Prolonged self-satisfaction is never really so great a thing, despite the fact of its being the modern ideal.
Aesthetically and spiritually, I would prefer to treat myself as if I had a certain sickness of lassitude or frailty, whether of the mind or of the body -- and then attempt to heal it.
Shamanic types are those who go deepest in an attempt to heal their minds and bodies. They don't stop at the body itself but go deeply into historical processes and enchance their understanding of these as well. They develop means of conceptualising psychodynamics. They read the meanings of these psychodynamics within their own heads and come to terms with them.
The frenzy of their madness burns holes into reality. Destruction follows. Often this is a cleansing destruction. Steel one's nerves when approaching shamanic writing. Allow oneself a long recovery period, incase one should need it. A normative, sealed consciousness, one which is one that has allowed itself to be closed in by its tacit acceptance of social norms, will experience some degree of shock and even initial trauma when its vistas are suddenly ripped open.
The shamanic type is seated on Venus. You don't want to visit him there unless you can handle the heat and most of us, to be frank, cannot do so.
If you imagine that the shamanic type enjoys being where he is or that he is merely teasing you playfully with his ideas, you couldn't be more wrong. The shaman has learned to tolerate the heat, but it is almost unrelenting agony. His or her art reflects that, showing what lies beneath the skin of human consciousness -- the unconscious, unaware raw tissues of our shared reality.
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to write in this vein. Much of the energy comes from facing the self-destruction that awaits one when one finds one's skin has been ripped off again with the consequence that one is facing reality freshly.
One must also find methods to sustain oneself in the face of incomprehension and critical disapproval.
Since one's points of reference come from looking UNDER the skin of humanity and not, in a normative sense, on top, one will have to get used to people not knowing what one is referring to. Indeed, they may imagine all ones thoughts and ideas refer to something else entirely, something that is more on the surface, and contains less of an imagination for the ripped off skin revealing the underlying bones and sinews of our daily existence.
Shamanic types know "a few things more" as Nietzsche claimed to know about himself. But they also know it in different ways that the bulk of humanity, which prefers not to have its flesh ripped off in order to know something. Even as they attempt to convey their knowledge, the limitations they face are already built-in the fact that what they see and experience is qualitatively different from what the majority experience and notice. One doesn't notice and perceive the same things if one is situated differently. This is not the subtle variation of normative conscious minds that we are talking about here, but the fact that shamanic injury produces a completely different category of knowledge in the shaman. Those who are not injured see and experience the world without the benefit of injury. On one level, this lack of injury makes them healthy, quite definitively so, but healthy people still do become the victims of malicious pathological forces -- which they do not see coming. The shamanic type, the one who is "sick", has knowledge of these things even before they arrive.
But there are few he can share them with. He is, like Marechera like Cassandra. Nothing he says is really listened to, because he's out of step and kind of "mad".
His madness is the cost he pays for his insights, certainly. But if humanity doesn't feel it needs his knowledge, all his efforts, written or political, are a waste of time.
And certainly, so long as life is going swimmingly, no person in their right mind feels they need access to shamanic insights. Not whilst the going isn't tough, at least.............
Aesthetically and spiritually, I would prefer to treat myself as if I had a certain sickness of lassitude or frailty, whether of the mind or of the body -- and then attempt to heal it.
Shamanic types are those who go deepest in an attempt to heal their minds and bodies. They don't stop at the body itself but go deeply into historical processes and enchance their understanding of these as well. They develop means of conceptualising psychodynamics. They read the meanings of these psychodynamics within their own heads and come to terms with them.
The frenzy of their madness burns holes into reality. Destruction follows. Often this is a cleansing destruction. Steel one's nerves when approaching shamanic writing. Allow oneself a long recovery period, incase one should need it. A normative, sealed consciousness, one which is one that has allowed itself to be closed in by its tacit acceptance of social norms, will experience some degree of shock and even initial trauma when its vistas are suddenly ripped open.
The shamanic type is seated on Venus. You don't want to visit him there unless you can handle the heat and most of us, to be frank, cannot do so.
If you imagine that the shamanic type enjoys being where he is or that he is merely teasing you playfully with his ideas, you couldn't be more wrong. The shaman has learned to tolerate the heat, but it is almost unrelenting agony. His or her art reflects that, showing what lies beneath the skin of human consciousness -- the unconscious, unaware raw tissues of our shared reality.
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to write in this vein. Much of the energy comes from facing the self-destruction that awaits one when one finds one's skin has been ripped off again with the consequence that one is facing reality freshly.
One must also find methods to sustain oneself in the face of incomprehension and critical disapproval.
Since one's points of reference come from looking UNDER the skin of humanity and not, in a normative sense, on top, one will have to get used to people not knowing what one is referring to. Indeed, they may imagine all ones thoughts and ideas refer to something else entirely, something that is more on the surface, and contains less of an imagination for the ripped off skin revealing the underlying bones and sinews of our daily existence.
Shamanic types know "a few things more" as Nietzsche claimed to know about himself. But they also know it in different ways that the bulk of humanity, which prefers not to have its flesh ripped off in order to know something. Even as they attempt to convey their knowledge, the limitations they face are already built-in the fact that what they see and experience is qualitatively different from what the majority experience and notice. One doesn't notice and perceive the same things if one is situated differently. This is not the subtle variation of normative conscious minds that we are talking about here, but the fact that shamanic injury produces a completely different category of knowledge in the shaman. Those who are not injured see and experience the world without the benefit of injury. On one level, this lack of injury makes them healthy, quite definitively so, but healthy people still do become the victims of malicious pathological forces -- which they do not see coming. The shamanic type, the one who is "sick", has knowledge of these things even before they arrive.
But there are few he can share them with. He is, like Marechera like Cassandra. Nothing he says is really listened to, because he's out of step and kind of "mad".
His madness is the cost he pays for his insights, certainly. But if humanity doesn't feel it needs his knowledge, all his efforts, written or political, are a waste of time.
And certainly, so long as life is going swimmingly, no person in their right mind feels they need access to shamanic insights. Not whilst the going isn't tough, at least.............
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