Well the way I was thinking about it is that when one experiences temporary madness, that is as a result of the poor engineering of one's psyche. This can be as a result of the action of political forces, or familial forces and/or even temperamental propensities counterpoised against the prevailing political, historical and social realities. So the psyche is likely to vomit itself up, as it were, and then there is a chance to start over, using the raw materials that have in some sense become more malleable and less resistant than before.
This was my original notion. But now I think that any guarantee of a safe return is influenced primarily by whether or not one's very early childhood was happy, or perhaps inhibited in some way. I think one's very early childhood forms the foundation to start again, but if that was itself unhappy, the outcomes probably will not be as good.
In Marechera's case, he did have a very happy few early years and really felt attuned to nature. In effect, then, one can lean on the memory of these early years, and this helps to rebuild. But if one cannot lean on those, because those memories themselves do not allow oneself to reflect on oneself as a WHOLE being, then that is obviously problematic.
I guess in that case there are holes in the matrix all the way through. But the goal of shamanism is still to try to reconstitute the self as a whole. Only, I don't think a regressive mode will work in that case.
Perhaps, at least in theory, what one needs to do instead is to find out what is missing from one's being that makes it less than whole. For a Rhodesian white woman, such as myself, we missed the visceral aspects of bodily experience, I mean access to raw emotional states. So I also had to go looking for these sorts of memories and experiences (even if I hadn't originally had them) and add them on to my base of self-knowledge. This has been done and I have done it by correcting the historical error and adding them on retrospectively. When I did this successfully, I cured myself of an immune system deficiency (literally -- I used to catch every 'flu and cold).
But it is hard to know what is missing in each individual's particular being, so that one can close off the hole to the matrix.
I think Marechera's writing CAN be instructive, if you immerse yourself in it, because he really was a completely WHOLE person who found all the missing parts of himself and got them to work together. So by reading his writing, but through full immersion, you can get a sense of which parts of yourself are still switched off and try to bring them into full functioning. I, myself, had to read BLACK SUNLIGHT about 50 times to break down my resistance to raw, visceral experiences. But once I had done that, I experienced for the first time the raw sensations of a more delicate form of life. This was healing for me, because I realized I could access more of life's sensations without being in an automatically defensive mode against them.
But everybody will be different. And it does take some work!
This was my original notion. But now I think that any guarantee of a safe return is influenced primarily by whether or not one's very early childhood was happy, or perhaps inhibited in some way. I think one's very early childhood forms the foundation to start again, but if that was itself unhappy, the outcomes probably will not be as good.
In Marechera's case, he did have a very happy few early years and really felt attuned to nature. In effect, then, one can lean on the memory of these early years, and this helps to rebuild. But if one cannot lean on those, because those memories themselves do not allow oneself to reflect on oneself as a WHOLE being, then that is obviously problematic.
I guess in that case there are holes in the matrix all the way through. But the goal of shamanism is still to try to reconstitute the self as a whole. Only, I don't think a regressive mode will work in that case.
Perhaps, at least in theory, what one needs to do instead is to find out what is missing from one's being that makes it less than whole. For a Rhodesian white woman, such as myself, we missed the visceral aspects of bodily experience, I mean access to raw emotional states. So I also had to go looking for these sorts of memories and experiences (even if I hadn't originally had them) and add them on to my base of self-knowledge. This has been done and I have done it by correcting the historical error and adding them on retrospectively. When I did this successfully, I cured myself of an immune system deficiency (literally -- I used to catch every 'flu and cold).
But it is hard to know what is missing in each individual's particular being, so that one can close off the hole to the matrix.
I think Marechera's writing CAN be instructive, if you immerse yourself in it, because he really was a completely WHOLE person who found all the missing parts of himself and got them to work together. So by reading his writing, but through full immersion, you can get a sense of which parts of yourself are still switched off and try to bring them into full functioning. I, myself, had to read BLACK SUNLIGHT about 50 times to break down my resistance to raw, visceral experiences. But once I had done that, I experienced for the first time the raw sensations of a more delicate form of life. This was healing for me, because I realized I could access more of life's sensations without being in an automatically defensive mode against them.
But everybody will be different. And it does take some work!
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