as to keep our attention directed outwards, thereby stopping us from finding the light within ourselves, which would “kill” the vampires. If we hold up a mirror and reflect back the insanity being exhibited by those stricken by the wetiko psychosis, we run the very real risk of being accused of being the ones who are crazy. If we do manage to connect with the light within ourselves and try to share it with others, these nonlocal vampiric entities (what I have in previous articles called “nonlocal demons,” or NLD for short), not bound by the third-dimensional laws of space and time, will try, via their “connections” to the nonlocal field, to stop us by influencing other people to turn against us. This process can destroy us, or, if we have the meta-awareness to see what is happening and are able to skillfully navigate our way through, can serve to further strengthen our intention, deepen our connection with the light of lucidity, hone our skill of creatively transmitting our realizations, and cultivate more open-hearted compassion. It is as if these psychic, nonlocal vampires are guardians of the threshold of evolution.
In addition to the weak and defenseless, vampires seek out people who are on the verge of a quantum, evolutionary leap in consciousness, but have not yet fully integrated their realizations and come out the other side. These individuals are in an energetically sensitive and “charged” condition, and their openness and vulnerability invites the vampiric entities to help themselves and gorge on the light of their expanding awareness. The strategy of these predators is to distract us so as to keep our attention directed outwards, thereby stopping us from finding the light within ourselves, which would “kill” the vampires. If we hold up a mirror and reflect back the insanity being exhibited by those stricken by the wetiko psychosis, we run the very real risk of being accused of being the ones who are crazy. If we do manage to connect with the light within ourselves and try to share it with others, these nonlocal vampiric entities (what I have in previous articles called “nonlocal demons,” or NLD for short), not bound by the third-dimensional laws of space and time, will try, via their “connections” to the nonlocal field, to stop us by influencing other people to turn against us. This process can destroy us, or, if we have the meta-awareness to see what is happening and are able to skillfully navigate our way through, can serve to further strengthen our intention, deepen our connection with the light of lucidity, hone our skill of creatively transmitting our realizations, and cultivate more open-hearted compassion. It is as if these psychic, nonlocal vampires are guardians of the threshold of evolution.
don Juan and the hidden virus
The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Known to Humanity | Unsettling America
Speaking in his own language about the predation of the wetiko virus, the spiritual teacher Don Juan, of the Carlos Castaneda books, mentions that the ancient shamans called this “the topic of topics.”[xi] Don Juan explains, “We have a companion for life…We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The predator is our lord and master.”[xii] This sounds just like the state of affairs being pointed at in the Bible when, for example, The Gospel of John refers to the devil as “the ruler of this world” (14:30; 16:11), and Paul speaks of Satan as “the god of this world” (Cor. 4:4). The Gnostic Gospel of Phillip, talking about the root of evil that lies within all of us, makes the similar point that unless this evil is recognized, “It masters us. We are its slaves. It takes us captive.” (II, 3, 83.5-30) Speaking about the predator, Don Juan continues, “It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don’t do so.”[xiii] It is striking how Don Juan’s description of the effects of these predators is being enacted in our increasingly militarized society, as our freedoms and liberties get taken away step by step. It is as if an inner, invisible state of affairs existing as a yet unrealized archetypal pattern deep within the soul of humanity is revealing itself by materializing in, as, and through the outside world.
To quote Don Juan, “Indeed we are held prisoner! This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico.”[xiv] Don Juan is referring to an “energetic fact” that I imagine most of us can relate to; i.e., there is “something” within us that stops us from expressing our true creative genius and attaining our full potential. These predators are “time-bandits,” consuming the precious hours of our lives, as if we are wage-slaves on a prison-planet “doing time.” Deepening his description of these predators, Don Juan elaborates, “They took over because we are food for them…we are their sustenance. Just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, gallineros, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros.”[xv] The wetiko virus particularly flourishes in overpopulated cities, where people are “coop-ed up.” When we buy into group-think and are enlisted as a member of the herd, we become like sheep that are being led over the edge of a cliff, or cattle that are being raised to be slaughtered.
Don Juan continues, “The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind.”[xvi] It is as if these predators are in competition with us for a “share” of our own mind. The predator shape-shifts and assumes our form, and if we are unaware of its masquerade, we will identify with its invasive thought-forms as if they are our own, and act them out. We will mistakenly believe that we are acting on our own impulses, with our best interests in mind. This predator, Don Juan continues, “fears that any moment its maneuver is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied.”[xvii] The wetiko predator has an inner necessity, a brute compulsion born out of terror, as it continually has to feed itself so as to postpone its ever-approaching death. Don Juan continues, “Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them [the predators].”[xviii] Cloaking itself in our form, this predator gets under our skin and “puts us on” as a disguise, fooling us to “buy” into its false version of who we are. (This is why the shortened name of Malignant Egophrenia is “ME disease,” referring to a distortion of our identity, i.e., our sense of “me”-ness). Instead of being in our power and serving ourselves, we “unwittingly” (which means to be “out of our wits,” i.e., not in our “right” mind) become the servant of the predator. Instead of being a sovereign being who is creating with our own thoughts, we will then be created by them, as the predator literally thinks in our place. It is as if the predator is sitting in our seat.
Speaking of the predator’s scheme, Don Juan says, “it proposes something, it agrees with its own proposition, and it makes you believe that you’ve done something of worth.”[xix] It is as if there is an alien “other,” an extraterrestrial, metaphysical entity which is subliminally intruding its mind into ours in such a way that we identify with its point of view and dis-connect from our own. Don Juan refers to this situation as a “foreign installation,” as if some alien race has set up a space station inside of our minds. This is exactly what the Gnostics — the ones who “know” — are pointing at when they talk about alien predators called “Archons” who infiltrate and subvert the workings of our mind.[xx] To the extent that we are not conscious of this alien take over of our psyche, we become drafted into the predator’s sinister agenda, unwittingly becoming its slaves. This state of inner, psychological warfare is mirrored by the sinister psy-ops (psychological operations) being instituted by the powers-that-be in the outside world. The disease feeds on our unawareness of it.
On religion and new atheism
The dichotomy between cold rationality and warm religion is Anglo-Saxon. Americans seem to carry this notion to extremes with their ideology about gender, where men are viewed as one thing, women another. It is possible to be warm, to have hope in all sorts of things, including nonrational things and to be atheistic. Rationality as embraced by new atheism is a fetish that merely inherits the religious paradigm of "truth at any cost" -- as Nietzsche pointed out. You have to be pretty religious -- an extreme form of Christian -- to take things to this degree. There's no need to fall on either side of the dichotomy and a more extreme form of atheism does not. Once you stop worshiping the notion of truth for its own sake, you can loosen up and just enjoy the granular experience of life. Or why not invent a goblin or an elf to help you out, rather than a God?
Sunday 29 December 2013
Saturday 28 December 2013
Repost
http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/03/want-to-feel-younger-more-open-magic-mushrooms-trigger-lasting-personality-change/
Above is an article depicting much of what I have also found as a result of my intellectual research on the intersection between literature and shamanism. This kind of impersonal ego, or indeed "egoless" experience (as per the article), was a fundamental part of my experience until about the age of 15, when I emigrated from Africa to Australia.
The impersonal, mystical or detached aspect of experience is the core part of my identity. As such, I revert to it when under stress. The more stress I'm under, the more detached I become. Ego matters less and less at that point -- and, thus, I see the world more pragmatically, in terms of whittled down structures.
Above is an article depicting much of what I have also found as a result of my intellectual research on the intersection between literature and shamanism. This kind of impersonal ego, or indeed "egoless" experience (as per the article), was a fundamental part of my experience until about the age of 15, when I emigrated from Africa to Australia.
The impersonal, mystical or detached aspect of experience is the core part of my identity. As such, I revert to it when under stress. The more stress I'm under, the more detached I become. Ego matters less and less at that point -- and, thus, I see the world more pragmatically, in terms of whittled down structures.
Friday 27 December 2013
Documentary about great cave diver Dave Shaw and his last dive - www.Scu...
I sort of wonder whether an obsessive-compulsive tendency might not have been useful, for instance if Dave Shaw had insisted on having the light on the top of his headgear, rather than being held by hand.
Thursday 26 December 2013
Wednesday 25 December 2013
New Year's Resolutions
I made some last year, but they were half-hearted, because I still had some unresolved work to do, figuring out some loose ends. I've finally done it though. It turned out that what I had to do all along was separate the Judeo-Christian metaphysical elements -- including, to a large part, Freudianism -- from my understanding of the world. That way, I have one consistent world view, which works a lot better than two mutually contradictory (but partly overlapping) maps.
Having finally achieved what I had set out to do, even though I did not understand back then that this would be the end point of the journey, I have become extremely secure in my being and in my knowledge.
I am also able to perceive myself, my interests and my needs much better, since I do not allow my head to be clouded with other people's metaphysical axioms.
Of course, maturity, which is to say simply age, is very useful for understanding which propositions presented by others do or do not work. One might be tempted to accept a great deal as useful suggestions, if one had not tried and tested these ideas already and found out the extent to which they did not work.
Now that I have reduced extraneous mental baggage, I don't need to consider everything twice. I know that I have rejected Christianity and my reasons for it are quite clear. The basic one is that this religion and those ideas related to it obscure the truth and make it much harder to recognise. Those who want to find out the truth about anything will have to settle for much less if they adopt Christian views and values.
And why is the truth important? It gives us the greatest scope for movement. Not to be bound in fear by some false notion about how the world operates, but to be clear-sighted, means one can weigh up the risks much more accurately, and on that basis choose to do whatever it is one wants.
One can't be brow-beaten anymore, because there are no longer any looming truths that others can hold over you, which you fear you inadvertently had failed to factored in. Reality is hardly simply material matter, but the rules for life are those one has experienced and already deeply thought through.
Let those who do not know the rules yet suffer under externally imposed regulation. I understand the theory of gravity enough to ride a thermal and descend at my own pace.
I don't have to collapse under the sheer weight of the gravitational law.
And so. Onward and upward, and again in spirals.
The principle of managing energy is fundamental to shamanism, and how one uses or abuses it will determine the success or otherwise of the rest of one's life.
Having finally achieved what I had set out to do, even though I did not understand back then that this would be the end point of the journey, I have become extremely secure in my being and in my knowledge.
I am also able to perceive myself, my interests and my needs much better, since I do not allow my head to be clouded with other people's metaphysical axioms.
Of course, maturity, which is to say simply age, is very useful for understanding which propositions presented by others do or do not work. One might be tempted to accept a great deal as useful suggestions, if one had not tried and tested these ideas already and found out the extent to which they did not work.
Now that I have reduced extraneous mental baggage, I don't need to consider everything twice. I know that I have rejected Christianity and my reasons for it are quite clear. The basic one is that this religion and those ideas related to it obscure the truth and make it much harder to recognise. Those who want to find out the truth about anything will have to settle for much less if they adopt Christian views and values.
And why is the truth important? It gives us the greatest scope for movement. Not to be bound in fear by some false notion about how the world operates, but to be clear-sighted, means one can weigh up the risks much more accurately, and on that basis choose to do whatever it is one wants.
One can't be brow-beaten anymore, because there are no longer any looming truths that others can hold over you, which you fear you inadvertently had failed to factored in. Reality is hardly simply material matter, but the rules for life are those one has experienced and already deeply thought through.
Let those who do not know the rules yet suffer under externally imposed regulation. I understand the theory of gravity enough to ride a thermal and descend at my own pace.
I don't have to collapse under the sheer weight of the gravitational law.
And so. Onward and upward, and again in spirals.
The principle of managing energy is fundamental to shamanism, and how one uses or abuses it will determine the success or otherwise of the rest of one's life.
Transgression versus fascism
I present you with a populist conception of "the law of Nature" and consider what that is and how natural laws should be better understood in a rational, innovative and mature manner. Understanding a law doesn't mean having to submit to it, but knowing enough to go beyond submission. Real psychological maturity can be achieved through transgression, whilst the populist notion of maturity tends toward fascism.
Tuesday 24 December 2013
Monday 23 December 2013
Monday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog
Monday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog
The narrative of the extreme right is that once our oppression is lifted, we wander around in small circles not knowing what to do, but eventually taking to booze and a dissipated lifestyle. I can heartily recommend both.
In other news, it has become apparent that the cultural critics of the left and the right are now only walking in small circles. Every time I see a critique, the solution being offered is not new or well-considered but has to do with some kind of folksy notion about how "things used to be okay in the past."
It would be very interesting if people began using their intellects, but having a thinking mind is not automatic. It requires all sorts of fortuitous events to combine, like having a propensity, like needing to know something for fear of living the rest of your life in ignorance and so on.
Most people don't see it that way at all, but work with what they have, which hasn't been developed into anything yet.
The narrative of the extreme right is that once our oppression is lifted, we wander around in small circles not knowing what to do, but eventually taking to booze and a dissipated lifestyle. I can heartily recommend both.
In other news, it has become apparent that the cultural critics of the left and the right are now only walking in small circles. Every time I see a critique, the solution being offered is not new or well-considered but has to do with some kind of folksy notion about how "things used to be okay in the past."
It would be very interesting if people began using their intellects, but having a thinking mind is not automatic. It requires all sorts of fortuitous events to combine, like having a propensity, like needing to know something for fear of living the rest of your life in ignorance and so on.
Most people don't see it that way at all, but work with what they have, which hasn't been developed into anything yet.
Sunday 22 December 2013
Flying Lion: Buffalo Launches Predator Into The Air
This is what we have to see more of -- various human animals defending their human counterparts from being preyed on, whilst putting up a spectacular theatre show.
Saturday 21 December 2013
"I am revolted and disgusted"
People use that refrain to exert power and persuade us they are sophisticated. But to me it is an expression of having developed an allergy to life. Nietzsche said that it is very easy to become more and more sensitive to life. A strong tree has a sturdy base and spine, but as cultures age and people get older, they develop thin, twiglike mentalities, shivering in every breeze.
To view this tendency to shake and quiver as a sign of knowledge of reality only tells half the story: It also signals premature aging. One no longer cares to know more than one already knows. One believes one has had enough. It is all dirty. Disgusting. Life itself repels us.
But younger cultures don't seem to care as much. It is only the Westerner who has learned to hate his image in the mirror. But that is because he has grown thinner, uglier, more like a twig.
A Nietzschean parable.
To view this tendency to shake and quiver as a sign of knowledge of reality only tells half the story: It also signals premature aging. One no longer cares to know more than one already knows. One believes one has had enough. It is all dirty. Disgusting. Life itself repels us.
But younger cultures don't seem to care as much. It is only the Westerner who has learned to hate his image in the mirror. But that is because he has grown thinner, uglier, more like a twig.
A Nietzschean parable.
Friday 20 December 2013
What is shamanic awakening?
Emotions always tell us something truthful about a situation, although they may lie to us when they are misdirected. If you imagine human society as being built a bit like an ancient Roman city, there are aqueducts that bring in water and refreshment and there are sewers that take away the waste material. A socially adapted person is one who adjusts to their manner and expectations to being serviced by the established methods of hygiene. It could be conventional to take one's nourishment from certain established authority figures, including politicians or priests. One then must also excrete one's waste in a particular established manner -- that is, having received the blessings of positive emotions and sensations from above, one must also relieve one's sense of negativity about the world. So suitably culpable victims are found, and one's negative emotions are excreted onto them, so that they are taken away from us.
To some degree it doesn't matter who the negative, sewer conduits are, because the issue is a structural one, one of needing to excrete waste, and does not have to do with the higher faculties of the mind, which are capable of thinking more deeply about identity. The need to take in pleasureful ideas and excrete unhappy ones exerts a hydraulic push and pull. To imagine there is very much intrinsic to your or anyone else's identity that causes this to happen is a fundamental mistake, but a very common one. The issue is almost completely structural, and has to do with the power relationships that contain the whole of society, not its individual parts considered separately.
That is why it is pointless to engage in endless meanderings of thought about guilt and sin or worrying too much about individual distortions of reality. If you did not distort it yourself as an individual, the greater distortions will already be taking place within the overall structure of the society in relation to its hierarchies. Somehow one is on the sewerage end of the conduits instead of on the fresh water end. All that means is that you haven't been well watered, but have become a victim of other's unconscious emotional hydraulics. These people can have been parents, or acquaintances, or anybody at all, really. And the system is such that some groups are systematically victimised, for instance when the word "woman" takes on a negative connotation in minds within the culture as a whole.
Our emotions tell us that something is going ok, or something is going very wrong. I can make tremendous efforts to extricate myself from negativity, but if that situation is structurally determined, my individual efforts will not stand for much. It's still good not to fall asleep and just accept that situation, though. One must move to get out of it.
Waking up means encountering these structural dynamics and figuring out how they are affecting us. For instance, I now understand the structural dynamics of patriarchy, which are designed to make me feel disgusted with myself. If some random or known person suddenly says something that makes me feel in despair of myself, I need to step back and notice that what they are saying isn't real. They are merely trying to get rid of an unpleasant feeling within themselves, by projecting something negative onto me.
Emotions are useful, in that they warn you when something is awry, but you do not need to accept the imposition of other people's distortions. Once you map the lay of the land, you realise that they are just trying to send their shit downhill -- or what they perceive to be downhill, which might be wrong in some cases (send it back up to them, and see how they like it!).
To u be able to map this tendency as a higher order of reality, is real transcendence. It takes a lot of learning, though, like developing a martial arts skill. Above all, one has to learn not to react to provocations, or otherwise, one immediately becomes a conduit for someone else's negative beliefs.
Many people sincerely believe that they only chastise and morally reproach people who are fundamentally negative in-and-of themselves. They only take good ideas and good resources from those who are already, in their beliefs, fundamentally good people. Everything is as is should be. But this outlook, which seems accepted as appropriate and adaptive by conventional psychoanalysis, is a sleepy and unconscious state.
Transgression is to infringe against the boundaries that, in our sleepy state, we have taken for necessary and natural. We arouse anger and confusion in others when we do so, thus proving we have touched on something real and important. This mode of transgression helps us to learn the lay of the land so that we may one day transcend the sleepy folk who live in it and govern it.
They're not malicious or damaging to us because they intend to be so, but just because they are yawn-inducing half asleep and can't wake up if it kills them. They simply won't wake up. You need to learn to walk around sleeping dragons, and to pick your fights extremely carefully.
To some degree it doesn't matter who the negative, sewer conduits are, because the issue is a structural one, one of needing to excrete waste, and does not have to do with the higher faculties of the mind, which are capable of thinking more deeply about identity. The need to take in pleasureful ideas and excrete unhappy ones exerts a hydraulic push and pull. To imagine there is very much intrinsic to your or anyone else's identity that causes this to happen is a fundamental mistake, but a very common one. The issue is almost completely structural, and has to do with the power relationships that contain the whole of society, not its individual parts considered separately.
That is why it is pointless to engage in endless meanderings of thought about guilt and sin or worrying too much about individual distortions of reality. If you did not distort it yourself as an individual, the greater distortions will already be taking place within the overall structure of the society in relation to its hierarchies. Somehow one is on the sewerage end of the conduits instead of on the fresh water end. All that means is that you haven't been well watered, but have become a victim of other's unconscious emotional hydraulics. These people can have been parents, or acquaintances, or anybody at all, really. And the system is such that some groups are systematically victimised, for instance when the word "woman" takes on a negative connotation in minds within the culture as a whole.
Our emotions tell us that something is going ok, or something is going very wrong. I can make tremendous efforts to extricate myself from negativity, but if that situation is structurally determined, my individual efforts will not stand for much. It's still good not to fall asleep and just accept that situation, though. One must move to get out of it.
Waking up means encountering these structural dynamics and figuring out how they are affecting us. For instance, I now understand the structural dynamics of patriarchy, which are designed to make me feel disgusted with myself. If some random or known person suddenly says something that makes me feel in despair of myself, I need to step back and notice that what they are saying isn't real. They are merely trying to get rid of an unpleasant feeling within themselves, by projecting something negative onto me.
Emotions are useful, in that they warn you when something is awry, but you do not need to accept the imposition of other people's distortions. Once you map the lay of the land, you realise that they are just trying to send their shit downhill -- or what they perceive to be downhill, which might be wrong in some cases (send it back up to them, and see how they like it!).
To u be able to map this tendency as a higher order of reality, is real transcendence. It takes a lot of learning, though, like developing a martial arts skill. Above all, one has to learn not to react to provocations, or otherwise, one immediately becomes a conduit for someone else's negative beliefs.
Many people sincerely believe that they only chastise and morally reproach people who are fundamentally negative in-and-of themselves. They only take good ideas and good resources from those who are already, in their beliefs, fundamentally good people. Everything is as is should be. But this outlook, which seems accepted as appropriate and adaptive by conventional psychoanalysis, is a sleepy and unconscious state.
Transgression is to infringe against the boundaries that, in our sleepy state, we have taken for necessary and natural. We arouse anger and confusion in others when we do so, thus proving we have touched on something real and important. This mode of transgression helps us to learn the lay of the land so that we may one day transcend the sleepy folk who live in it and govern it.
They're not malicious or damaging to us because they intend to be so, but just because they are yawn-inducing half asleep and can't wake up if it kills them. They simply won't wake up. You need to learn to walk around sleeping dragons, and to pick your fights extremely carefully.
A Vision | Clarissa's Blog
A Vision | Clarissa's Blog
Treating employees right pays off if those employees are complex, well-rounded thinkers. Then it is actually very dangerous NOT to treat them right. But in many cases, employers get away with treating human beings as if they were human resources.
Treating employees right pays off if those employees are complex, well-rounded thinkers. Then it is actually very dangerous NOT to treat them right. But in many cases, employers get away with treating human beings as if they were human resources.
Franco Is Not Dead | Clarissa's Blog
Franco Is Not Dead | Clarissa's Blog
That right wing way of thinking is a political game of moving chess pieces so as to seem to come out as a winner. One proclaims that women have not understood anything and that life goes on. It seems like a very clever sleight of hand, and I have had this trick attempted on me a number of times.
It's not the final move in the chess game, though, and to assume so is the mistake of those who make it. They get taken in by the cleverness of their own deception, but that doesn't mean I am also taken in by it. They have assumed that women are rather silly, but that assumption does not change reality, although they think it does.
I still remain not silly and with a working memory. I observe all of the petty maneuvers and I don't forget any of them, even after the would-be hypnotists have proclaimed they have completed their game and drawn all the conclusions there are. I remain waiting, choosing my moment.
I notice and remember everything.
That right wing way of thinking is a political game of moving chess pieces so as to seem to come out as a winner. One proclaims that women have not understood anything and that life goes on. It seems like a very clever sleight of hand, and I have had this trick attempted on me a number of times.
It's not the final move in the chess game, though, and to assume so is the mistake of those who make it. They get taken in by the cleverness of their own deception, but that doesn't mean I am also taken in by it. They have assumed that women are rather silly, but that assumption does not change reality, although they think it does.
I still remain not silly and with a working memory. I observe all of the petty maneuvers and I don't forget any of them, even after the would-be hypnotists have proclaimed they have completed their game and drawn all the conclusions there are. I remain waiting, choosing my moment.
I notice and remember everything.
Thursday 19 December 2013
Jungle Drug Ayahuasca Could Revolutionize Psychotherapy - - News - Miami - Miami New Times
Jungle Drug Ayahuasca Could Revolutionize Psychotherapy - - News - Miami - Miami New Times
Sounds good, but I wouldn't like to be the "shaman" catering to the amazing sensitivities of these Yankee Doodle Dandies.
Sounds good, but I wouldn't like to be the "shaman" catering to the amazing sensitivities of these Yankee Doodle Dandies.
2013 closes
How many more character lines will I get in the coming year as I push myself to participate in another grading? I hope to face other challenging tasks as well, along a survival model.
Wednesday 18 December 2013
20 Ecstatic Shelter Dogs On Their Way Home For The First Time
20 Ecstatic Shelter Dogs On Their Way Home For The First Time
Poor things. The long captivity....and the ones who didn't make it.
Poor things. The long captivity....and the ones who didn't make it.
Tuesday 17 December 2013
Monday 16 December 2013
Three levels of reality
It's weird how nature works in that it always seeks its own equilibrium, for instance in relation to positive or evil intentions within the individual or collective psyche.
Let me give you an example. I recently made a video that attempts to go to the heart of something very wrong with a turn in Western culture today. That is the collapse of meaning into a rather crude biologist interpretation of human drives.
Now somebody, no doubt a young or middle-aged male decides to make a revolting statement on one of my videos, that would reduce women to being biological effusions. This remark reveals him. He doesn't realize he is being revealed by this comment, but not only is he revealed, the dynamics governing our combined reality are changed. The fellow has taken on the outline of the idea of a generic Western male, and as such he cannot stand where I would like to put him. I'd have liked him to be a hero or at least in charge of his emotions, but cannot stand there. His unconscious demand? That I raise my profile and lower his to match what has become true about gender relations.
Everything rearranges itself dynamically, in the motion of time, and forces a rebalancing of energies. Those who can stand up will, and those who cannot end up forcing others to rearrange their own thoughts to recover equilibrium.
"Nature" is not the words that are said, that seem to have the intention to intimidate or to strike back. Those words operate on that level, but even the speaker doesn't know the full ramifications of his communication at the level of the interaction. Something dynamically changes in the broader scheme of things in relation to the writer's unconscous communication as regards his value.
This is, in a very small way, nature trying to heal itself. If communication only ever happened on one level there would be tremendous and destructive forces of dominance, but that is not so because the deeper communication takes place on another level. That is, we don't just exert force by communicating. We reveal what is in us in terms of whether our powers are ascending or declining: we convey our position in relation to 'the whole' of human, organic reality.
Thus, organic nature trumps mechanical efforts to gain control, just as the former reveals us for who we really are.
There is a kind of duality here, of course. A way of seeing things on two levels. One sees not only what is being overtly said but also the unconscious confession, "I am not up to the present task."
Whereas those who are submerged by greater psychological forces, who are struggling, see the duality from below, the shaman sees the duality from above.
I have certainly experienced struggling from below the surface of the ocean, trying to break up into air and light. That is what my memoir was about. But nowadays, I experience everything from the opposite direction. My duality or double-take is in noticing that people espouse views and ideas that they rarely mean, since they are not prepared to follow up on them. The separation between speaking and conceptualising and action itself is very strong in Western society -- much greater than in African cultures. So one learns to understand the discrepancy or non-alignment between the words and the actions. Passivity is the rule.
The difference between the duality that takes place from below and the one from above is that the former is full of emotion and passion. The dual perspective from above is impersonal and rather like the aspect of the Buddha just observing. One would have to speak a different language from this to intervene in what one sees. But, since life constantly tears itself down and reformulates itself in relation to the principle of psychological and political equilibrium, no intervention is necessary. Or not much.
So that is nature and how things take place naturally, at least from a fully shamanized perspective. But the difficult part is when one is still submerged and struggling to the surface. That is a life and death struggle (at least it feels like it) against hidden dynamic forces that one cannot see yet. They're not just in your head, but they are the historical forces that buffet you, that continue to make you what you are, until you start to master and control them.
You can't hide from them by playing dead -- by being passive and invisible -- because they are coming for you anyway. You really have to spar with them, outwit them, use all of your resources. I was doing this for the longest time -- trying to work out why certain kinds of put-downs left me feeling totally deflated. At last I understood it was because they were, in effect, seeming to steal something from me, because I had not secured down all of my wealth, having doubted or disbelieved in it. Guarding one's wealth is a large part of shamanic mastery. One can't do that if one doesn't know one has that wealth or where it happens to be in the first place.
Also important: to realize that others are hungry and will try to take from you what you do not yet even recognise you have. There are wild animals out there and people whose only way of living is to tear chunks off other people.
In short, there is an invisible world that one has to learn to see clearly, which is the way that it is conquered.
Perhaps one can continue to learn to see it better and better throughout one's life. In the mean time, it doesn't always remain the same.
So yes -- there are three levels. There is the level of the submerged underworld, where one is struggling psychologically for existence. At this level a lot of things seem touched by magic. Then there is the level of 'ordinary reality' where people pontificate in everyday language but do not seem to have a clue as to what is going on. Finally, there is the higher level, where a certain degree of mastery has been attained. One doesn't really speak about this level, as natural language doesn't lend itself to describing what one sees concerning the levels of manipulation that take place ordinarily. But there is seeing and observing.
Let me give you an example. I recently made a video that attempts to go to the heart of something very wrong with a turn in Western culture today. That is the collapse of meaning into a rather crude biologist interpretation of human drives.
Now somebody, no doubt a young or middle-aged male decides to make a revolting statement on one of my videos, that would reduce women to being biological effusions. This remark reveals him. He doesn't realize he is being revealed by this comment, but not only is he revealed, the dynamics governing our combined reality are changed. The fellow has taken on the outline of the idea of a generic Western male, and as such he cannot stand where I would like to put him. I'd have liked him to be a hero or at least in charge of his emotions, but cannot stand there. His unconscious demand? That I raise my profile and lower his to match what has become true about gender relations.
Everything rearranges itself dynamically, in the motion of time, and forces a rebalancing of energies. Those who can stand up will, and those who cannot end up forcing others to rearrange their own thoughts to recover equilibrium.
"Nature" is not the words that are said, that seem to have the intention to intimidate or to strike back. Those words operate on that level, but even the speaker doesn't know the full ramifications of his communication at the level of the interaction. Something dynamically changes in the broader scheme of things in relation to the writer's unconscous communication as regards his value.
This is, in a very small way, nature trying to heal itself. If communication only ever happened on one level there would be tremendous and destructive forces of dominance, but that is not so because the deeper communication takes place on another level. That is, we don't just exert force by communicating. We reveal what is in us in terms of whether our powers are ascending or declining: we convey our position in relation to 'the whole' of human, organic reality.
Thus, organic nature trumps mechanical efforts to gain control, just as the former reveals us for who we really are.
There is a kind of duality here, of course. A way of seeing things on two levels. One sees not only what is being overtly said but also the unconscious confession, "I am not up to the present task."
Whereas those who are submerged by greater psychological forces, who are struggling, see the duality from below, the shaman sees the duality from above.
I have certainly experienced struggling from below the surface of the ocean, trying to break up into air and light. That is what my memoir was about. But nowadays, I experience everything from the opposite direction. My duality or double-take is in noticing that people espouse views and ideas that they rarely mean, since they are not prepared to follow up on them. The separation between speaking and conceptualising and action itself is very strong in Western society -- much greater than in African cultures. So one learns to understand the discrepancy or non-alignment between the words and the actions. Passivity is the rule.
The difference between the duality that takes place from below and the one from above is that the former is full of emotion and passion. The dual perspective from above is impersonal and rather like the aspect of the Buddha just observing. One would have to speak a different language from this to intervene in what one sees. But, since life constantly tears itself down and reformulates itself in relation to the principle of psychological and political equilibrium, no intervention is necessary. Or not much.
So that is nature and how things take place naturally, at least from a fully shamanized perspective. But the difficult part is when one is still submerged and struggling to the surface. That is a life and death struggle (at least it feels like it) against hidden dynamic forces that one cannot see yet. They're not just in your head, but they are the historical forces that buffet you, that continue to make you what you are, until you start to master and control them.
You can't hide from them by playing dead -- by being passive and invisible -- because they are coming for you anyway. You really have to spar with them, outwit them, use all of your resources. I was doing this for the longest time -- trying to work out why certain kinds of put-downs left me feeling totally deflated. At last I understood it was because they were, in effect, seeming to steal something from me, because I had not secured down all of my wealth, having doubted or disbelieved in it. Guarding one's wealth is a large part of shamanic mastery. One can't do that if one doesn't know one has that wealth or where it happens to be in the first place.
Also important: to realize that others are hungry and will try to take from you what you do not yet even recognise you have. There are wild animals out there and people whose only way of living is to tear chunks off other people.
In short, there is an invisible world that one has to learn to see clearly, which is the way that it is conquered.
Perhaps one can continue to learn to see it better and better throughout one's life. In the mean time, it doesn't always remain the same.
So yes -- there are three levels. There is the level of the submerged underworld, where one is struggling psychologically for existence. At this level a lot of things seem touched by magic. Then there is the level of 'ordinary reality' where people pontificate in everyday language but do not seem to have a clue as to what is going on. Finally, there is the higher level, where a certain degree of mastery has been attained. One doesn't really speak about this level, as natural language doesn't lend itself to describing what one sees concerning the levels of manipulation that take place ordinarily. But there is seeing and observing.
Sunday 15 December 2013
How religion messes with your otherwise secular mind
Why focus on these musty, long dead theologians and philosophers? These thoughts are alive and well and have a super long tail outside of religion—think: domestic work, pay discrimination, and sex segregation in the workplace. Every time a young girl can’t serve at an altar, or play in a game, or dress as she pleases; every time she’s assaulted and told to prove it, it’s because she cannot, in the end, be trusted. Controlling her—her clothes, her will, her physical freedom, her reputation—is a perk.
Conventional Abrahamic religious thought cannot escape the idea that we have to pay, as women, with lifelong suffering and labor and be subject to the authority of men lest our irrationality and desires result in more evil and suffering. Until religious hierarchies renounce beliefs and practices based on these theologies, these long-dead men, creatures of their time, might as well be the ones repeatedly showing up in Congress to give their massively ill-informed opinions on women’s health and lives.
http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2013-11-how-we-teach-our-kids-that-women-are-liars
Saturday 14 December 2013
New study: Magic Mushrooms Repair Brain Damage From Extreme Trauma |Higher Perspective
New study: Magic Mushrooms Repair Brain Damage From Extreme Trauma |Higher Perspective
An estimated 5 percent of Americans – more than 13 million people – have PTSD at any given time, according to the PTSD Alliance. The condition more often associated with combat veterans, is twice as likely to develop in women because they tend to experience interpersonal violence (such as domestic violence, rape and abuse) more often than men.
Recovering through shamanism
Don't be so hard on yourself. That you are searching for a cure does not mean you are trying to escape something. If you get rid of the punitive level of self-accusation regarding something so natural as searching, you may be able to make some headway.
Bear in mind that a lot of psychoanalysis is firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian mores, which maintain a dogma that one's goal in life HAS TO BE to serve the community through conforming to its mores. To have to be in a position to do anything other than this is viewed as gross immaturity and narcissism. But, this perspective does not take into account that those who are thoroughly immersed in the community and who are mostly deeply conforming to its mores are often the most immature and narcissistic types around. Far from being the selfless types they would like us to believe they are, they adopt the principle that there is safety in numbers. In fact, whatever the mass of people do, they will follow along, because in that way they are able to hide.
When writing my thesis, I was really confused by Judeo-Christian mores, because I thought they had some real substance to them. I thought that "infantile" states might really be narcissistic, or indeed as Lacan puts it, "psychotic". But in fact the defining factor of an infantile state is an openness to experience. Even the logic of maturation as a process should make this obvious. When one is uncertain, one reverts to a state of being more open than before about what reality might be. That is the healthy response to not knowing something -- one expands the realm of possibilities, so that one can take in more information of the sort that might prove useful, without at this stage knowing what the nature of that information might be.
The unhealthy narcissist is the Christian himself, who is afraid of taking in any new knowledge. True infantilism shouts that one knows all there is to know, that there is nothing more that could be possibly added.
The Judeo-Christian ideology, which is reflected in Freud, also maintains a certain line of thinking that a theorized pure state of being -- for instance, a perfect "soul" -- is inevitably damaged and sullied by sin or corruption, thus wrecking it. The older you get, the more things can go awry, in their natural course, leading you to be wrecked by sin and corruption. Thus the therapist can't really cure you but can put on a straitjacket over the mind, to keep your psyche in a splint.
But that is making so much nonsense out of reality, which is actually not based on such metaphysics, but is organic nature. The thing about organic nature is that, left to its own devices, it will almost always heal itself, just as the body repairs itself from physical damage.
In an overall healthy, organic psyche, projection and infantilism are ways that the psyche heals itself. It may be damaged and confused, but it can still heal. But in the case of a Christian who has already accepted a straitjacket over his mind, nothing more can be done. His projections will inevitably not help him, but will make the situation worse, and his infantilism will not help him to regenerate, but will just express a limit to his existing psychological state. Buyer, beware.
Here are a couple of pages from an anthropological text on traditional shamanism:
http://musteryou.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/the-strong-eye-of-shamanism/
Bear in mind that a lot of psychoanalysis is firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian mores, which maintain a dogma that one's goal in life HAS TO BE to serve the community through conforming to its mores. To have to be in a position to do anything other than this is viewed as gross immaturity and narcissism. But, this perspective does not take into account that those who are thoroughly immersed in the community and who are mostly deeply conforming to its mores are often the most immature and narcissistic types around. Far from being the selfless types they would like us to believe they are, they adopt the principle that there is safety in numbers. In fact, whatever the mass of people do, they will follow along, because in that way they are able to hide.
When writing my thesis, I was really confused by Judeo-Christian mores, because I thought they had some real substance to them. I thought that "infantile" states might really be narcissistic, or indeed as Lacan puts it, "psychotic". But in fact the defining factor of an infantile state is an openness to experience. Even the logic of maturation as a process should make this obvious. When one is uncertain, one reverts to a state of being more open than before about what reality might be. That is the healthy response to not knowing something -- one expands the realm of possibilities, so that one can take in more information of the sort that might prove useful, without at this stage knowing what the nature of that information might be.
The unhealthy narcissist is the Christian himself, who is afraid of taking in any new knowledge. True infantilism shouts that one knows all there is to know, that there is nothing more that could be possibly added.
The Judeo-Christian ideology, which is reflected in Freud, also maintains a certain line of thinking that a theorized pure state of being -- for instance, a perfect "soul" -- is inevitably damaged and sullied by sin or corruption, thus wrecking it. The older you get, the more things can go awry, in their natural course, leading you to be wrecked by sin and corruption. Thus the therapist can't really cure you but can put on a straitjacket over the mind, to keep your psyche in a splint.
But that is making so much nonsense out of reality, which is actually not based on such metaphysics, but is organic nature. The thing about organic nature is that, left to its own devices, it will almost always heal itself, just as the body repairs itself from physical damage.
In an overall healthy, organic psyche, projection and infantilism are ways that the psyche heals itself. It may be damaged and confused, but it can still heal. But in the case of a Christian who has already accepted a straitjacket over his mind, nothing more can be done. His projections will inevitably not help him, but will make the situation worse, and his infantilism will not help him to regenerate, but will just express a limit to his existing psychological state. Buyer, beware.
Here are a couple of pages from an anthropological text on traditional shamanism:
http://musteryou.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/the-strong-eye-of-shamanism/
Friday 13 December 2013
Repost
These days I have a certain problem with coffee. In effect, it makes me insane — although there may be a benefit in going deeply into this madness it produces. Unlike so-called “depressants” like alcohol, which take you lower into the self and the emotions, a stimulant likecaffeine acts to block my emotional awareness. This is not at all a source of jubilation, as when I cannot access what I am feeling I suspect that certain aspects of my environment are out of my control.
The horse beneath my seat may be walking, trotting, cantering — but I have no sensation of the reins, hence no control over my decision-making processes. I wouldn’t know if I were pulling too hard or not at all. I’m not quite sure what I’m feeling about anything. In times like this, I exercise perfect control and say nothing at all. I won’t be able to tell until the caffeine wears off and theflood gates allow my sensations to pass through again.
Caffeine triggers a traumatic center in my brain. Since I am unable to draw sufficiently from my emotional memory, I jump to the most negative conclusions about the-nature-of-reality-itself. It all seems very sordid, rather scary, deadly and refusing to reveal its layers.
An occasional drink of wine, on the other hand, is not just beneficial but practically essential for my health, for otherwise, with caffeine or no caffeine, I tend to lose touch with what I need to recognize in order to maintain my mental well-being. I can reintegrate my emotions by going deeply into them in a positive way, whilst building plans and formulating my ideas. This is what a glass of wine achieves for me. Not engaging in this bi-weekly ritual, however, returns me to my early-adult self. My 16-20 year-old self had repressed everything to do with emotion and feeling. This was the effect of post-migratory trauma; also of the tactics I’d developed from a very early age to deal with emotionally confusing and disturbing experiences. I switch off.
It has taken me years to realize the damage I was doing to my health in not maintaining emotional awareness. I had no idea I was so impersonal and detached from everything, until a crisis made me realize I had been repressing a huge amount of sadness and anger. I made a tremendous effort, from then on, to switch on to my actual emotional states. My physical healthimmediately improved with my self-understanding.
My ongoing tendency is nonetheless to switch off and thus to become a mystery to myself again. I hold my breath and hope nobody asks me what my motives and intentions were, because likely as anything I will not be able to know — until I have consulted with myself. And, who knows how long or short such a consultation with one’s inner being might be? It could take forever. Or a very limited time. Still, one has to begin the query first and then, wait and see.
Because of an inclination to hold my breath, I sometimes need to learn what I’ve experienced retrospectively. I haven’t really been taking it all in. I’ve been waiting for someone to be an ass — and then I’ll deal with it. I handle crises of most sorts and people behaving like asses very effectively — because it’s this I have been waiting for. I can think extremely logically and unhindered by any emotion or doubt, once I’ve decided to take action. My views and values become sharpened, clearer, in a crisis — and this is really paradoxical because it’s just the regular stream of life where I often can’t get enough emotion to flow through to think clearly. In a situation resonant of my trauma, it is difficult for me to “be myself”.
I retain an odd, Rhodesian personality — which I have modified to some degree.
I take time to decompress, to feel what I have been experiencing. I have developed a much higher capacity for emotional integration than I had in those early days of post-migratory trauma. Despite this, I’m never going to be an “emotional person” or even a very personal person, because focusing on feelings in their own right, rather than as building blocks of culture, puts a huge strain on me. I genuinely can’t understand the importance of having emotions that don’t supply substance for analysis.
It’s the resulting analysis that counts, which is the source of every deeper pleasure.
Thursday 12 December 2013
Wednesday 11 December 2013
Directions
****This has to do with when you are fully grown up in terms of one society, but barely knowledgeable in terms of another, the host society after migration.
Instead of being locked into the nourishing space that belongs to very early childhood, I was barred outside of it. I was in a very adult and responsible space, but I couldn't nurture myself emotionally. I COULD act in a very dutiful way, but not in the sense of being able to understand, seek out, fulfil, or take care of my own needs. I was certainly not primeval, nor capable of relating in a relational way. I could only relate in terms of what was proper and what my conscience deemed necessary. Hence, I was compulsively truthful, very compliant to authorities without questioning them, very detached from my body -- from emotion and sexuality. I simply couldn't put myself first. I had no idea where I was in the equation. In a sense, I had been an adult since I went to nursery school at the age of 4. I learned to contain my emotions and not to make a fuss.
That is why when contemporary Western people, who have had a different upbringing, have sometimes in the past accused me of being "immature", because I hadn't figured out how the system worked yet, I literally could not make sense of what they were getting at. In fact, I had to go backwards and do a lot of the work of BECOMING immature, so that I could trace some developmental steps that I had missed.
In fact even today immaturity bugs me. I can't take my time with it, for instance in the case of children whom I could take or leave, or indeed with most of Western adults who don't seem to be able articulate their needs very well but become hostile if you can't gauge what they are indirectly implying. It took me YEARS to be able to "read" and understand the ubiquitous nature of an expression of inarticulate desire. Just being direct works for me, although I can backtrack a bit in some situations, to understand the ways in which most people don't express their thoughts directly.
Backtracking, for me, meant learning about immanence from a position of alienation from it. I'm now okay with it, and feel I have fully closed the circle, so that I don't need to keep trying to fill a gap of missing knowledge in my consciousness.
Anyway, the other gap in my knowledge had to do with gender. For instance, people implying that I am "emotional", when emotion was something I was trying to get hold of, which was in me somewhere, but profoundly cut off. It's exploiting a gender stereotype to insinuate that any problem that a woman has must be due to what is deemed to be her essentially emotional nature. Mine was that I was separated from any source of nourishment or any ability to refer to myself in a meaningful sense. Not too much emotion, but the absence of any emotion at all, was causing me difficulty.
For me it was very difficult to find my center, and basically break down my own resistances to finding myself. These are all unconscious resistances, with the prohibitions of one's conscience keeping them in place. Having too much structure, having to break down one's self-definition to build it again but this time with more content, became the governing principle of my life. In all, it's taken about 30 years. I was way too prematurely adult at 15.
Transcendence is the acceptance of a sharp outline: shape, form and structure. I had already thoroughly transcended myself by the age of about 15 -- nowhere else to go. I should have joined the military really, because I would have already been one of them. But, because I literally could not feel my emotions, anything complex or ambiguous (especially if coming from hostile sources), caused me to attack myself. Any sense of disequilibrium in the environment around me seemed to be, in my mind, my fault. Not recognising that I had emotions at all, I couldn't regulate them, only repress them. But the force of the repression was causing my physiology to overheat, sending out constant messages of alarm.
Now I have come to terms with this somewhat by accepting that whatever I do I am always in the wrong. I was never afforded that slow pattern of development of gradually learning to discern what is right and wrong on the basis of recognising subtle emotional patterns, though a slow maturation process. I just learned to comply. And now I am always wrongfooted as regards contemporary morality. It's not that I have any negative drives, but that I don't care for community one way or another. I'm not interested enough in society to wish to bless it or harm it.
But if I try to enter the community -- which I do not wish to do as I have no drive to do so, nor any particular need for that close level of emotional belongingness -- I end up showing that I really don't know how to read between the lines enough yet, with regard to other people's mores.
That said, I am really an ideal citizen -- very decent, very capable of reciprocating, aware of what my responsibilities are. I just don't play politics or gossip and can't seem to take an interest in them.
Developmental patterns really leave their mark on us, and we can change them to some degree, to the extent of creating a much healthier internal equilibrium, but that takes decades. In a way we have to work with what we have. I could be a war journalist or something that involves repressing emotions, although that doesn't seem to be the trajectory of my life now. But certainly I could handle the extremes, for stints at a time. Not to be confined in a place where very refined emotions are shared seems ideal and rejuvenating.
Cf.
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/the-road-to-freedom.html
Instead of being locked into the nourishing space that belongs to very early childhood, I was barred outside of it. I was in a very adult and responsible space, but I couldn't nurture myself emotionally. I COULD act in a very dutiful way, but not in the sense of being able to understand, seek out, fulfil, or take care of my own needs. I was certainly not primeval, nor capable of relating in a relational way. I could only relate in terms of what was proper and what my conscience deemed necessary. Hence, I was compulsively truthful, very compliant to authorities without questioning them, very detached from my body -- from emotion and sexuality. I simply couldn't put myself first. I had no idea where I was in the equation. In a sense, I had been an adult since I went to nursery school at the age of 4. I learned to contain my emotions and not to make a fuss.
That is why when contemporary Western people, who have had a different upbringing, have sometimes in the past accused me of being "immature", because I hadn't figured out how the system worked yet, I literally could not make sense of what they were getting at. In fact, I had to go backwards and do a lot of the work of BECOMING immature, so that I could trace some developmental steps that I had missed.
In fact even today immaturity bugs me. I can't take my time with it, for instance in the case of children whom I could take or leave, or indeed with most of Western adults who don't seem to be able articulate their needs very well but become hostile if you can't gauge what they are indirectly implying. It took me YEARS to be able to "read" and understand the ubiquitous nature of an expression of inarticulate desire. Just being direct works for me, although I can backtrack a bit in some situations, to understand the ways in which most people don't express their thoughts directly.
Backtracking, for me, meant learning about immanence from a position of alienation from it. I'm now okay with it, and feel I have fully closed the circle, so that I don't need to keep trying to fill a gap of missing knowledge in my consciousness.
Anyway, the other gap in my knowledge had to do with gender. For instance, people implying that I am "emotional", when emotion was something I was trying to get hold of, which was in me somewhere, but profoundly cut off. It's exploiting a gender stereotype to insinuate that any problem that a woman has must be due to what is deemed to be her essentially emotional nature. Mine was that I was separated from any source of nourishment or any ability to refer to myself in a meaningful sense. Not too much emotion, but the absence of any emotion at all, was causing me difficulty.
For me it was very difficult to find my center, and basically break down my own resistances to finding myself. These are all unconscious resistances, with the prohibitions of one's conscience keeping them in place. Having too much structure, having to break down one's self-definition to build it again but this time with more content, became the governing principle of my life. In all, it's taken about 30 years. I was way too prematurely adult at 15.
Transcendence is the acceptance of a sharp outline: shape, form and structure. I had already thoroughly transcended myself by the age of about 15 -- nowhere else to go. I should have joined the military really, because I would have already been one of them. But, because I literally could not feel my emotions, anything complex or ambiguous (especially if coming from hostile sources), caused me to attack myself. Any sense of disequilibrium in the environment around me seemed to be, in my mind, my fault. Not recognising that I had emotions at all, I couldn't regulate them, only repress them. But the force of the repression was causing my physiology to overheat, sending out constant messages of alarm.
Now I have come to terms with this somewhat by accepting that whatever I do I am always in the wrong. I was never afforded that slow pattern of development of gradually learning to discern what is right and wrong on the basis of recognising subtle emotional patterns, though a slow maturation process. I just learned to comply. And now I am always wrongfooted as regards contemporary morality. It's not that I have any negative drives, but that I don't care for community one way or another. I'm not interested enough in society to wish to bless it or harm it.
But if I try to enter the community -- which I do not wish to do as I have no drive to do so, nor any particular need for that close level of emotional belongingness -- I end up showing that I really don't know how to read between the lines enough yet, with regard to other people's mores.
That said, I am really an ideal citizen -- very decent, very capable of reciprocating, aware of what my responsibilities are. I just don't play politics or gossip and can't seem to take an interest in them.
Developmental patterns really leave their mark on us, and we can change them to some degree, to the extent of creating a much healthier internal equilibrium, but that takes decades. In a way we have to work with what we have. I could be a war journalist or something that involves repressing emotions, although that doesn't seem to be the trajectory of my life now. But certainly I could handle the extremes, for stints at a time. Not to be confined in a place where very refined emotions are shared seems ideal and rejuvenating.
Cf.
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/the-road-to-freedom.html
Tuesday 10 December 2013
Rome: Sex & Freedom by Peter Brown | The New York Review of Books
Rome: Sex & Freedom by Peter Brown | The New York Review of Books
Nothing could be more different from the worldview of Achilles Tatius. For his heroes and heroines, sex is less about the will than about the great chain of being that linked humans to the gods and to the stars. Sex was the moment when human beings allowed themselves to sink back into the embrace of a universe into which their own bodies had been ingeniously woven. They would draw on the life-giving energies of a vast world. Sex was the gift of ever-present gods. Like wine, itself the gift of the god Dionysos, sex filled the body with “an immanent divine force, and the wash of its warm energy was experienced as a communion” with the divine.
Monday 9 December 2013
Shamanic healing
In my case, what was damaged was not my inner core of being, but my outer levels, more pertaining to the shell. If you imagine something like a cross section of the Earth, my inner, moulten core was in a fine condition, but the external shell -- the colder adult reaches -- were prematurely solidified and misshappen. Actually, recently I did more work on myself. I took some very high doses of resveratrol (the red wine extract) along with red wine itself. This seems to have changed me in some way. I feel more like the Buddha and can pass situations by that do not appeal to me, without having to fend them off. So, I've expanded my capacity to cope with more diverse situations, including boring or unappealing ones. I suspect this will make me into a better workhorse when it comes to applying myself to such things as really getting a handle on my martial arts syllabus (which is quite boring to learn because it's very repetitious).
About object relations versus the superego development, another way of looking at it might be that the inner core relates to object relations, whereas the outer shell is superego. When the problem seems related to a very early stage of development, it is not an issue of pushing the limits, or expanding the outer shell (Bataille's project overall). That's a problem more to do with people like me, who had a very authoritarian upbringing, which cast me into a form where I complied too strictly with gender roles. For me, fantasy counteracts this strictness, and is a release valve. For others, fantasy is a disruptive force and is uncomfortable. Needless to say, Bataille's destruction fantasies are not for everyone.
The shamanic concept of "soul loss" does seem to address things from an object relations viewpoint, with the idea that sad or frightening experiences can cause parts of the psyche to wall themselves off and seem to shut down. One has to gently move into those deadened areas, with the assistance of a shaman.
About object relations versus the superego development, another way of looking at it might be that the inner core relates to object relations, whereas the outer shell is superego. When the problem seems related to a very early stage of development, it is not an issue of pushing the limits, or expanding the outer shell (Bataille's project overall). That's a problem more to do with people like me, who had a very authoritarian upbringing, which cast me into a form where I complied too strictly with gender roles. For me, fantasy counteracts this strictness, and is a release valve. For others, fantasy is a disruptive force and is uncomfortable. Needless to say, Bataille's destruction fantasies are not for everyone.
The shamanic concept of "soul loss" does seem to address things from an object relations viewpoint, with the idea that sad or frightening experiences can cause parts of the psyche to wall themselves off and seem to shut down. One has to gently move into those deadened areas, with the assistance of a shaman.
Sunday 8 December 2013
On the Importance of Mental Health | Clarissa's Blog
On the Importance of Mental Health | Clarissa's Blog
There is a real possibility that the lack of having had adventures does produce a traumatic sense of lack — almost a feeling that one lacks personhood. Modernity may produce these sorts of overregulated people who have to dig deep to find anything to say.
There is a real possibility that the lack of having had adventures does produce a traumatic sense of lack — almost a feeling that one lacks personhood. Modernity may produce these sorts of overregulated people who have to dig deep to find anything to say.
Saturday 7 December 2013
On the Importance of Mental Health | Clarissa's Blog
On the Importance of Mental Health | Clarissa's Blog
I sense a distinct separation developing between those who can actually think and those who can’t do so at all, with a huge gap inbetween. It’s too easy nowadays to find sugar treats for the mind and to enjoy superficial pleasures of complete certainty. I, for one, can no longer be bothered correcting, assisting or encouraging people to think more deeply, if they are inclined to think in this pattern. They can take the easy path and whatever that brings for them. To go deeper takes considerable pain and heartache, and these are all too underestimated by the glib morons who just like what they like. So let them hear the same thing over and over about how women just want to be mummies, that life as they know it can never be altered — whatever they like. Even if they want to believe I am the source of their problems, let them believe that too. There is no obligation on my part to play the role of educator, which is what they demand I try to do whilst maintaining their role as the wilfully ignorant. But really, let them be ignorant. The lie that the majority want to preach is that we are all in this together, but that is not nearly so much so as they would like me to believe. They can proclaim that the average Joe has every right to correct a female philosopher for her seeming intellectual paucity in their eyes, and I will clap them on the back. “Well done! You have made a pronouncement!”
I sense a distinct separation developing between those who can actually think and those who can’t do so at all, with a huge gap inbetween. It’s too easy nowadays to find sugar treats for the mind and to enjoy superficial pleasures of complete certainty. I, for one, can no longer be bothered correcting, assisting or encouraging people to think more deeply, if they are inclined to think in this pattern. They can take the easy path and whatever that brings for them. To go deeper takes considerable pain and heartache, and these are all too underestimated by the glib morons who just like what they like. So let them hear the same thing over and over about how women just want to be mummies, that life as they know it can never be altered — whatever they like. Even if they want to believe I am the source of their problems, let them believe that too. There is no obligation on my part to play the role of educator, which is what they demand I try to do whilst maintaining their role as the wilfully ignorant. But really, let them be ignorant. The lie that the majority want to preach is that we are all in this together, but that is not nearly so much so as they would like me to believe. They can proclaim that the average Joe has every right to correct a female philosopher for her seeming intellectual paucity in their eyes, and I will clap them on the back. “Well done! You have made a pronouncement!”
The baboon storms the mountain
On the Importance of Mental Health | Clarissa's Blog\
Current feminism is really very boring indeed. Identity politics is psychological corruption. I just pointed out to some guy that when Richard Dawkins, in a mode of rightwing identity politics, makes fun of Luce Irigaray, by pointing out (as this black Zimbabwean presumes), her alleged lack of intellectual acumen, this is not different from when the white minority leader, Ian Smith, counteracted the protests of blacks storming parliament by singing, Bobbejaan Klim die Berg. Some say he meant nothing political by it, but the Afrikaans words mean “baboon climbs the mountain”. It could be a funny joke under the circumstances, or it might not be, but many ignorant male people are now reinforced in their views that women cannot be philosophers. And, of course, Smith suggested that blacks would be ready to rule in about 1000 years.
Current feminism is really very boring indeed. Identity politics is psychological corruption. I just pointed out to some guy that when Richard Dawkins, in a mode of rightwing identity politics, makes fun of Luce Irigaray, by pointing out (as this black Zimbabwean presumes), her alleged lack of intellectual acumen, this is not different from when the white minority leader, Ian Smith, counteracted the protests of blacks storming parliament by singing, Bobbejaan Klim die Berg. Some say he meant nothing political by it, but the Afrikaans words mean “baboon climbs the mountain”. It could be a funny joke under the circumstances, or it might not be, but many ignorant male people are now reinforced in their views that women cannot be philosophers. And, of course, Smith suggested that blacks would be ready to rule in about 1000 years.
Ascent
Bataille's atheistic religion and despair from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
This video also concerns Bataille's negative dialectic or the exposure to "nothing". It's not at all scientific to assume that the salience of points have a fundamental existence outside of your mind. Atheistic "mysticism" differs from religiosity a few steps further up the mountainside at the point where hope turns into despair and one's despair becomes redemptive. I'm not really arguing that one should embrace this perspective, only that it is the natural consequence to a long climb in relation to Western metaphysics. At the higher reaches of the summit, unlearning/nonknowledge becomes key to advancing, instead of requiring a further acquisition of knowledge.
Cf. unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/time-has-come-walrus.html
Repost
I woke up this morning after dreaming heavily. Whilst in the borderlands between wakefulness and sleepiness, I suddenly caught sight of what seems to be the most elusive issue, but the central one relating to shamanism. It is also the most difficult to express, since language, being a static self-contained philosophy in its own right, doesn’t really address it. Also the ideologies of humanism and other systematizations of theory cannot bring it directly befoire our mind’s eye.
The issue is the nature of being. Being is the faculty by which we interface with the sacred. So long as being is passive — which is its normal state — being cannot be sensed, smelled or felt. What can be detected whilst being is passive are expressions of knowledge and insight. But these are not being. They are almost the opposite of being, since they can deflect attention away from being, making the core of life seem to be about how much knowlege one had obtained, or whether one had developed insight into anything.
But shamanism is not about knowledge and insight. These are just the epiphenomena of being. Shamanism is about discovering being, which is elusive.
Here’s what Bataille discovered about being. It can’t be discovered whilst one is sitting still. It has to be shaken up. Being only comes to light when it is volatile. In its resting state, in its apathetic or complacent state, it seems like nonbeing.
So Bataille and Nietzsche — the core of the philosophies — is to make being volatile. That way it can be known. Awareness of being for the first time is shamanic awakening.
Language, of course, betrays this sense of things, because it is too facile. Some people will say, “Well, of course, we know we have being, because it’s mentioned right there in the text. In fact they will say this, but next minute they will imply that they are trying to develop their knowledge and insight about fixed things in a fixed world. This is proof positive that they do not in fact understand about being. At best, they must have lost sight of it.
Static being erases itself. All that one sees is the shell of knowledge it has left behind. To be self-satisfied with one’s being, or to confuse being with one of its outer shells — social identity, personality or knowledge — is to lose sight of being. Those things are either static or slow moving and do not encapsulate being.
The great philosophers of being — Nietzsche, Bataille and Marechera — do not fit well into frameworks that maintain a static view of things: academia is one of these. I have often wondered what made me so uneasy about the ways that critics took Marechera apart with such facile motions. It seems they erred in not understanding the core issue of his writing, which was to make being more apparent. To cause being to appear in his writings, he had to stir it up and make it volatile. But people took this volatility as a threat or a sign of pathology, rather than seeing that through allowing being to be tormented, a relationship with the sacred is established.
But no matter — the critics focused on the external form, the shell, whilst debating whether his writing had social or political utility. Of course, postmodernists also do the same to Nietzsche, which is moronic. The degree to which they don’t know anything about being can be measured precisely in the lengths they will go to preach morality to others. Morality spells the closing off of being. When the circle of experience becomes closed and one is cocksure about one’s knowledge and one’s place in the world, one begins moralizing. Some people never stop moralizing after this point. They’ve lost access to the sacred – maintained through the volatility of being — and this is their revenge on others. To be static in one’s overcertainty about things is spiritual death.
But no matter. A prematurely closed circle around one’s being means no more torment of one’s being. One is what one is what one is. The sacrilege only appears in a demand that others simply be “what they are” — which means they are obliged by me to remain just how they appear to me. This is childish vengeance against the sacred — but it is not uncommon among academics. They want things to be fixed by their piercing eyes.
You can tell they don’t know anything, because one’s obligation to the sacred is not to remain fixed, but to stay in a volatile state, so that one may communicate with it. A really good shaman — which I am not — will also be able to impart in words some of the ecstasy of his interaction with the sacred to others.
The cost of being a good shaman is that one must allow one’s wound in one’s being to constantly be reopened. One does not communicate with the sacred otherwise. This sort of relationship with reality is what Bataille terms not “torment” but “torture”. If one allows oneself to be tortured, the relationship between being and the sacred becomes salient. Ancient shamanism does not mince words about what shamanic initiation implies — the initiate’s organs are taken out, boiled and counted and then replaced. This is a depiction of torture followed by spiritual rebirth.
A shamanic initiate is therefore not one who ought to be summarily dismissed with remarks about so-called pathological states, or by remarking on a lack of social utility or a failure of originality. All of these issues could hardly be more beside the point. Indeed, experiencing pathological states, not having any social function and falling short of all measure of originality may be the cost a shaman has to pay in order to gain access to the sacred. To pay the cost no matter what one loses in the process is an act of courage that goes way beyond my present capabilities. Marechera could do it. But me, I am at the bottom of the ocean floor, happy for now if others mistake me for a shell. When I do eventually move, I know it will feel like torture, so I wish to delay that process of regaining volatility.
I hope I’ve explained about the nature of shamanic being and the encounter with the sacred. Passive beings can’t do it as they lose sight of the sacred in a non-volatile state, but the volatility of being is nothing short of torture and shamanic initiation is ritual torture or extreme violence that suddenly befalls someone, that cannot be fully resolved. Those who don’t understand this tend to miscategorize shamanic writing to make it something they can more easily relate to. They say very weird things in this vein, for example laying the charge that Bataille’s writing is “left fascism”.
They demand more political and social utility from the writing. They moralize, or seem to be observing states that they take to be self-evidently pathological. In most cases, they stay on the surface of being, unable to see down to the level of the sacred. To understand being, they would have to risk their own beings, but they won’t allow themselves to experience any amount of torture, so they stay where they are, which allows them to grasp much less than what the writers have expressed. They remain static and their very language betrays a resistance to knowledge of the sacred. The fact of shamanic experience upsets them, just as being pierced through or watching as this happens to others is a horrifying prospect. It’s easier to choose not to see what has just occurred.
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