I think I already have a 'Forbidden Fruits' post buried somewhere back there between 2007 and now. If I don't, then I ultimately should. This post is dedicated to my friend Clarissa, who told me at age 14 that 'you will always be chasing forbidden fruit'. It took me a few more years to live up to the prophecy, but there you have it.
'How to end a Lacanian Analysis or How to 'Come' to Forbidden Fruits' is an article by Gillian Straker, an Australian Lacanian analyst of South African origins. The article was published in the Australian Journal of Psychotherapy in Vol 26:2 in 2007:
http://www.ajppsychotherapy.com/26-2-essays/gillian-straker.html
The article sets out some basic terminology as used by Lacan. Straker humbly acknowledges that systematising Lacan does little credit to the complexity his work, and indeed would be an anathema to the man himself. Resolute, she offers us a subjective understanding of Lacan's theory from the perspective of analysand. I like her approach - she uses terminology that is inclusive, and that addresses me, the reader.
Straker introduces us to the notion that we are born desired, and therefore, inevitably, are born misrecognised. The projections of the mother onto the child (of what the child's needs are, of what the child will become when the child is grown) plus the birth of the child into a given language and a given cultural milieu results in an interpolation of ourselves into the discourse, already established, of the Other. Through this means we become 'barred subjects' - subjects with an unconscious. The unconscious is constituted as an effect of language by Lacan - an amount is required to be ignored in order to make an utterance. The one who makes the statement and the one who is framed by an enunciation, while being the same person, are not reducible to each other (this is so resonant with Foucault).
Lacan's model of the ego is painted by Straker as both an internalisation of an image and an imaginary projection of the body. This psychical anatomy will be coloured by 'lines of parental and familial signification' and even though it will often be at odds with reality, the child, confronting his mirror image, jubilantly misrecognises herself, on the way to becoming interpolated into the discourse of the Other. This discourse by necessity comes from outside, it is 'extimate' not intimate, and it's slow steady adoption not without significant trauma.
Trauma is indeed considered therapeutic in this Lacanian model offered by Straker - a perfect attunement of (m)other to child is considered to render the relationship as problematic, with psychosis as a likely outcome, because growth requires desire, to fill the 'gaps' of lack. Desire will not arise in a symbiotic state. A perfectly aligned (m)other forecloses on agency, and in no way enables the development of subjectivity.
For Lacan, the 'Other' is the imaginary register or the world of identification and the image - the symbolic order of law, language and kinship. It is extimate - the foreign or alien that is within us. 'Language, law and kinship' speak through the mother to the child, but they exceed her. The way they act upon the child, through her, will depend on how and to what extent the mother has negotiated her own relationship between jouissance and desire. I'll come back to jouissance and desire in the next post.
A mother's response to her infant reflects her own imaginary relations, and the circuit between mother and baby is only broken by the 'name' of the father. In the ternary relationship (mother, child and mother's desire for the child) the paternal figure enters as a fourth, rescuing the baby from fusion with the mother by leading the child 'out' in two ways - limiting the mother's desire for the baby (by channelling some of her desire towards himself) and naming the mother's desire (popping the incest taboo on the table). Without these limits, the structure of the psychotic may take hold within the child. Perversion may be the outcome if the limitation is in place, but the naming of desire is absent, and neurosis is likely for the opposite relations.
Jouissance is pleasure in pain, and pain in pleasure. It is connected with the death drive, seeking pleasure beyond the pleasure principle (which is the title of the next book I need to read). It ties in with Bataille's perspective on the erotic as a realm of violence which 'borders on death itself' - it can also be compared to the mystical experience.
Jouissance must ultimately be refused in order to encounter it, once again, on an inverted ladder of the law of desire. Odysseus strapped to the mast of the boat so that he can sail close enough to the rocks to be pleasured by the siren's song is about as vivid an image as is needed to call forth the sense of the ignition of desire, and the devouring nature of the passion of jouissance.
We can become neurotics who languish on the ladder or perverts who sting themselves with jouissance, or psychotics who founder in the realm of the 'Real' and never enter into the Symbolic at all. Desire longs for that which is absent and is killed by satisfaction. Desire arises in a relation between need and demand. Jouissance enjoys what is present - but to a 'deathly' outcome for the self - desiring either what the other has, or to be the other.
Hmm. I need to spend a bit more time with the Real and the Imaginary and Symbolic realms, to untwine the method by which love appears in this configuration. Time for a 'to be continued'.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Freud's Lecture 11 'The Dream Work' - A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
A summary of the workings of my blue highlighter upon a largely imperfect photocopy of the material from this 1920 lecture by Freud.
The important relations of the elements of dreams are:
1) the relation of part to a whole;
2) the approximation they represent;
3) symbolic relations;
4) plastic representations.
The manifest content of a dream as a whole can be compared to the latent dream, that Freud proposes can be revealed by interpretation. Work that is achieved in the opposite direction to the interpretation is called the 'dream-work', by Freud.
There is an amount of infantile wish fulfilment which Freud encourages us to recognise as a component of our dreams.
Dream-work achieves condensation - that is, the manifest dream has a smaller content than the latent one. Condensation is brought about by:
1) the total omission of some latent elements;
2) by only fragments of latent complexes passing into the manifest dream;
3) by latent elements that have something in common and are fused into a single unity in the manifest dream.
The third point is interesting - here a new and transitory concept is proposed to be spawned in the dream process, per Freud's interpretation. There is an intriguing sentence here 'The 'creative' imagination, indeed, is quite capable of inventing anything; it can only combine components that are strange to one another'.
Freud says thoughts are translated in dreams, but it is not like a language translation, where the distinctions are kept, rather an economy is proposed to be in operation, censoring some information.
Displacement is also a component of dream-work. This is evidenced where:
1) a latent element is replaced by a remote allusion;
2) the psychical accent is shifted from an important to an unimportant aspect.
There's a odd little anecdote he provides to illuminate the displacement process - a blacksmith in a village commits a capital offence. The Court decides the crime ought to be punished - but as the village only had one blacksmith, and three tailors, one of them was hanged, instead.
Plastic representations in dreams are the visual interpretations of what Freud classes as abstract words - the parts of speech that indicate relations between thoughts. Doublets may appear, which Freud proposes are several symbols that represent one difficult, hard to digest, element of a latent dream.
Conformities in the latent material appear as condensations in the manifest dream, and contraries may appear as conformities as well - it's important to know that contraries do exist because Freud, with all his experience, proposes that unambiguous 'no' representations are not found in dreams.
I love this next paragraph - Freud describes findings in philology to parallel the contraries process occuring in dreams. In ancient languages 'weak-strong'. 'light-dark', 'big-small' pairs were expressed in the same primal root-words. Misunderstandings were avoided by slight differences in intonation. So, for example, 'sacer' in Latin means both sacred and accursed. I think we could beneficially mine this a little more deeply today - I need to explore this idea more thoroughly. In terms of dreamwork, archaic systems are more likely to have free, superego unencumbered reign, this regression can be seen in operation in the dream-distortions, and contraries inherent in dream-work.
Freud cautions against trying to explain one part of a dream in terms of another. Dreams cannot compose speeches, nor do they contain justification, calculation or criticism. All of these are the products of after thoughts, after the fact.
My breath gets taken away over Freud's scientific, eulogising voice as it appears in this text. The hard cold (to me, dead) models that he applies to the warm, blood-fed, ill-defined realm of dreams has a disjunct at heart, a misalignment that I find it enormously difficult to reconcile with what I love about the field of psychology. To me the beauty of my field is the co-construction of meaning, that which we struggle with, and through, that which is in some ways the battleground of the schizophrenic, the market place for a cult leader, the place of deep restitution and deep division for all of us, mere mortals that we are, as we walk the earth.
That being said, this man was a genius, no doubt, and his ability to build abstract scaffolding from fantasy is unmatched, unparalleled, I think, really. Maybe brilliance requires, indeed demands, some blindnesses, in some ways. Chase the dream, lest the dream chase you.
The important relations of the elements of dreams are:
1) the relation of part to a whole;
2) the approximation they represent;
3) symbolic relations;
4) plastic representations.
The manifest content of a dream as a whole can be compared to the latent dream, that Freud proposes can be revealed by interpretation. Work that is achieved in the opposite direction to the interpretation is called the 'dream-work', by Freud.
There is an amount of infantile wish fulfilment which Freud encourages us to recognise as a component of our dreams.
Dream-work achieves condensation - that is, the manifest dream has a smaller content than the latent one. Condensation is brought about by:
1) the total omission of some latent elements;
2) by only fragments of latent complexes passing into the manifest dream;
3) by latent elements that have something in common and are fused into a single unity in the manifest dream.
The third point is interesting - here a new and transitory concept is proposed to be spawned in the dream process, per Freud's interpretation. There is an intriguing sentence here 'The 'creative' imagination, indeed, is quite capable of inventing anything; it can only combine components that are strange to one another'.
Freud says thoughts are translated in dreams, but it is not like a language translation, where the distinctions are kept, rather an economy is proposed to be in operation, censoring some information.
Displacement is also a component of dream-work. This is evidenced where:
1) a latent element is replaced by a remote allusion;
2) the psychical accent is shifted from an important to an unimportant aspect.
There's a odd little anecdote he provides to illuminate the displacement process - a blacksmith in a village commits a capital offence. The Court decides the crime ought to be punished - but as the village only had one blacksmith, and three tailors, one of them was hanged, instead.
Plastic representations in dreams are the visual interpretations of what Freud classes as abstract words - the parts of speech that indicate relations between thoughts. Doublets may appear, which Freud proposes are several symbols that represent one difficult, hard to digest, element of a latent dream.
Conformities in the latent material appear as condensations in the manifest dream, and contraries may appear as conformities as well - it's important to know that contraries do exist because Freud, with all his experience, proposes that unambiguous 'no' representations are not found in dreams.
I love this next paragraph - Freud describes findings in philology to parallel the contraries process occuring in dreams. In ancient languages 'weak-strong'. 'light-dark', 'big-small' pairs were expressed in the same primal root-words. Misunderstandings were avoided by slight differences in intonation. So, for example, 'sacer' in Latin means both sacred and accursed. I think we could beneficially mine this a little more deeply today - I need to explore this idea more thoroughly. In terms of dreamwork, archaic systems are more likely to have free, superego unencumbered reign, this regression can be seen in operation in the dream-distortions, and contraries inherent in dream-work.
Freud cautions against trying to explain one part of a dream in terms of another. Dreams cannot compose speeches, nor do they contain justification, calculation or criticism. All of these are the products of after thoughts, after the fact.
My breath gets taken away over Freud's scientific, eulogising voice as it appears in this text. The hard cold (to me, dead) models that he applies to the warm, blood-fed, ill-defined realm of dreams has a disjunct at heart, a misalignment that I find it enormously difficult to reconcile with what I love about the field of psychology. To me the beauty of my field is the co-construction of meaning, that which we struggle with, and through, that which is in some ways the battleground of the schizophrenic, the market place for a cult leader, the place of deep restitution and deep division for all of us, mere mortals that we are, as we walk the earth.
That being said, this man was a genius, no doubt, and his ability to build abstract scaffolding from fantasy is unmatched, unparalleled, I think, really. Maybe brilliance requires, indeed demands, some blindnesses, in some ways. Chase the dream, lest the dream chase you.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Gilbert Grace
Tonight I met one of Dulwich Hill's artists. This is the artwork below of Gilbert Grace, called 'King St Cineastes'. He brings a somewhat dark-edged perspective to many local scenes that it's possible to identify, as a local, by sight, in his work. He talked us through his understanding of the creative process and the interaction between consciousness, unconsciousness, creativity and schizophrenia. Please take a minute to hop over to his blog.
Research Idea #5637
I'm almost, almost, going to miss driving the somewhat excessive amount of kilometers home that I do, now. I'm going to miss it because the car has become my kitchen, and I eat ideas as I drive.
So, my great research idea, masticated upon as I drove home tonight, goes like this:
Through developmental cultural trajectories (why waste words?) see if it is possible to identify alternating but stable currents of sanitation of sex versus sanitation of death in cultural memes.
I'd need to establish:
1) that there are such entities as 'developmental cultural trajectories';
2) that sanitation of sex and death respectively do alternate;
3) a method of dealing with cross-cultural interaction.
Not easy. It's an interesting notion though, no? We live in a historical and cultural epoch of (relatively) free sexual expression, yet often we're not encountering death until it's that of our own grandparents, when we're already well into our own adulthood. There is the personal and the societal contrast to think about as well, I guess. While we may not see a dead body live in the flesh until we're quite a bit older (me and my royal 'We's') through the media, that secondary, distant way of viewing the life-of-the-world, we encounter death many times over, before we're really old enough to handle the scenes, if the research is indicative of the human-flesh experienced story, at all.
There's something more to think about too - about whether Eros and Thanatos are really a valid dichotomy. Not that sex and death aren't both on one level completely biological functions, it's just that, in terms of mind/body interaction, I'd propose that in the human species, sex has a biological beginning point and a psychic outcome, whereas death has psychic beginning point before it has a biological outcome. See that difference? I don't think it's trivial. I think the Eros/Thanatos dichotomy may be a red herring, as is identifiable by comparing sex and death as biological and psychical functions.
To turn it around into something recognisable, I'd propose that in my present cultural frame, sexuality in adult humans is psychological, primarily. Death is biological, primarily. The opposite ends of the psychological-biological spectrum that these two occupy makes me question whether it's possible to draw a model that directly contrasts their function. Much psychotherapeutic theory is grounded on this principle though - I'd love to have the time to unwind the tangles of my thoughts properly, about this.
I'm about to write a paper about self mutilation - I think I'll use a frame such as is it the ultimate act of self-destruction, or the ultimate act of self-love? There's a quote from my studies, earlier tonight, by one Francis Tustin:
'I have come to think that a sense of bodily separateness is the heartbreak at the centre of all human existence, and that for various reasons some people experience it in a more drastic way than others'.
Is self mutilation a retreival of life, in some way, a temporary way to resurrect and reunite the separated parts of the self, or is it a denial of life, a repression that speaks of far greater fear, with further reaching emotional and cognitive outcomes it's possible to integrate at a certain developmental level.
I've just presumed a developmental, evolutionary model, just there, did you see that? Sneaky old memes. :)
So, my great research idea, masticated upon as I drove home tonight, goes like this:
Through developmental cultural trajectories (why waste words?) see if it is possible to identify alternating but stable currents of sanitation of sex versus sanitation of death in cultural memes.
I'd need to establish:
1) that there are such entities as 'developmental cultural trajectories';
2) that sanitation of sex and death respectively do alternate;
3) a method of dealing with cross-cultural interaction.
Not easy. It's an interesting notion though, no? We live in a historical and cultural epoch of (relatively) free sexual expression, yet often we're not encountering death until it's that of our own grandparents, when we're already well into our own adulthood. There is the personal and the societal contrast to think about as well, I guess. While we may not see a dead body live in the flesh until we're quite a bit older (me and my royal 'We's') through the media, that secondary, distant way of viewing the life-of-the-world, we encounter death many times over, before we're really old enough to handle the scenes, if the research is indicative of the human-flesh experienced story, at all.
There's something more to think about too - about whether Eros and Thanatos are really a valid dichotomy. Not that sex and death aren't both on one level completely biological functions, it's just that, in terms of mind/body interaction, I'd propose that in the human species, sex has a biological beginning point and a psychic outcome, whereas death has psychic beginning point before it has a biological outcome. See that difference? I don't think it's trivial. I think the Eros/Thanatos dichotomy may be a red herring, as is identifiable by comparing sex and death as biological and psychical functions.
To turn it around into something recognisable, I'd propose that in my present cultural frame, sexuality in adult humans is psychological, primarily. Death is biological, primarily. The opposite ends of the psychological-biological spectrum that these two occupy makes me question whether it's possible to draw a model that directly contrasts their function. Much psychotherapeutic theory is grounded on this principle though - I'd love to have the time to unwind the tangles of my thoughts properly, about this.
I'm about to write a paper about self mutilation - I think I'll use a frame such as is it the ultimate act of self-destruction, or the ultimate act of self-love? There's a quote from my studies, earlier tonight, by one Francis Tustin:
'I have come to think that a sense of bodily separateness is the heartbreak at the centre of all human existence, and that for various reasons some people experience it in a more drastic way than others'.
Is self mutilation a retreival of life, in some way, a temporary way to resurrect and reunite the separated parts of the self, or is it a denial of life, a repression that speaks of far greater fear, with further reaching emotional and cognitive outcomes it's possible to integrate at a certain developmental level.
I've just presumed a developmental, evolutionary model, just there, did you see that? Sneaky old memes. :)
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Aubrey Beardsley
I've missed the anniversary of his passing on 16 March, a little, but it would be remiss of me not to make some sort of tribute post, to Aubrey Beardsley, the erotic artist, particularly as I begin research on erotic capital. It is profoundly worth checking out the Youtube footage, for a collection of his Grotesques, and for the Nyman piece, Prospero's Magic. Drink deep, even of the Eucharist wine (a Catholic convert, was he) and be sated.
The Peacock Skirt, 1894
Friday, March 19, 2010
Autonomy by Wislawa Szymborska
In danger the holothurian splits itself in two: it offers one self to be devoured by the world and in it's second self escapes.
In the middle of the holothurian's body a chasm opens and it's edges immediately become alien to each other.
On one edge, death, the other, life.
Here despair, there, hope.
To die as much as necessary, without overstepping the bounds.
To grow again from a salvaged remnant.
Here a heavy heart, there non omnis mortar, three little words only, like three little plumes ascending.
Wislawa Szymborska, 1996 Nobel prize winner for literature.
In the middle of the holothurian's body a chasm opens and it's edges immediately become alien to each other.
On one edge, death, the other, life.
Here despair, there, hope.
To die as much as necessary, without overstepping the bounds.
To grow again from a salvaged remnant.
Here a heavy heart, there non omnis mortar, three little words only, like three little plumes ascending.
Wislawa Szymborska, 1996 Nobel prize winner for literature.
Psalm 42 of the Ordo Missae
| P. Introibo ad altare Dei S Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. P. Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta: ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me. | P. I will go to the altar of God. S. To God, the joy of my youth. P. Do me justice, O God, and fight my fight against an unholy people, rescue me from the wicked and deceitful man. |
| S. Quia tu es, Deus, fortitudo mea: quare me repulisti, et quare tristis incedo, dum affligit me inimicus? | S. For Thou, O God, art my strength, why hast Thou forsaken me? And why do I go about in sadness, while the enemy harasses me? |
| P. Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem tuam: ipsa me deduxerunt et adduxerunt in montem sanctum tuum, et in tabernacula tua. | P. Send forth Thy light and thy truth: for they have led me and brought me to thy holy hill and Thy dwelling place. |
| S. Et introibo ad altare Dei: ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. P. Confitebor tibi in cithara, Deus, Deus meus quare tristis es anima mea, et quare conturbas me? | S. And I will go to the altar of god, to God, the joy of my youth. P. I shall yet praise Thee upon the harp, O God, my God. Why art thou sad, my soul, and why art thou downcast? |
| S. Spera in Deo, quoniam adhuc confitebor illi: salutare vultus mei, et Deus meus. | S. Trust in God, for I shall yet praise Him, my Savior, and my God. |
| P. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. | P. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. |
| S. Sicut erat in principo, et nunc, et semper: et in saecula saeculorum. Amen. | S. As it was in the beginning is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. |
| P. Introibo ad altare Dei. S. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. | P. I will go to the altar of God. S. To God, the joy of my youth. |
I made it to the Feria Sung Mass tonight at Lewisham's Maternal Heart chapel - Latin Mass in Lent is a solemn affair - knocks not bells on entry, dour black candlesticks, the Gloria and Alleluia omitted and all mantillas black, yes, please. Tonight's Mass took me through an understanding of the breathless, naked awaiting, in preparation for the coming of the Light, at Easter, an understanding that must be so resonant with Christianity as it is lived consonant with the seasons in the northern hemisphere. There is the symbolic understanding of the 40 days of asceticism, which of course is applicable to all human experience, no matter the continent upon which we rest. The Gospel readings at this time of year describe Christ's performance of miracle upon miracle upon miracle - part of me wonders in a burning painted this brightly, in the followers portrayed in their multitudes, His tireless, ceaseless push onwards, about the meaning that we ascribe to human life, when we are very close to the end of it. If I parallel these stories of Christ that are re-counted in the Bible to the stories that I hear from elderly folk about the important things they have done in their lives - the echoes remain the same. These stories of miracles, casting out the demons of many or saving a fellow nurse on the army fields from gunshot - these times of immense transformation, these seem to be how humans, as we are, define the ever-alterable courses of our lives.
Psalm 42 sat particularly close to my heart, tonight. It's possible to take a very surface reading of this call and response litany between priest and acolyte - going to the 'joy of my youth' through the altar of God in one way paints a very ageist picture pitting the young against old, fully in harmony with how we Westerners value our human lives (she says ever so cynically).
But there is a deeper, more transformative way to read/listen to Psalm 42 as it is recited here. This Psalm sets the scene for what will happen in the Mass - we are graced with a space where we can acknowledge the ways that we have been separated from the Divine - where it might seem to us that the Divine has indeed been siding with our enemy. We ask that the light be sent to us, and we enter upon a place above, the holy hill, to find again the re-newed zest to continue on our own true paths, the zeal that we most recognise in character as having been so present in our youth.
This Psalm invites me into a space where I am questioning the reasons I am sad, or downcast, it invites me to look into my own heart for separation, for distinctions I am making between myself and 'the Other'. May it never be said that I stood in the way, for one moment of my own, or anyone else's introspection. Herein lies the key to wisdom, or one of the many keys, methinks. :)
Thursday, March 11, 2010
A Long Standing Obsession - Two Ways
I've been studying erotic plasticity of the female sex drive - that is, the way that female behaviour might be more sharply shaped by cultural and social cues than male behaviour actually is. I'm not talking about old fashioned submissive and subordinate housewife roles, moreso a predisposition originally grounded in biology, but extended into our distal selves, a predisposition grounded on the notion that the Other comes first.
Distal self might need defining - 'distal self'' is a term coming from a theory called the construal level theory, that says that at any one time we have at least two models of the self active and available in our psyche - the proximal self, the self that is present right now and experiencing through the senses, and a distal self, which contains the experiences of the self through time - our memories, our future projections, and our emotional and imaginal selves live in the distal self.
The line 'You made me a thief of your heart' echoes over and over in my head as I read this literature. Distal self, here you be shaped.
Obsessed with Sinead because she's fiery and beautiful and feminine. Obsessed with connection to the Other, and beset by a world from which the description emerges that this here equates with co-dependence.
I still, still, don't get it.
Obstinate? Ignorant? Pathological? Must be.
Friday, March 5, 2010
The Four Tuning-In Phases
Arriving on my front door step from India this summer was a gorgeous lime green and vivid yellow covered secondhand hardback book, costing a measly $8.50, called 'Meditation Differently' by Herbert Guenther. This edition was published just the year before he passed away, being in 2005. It smells of incense and resin.
My recent lacking-in-confidence trait has been to give a paragraph by paragraph summary of the books that I am reading, barely straying from the revered words of the author lest I make the gist of their work too incomprehensible to read, via the filtering through my own mind, and the typing of my (inevitably distracted) fingers.
Guenther is far too dense and terse in style to make that habit possible with this book, really - phonetic-Tibetan is scattered liberally throughout the text, as are his occasionally obscure parallels to Western philosophy. There are some secret never-been-revealed before (I think) teachings on the psychological meaning of empowerment, the snying-thig, the essence of all essences, the Dzogchen approach to reality and two Mahamudra teachings on the Four Tuning-In Phases. It is the last of these I'm looking at today.
This book gives me material to meditate on, as well as meditations to do. I'm sort of enchanted with it. I'll draw out some of the skeletons of his translations of Mahamudra and Dzogchen texts as he has made available here, and we'll see how I go with incorporating at least some of this depth into the lunchtime mindfulness classes at uni.
There's a typical set up to most of these teachings, where there is a short invocation and a long invocation that includes gnosemes (vowel utterances that perform a function like symbolically indicating the complementarity of the feminine and masculine aspects of Being). This long invocation usually ends linking into the beginning of the teaching.
An apology is nearly always given for the shortcomings of the teacher, right at the very end. I feel right at home. :)
The translation in particular of the Four Tuning-In Phases that I am working with is originally the work of Padma Dkarpo (1527-92).
The text points to the interconnectedness of all things - the warmth of goal realisation in studying this text, the delight arising from it's challenge, the existent and non-existent entities of one's reality, all of these have dependent origination.
The four unpollutable Tuning-In Phases of psychic awakening are:
1) Single pointedness;
The explosion of time-and-space psychic energy, experienced as a ceaseless opening up. Worldly matters matter less.
2) Dissociation from conceptualisation;
Not anticipating spiritual wakefulness or fearing samsara. Not holding onto, nor forcing change in, anything. One feels like a pauper having discovered precious treasure.
3) Single piquancy;
The deeply felt understanding that the phenomenal 'that which lights up' and the noumenal 'that which is dynamically open, nothing' are indivisible. Subject-object dichotomies have subsided.
4) No-more-model building.
Whatever lights up and whatever has concretely arisen is already, in totality, present. Anxiety is a non-entity here - your experience, right here, now, is the finished model, the only possibility. One stands free of the notion that something has been imaginatively built by an imaginative builder.
The objects of one's experience in this realm do not come-into-existence - there is a sense of an uninterrupted flow of unity.
Being's dynamics are conceptually undivided, ontically without origination, non-dual and not within the scope of representational thought.
The point is to withdraw outwards/inwards, to a stage where thing and no-thing-ness do not obtain to dualism. The interface between quiescence and agitation comes tumbling down, too, sheer joy arises, and a sense of the primordial 'time before time' comes to permeate experience.
We become aware of our 'ec-static intensity' - the sub-moment-to-moment fluctuation between zero intensity and pristine lucidity, and that's lucidity in terms of 'light'.
I could bathe in this for hours. Oh. I think I have :)
My recent lacking-in-confidence trait has been to give a paragraph by paragraph summary of the books that I am reading, barely straying from the revered words of the author lest I make the gist of their work too incomprehensible to read, via the filtering through my own mind, and the typing of my (inevitably distracted) fingers.
Guenther is far too dense and terse in style to make that habit possible with this book, really - phonetic-Tibetan is scattered liberally throughout the text, as are his occasionally obscure parallels to Western philosophy. There are some secret never-been-revealed before (I think) teachings on the psychological meaning of empowerment, the snying-thig, the essence of all essences, the Dzogchen approach to reality and two Mahamudra teachings on the Four Tuning-In Phases. It is the last of these I'm looking at today.
This book gives me material to meditate on, as well as meditations to do. I'm sort of enchanted with it. I'll draw out some of the skeletons of his translations of Mahamudra and Dzogchen texts as he has made available here, and we'll see how I go with incorporating at least some of this depth into the lunchtime mindfulness classes at uni.
There's a typical set up to most of these teachings, where there is a short invocation and a long invocation that includes gnosemes (vowel utterances that perform a function like symbolically indicating the complementarity of the feminine and masculine aspects of Being). This long invocation usually ends linking into the beginning of the teaching.
An apology is nearly always given for the shortcomings of the teacher, right at the very end. I feel right at home. :)
The translation in particular of the Four Tuning-In Phases that I am working with is originally the work of Padma Dkarpo (1527-92).
The text points to the interconnectedness of all things - the warmth of goal realisation in studying this text, the delight arising from it's challenge, the existent and non-existent entities of one's reality, all of these have dependent origination.
The four unpollutable Tuning-In Phases of psychic awakening are:
1) Single pointedness;
The explosion of time-and-space psychic energy, experienced as a ceaseless opening up. Worldly matters matter less.
2) Dissociation from conceptualisation;
Not anticipating spiritual wakefulness or fearing samsara. Not holding onto, nor forcing change in, anything. One feels like a pauper having discovered precious treasure.
3) Single piquancy;
The deeply felt understanding that the phenomenal 'that which lights up' and the noumenal 'that which is dynamically open, nothing' are indivisible. Subject-object dichotomies have subsided.
4) No-more-model building.
Whatever lights up and whatever has concretely arisen is already, in totality, present. Anxiety is a non-entity here - your experience, right here, now, is the finished model, the only possibility. One stands free of the notion that something has been imaginatively built by an imaginative builder.
The objects of one's experience in this realm do not come-into-existence - there is a sense of an uninterrupted flow of unity.
Being's dynamics are conceptually undivided, ontically without origination, non-dual and not within the scope of representational thought.
The point is to withdraw outwards/inwards, to a stage where thing and no-thing-ness do not obtain to dualism. The interface between quiescence and agitation comes tumbling down, too, sheer joy arises, and a sense of the primordial 'time before time' comes to permeate experience.
We become aware of our 'ec-static intensity' - the sub-moment-to-moment fluctuation between zero intensity and pristine lucidity, and that's lucidity in terms of 'light'.
I could bathe in this for hours. Oh. I think I have :)
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Shadow fragments
I'm working on a presentation for my Psychoanalysis unit, where we are challenged to choose a term from the field of psychoanalysis, and discuss the term as it is relevant to an experience arising within our own lives.
I'm choosing the Jungian term, 'shadow'. Mention of Jung to any of my psychology tutors has historically had the effect of eliciting some decidedly less than favourable facial expressions, to be honest. The wizard's wily ways just aren't a digestible form of intellectual de rigueur for our Psychology department teachers. It makes sense, really, with the neuroscience and and cognitive psychology orientation that our university is renowned for - neurotransmitters and between-subjects designs are several times twice removed from mandalas and collective unconscious archetypes.
Anyway, I'm gathering here some of the paragraphs from his different books that I've read (and that I have on my bookshelf) that address the phenomenon of shadow.
Until I had sat here, this morning, and perused my bookshelf, I hadn't really cognised precisely how many of Jung's works I have in my possession.
Shadow?
:)
'The unconscious is commonly regarded as a sort of incapsulated fragment of our most personal and intimate life - something like what the Bible calls 'heart' and considers the source of all evil thoughts. In the chambers of the heart dwell the wicked blood-spirits, swift anger and sensual weakness. This is how the unconscious looks when seen from the conscious side. But consciousness appears to be essentially an affair of the cerebrum, which sees everything separately and in isolation, and therefore sees the unconscious in this way too, regarding it outright as my unconscious. Hence it is generally believed that anyone who descends into the unconscious gets into a suffocating atmosphere of egocentric subjectivity, and in this blind alley is exposed to the attack of all the ferocious beasts which the caverns of the psychic world are supposed to harbour.'
'True, whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes into himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face.'
'This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner way, a test sufficient to frighten off most people, for the meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant things that can be avoided so long as we can project everything negative into the environment. But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then at least a small part of the problem has already been solved; we at least have brought up the personal unconscious. The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalised into harmlessness.'
Ref:
Jung, C.G. (1959). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 2nd Ed. London: Routledge.
'The archetypes most clearly characterised from the empirical point of view are those which have the most frequent and disturbing influence of the ego. These are the shadow, the anima and the animus. The most accessible of these, and the easiest to experience, is the shadow, for its nature can in large measure be inferred from the contents of the personal unconscious. '
'The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognising the dark aspects of personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets considerable resistance.'
'Closer examination of the dark characteristics - that is, the inferiorities constituting the shadow- reveals that they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly, an obsessive, or, better, a possessive, quality.'
'Although, with insight and good will, the shadow can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality, experience shows there are certain features which offer the most stubborn resistance to moral control and prove almost impossible to influence. These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not recognised as such, and their recognition is a moral achievement beyond the ordinary... No matter how obvious it may be to the neutral observer that it is a matter of projections, there is little hope that the subject will perceive this himself.'
'Let us suppose that a certain individual shows no inclination whatever to recognise his projections. The projection making factor then has a free hand and can realise it's object - if it has one - or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power. As we know, it is not the conscious subject but the unconscious which does the projecting. Hence one meets with projections, one does not make them. The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the world into a replica of one's own unknown face. [italics mine]... The resultant sentiment d'incompletude and the still worsening feeling of sterility are in their turn explained by projection as the malevolence of the environment, and by means of this vicious circle the isolation is intensified.'
This paragraph has completely made me re-think the notion of 'shadow' that I had been holding in my mind:
'One might assume that projections like these, which are so very difficult if not impossible to dissolve, would belong in the realm of the shadow - that is, to the negative side of the personality. This assumption becomes untenable after a certain point, because the symbols that then appear no longer refer refer to the same but to the opposite sex...a contrasexual figure... Though the shadow is a motif as well known to mythology as anima and animus, it represents first and foremost the personal unconscious....when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognise the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil'.
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