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The subject matter for this download is represented by PAIN:
Just as Wittgenstein thought that “pain” was in one sense a name and in another not, so he can regard ‘I am in pain’ as in one sense a description and in another not. … To treat the expression of pain in this way as a description of pain is to make it seem too distant from pain. … A description must be independent of what it is to be compared with …
Kenny A. 1975, Wittgenstein, GB, Pelican.
This suggests that one should be aware that ‘I’m in pain’ can be used to manipulate feelings of guilt for the purpose of control.
The second symbol describes the unconscious material as ALONENESS:
When one who is becoming explores the Universe - other systems are found, other Planets … at their own unique level of awareness. Through a satellite of expectation one seeks … to find another - a kindred Planet, a like level of awareness. … In terms of evolution, there are those above and those below, desolation in-between. One finds our ‘self’ a consciousness alone at a level exposed to our fear which transforms into need and expectation. … submit to Source. … Keep your introspective knowledge to yourself … [or be accused of] arrogance … those of similar kindred spirit will find you and you will find them.
Polakow E.S. 2000, Your Soular System, SA, Spearhead Press.
Everyone who has experienced a change in their world view, who has survived the transition to another level of consciousness, understands what being alone means and how rare it is to find a kindred spirit.
The third symbol introduces FEAR as a motivating force within the Aloneness. The thing about personal growth is that transformation archetypes are activated when the time is ripe for change. There is a real fear of these forces that are then perceived as dark forms, a conditioned fear that is the result of having suppressed the feminine over hundreds of years. We are warned that one needs a stable ego-consciousness to face this fear.
JRH Christie - murdered at least six women … As a result of fright he lost his power of speech for several weeks, and was able to speak only in a whisper for many years. … [p126] The Nietzschean ‘Will to Power’, the craving for complete consciousness, expresses itself on several levels. But it is always a striving to overcome the repeating mechanism. … We dream of finding the hidden lever that operates the flood-gates of vitality … Consciousness is synonymous with vision, and vision means godhead. … [p134] a sex crime could be a step in the direction of conquest, of godhead. … Sartrian attitude …
Wilson C. 1963, Origins of the Sexual Impulse, GB, Aurthur Barker Ltd.
The synthesis of these symbols relates to Fromm’s work on sadism and masochism, and Nietzsche’s ‘Will to Power’. In his book The Fear of Freedom, Fromm writes that both tendencies are the outcomes of one basic need, the inability to bear the isolation of one’s self. These tendencies are an attempt to escape an unbearable feeling of aloneness.
An awakening implies having to work at changing and healing the relationship that one wakes up in. The emergent self is under pressure to realize its freedom and must struggle to deal with anxiety, doubt, and feelings of powerlessness.
The core issue calls for an understanding of what is meant by CONFLICT.
Real conflicts between two people, those which do not serve to cover up or project, but which are experienced on the deep level of inner reality to which they belong are not destructive. They lead to clarification … Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the centre of their existence, hence if each of one of them experiences himself from the centre of his existence. Only in this ‘central experience’ is human reality, only here is aliveness … constant challenge; it is not a resting place …
Fromm E. 1979, The Art of Loving, GB, Unwin – This is recommended reading along with his other book: The Fear of Freedom.
I interpret this to mean that real conflict is what helps get both people up onto the next level, but I think this is only possible if both have the potential to self-actualize at the same time.
As a consequence, the situation is represented by the symbol DRAGON:
It pulled him under, he looked around and saw nothing in the brown water, but then his eyes changed … pure white, he saw the weird beast … gills … eight tentacles ... It looked like a dragon … the beast was coming for him.
Elliott K.R. 2008, James Litel, SA, New Voices
The changing of his eyes relates to the change in one’s world view to acknowledge the relationship one must develop with the unconscious as represented here by the anima. The responsibility one has in these transformation dramas is to find one’s DIGNITY when everything is being stripped away.
dignity of a human being … man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment - he has made out of himself. … swine … saints … Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. Our generation is realistic for we have come to know man as he really is. … invented the gas chambers … entered upright.
Frankl V.E. 1964, Man’s Search for Meaning, GB, Hodder & Stoughton.
Ouch! It was as a prisoner that Frankl was able to gain this precious insight into human behaviour. But to understand how this relates to relationships one probably needs to believe in archetypal forces and the notion that superior decisions are called for. The problem we find here is that decisions need to be true to Self and not what society and family expect if one is to grow to the next level.
The predictable outcome is presented by the symbol FEAR and it suggests what I believe most people are intuitively aware of: a fear of change and its source, the unconscious.
… how people looked deeply into themselves, how many different fears came into the daylight. … the dam broke … how the Work and group support gave him the courage … There are overwhelming, draining, corroding fears caused by fantasies, projections of future events, dread of catastrophes … “the fear of the unknown.” … The part of a man that he is afraid to see in himself. … You can be afraid of being asked for more and greater efforts in the Work. … What is the opposite of fear? It is courage. It takes great courage to see all this in you - not to turn away, but face it.
Fuchs J. 1994, Fourty Years After , GGD
I tend to see two threads: one relates to the personal and the other to the collective. The personal thread uses this symbol to motivate the freedom to choose to work for another outcome. In terms of the collective: this week is about the Copenhagen summit on climate change, so consider the subliminal effect of millions of interconnected minds focused on this threat.
The conditioning one must overcome is the fear of the unconscious as represented by the ANIMA.
Neumann writes: “The ambivalent female figure may guide the male or beguile him. Side by side with sublimation stands abasement … And how close ecstasy is to madness, enthusiasm to death, creativeness to psychosis, is shown by mythology, by the history of religions, and by the lives of innumerable great men for whom the depths has spelled doom.”
To see more specifically how these dynamics operate, we will examine in detail “Morella,”(Edgar Allan Poe) … apocryphal appearance emphasizes her ultimate origin in the narrator’s own psyche.
+[p65]Neumann call “uroboric incest.” … to be understood symbolically, … as regressive and ultimately ego-destroying …
+[p66] The feminine as it appears in Poe, then, or in any other writer who treats women as psychic externalizations, can be viewed first as either elementary or transformative in character, the Great Mother or the anima.
+[p68]anima seeking recognition and union … Janus face ... Morella’s philosophical studies, exciting and terrifying.
Bickman M. 1980, American Romantic , Spring.
It follows that one needs to develop the right attitude to overcome the conditioning, and here we get to examine the symbol SEDUCTION.
… if we can make the imaginal leap from seduction as shameful to mutual seduction as a universal dynamic, then our idea of Jung’s notion of individuation and the self will change. … self as symbolized in the legendary Echenis fish … It is now the fish that draws out the fisherman! … Alchemists sought to replace the fish with an instrument … the “magnet of the wise,” can be taught as a body of practical knowledge, Jung writes, and he makes the connection between this secret knowledge … and the practice of psychotherapy. The magnet is described … crowned figure is raising a winged, fish-tailed, snake-armed creature … monster.
+[p120] The path is now not something to avoid being seduced away from; rather it consists of reflections upon the various seductions, fascination, or fallings away that become as the path itself. …
+ [p121] but if I say something is extracted through seduction, I am assuming a dual source of energy … the reciprocal flow.
+[p122] Different aspects of the soul appear in the world through the movement of different kinds of loves. ... Eros then, is the purposive, the striving, the intending of universal patterns.
Schenk R. 2001 The Sunken Quest, the Wasted Fisher, the Pregnant , Chiron.
I think it is important to realize that Eros and seduction places one in a position to interact with unconscious projections that need to be recognized and integrated. The problem lies with the name and shame belief that most people have.
It all makes sense so far, but what does one make of the symbol BREATHING as the right-action to take here. It suggests practicing a breathing meditation to get control over one’s mind (fears) as preparation for whatever comes next.
Breathing is a very important part of almost every awareness-freeing tradition. Even the word “spirit” is part of “inspiration,” “expiration,” and “respiration.” … When a person learns how to watch his or her breathing without influencing it in the slightest, he or she will be very close to being able to do the same thing with the mind. … Work with the breathing can constitute the sole practice of meditation.
May G.G. 1977, The , , Paulist Press
The download uses the symbol WEAPONS to communicate the required quality and quantity of the preparation.
He went to the forge and said, ‘I will give orders to the armourers; they shall cast us our weapons while we watch them.’ … They cast for Gilgamesh the axe ‘Might of Heroes’ and the bow of ; … the weight of the arms they carried was thirty score pounds. … they came through the gate of seven bolts … ‘I, Gilgamesh, go to see that creature … I am committed to this enterprise: to climb the mountain, to cut down the cedar.
Sandars N.K. 1972, The Epic of Gilgamesh, GB, Penguin.
It makes sense if I interpret these special weapons as an extension of one’s will, and link this to the commitment shown by Gilgamesh.
The right-action is about preparation that must include the objective, which represented here by the symbol FAITH, which fits rather nicely. The resultant image is that of a spiritual warrior.
Our situation today is not unlike that of Abraham and of Paul and we must emulate their faith. We, too, have the promise. This time it is the promise of Jesus: ‘I will be with you all the days even to the end of the world.’ What precisely this promise entails we do not know. We will only know from day to day as it is revealed to us by the Spirit. … We live in an age which asks for faith … mystical faith. It is an age in which we accept the formulations but see their inadequacy; we believe in the doctrines but do not cling to the words … we are open to change. … We are going on a journey into darkness.
W. 1981, The Eye of Love, GB, Fount Paperbacks
The final symbol PREDICTABLE introduces Wittgenstein again, whom we started with under PAIN.
Wittgenstein … was saying … I can make nothing of the notion of a private language … my own response to the suggestion that perhaps some genius might render what is now unpredictable predictable. … Given that there are these unpredictable elements in social life, it is crucial to notice their intimate relationship to the predictive elements. …
+[p99] We are thus involved in a world in which we are simultaneously trying to render the rest of society predictable and ourselves unpredictable.
Macintyre A. 1981, After Virtue, GB, Gerald Duckworth.
The right-action is to prepare the mind to direct one’s will and to have faith in the unfolding purpose of one’s life. The final outcome brings these together in a relationship that mirrors what the Wisdom of the I Ching is about: the superior person’s decisions that shape and direct his will in harmony with Tao.
