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.
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