Musings (for a friend)

I don't think Bataille's system is really related to a system of regression, which I have been describing in terms of traditional shamanism.   Traditional shamanism takes the individual back to a dependency state and then restores the mind, in a sense reprogramming it with a more coherent sense of reality, whilst removing the force of the painful memories.   I understand this idea theoretically more than in terms of what may be practically possible -- at least for all people at all times (although perhaps I am erring on the side of doubt).   All shamanism involves some measure of reprogramming and reintegration of parts that had gone missing from one's core being -- that are needed in order to make up the whole.  

In the case of Bataille, the way I read him, he was able to integrate the negative, lower elements of life that he would tend to try to escape from, only after he had made his effort toward transcendence.  Without the fatigue that comes from this effort, I would say, there is no ability to integrate.   Despair is the integrative principle.   Fatigue is the opening/receptive principle.  But initial effort is above all the disciplining and ordering principle, which is also necessary to give shape to the experience.  Of course I read him through the lens of my own experience as well as through conjecture.  

So Bataille and traditional shamanism are different, especially as regards their methodologies.  But they are the same in the sense of the project, which is to discover the terrain of the mind and to integrate it more thoroughly.

As I said, I use some conjecture here, based on personal experience and so on.   To me, the effort I make toward transcendence (the masculine principle) can become a form of developing resources (self nurturing), which makes integration with the difficult or seemingly impossible or hateful aspects of one's experiences more likely.  I think that modern man (the contemporary human being, but especially of Bataille's time) is divided from himself, above all by principles of civilisation, so the aspects of life such a violence, sexuality and the sense of being fully in the body, in the skin, are implicitly denied if not renounced.   To return to them makes for a fuller being, at least one that acknowledges the highs and lows better.  One becomes less schizoid or divorced from oneself than the moral-minded man.

Getting back to traditional shamanism, in that case regression is facilitated by singing or changing or drumming, and/or with the assistance of mind-altering substances.  The shaman thus regresses the subject to a dependency state.  Once there, the subject can relearn about himself and about the world.  But this is because the shaman is a healer, with highly developed intuitive skills and a mythological framework to impart.  We all live in a framework of myths, anyway.   There are Freudian myths, free market myths, other salvation and redemption myths.  Some of these are healthier than others.  To be integrated better (a sign of health) one can use a framework that is healthier than the one that one is implicitly relying upon.

I think most of us really don't know what myths we are relying upon, which are animating us.  Some will make it harder to reach wholeness.   Christianity is a very negative myth for women, for instance, since it tends to divide the psyche rather than allow for its integration.

Feminine relaxation is just bodily relaxation.   There's a certain sense in which the earth is feminine and the sky is masculine, although we would be better to see these as symbolic categories rather than defining human differences.

That's all I can come up with right now.

New ambitions

Life is strange.  I've been in the process of casting off weight and I do mean psychologically.   One shouldn't go through life with precious stones that don't have practical benefits.  I can carry, for instance, the burden of my responsibility to the past or to others, but these weights are not that necessary, all up.

I have become aware of how much Christian responsibility I still felt, even though I had disavowed Christianity.   I still felt responsibility for making others feel better about themselves.

I should have understood that even practising Christians don't go out of their way to that extent, so now I happily allow nature to take its course.  There will be those who are attracted to me, those who aren't so drawn and others who don't like my ways at all.   I will of course make those who like me feel very good about themselves, but this is not by way of a burden and does not require any sort of effort.

When I consider what I have the capacity to idealize, I can easily narrow it.   I do like adventure and pushing the boundaries, but when accompanied with a sense of efficiency that gives these qualities an aesthetic edge.   

By contrast, I don't like petty opportunism and have never liked it.   I don't like, in other words, the soul of the modern man or woman under contemporary capitalism.   Instead of lamenting the ugliness of this particular manifestation, I will withdraw my interest and my energies.   Those who curtail their spirits to accept such bondage will never have much going for them in my eyes.  Maybe in another's eyes they will look pretty gradiose, but I don't care to contemplate that very deeply.

Instead, I will go my own way.   It will be easier in some regards, because I will go lightly, much more breezily than before.

The world does not need my moral ambitions, but it could do with my continued authenticity.   I don't have that much power, but I do have insight and courage.

That's just how it is.  I will do my martial arts grading in March and then onward and indeed sideways, if that happens to be the way of nature.   I've always come out better from every experience, so I don't see how that can change.

Knowledge and nonknowledge (Bataille)

The changing world & one's worth

ZARATHUSTRA'S Shatter the good and just

First see that you become whole

What the hell.

What is conveyed by heterogeneous (shamanic) texts

Zimbabwe Police beat up recruits

Heterogenous and homogeneous types

In a psychoanalytical vein

I would say that, roughly, object relations refers to the mother and superego refers to the father, in the Freudian/psychoanalytic paradigm.  That's very rough, but the idea it that the mother is not inherently authoritative, but nurturing, rather, whereas the father represents authority, and thus superego.  This is of course all very Jewish, in the sense of being a construct that develops under both the practical and theoretical guidance of a religious patriarchy.   In my original culture, female school teachers were in fact extremely authoritative, but in Australia, they have less latitude to represent something other than a nurturing mother.  I think gender essentialist feminism has made this situation worse rather than better.

One of the problems relating to the discussion in terms of guiding parental principles is that it tends to be one sided.   You can say, "well this was a slap that was internalized" and "this was a principle of obedience imposed from the outside", but in fact the issue is also always one that concerns nourishment.   In a pluralistic society, an authoritative slap down may mean that I simply look for my nourishment elsewhere.   And whilst nourishment in the feminine sense may mean a search for approval, nourishment in the masculine sense would imply a search for a different standard of discipline or testing ground, so that one may prove one's worth effectively.

Perhaps there are even stages of this, similar to Maslow's pyramid, whereby the needs to be nurtured in a feminine way are superceded by a more masculine need.  But some people have unfinished work at the basic familial/feminine level.  Then object relations has a greater level of significance in their psyche.  In fact, I think where people are brought up too quickly and forced to become adults very early on, they do not finish this early work ever, or only with difficulty, because it is hard to be nourished in a totally open and unconditional way in adult society.

In my case, I had a lot of nourishment at the early childhood level.   I had a very prolonged childhood, but not in a way that was suffocating.   What I really needed and craved was a more masculine rite of passage -- which I eventually got through pushing beyond my superego limits, since my superego had placed a very narrow grid over my mind.

The old fat teacher in your story seems to have wanted some feminine level nurturing, but there is no intimacy of communication.  Reality has become atrophied, even at the level of the (symbolically) feminine.   I think, in general, in patriarchal societies, women are laughed at with the presumption that they are not capable of being aware of what is happening.   As an example, I recently saw a site which depicted "before and after" photos of women not wearing and wearing makeup.  The article was titled, "women are deceiving you".   In each section, the woman was condescendingly praised for making a good effort and managing to present herself better than in the previous image.   The lesson is that no matter what women may do, the feminine is an object of ridicule.   It is defined only for the purpose of being negated. Well, that is what is really problematic about occupying a female subject-position under patriarchy.  Lesson for those who aspire to be good female teachers:  No point "changing the subject" in order to win approval -- you are, definitionally, never going to be any good.  That is a condition of your gender.

Being "bad" however, is an option, as is being bad.   The first is an obviation of language and the second is transgression.  Both are ways out of a hostile construct of reality.

Your dream of smashing red phallic symbols against the wall?   Well, a denial of masculine modes of reality -- i.e. masculine authoritativeness?  One cannot proceed to this next level, anyway, if at the level of the feminine one has become atrophied.   One needs extreme fluidity at this level and then one proceeds to the next level. Or one prematurely crystalises and then stays in a needy mode.

One difference I see between African children and Australian ones is that the latter is more likely to be prematurely crystalised in a mode of neediness.   The African child can be playful AND can take on responsibility, but more than often the Australian child still has need of nourishment but can't really take it in and absorb it.  Something blocks and prevents this, which probably leads to the high amount of misogyny in the society: the anger at "the feminine" for seeming to be withholding itself.  Should one be able to regress to the level of an infant and then get all the unconditional love one had originally needed, one would perhaps be able to proceed more effectively through life.   But many people are left trying to form unhealthy symbiotic relationships with others so as to extract this nourishment.  The problem is, their own stomachs reject it and cannot take it in.  It's like in Knut Hamsun's HUNGER, he has been hungry for so long that he cannot digest a rich steak and throws up immediately.

Perhaps all misogyny stems from this sense of hunger in a more emotional sense?   That is why we have right wingers proclaiming their desire to "save the foetus", which makes no sense logically (since they are also prepared to deny life and to kill), but seems to symbolize their need for greater emotional nourishment at a stage of early development.

I had a dream last night where this was a maniac in Syria who had set up a roadside bomb so that it would kill passers by.  He would beam the distressed cries of their family members immediately onto the Internet.  Then I unpacked a huge sports bag I had been carrying, and suddenly out fell his head and then a human ear.   I put these on the floor of the van and then I randomly decided to notify the cops.  I said, "You know there is a human head in that van if you go and look."  But then they looked and there was nothing there.  That made sense (in my dream) because I suddenly realized I had no sequence of memory leading up to the appearance of the head, and consequently I had probably dreamed it.   But it had seemed so real.  Somehow I had committed to something beyond myself by telling others what I had seen.

On this Freud letter, he is a Jewish patriarch and doesn't want to offend his father by going beyond him and seeing what his father could not see and would have no interest in seeing.  This level of obedience is very different from Bataille's transgression.  Bataille would say:  "If my father would not have been privileged enough to see this sight and if he would have found it boring, then I must certainly see it very clearly and enjoy it."   There is no point in preserving tradition for its own sake.   One must go beyond what exists, to create the future.  But that is tricky because then one shatters the existing frame of being that has given us comfort.   To accept that one cannot do certain things is easier than to push beyond what exists.

But nobody pushes into the limits without adequate nourishment.  Consider an arctic voyage without stocking up and adequate supplies.   One has to figure out the logistics of this, not just push willy-nilly.  Part of this is accepting that what one is doing isn't easy.  It's not supposed to be.  So, since it is hard, one has to plan and plot along the way. Have plenty of nourishment, have plenty of "feminine" relaxation and you will be better off.

But pushing the limits in Bataille's sense will be harder for people in a society where the "feminine" is routinely devalued.  They can push along in a masculine mode, but they just won't have the resources to get where they want to be going.  It's hardly heroic to go exploring the mountains without adequate supplies, especially if supplies are needed.  Ironically, they will never figure out how their societies and the values they have been taught to embrace are sabotaging their masculine efforts.  I keep seeing this all the time, but most people can't or won't be taught.

The shamanic project of ultra-Christianity: Nietzsche & Bataille

Heterogenous and homogeneous types

Boxing Drills - Fluid Motion

The psychology of fascism

Vagina Dentata

Vagina Dentata:

'via Blog this'

The psychology of fascism & Jewish misunderstandings

Rugged day out

The road to freedom

I used to see the same thing, that my father was suffering, and that someone should either help him or take him out of his misery.  I felt bad that I had to see this suffering and yet be unable to assist.  Also I was very angry, indeed rageful, because all of his efforts seemed directed to keeping me in a stunted immature state, from the age of 15 onward.   He seemed to draw his energy from keeping me down.   But this isn't object relations, which would mean something that happened when I was very young.  It happened when I was an adolescent and subsequent to that.

It's a terrible state to be in, because as you have suggested it leads to an internal antagonism.   Initially, whenever I became angry, I would reflexively condemn myself as worthless for being angry at what already had worth, whilst I, being not yet a socially sanctioned adult or having passed any rites of initiation, had not yet any worth in my own estimation.  I wanted something to test myself against, followed by recognition of what I'd done.

I had to get myself to adulthood so that I would have the authority to do something authoritative, to fix the situation.  That was hard.  I needed my father's blessing or the blessing of a proxy to reach adulthood, and people, above all my father, resolutely refused to give this to me.

Actually, one of those things about patriarchal society is that if you mention "my father said X about me," everybody takes it for granted that this is an authoritatively true statement about you.  After all, it was said by one's father.  Consequently, people kept battering me and telling me to grow up -- which was ironic to say the least.   Nobody wanted me to grow up, at least in terms of the new culture.  I couldn't form an emotional bridge to it.  And yet in other ways, I was overly mature.

I did eventually get there but it was a stuggle in a way it ought not to have been and that depleted the energy I could have used for other things.

But I do understand what you mean by the stage where "no" would have been destructive, as I have been there myself.  That was when I lacked authority.  And really, I had to do a lot of things to gain my own respect, so that I would have more authority, compared to that of my father and his voice in my head.   So I got into what Bataille calls transgression and I got into it more and more, to try to loosen my boundaries and reduce the levels of rigidity.

When I began writing my memoir (also a form of transgression, since I was attempting to tell my side),  I had that very conservative idea of climbing a slope and reaching a point where it all made sense and the situation was redemeed.  It didn't really work out that way.  People who read my work kept saying, "Your father said WHAT about you?"  They were very much stuck at a patriarchal level and that is the way it has remained.   But the thing is, I did transcend that notion of redemption eventually.   It must be that I became more redeemed, so I had less use for the idea.  Also I saw that it was futile to expect others to redeem you.  Maybe in a homogenised society, where everybody could understand what was going on, due to sharing the same history, sense of responsibility and being able to conjecture.   But otherwise, I had vastly overestimated the level of people's emotional and intellectual knowledge.  I had been so intent on proving myself to be an adult to those who would deny me that status, that I had very much overshot the mark.   And they still couldn't see it -- the patience, the strategy, the effort.

So I began to laugh.  I split with the whole structure of the trauma and with the notion that effort has to be morally rewarded.   The Christians themselves, who had encouraged me along that line of thought, had proven it untrue by their own reactions, in not recognising the need to move beyond a narrowk patriarchal view of things.   Since they had demonstrated their own ability to confirm the beliefs they had, I was free from their ideology.

One does have to learn to say NO to various things at various points, but the timing really does matter.  You have to build up the strength within yourself to be able to say it, otherwise you get crushed by your own exertion.   You're dealing with forcefields.

Most people, it seems, can't say "no" to things in important ways.  For instance, someone might say to me, "It seems you have made yourself free from bondage to conservative situations and beliefs, but I can do that too in due course."  It doesn't work that way, because the mind does not function only on volition, but on the basis of emotional muscle tone.   You can build that up within you and there are ways of doing that, for instance by becoming more attuned with and accepting of "disgusting" things.   Anything that reduces authoritarian rigidity is useful.

But the road to freedom can take a couple of decades, and not at cruise speed either, but pushing along over some pretty rugged terrain.

Cf.

http://musteryou.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/seeking-rejuvenating-stints/

What is shamanic doubling?

TRUE RELIGION AND SHAMANIC INITIATION

Drinking doesn't make you fat: A startling new book claims that nightly glass of wine won't go straight to the hips | Mail Online

Drinking doesn't make you fat: A startling new book claims that nightly glass of wine won't go straight to the hips | Mail Online

So eating fat and drinking wine is actually good for you.

Daily Sun Mobi

Daily Sun Mobi

This is why some people cautioned me not to take mini-buses through Zimbabwe.

First see that you become whole

What is the moral summit?

Running away/leaving

The end part of the dream was rather disturbing because I was in a bookshop, compulsively opening and looking through some very refined and well crafted picture books. However, the sweat on my hands was so intense it soaked the books and I mangled several pages in many of the books I touched. The sales assistant said that I was on their list as a suspect. I didn’t mean to be destroying the books I was touching, but this kept occurring. I even thought I could offer to pay for the one I had more recently mishandled, but then I thought I’d probably end up paying for all of them, which I wouldn’t have been able to afford. There were religious women starting to persecute me, too. One ugly woman got close to me and contorted her face and said, “Deeem….!” I said, “Demon?” She was implying I was demon possessed.

So I just left the bookshop, and I realized I had no baggage to carry at all. No books was good, on one hand, but then I also had no food. I went through a very built-up arcade, which was in a suburb where my parents now live, only way into the future. A woman with a child over her shoulder almost scraped me and I had to sidestep her.

I just wanted to get out of this claustriphobic place as soon as possible, but suddenly the book shopowner, a kind of spy, was running after me. She had always kept me in her sights. She said she just wanted to ask me a few questions, so I said, “yes?”

I was feeling very guilty, so she began playing on that guilt, asking me why I was no longer doing mymartial arts training. That was false, as I was still doing it. I said, “Why do you ask?” She said that when she was 65, she’d like to have a very toned body, and implied that I had the responsibility to think about that. I began trying to run away from the place, but it was like running underwater. I could only make very tiny steps with all my force.

I was trying to get away from middle class people and their concerns, from religious people and their concerns and from a situation where I inadvertently destroy their artefacts.

What I am finding is, all the time, the rejection that what I have to say contains violence. It’s more like I’m suspicious because I mess up the picture book and inadvertently destroy cultural property, but this is more demonic than deliberate. Or something.

But then, to get out of femininity and its mode of suffocation, it has to be deliberate, not inadvertent or out of my control (and in the control of the one who eternally monitors and polices reality to make sure it contains enough of the ascetic ideal).

I suppose, in a way, this hints at my relationship to A, which isn’t really a condition of having totally no power in my case, but has to do with being required to embrace an ascetic ideal, in a way that conforms to social expectations, especially with regard to femininity. For instance, if I make an unusual, because very personal interpretation of a book, the feminine world will say I’ve made a “mistake”, rather than acknowledging that I have expressed myself creatively. The books I was messing up were not language books, but picture books, however. I was destroying pristine and elaborate appearances, just by picking up the books in question. And this is because my hands were very sweaty — probably because I was, yes, still continuing with my martial arts even in the shop.

The feminine world denies my efforts and abilities, whilst policing me and asserting this is something I should be glad about. I feel very, very clumsy in its arena, and mess things up consistently even when I don’t intend to. Then the social police will claim that this occurred because I lapsed from my real nature — in this case accusing me wrongly of no longer thinking about the future by doing martial arts.

This, for me is horror in the realm of A. There are people who are very, very clear about their direction in life, who will not see me as having a different mind than they and a life they haven’t directly observed for themselves. They work on conjecture and with bad premises. For instance, they may assume that I have given up my training because I don’t come across as an ascetic.

In any case, they are picture books, not language books, that I tend to destroy with my fingers. I destory the ornate and beautiful ideas, but still manage language. But my language isn’t good enough to correct the misconceptions or the policing of my being, so I can only run away.

ZARATHUSTRA'S Shatter the good and just

Freetalk: my oafishness regretted.

Hey mate, don't be afraid to stand up (in the workplace)

The appropriate action would be to grab his nose and twist it, or grab something else and give it a good twist!

Watch Daredevil Diver Hugs An 8 Foot Lemon Shark in Bora Bora - Good Way...

Deleted.  I guess they don't want you to see this, incase you try it yourself.  But killing sharks to keep you safe is OK.

Subjectivity and the Western problem of narcissism

Nietzsche and guilt

Unconsciously internalized ideology sabotages your ideology

Recover from ideological madness

Commiting psychoanalysis on myself

Let A stand for mother love and close proximity to others, whereas B will be more closely aligned to the symbolic masculine position, which is away from the community and on its boundaries, perhaps (in historical terms) protecting the camp from wild animals.   In its extremes, B stands for the wilderness itself and A stands for civilized modes of relating.

In terms of how we find ourselves in relation to A and B, I think they are morally neutral in and of themselves.  No preference for one or the other has any moral meaning in itself.

But I think what may be more important is the way that the relationship between A and B are symbolized in our heads.  I am getting to a Freudian point.  Perhaps for a male being pushed away from the embrace of the mother (A) is a very painful experience?   It's not A itself that is desired, but to relive that experience of a more gradual transition from A to B - one which is less damaging?

In my case, I really only feel healthy and fully myself when I am very close to B.   I am suffocated when in A, and in truth I have not found a way to exist in language.   In fact, sometimes I seem to mutilate language to take my revenge.  I want to put it at a disadvantage, so that it doesn't grab hold of me.

The wilderness, where I have fully separated is the only state that has full meaning for me.  But because I am female, people have constantly treated me as if I were more comfortable with A, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of my being, not to mention my goals and desires.   I am never happier than when I am cast out of society and left to fend for myself.   Too much mother love robs me of my being.

If A and B are feminine and masculine modalities respectively, one has to keep both of them, to not deny one's full humanity.

A certain scenario that keeps playing out, where people want to punish me by denying me access to the community, and inadvertently (on their parts), they liberate me.   Whenever someone tries to make me see that I am not conforming to the community's mores, the more I realize that I had only been conforming in a half-assed, rather unconscious way from the beginning, but that this had never been my actual desire.   Their anger liberates me from that which was never really in me to begin with.

I suppose, in a way, what A does not have, which B has, is a sense of eternity.  A tries to keep me focused on the details, like doing needlework when I am dripping with sweat and my eyes are half-blind.   I can't see anything beyond the details, but I can't really experience them fully and their presence overwhelms me.

In the mode of B, my eyes gaze out to the horizon and beyond.   There is no threat I am not already equipped to handle.   When I give up on A, it is like throwing away a mutilated being, like a child I never wanted.   I am relieved to be rid of an externally imposed burden.

US Versus Quebec | Clarissa's Blog

US Versus Quebec | Clarissa's Blog


Australia is a high context culture, not a low context one. This is reflected even in the street signs, which are far from systematic, implying you have to know where you are going or you are an outsider.

 Also I would say that the low context, independent style was the one I was brought up with, except in the case of understanding jokes, which were high context. Really, I think it may be impossible to categorise nationalities in this way. You could say that there is a certain degree of rationality that makes for independent thinking, rather than relying on the collective mind, but a lot of stuff will still be context dependent. I think gender relations are very much like this, because there are certain behavioral lines you can't cross before people start to penalize you for that.

The Nietzschean shamanic experience

Summer Heights High Full Episode 2

Summer Heights High Full Episode 1

The shamanic project of ultra-Christianity: Nietzsche & Bataille

What is the moral summit?

 This should really be part 2. I have just made part 1. Look out of it.

The morality of the summit

The morality of the summit is when you sacrifice yourself for a higher good. You go beyond yourself and your narrow interests. The morality of the decline is where the sacrifice is merely symbolic and not substantive, as in the case of the Christian religion, where it is posited that a god died for us, but we don't understand this in terms of an actual action that we are capable of performing.

Grumpy morning wake-up

Sometimes, in the morning, one wakes up.

Mike is aggressive (the jo)

Fabulous Fashionistas (2013)

Why Killing A Lion Is The Most Cowardly Thing You Can Do

Why Killing A Lion Is The Most Cowardly Thing You Can Do

The changing world & one's worth

''My story'' by Robin Temple

m.friendfeed-media.com/5a568ad320b2d48b863e37e21845bc3f32cf4f82

m.friendfeed-media.com/5a568ad320b2d48b863e37e21845bc3f32cf4f82

Sunday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

Sunday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog


The French have the best aventures érotiques, but even in that case, there’s something missing, for instance in terms of a really broad range of emotion that includes aggression. They’re just a little too detached, which in some ways is interesting, because they have sex like they were putting on a pot of coffee, but in other respects I don’t see any flickering micro-emotions, not really.

I refer to the movies I have been watching recently.

Get real

Even when other humans throw shit at you, they are in a way throwing away their richness.  Sure it creates imbalances and distortions in your mind.  At least it is real, whereas the shit-free existence or the eternally bland is never all that real.  

There are ways of figuring out where the excrement is coming from, for instance, when somebody is projecting something, they are attempting to lie to you, but part of them is also preventing this lie or obstructing it.  It's a weird phenomenon I've noticed again and again, but there is a truth-telling element in all attempts to deny reality and to project it away.  It's a kind of inadvertent ontological doubling -- and if you watch people really closely, you can see this happening.

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/unconscious-confessions.html

But certainly the process of figuring it all out from the inside is like trying to solve a complex puzzle, because our perceptions are warped by the pummelling we are still receiving.

I know I eventually made my way out of my confusion and dilemma by learning to repeat "no", whenever I felt someone was bullying me.   They would attempt some emotional blackmail and I would just say "no" to it.  I resist.  I refuse.  You  feel a lot of G-force then, like you are breaking up, but you can eventually come out of that.

Dangerously real

The primeval is experience  is that which is dangerously real.  Reality isn't real unless it is dangerous.  Naturally, humans thirst for this experience, although plastic fakes abound.  Strangle a lion with your bare hands, or attempt to, and I will concede that your experience has been real and dangerously so.   Or:   stand behind a mesh screen and shoot your prey through a peepy hole after it has been set up for the kill, and I will posit you are maybe just a yank.

Sorry.  That was hurtful.   I should refer to this by the full name:  Yankee Doodle.

Tamed-down versions of primeval experiences exist, but when they have been dosed up on tranquilisers, they're not any more primeval than your great granny in her rocking chair.  But she may be a very nice lady and I'm not intending any insult.

Primeval experiences are dangerous, but being a lady isn't so.   To be a lady means no dangerous experience will rock your being.  In fact the gender system agrees with me:  once "a lady" is raped or otherwise mishandled, she loses her societal status and is nothing more than one who dwells in gutters.

In any case, I maintain my view that an unsullied lady is the only possible variety, with no room for deviation from that basic format.

Dandy.

A dangerously real experience means no longer calling on this gender terminology.  Why not?  Because you realise that it is fake.  Why?  Because you have become exposed to one or myriad experiences that are dangerous and real.

Many people long for a deeper draw on reality, but their lungs are shallow.  So, they shoot a beast in Africa and then encourage other "ladies" to take up a weapon.

Why?  Because they lack the courage for a full experience and want to latch onto plastic bubbles to stay afloat, when they should give up all claims to what is artificial.   Go for the full-on dirty, combat with primeval elements.

You might find something out about the reality or falseness of society's gender constructs.

(THIS POST IS CONNECTED TO THE ONE DIRECTLY BELOW.)

Cf.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10453255/TV-presenter-causes-outrage-after-posing-with-lion-she-killed.html

A lady's extravaganza.

She refers to women as "ladies" which makes it plain that she does not get close to the animals she kills. If she really got primeval and into a killing mode, she wouldn't want/need to stand back and be a feminine poseur.

Cf.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2508209/Winchester-Deadly-Passion-presenter-Melissa-Bachman-sparks-outrage-posing-lion-shot-dead.html

Excremental being

There are some things  that I have found in Bataille..   The notion of excremental being is very strong in his work.  Consider society as a human organism.   Some people will form the parts of it that function, like eyes and ears and others will be intestines or excrement.  Bataille thought that "heterogeneous" beings were those who did not fit the regulated, homogeneous structure of society and were excreted out.  You might be able to find his essay, "On the psychology of Fascism".   He speaks about it here.  Basically these excremental beings are strong, but separated from everything else.  So fascism gets moving when they are reintegrated into the whole.

There is also another aspect to this in that if we consider, again, the whole of society as a kind of bodily structure, people tend to project unrecognized and unwanted parts of themselves into others.   For instance, if they are dependent, they might project dependency.  As Melanie Klein points out, they are literally trying to get rid of their excretions.  I say, "literal", because there is a literal aspect to all this.  The person projected upon feels dirty and estranged.   Klein says that the infant does this form of projection on and against its mother.  "Here, take my excretion.  YOU are disgusting!"

So there are invisible transactions like this going on all the time, and they are far from being merely symbolic or imaginary.  Rather, they do have a direct material effect on those who get treated in this manner, especially if the treatment is prolonged.  

When I began my research into this, I started to understand that what shamanism ought to address is how to handle these projections as material realities.  Start taking them seriously.  Realize that they are actual, although invisible, forces that can do some severe damage to your life.

If we have weak boundaries, due to some kind of psychological trauma, we are more likely to be affected by these forces, as we are less able to recognize and deflect them.  That is like being a person without skin.   It would be worse if you are actually taught to embrace your weakness rather than work against it.  Actually I was taught this, because that was the female gender role I was supposed to adjust to, but that means taking on everybody's projections and allowing them to be the infants who want to transfer onto me the identification with their own excrement.  

I think it is sometimes enough to recognize that humans do wish to excrete themselves to gain a sensation of purity and that they will use anyone around them who has experienced psychological damage as their toilet.  It's a general dynamic that is not particularly personal. 

And there is a certain truth, also, to the fact that war cleans everything up and makes this dynamic either more obvious or more difficult to impose because people do get thicker skins when they recognize they are at war.   The thicker skins themselves repel these forces.   But weak or compulsively liberal societies seem to make them endemic.   Everybody suffers from them and this is considered the norm.

So learning to be at war with oneself and with others, as Nietzsche recommended, can be a healthy solution.

Our understanding of what is real and what isn't seems to take care of itself when we can differentiate these negative forces projected by others from our real selves.   That's easier said than done, especially if you are basically a kind and gentle person who takes on the burdens of others.  But it has to be done.

bergs of change

Where Did Character Development Go? | Clarissa's Blog


It’s especially strange when one makes a point of emphasizing change, for example: “Yesterday I was a yellow iceberg and then I turned orange and it seems like I am becoming red.” People respond with: “Okay, so you are very confused. You seem to be saying you are yellow and orange and red. I don’t get it. How can we have an iceberg that is three colors at the same time? Or do you just think you are more special than the rest of us?”

The women are revolting: a polemic?

Philosophically objectively stupid statements

is my eros your thanatos? | Nietzsche's hairs

is my eros your thanatos? | Nietzsche's hairs

Guilt

Guilt is a primeval emotion.To have guilt as a primeval sensation is to be more well positioned to develop shamanic awareness.  The consistency one finds in various shamanic writers is not in the use they put their knowledge to, but in the purity of their awareness that these expressions of the psyche are decisive.

Nietzsche says guilt is an idiocy.  He also says that there is a dire need for someone, some kind of overman creature, to rescue humans from their proneness to guilt.  Bataille says something of the opposite.  Guilt is a primeval emotion that ought not to be wasted.  It enhances subjectivity, giving us something else to focus on than the world of objects and actions driven by material need or by the mechanics of the system.  Guilt returns the individual to himself in a doubling motion and makes him or her more self-aware.

There is always that doubling motion in shamanism.  People that see reality as only having one side, or linear dimensions tend to misread the project.  For instance, neither Nietzsche nor Bataille advocate a descent into primevality without reflection.   The assumption is that there is a doubling back upon oneself, so that the higher reaches of the mind enter a knowledge of primevality.   If you don't understand this already then a return to the primeval limits is not for you.  A simple regression is a descent into madness that wastes everybody's time.   The key to successfully completing shamanic projects is rather self-outwitting.  Don't get pulled in by something you can't control, but do get close enough so that you can observe it.

In relation to this goal, guilt works wonders.   It does indeed create an effective doubling.   One has the original actor -- the "sinner" if you will -- and the accuser who stands apart and makes the condemnation.   This shamanicically enhanced polarisation of experience enhances subjectivity.   The psyche is widened and one takes in more information than before, when one's being had been rather flattened.

Self doubling also comes about automatically in the face of the fear of death.   One attempts to stand apart from the inevitable, and thus is doubled.   This expansion is more extreme than dreaming and being attentive to what one dreams.

To make one's project to reinhabit subjectivity rather than to allow one's psyche to be passively filled is the entire purpose of  shamanic projects.  There's always a risk of destruction -- always.

Academics who might be inclined to assert that Georges Bataille is just being silly by making guilt central to his project whilst claiming to be a careful reader of Nietzsche are clearly not sufficiently DEEP readers of Nietzsche, which is to say they do not read deeply enough into the meaning of his project.   It's to enhance subjectivity through mastering the invisible forces.  In making this his project, albeit in slightly different way from Nietzsche, Bataille is Nietzschean.   He is just using methods available to him and to us today, as opposed to the aristocratic methodology of the past.

In terms of inner experience, it's not like you can eliminate guilt and still expect to develop a means of self-doubling.   Some circumstances may allow a different method, but not all.  In the 20th Century, form has held sway over content.   People emptied of subjecthood may feel no guilt, but that is not to their advantage.

Automatons march robotically in their sleep, free from the nightmares that could have them leaping from their beds.

But looking deeper than how things appear to be on the surface requires an already well-developed base of subjective knowledge.  Let us not assume we have this capability already, simply by existing.

Chapter 5 part 2.

In our last section we caught a vision of the perambulating ape walking away from his ordinariness.  I made a mistake with that.  I meant to say he was embracing his ordinariness, but in an abject or profane mode and not with respect to the sacred.

I used to think it my moral responsibility to wake up all bipedal apes and inform them there were other modes of travel available, but they kept informing me with solemnity:  "No, can't you see?  We are bipedal!"  It was their fate to travel only by foot as nature had ordained it.  So let no man put a biped and his nature asunder.

You may as well just try splitting an atom.  Or spitting gum.

I took a jet from one side of the Earth to the other and I kept hearing a refrain that was the same:  "Humans are creatures of instinct, nothing can change that."

I agreed when I heard that, but the triumphant tone with which this was proclaimed confused me.   If you walk away from yourself like that, you will spend the rest of your life in the modality of the profane.  I know that can seem easy, natural, even good, but isn't it a trifle?   I mean you'll never get to be a soft porn star in a typical French movie.

Worse than that, you will be under the thumb.   Something is enticing our fellow -- a banana perhaps? -- and he is  moving further and further from himself.   "It's my nature!" starts to sound a little hollow at this point.  More like a desperate drive to prove something to others who aren't even listening or capable of paying attention.

This hair-coated figure moves further and further away because he must.  He doesn't require a justification that this is "human nature", but he wields it as a stick just incase.    That this is human nature in its natural or organic state is not to be denied, but it is trivally true.  It's harder to turn back on oneself when one is lost or disgusted or driven by a need to revolt against internal emptiness.   Embrace the realm of the profane as if it were an offer of redemption.  

But if you do not return to yourself,  you'll never be my gargantuan fellow.   Well that's okay, but you will be someone else's dummy.  What you mistake for nature is just stuff the ruling class has put into your head.  If you like it -- good. Embrace.  But it is put there not by you and not by nature.  It's in the order of the profane.

The sacred is a return to oneself, but that is difficult, like science.  

solidarity

There were also no doubt aspects of post traumatic stress,  added into the mix of cultural, historical and social influences on Marechera’s outlook. Having been subjected to the harsh rule of the ghetto as well as harsh ideological authoritarianism in the religious (Anglican) school system, Marechera’s drive was towards personal independence as an escape from mental pain and mind control. Yet much of this inner anguish had an intergenerational flavour, for it was those of Marechera’s parent’s generation who bore much of the brunt of the violence of colonial segregation into poverty and the bush war. Indeed, whereas Marechera’s sister fought the second Chimurenga, Marechera himself was, by virtue of his intellect, spared some of the more direct onslaught of violence, after his senior school years and award of an Oxford scholarship. Yet the burden of the guilt for having thus escaped did not leave him unaffected. Indeed, there may have been something of a more active guilt-enhancing mechanism in the approach his mother took to their relationship, reminding him that his going to high school was at the cost of her prostitution of herself. Ira Brenner’s Dissociation of Trauma: Theory, Phenomonelogy and Technique ( p 91 -104) suggests that holocaust survivors can sometimes resent the pleasure that their children are able to experience, as a result of not being subjected to the levels of agonies that the parents had been subjected to.

Faimberg (1988) has conceptualised a type of identification with a “telescoping of generations.” She postulates an intergenerational narcissistic problem in which the parent appropriates the capacity for experiencing pleasure from the child and is internalised as a dominating and intruding object. ( p 96).

Thus, the safety and comfort of “traditional culture” and its responsiblities to parents had all the lure and promise of pleasure for him as would have been symbolically represented in selling out to the “bloody whites” -- that is, nil and less than that in fact. At least this is the point of view of Marechera’s unconscious mind:

And that mongrel was licking my face and sniffing me with his cold nose and swishing his stumpy tail softly to and fro, but somewhat uncertainly. It seemed I had been talking to him while I was unconscious. I know I woke up telling him about how my parents starved themselves to give me an education and to make me what I am now. I was saying: ‘Never under any circumstances consent to be blackmailed by hard-suffering parents to be made the sacrificial investment for their old age. Usually that means they have decided to sell your mind and soul to the bloody whites.’ The dog regarded me pensively for a few seconds and then nodded his head. He licked his lips and in a sad gravel voice he said: ‘What you have been saying is true. Very true, indeed. But do get up, or else someone will think I attacked you: not that I mean anything at all about your fighting spirit or my own, but merely that men are so quick to draw wrong conclusions all the time

Communication involves desecration?

Tony Abbott Hypocrisy Caught Out By Graham Perrett

Yes, of course, the degradation of one person's consciousness using an excuse, "a woman made me do it!" does not mean that everybody else's consciousness was so degraded from the outset. That's just the PM's distorted perception of the matter.

The women are revolting: a polemic?

The benefits of violence

Violence narrows the boundaries between life and death and makes them seem more permeable.

When I came to Australia at 15  I had a different culture in me.   I found it very, very stressful to understand here.  People assumed I wanted to fit in, or promote my ego or something like that, but I hadn't even made the most preliminary steps in that direction, nor did it seem logical to do so.   I really found, aesthetically, the situation here was too plastic and pretend.  I still find modernity to be extremely jarring and repulsive in the sense of suddenly dropping a trap door under you.   I can't imagine how people could like that or even get along with it as if it were normal. 

I had a bubble in me that was extreme rage and sadness, but primarily rage.   My father felt he had been defeated in battle, which is why we were migrating, and he hated anyone that reminded him of his defeat.  I reminded him, because I seemed, myself, defeated.  Also he didn't like women and I was turning into one, it seemed.   Not that I was behaving in any particularly different way, but my body was starting to change slightly and this filled my father with a violent rage.  I really don't know why he hated the female gender so much, but it also probably had something to do with the war and perhaps being told that if the men had not been pussies they would not have lost the war, and lost the country.  Who knows?   His aggression was extreme.  In response, I became very emotionally repressed and did not really experience any negative emotions. 

But I had this bubble in me and it made me extremely weak and fatigued.   I developed chronic fatigue syndrome.  I got multiple allergies to foods and pollen, which only justified my father's rage.  

I eventually got to reading Nietzsche, during a crisis, and understood that somehow I had to express my negativity more fully.   It was an experimental path to health for me.  I was being bullied heavily in the workplace at this time, which had a lot to do with being out of my depth socially, politically and emotionally.

I was becoming more distressed due to my own experiences, and I finally understood the depth of my rage which had been making me sick.   It was white hot and I thought I could actually kill people.  

But the bubble has eventually gone, over ten or fifteen years.  I was extremely hostile during this time, but for the purpose of digging through to what was in me and expressing it.  

And now I've gone through all that process and I'm thriving pretty much physically, although mentally I am a little fraught from all the battles I have had with myself in terms of trying to adapt to modernity, when I cannot.  You see, I still don't like it, although I am starting to understand what it is and why I don't like the kind of behavior people now consider normal.  It seems lacking in sentiment and proper care and depth.  So I understand this and I cope with it through the shamanic principle of "not doing", not responding, just letting everything fall where it does.   My nerves are a little bit ragged but they are improving as I start to understand that I will not adapt to some things and have chosen not to make the effort, come what may.   It's not that there is something wrong with me, but my mentality is different from those who expect a highly regulated environment and want nothing more than that.  I actually want and need the opposite.  To have developed the capability of living in the moment but not to use it seems a waste.

Hard science and the metaphysics of gender

Get back on your rockers

If the aim of knowledge is to turn what is unknown into a representation of what is already known, then the aim of shamanism is to do the opposite.   Nietzsche suggests that people are often uncomfortable with anything unfamiliar, so we go to great lengths to convince ourselves that whatever we encounter is already known.

If A is like B, we’ve seen it all before, so we think we can handle it.  The brain likes to build bridges.  But this method comes with its own limitations.   Sometimes A and B are extremely un-alike, but we try to convince ourselves they are the same anyway, just to give ourselves peace of mind.  Anything, rather than face the unknown!

Turning what is not known into what is deemed to be known happens far more frequently than it ought to happen.   The means by which we lay claim to knowledge is too facile.   We fill our heads with  links, narrowly portrayed, but often these do not represent our experiences to ourselves very well.  We’re leaving out too much and including too little.

Here’s the thing.  Perhaps none of what I am saying is true, but everyone loves Zen Buddhism, right?   Zen is all about coming to terms with perceptions, because even though we think we are perceiving things, there is a lot that is getting past us.  Well, enlightenment is to stop so much getting past us and to keep more of it near us, so that it becomes part of ourselves.

Shamanism is like that only different.  In the case of Zen, you kind of get into an ascetic modality and you eat only a few grains of rice at a time and focus on the weirdness of it all.  The brain snaps under the pressure of asceticism and you stop defending yourself so much from the unknown and accept it.

But in shamanism everything is more frothy and voluptuous.  You just work with what you have.  You don’t need to use asceticism to put you under strain.  You can snap at anything.   Sometimes it’s traumatic experience, or it might be pharmacology.   Whatever it takes to stop defending yourself from yourself.

The level of shamanic health in any society can be measured by the degree to which it accepts, rather than defends itself against the ordinary.   Asceticism and self-denial can take you way off in the wrong direction.  ”We are disgusted with ourselves and wish to improve!”  – but so?   Self-contempt comes from self-alienation, which originates in an unbridled contempt for the ordinary.

Whoever told you that you had to be special to be able to accept yourself was setting you up to buy their own brand of snake oil.   What you were when you were five or six years old — that was special.   Nowadays, not so much, because you don’t really have yourself available anymore.   Seems like you’ve wandered off somewhere.  Any idea where you’ve gone?

Oh!  You’ve in search of something that will make you special, most likely.   But you were special before, and now with every step along the well-worn path to knowledge you are whittling down, becoming slimmer, harder to make out.  Madnesss!

So many people have gone off their rocker.   No expression conceals greater contempt for humanity than, “Oh, but this is ordinary!”

Can you imagine how very strange it is, to have a person, who ought not really to exist, proclaim that anything at all is ordinary?   Consciousness is a fluke.  The likelihood that it has come together in the universe is next to nothing.   Your body is an alarming construct and it is impossible to believe that you are really here.

So stop being mad and get back on your rocker, as it’s getting late. I, personally, am getting tired of these general people, old before their time, clambering off their rockers.p://www.fearnet.com/news/news-article/monster-sized-unidentifiable-creature-dug-vietnam

How to Optimize Your Omega-6 to Omega-3 Ratio

How to Optimize Your Omega-6 to Omega-3 Ratio

How to eat

Overestimating the commonalities of experience

Servility

Servility is whenever one embraces unequivocal truths about reality.  This is how servility and the ascetic ideal are linked, as noticed by Nietzsche in his Genealogy of Morals.   Now, this insight should definitely not be transferred into a different light to imply that objective reality doesn't exist or that it is morally wrong (or right) to be servile.   These links are psychological and only have moral implications further down the track.  That is, intellectual shamanism calls forth the question of what it means to submit to the truth and whether this is always necessary.

To imagine reality as a small bubble of oxygenated consciousness inside which you or I dwell is to see it as the intellectual shaman sees it.  I'm in this bubble and I feel safe.  I'm surrounded by my truths, pressing in on me somewhat, but this state of being is reassuring.   Maintaining awareness is oxygen, meaning I can breathe.   I'm a spaceman walking on the moon right now, but nothing phases me.   I'm only worried about losing oxygen, losing consciousness, for then I die.

Death is inevitable, but it is the fear of death that keeps us fixated on the truth as an oxygen supply.

Now let us imagine a different scenario.  For some reason humans have come to associate truth with perserving life, but the relationship is more tenuous than had been presumed.   For instance, truth turns out to be socially defined  -- meaning it has an unstable quality by its nature.  Or truth is a boundary set up by your mind, that doesn't really correlate with objective reality very much.   Take the space helmet off and you will still be fine.

Most people don't live long enough to see historical perspectives:  boundaries of reality shift.  That which seems true to people today will seem like superstition to those who populate the future.

The ascetic ideal, meanwhile, constrains us.  Humans are prone to proceed cautiously through life, watching their steps.   But intellectual shamanism counsels that a too narrow mode of consciousness, all suited up with helmet on and cautious steps, is also a form of death.   One dies inwardly bit by bit.

Death is not a great thing, but Bataille goes on and on about it.  You would almost think he was inclined to celebrate the act of dying, but that isn't it.   It's the opposite. He is constructing formulations for opposing the ascetic ideal, without totally going mad and losing it.   You need to pay attention to safety and freedom.  A bit for tradition and a bit for me.   Otherwise your safety mechanisms will destroy you and you will be none the wiser.

So don't focus so much on the truth side of things and start to live a little.

Julia's Speech

Morality

Mike says I should write about morality so here's the problem as I see it.  There is life and life is the flurry of real attitudes, actualities and events.  After these events have all taken place, that is after history has transpired, certain people try to make sense of what has happened.   Some of these people may be very inexperienced in life.  They've grown up in such a way that others have regulated a lot of their experiences, so that they don't need to make difficult choices or perhaps they have not grown up all that much at all, so that they feel that goodness is the same as being passive.   In any case, these people look at the events that have transpired in history and instead of understanding them, they make exclamations of alarm.   It's almost like they think the whole of history shouldn't have happened just so they can stay contained in their narrow, uncontaminated existence and they don't love the mess of life, which is understandable, but they assume that everybody would be better off living just like them or even that this would be possible in the long term.

Well, they are self-deceived because their regulated fish tank existence is highly artificial and had to be put in place by people who were able to think outside the format of this overly controlled existence.

That's what's wrong with moral posturing and posing.  It's usually done by people who don't like things to be too complicated for them.   They don't take into account that life itself has this primeval nature of oozy complexity.   That upsets them.

People who view cultural differences as having to do with morality choices or moral stature or principles of right and wrong and not thinking deeply enough, but this level of superficiality is endemic to our times.   We find it hard to take into account primeval ooze, the substance of reality, just because we are not exposed to it enough.   We see only the rocks and leaves that others have placed into our existence.

When reading my writing, understand that I have not fending off the finer faculties of discrimination or discernment about life and all that's in it.  Rather I am standing for integration and complexity.

Try and figure it out.  That's hard.

the unknown soldier

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2502994/Black-Rhino-Range-Expansion-Project-gets-black-rhino-airlifted-safety-poachers.html

Repost: raw speculations

The only overt reference to shamanism that Marechera makes is to Castaneda’s don Juan.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda

Nevertheless there is a link between primeval consciousness (at the level of the lizard part of the homo sapiens brain) and early levels of consciousness mapped out by schools of object relations. Both involve efficient ways of communicating that are beneath the level of rational consciousness.

Lizards even have a role within the don Juan narrative. In effect, if you get a pair of lizards and sew up the jaw of one and the eyes of another and set them free, they can become your spirit messengers. What does this suggest, other than that one can learn to experience reality as through the (in some ways more efficient) lizard part of one’s brain.

The lizard part of the brain is cold-blooded, lacking in emotional nuance. Perhaps this is the key indicator I have been looking for, for example, when I perceive that there is something hyper”scientific”, something transhumanly objective, in looking out at the world in this way. You see various actors and players in the human arena for what they are, rather than having your perspectives influenced by shades of emotional meaning. This detached and cold-blooded way of looking at the world, our through the lizard brain, enables the “seer” to contemplate the interactions of other lizard brains, occurring beneath the surface of human rational consciousness. So it lends a different perspective — based on awareness of instincts that are geared towards survival rather than being geared towards processing emotional nuances.

From personal experience, this lizard brain part of the mind does in fact exist. I have operated within it, when I suddenly saw that it was not possible for me humanly take any more emotional abuse, or to reason with it. At that point, the mammalian brain switched off, and I began to operate from the lizard brain. (It is hard to describe how efficient this lizard brain is, in a fight for survival, only you feel really, really calm, as if human nuances do not matter, as if only one goal matters. Time slows down, and you see things happening in slow motion, but you don’t feel anything.) In my experience, the lizard brain is what facilitates the killer instinct.

Somehow knowledge of the functioning of the lizard brain in humans is linked to shamanism. I would say it is linked at the level of understanding the preconscious roots of power relations. I think that it is the cold-bloodedness of this level of consciousness that gives it its objectivity, enabling the subject to extricate herself from conventional modes of power relations, whilst developing a masterful knowledge of how they function.

Unconscious confessions

The mind may contrive to lie about existence, but the body doesn't and cannot, as Nietzsche points out.  The body absorbs the explosive impact of every lie.  Usually, and not just sometimes the lies we wear under our skin were bequeathed to us via historical circumstances.  For instance, someone might believe that negating their emotions is the natural and decent thing to do.  That's not because they have decided this for themselves, but they were taught to accept the behavior as a pattern.  Their grandma or grandfather probably negated their feelings to cope with war trauma -- but you, the receptor of their life skills were not to know that.

But receiving legacies is not as simple as I make this seem.   The mind may be okay with it for a while,but then the body revolts.  The body finds all sorts of imbalances revolting.   It aims for a nice emotional flow between itself and the world.   If it can't get that, it starts to scream and sigh.   That is why Nietzsche referred to the body as "the great sage" situated behind the ego.   The ego may say this or that or the other, but the great sage knows when it has been cut off from the emotional streams of reality.

Many people try many things to get power.  And then, somehow behind all that, I hear something screaming.   For instance, my father said to me that absolute trust and submission were the only means to make your way through life.   Underneath that I had him screaming that these were life's negation.   Similarly, when men mock women and eroticism and the body, I hear the same impaled cry.   There's nothing remaining to see, just a life cut off in its prime.

You can't trick the body, because it knows.  It is a fundamental receptor of emotional energies, which responds retributively when its life's juices are cut off.   Nietzsche says if you turn away from life, the body -- which is to say your own flesh and blood -- takes the view that it is going to knock this guy off (that's you).  It says it cannot stand it anymore, living bone in joint with a despiser of the body.   It's going to take you way out of your way and plant the evidence in the back woods.

Well, the body is a great avenger, what can I say?   Better not mess with stuff this dark but try and get your being back before you run out of time.   That means paying more attention, above all when you start to scream at someone.  Ask not at whom you are crying -- you are screaming at yourself.

Patriarchy, you know?

Playing God

Working from experience, that is from inside of the muddle that is life and looking out, one says things and one does things that in retrospect were misleading.    I've known this because I've seen people leap around taking one side of the matter to heart but not the other and then vice versa, and I've seen their lives are not enriched by that.   They stay on the surface and don't go deep enough, not for my liking.

They don't see that in certain circumstances ideas have quite clearly become their opposite.  For instance, I am very weak in relation to my circumstances, which are to some degree unfavorable.   In relation to myself, however, I am mentally acute and knowledgeable.  To be two things at once seems like an impossibility on the surface, but even science concurs that having two sides to a coin is really more the norm than the exception.

We get so bogged down in metaphysical assumptions, we don't really think.   For instance, to aim for something and miss one's target is oftentimes considered to be the sign of abject stupidity next to which no argument or explanation will suffice.   But that's not fair at all and doesn't really add up.  Primarily, the universe is not gagged and bound and forced into the role of your willing servant.   It does its own thing much of the time.   And not being master of the universe does not make you an idiot, although it certainly suggests you are not God.

To not be God might be okay.  The upside is that the universe remains largely a mystery to you.   Well, that's not bad at all.  Imagine going on a holiday and everything that happened was what you already knew was going to happen.  It would be better to stay at home.  Twiddle your toenails.

I'm not too fond of people who try to play God.  I wonder what makes them so insecure that they need to put on a show as if they know everything.  Can't you just sit still for three seconds and allow that something you've encountered might be totally new?  It might be more fun that way, really, and to be honest it's the best way I have found to get to know something.   There's also another way, but that's more complex.  You have to immerse yourself in it emotionally and then let go.   You see it close and then you see it from afar, and finally you understand.

The thing about shamanism that's hard to grasp is that you have to get used to keeping a lot of opposites in your head at the same time.   It's not that someone is trying to deceive you, but life really is made up of organic unities that, on the surface, seem like opposites.   Let them stray too far apart in your mind and you have metaphysics.  Bring them back together and you have life.

To combine very, very distant opposites is the trick of the most powerful shamans. The greater the distance you can span and somehow hold together, the more energy and insight you might have. For instance, those who live on one side of a binary know that side. I know what it is to be delicate in response to a shift in temperature. But let's go up ten thousand feet let the breeze in through Cessna's door whilst summer is heading into winter, and then my insight expands rapidly as to what it means to be existentially threatened.

Wind chill gets into the bones and it is interesting there.   It makes strange inroads into the mentality.   You've got to be quite powerful to take the strong assault  in relation to your weaknesses.   This is no either-or scenario of choosing to be strong or choosing to be weak.   You're straddling both sides.  And that's the way we learn what life is.

It's easier to say yes or no to certain aspects of experience or to try to cram others into predefined categories, but they will not thank you for that.  You're making them live down to your limitations and pushing all the air out of their lungs when they could learn to breathe in more deeply.

You've got to strand the opposites between a deliberate high sensitivity and fortitude to make the grade.   Or else, you won't generate insights.   You can't be one thing at once, but two at the very limit.   That's why Bataille is so keen to draw a distinction between humanity's animal nature and its civilized side.  He needed that division for the sake of doubling his energies.  Likewise, if you can move between the states of being man and woman, live and dead, you will gain more than you would have if you stayed where you are.

The risk is that you may also explode and die, but at least you would have solved many of life's mysteries.   And you would still be mystified, but in a good way, as an awestruck animal, and not like some refined dolt who claims to know all that there ever is to know, but you've just seen a giant spider make its way into his butt.

The point is not to get offended but to start to figure it out.   Taking offence is lack of fortitude, without which you cannot straddle the gap.  (This is a different gap from where that spider sleeps -- believe me.)

Another point is you can't claim to know the things you know without drawing from opposing energies.   You're stuck in one position and fixated on the matter.

Shamanic wisdom says there is no point in playing God.  Rather, sleep under a hibiscus bush and find out what that is like.  If you are rich enough to draw your powers from two poles, your sense of mystery and your sense of knowledge will be simultaneously expanded.

That is, until you're drawn apart and explode.  Stars will start raining from the universe.