A Kundalini Christmas

     It wasn't long after the whole Santa Claus thing unraveled that "How I Am: Being Human" began drifting away from the bindings of formal religion.  It seems the power of Santa Claus and the literalism of Catholicism were totally dependent on the conditional and externalized concepts of "you better watch out" and "naughty or nice."  Throughout my formative years it was a bit nerve-wracking to know that God was keeping score of every one of my childhood failings.  And with Santa the stakes were even higher than eternal damnation - toys!  Christmas time was a psychological wrestling match.  ("In this corner, weighing in at fifty-five and a half pounds, the snotty-nosed trouble from the emotional rubble - John!  And in this corner, weighing in at an incalculable amount because the laws of physics don't apply, the white-bearded tag-team of gyrations from the imagination - the transcendent, co-dependent enforcers of repentance - God and Santa Claus!!")  In my childhood mind I figured the baby Jesus was a sort of kindred spirit because he also had to contend with the threatening surveillance of "you better watch out."  I still wonder if Jesus had to deal with the childhood curiosities that result in "naughty or nice."  Nowadays I understand it all as the physiological, psychological, social, mental, emotional and spiritual conditions of "How I Am: Being Human."  But back then, the season of Santa Claus and unrelenting Catholicism both did a fine job of conditioning the inadequacies of my budding ego.
     On the other hand, there was the comforting imagination and beauty of having a Christmas tree in the living-room.  I remember turning off all the lights except for the tree, fitting perfectly into the too big rocking chair and listening to the music of the season.  I still do this ritual today for no other reason than comfort, imagination and beauty.  The personal meaning of that tree, with all its multi-colored lights and storied ornaments, has always been an unconditional conduit (unlike God and Santa) for the memories of my Christmas spirit.
     It's obvious, then, that my annual task is to re-imagine the symbolism and reclaim the meaning of the whole story: the birth of the Christ child; the spirit of the season; the solstice and returning of light; and renewing enthusiasm for Life.  And because words are symbols I always think it's valuable to examine their deeper meanings.  
     "Birth" originally meant to bear, to carry or conduct oneself, to take responsibility for one's life.  The word "Christ" of course means anointed one.  "Child" originally meant to descend, to climb down.  And "infant" comes from Latin and means not able to speak.  Solstice is a combination of words that mean the sun (sol) being still (stice).  Spirit means breath and season originally meant to sow.  Enthusiasm means to be possessed by a god and inspired (inspiritus).
     I am enthusiastically writing these words today because of an unexpected image that came to me about a week ago.  It happened in a Kundalini yoga session where we had been working on the third chakra, fire in the belly, the solar plexus, conviction and action.  Our yoga instructor kept suggesting that we imagine the light and power of the sun growing within our bellies.  I, however, was still mentally struggling with my inadequacies in accomplishing the physical aspect of the exercises.  In other words, I was having "a bad yoga day" and my ego was refusing to be quiet.  In fact, my ego was giving me a psychological whipping equalled only by those given by God and Santa.  Needless to say my whining ego kept me from imagining anything but "getting-on with my certain to be lousy rest of the day."

     As always we finished the session with the stillness of "final relaxation."  Then I sat in meditation.  The others began singing the traditional "Long Time Sun" song to conclude the day's practice.  I wasn't singing but my ego-whining began to quiet.  With eyes closed I merely listened.  "May the long time sun, shine upon you, all love surround you, and the pure light within you, guide your way on."  In my mind's eye I unexpectedly beheld the image of a child standing in front of me.  At first the child melded between looking like my daughter and my son when they were little.  But then I recognized him as the short-haired round-faced kid I used to be.  He reached-out (I reached out?) and took my aged face in his hands.  He gazed at me as if he was studying some ancient truth that he already seemed to know better than anyone.  Without words he seemed to be asking me to remember someone I had forgotten.  I tried to smile at him but instead began to cry.  He held my cheeks in his little hands, unafraid of my sorrow and inadequacies, looking intently but without any judgment at all.  As the singing in the room came to its final phrases the belly in the little boy began to glow.  He smiled and then tipped his head back as if he was experiencing pure joy.  The glow in his belly spread from the red-orange of fire embers to a yellow-white as bright and sparkly as sunlight on rippling water.  Soon all that was left of him were his hands on my face.  Then they also became pure light and I filled my lungs and belly like it was the first breath of my Life.
     For me (for many years now), the annual Christmas symbols contain an idea - the birth of the soul, the daimon, the genius.  And I think we are all looking for a personally meaningful image to carry us beyond the conditionings and inadequacies of ego, especially at this time of year.  After all, the symbols of Christmas, if read correctly, all point to how each one of us has descended into this world to bear the anointed responsibilities and privileges of being alive.  To be enthusiastic in this effort we must all learn to sow the authentic and ageless soul found in the images and symbols of rebirth.  
     A good yoga teacher can help in this effort.  I know I can't express how grateful I am for my yogi.  She has guided me to consciousness of a deeply personal image that I think is powerful enough to wrestle with the likes of anyone, including God, Santa and my ego.  For this gift I am forever grateful.  Merry Christmas. 

Soulful Biology

     There are enough theories and research on the human project to make one's head spin.  And because of "How I Am: Being Human" I intend to continue learning.  Nevertheless, my main conviction holds firm: all behavior is purposeful and internally motivated.  This fact is the main key to understanding how humans embody Potential and interiorize Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions.  The how of this embodiment and interiorization becomes Internity. But let's be clear on this point: Internity can be the complex and separating contrivances of nature versus nurture or the complex and authentic cultivation of "nature via nurture" (David Lykken).  An intentional and genuine Life, after all, is about discovering, expressing, connecting and making meaning out of one's complex internal images, instincts and emotions - whatever they are.  It's this physiological, psychological, social, mental, emotional and spiritual project that becomes the behavioral energies of soulful biology.  
     Soulful biology, therefore, is the originality of mythological calling (the nature of genetics and temperament) taking form in biological birth and then being transformed by the continuous psychological birth of ego (the nurture of family, community, peers, education and environment).  This cyclical processing of Life's energies is "How I Am: Being Human."  Of course, the intentions of one's personal myth and one's purposeful behavior are often as contradictory and varied as human consciousness.  Both ego and calling, after all, are members of a psychological and archetypal commune (Hillman).  The task of ego, therefore, is to become the centering "I Am" point of intentional consciousness.  The eventual and ultimate task of ego, however, is to intentionally resume its Relationship with the characteristics of calling.  This is precisely why healthy ego formation and a living mythology are vital to becoming fully human!  The daily Experience of this Relationship between ego and calling (conscious and unconscious) is what creates the complex variations of "How I Am: Being Human."  And this inexorable Relationship between ego and calling, contrived or cultivated, will not be denied!  Granted, it can be consciously ignored but not without grave consequences.  The transformation and/or habituation of one's Internity then (consciousness, challenges, choices, changes), is always and everywhere a behavioral display of how an individual is discovering, expressing, connecting and finding meaning in the soulful biology of all Life.
     I repeat - the psychology of all the Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions of ego are of a secondary "nurture" and will never be able to completely detach from the original "nature" of calling's Potential!  In other words, human consciousness must be centered by ego but is simultaneously destined to respond, positively or negatively, to the calling's of Potential.  These destined responses reveal and reflect both the personal and collective Internity as either separating contrivances or authentic cultivations of image, instinct and emotion.  These responses also reveal and reflect how all behavior is purposeful and internally motivated.  
     Unfortunately, at this point in the human story, most of the beliefs, values and systems formulated to address the behaviors of ego and calling are ill-advised and separating contrivances.  No matter if it's physical health, psychological health, social health, mental health, emotional health or spiritual health I think our current oppressive beliefs (about manhood, womanhood, childhood, etc.), our values [making use of the contributions of the community for one's own myopic purposes without adding anything in return (Adler)] and our systems (media, economy, health, politics, religion, etc.) are precisely why too many individuals, families and communities have become air conditioned emotional nightmares (thank you Henry Miller).  I think it's painfully obvious that we are failing to acknowledge and integrate the deeper realities found in the Relationship between calling and ego.  In effect, the natural characteristics and callings of Internity get nurtured into emotionally desperate egos that then go about righteously and incessantly denying the natural characteristics and callings of Internity.  This ignorant and impossible act of diminishing the mythic call of one's Life into mere beliefs and values of one's ego has behaviorally and emotionally sabotaged both the personal and planetary atonement of soulful biology.      

Manhood

      I work with men who've been accused of domestic violence.  I say "accused" because I wasn't there and I don't really know what happened.  I do know, however, that these men often describe whatever happened as an "argument."  My usual response to that is, "It must have been more than an argument because someone got scared enough to involve law enforcement" (too often the 911 calls are made by children).  They will then try to explain the happening by starting every sentence with, "She..." or "Kids these days..."  And such a vehement diffusion of responsibility for something that supposedly "didn't happen" always and everywhere creates suspicion.  
     I perceive these diffusions of personal responsibility as emotionally desperate projections that only reveal the fear-based beliefs and unexamined values of too many men.  The resulting violent behavior and emotional vandalism - the verbal and non-verbal attacks intended to humiliate; the tactical threats intended to create and maintain an environment of fear; the indirect yet focused intentions of destroying property or hurting pets; using violence to intentionally cause physical pain; and/or the multi-faceted methods and intentions of sexual violence; etc. - display their images of "manhood" as nothing more than emotionally desperate beliefs and dehumanized functions of learned pathology.
    Manhood as pathology.  Men whose purposeful and internally motivated behaviors always and everywhere come from their own emotional desperation (even when they are putting on the mask of "nice guy" and "good citizen").  Men who reveal and reflect emotional weaknesses with enraged silence, righteous yelling or physical strength (typically such behavior is directed at a partner and the children he perceives as "his").  Men who are so rigidly attached to their impaired ego-needs that empathy for the emotional Experiences of others, especially their partners and children, becomes impossible.  Men who constantly blame their behavior on drunken circumstances, deny everyone else's perspective of their behavior and/or minimize the validity of all Experiences but their own.  Men who, consequently, are ignorant of the profound disconnect between how others perceive them and how they perceive themselves.  Men who fail to understand how any attempt to change everyone and everything but their own “stuff” always creates some form of violence.  Men who are conditioned by fear to think that creating fear in others equals respect and that punishment equals discipline.  Men who justify violent behavior without realizing the immaturity and pathos of their efforts.  Men who have beliefs about love but no actual experiences of it.  Men who, by means of their emotionally desperate egos, compensate for all these fears and weaknesses by defining, believing and maintaining "manhood" as the oppression of others, especially women and children.  Men whose internalized images are formed by chronic oppression, resulting in "pathological" Relationships of desperation, malfunctioning, defect and aberration.
     The men I work with have internalized the images and beliefs of themselves and "manhood" that they discovered as children in oppressive family and community environments.  In fact, I think society's oppressive efforts to "teach" have resulted in children "learning" the diffusion of responsibility (withdrawal, manipulation, rebellion, compliance) for themselves, each other and society as a whole.  And because the Experiences of being alive are submerged in such environments every obscenity becomes normalized, a way of Life.  In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire points out how the struggle to "make" a different Life, one based on safety, love and freedom, begins with men's recognition that they have been destroyed.  Freire also explains how these men, "having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.  Freedom would require them to eject the image and replace it with autonomy and [personal] responsibility."  In my work I've come to realize that asking men to eject their learned images of "manhood" is like asking them to change how they walk.    
     Yet, "we make the road by walking" (Freire) and change can only come from the courage within.  But even the word "courage" cannot be understood from the perspective of "manhood" because it has less to do with bravery, strength or endurance and instead derives from the French word coeur meaning "heart."  And the men I work with have had their hearts damaged - physically, emotionally and spiritually.  From the very beginning of life too many are dehumanized.  They've been "made" into oppressors through a system of oppression and so their behaviors of courage are twisted around beliefs of conquering.  Nevertheless, they must learn to walk this world differently.  To do this they have to find the responsibility and courage necessary to "make" being and becoming more fully human an act of personal freedom.
      In working with men accused of domestic violence I am learning that "becoming human is a project" (Freire).  I also have to understand how these guys firmly grasp onto belief systems that force them to overcompensate for the lack of courage they've come to believe is "manhood."  And even though I describe their behavioral overcompensations as "pathology" I recognize that the desperations, malfunctioning, defects and aberrations come from the whole society's unexamined belief systems about men, women, children and the Relationships that "make" Life.  So, in a completely oversimplified nutshell, the work I do involves examining how the culturally supported dehumanization of too many men creates the pathology called "manhood" and how this travesty is at the root of oppression and the dehumanizing violence against women and children.  

RESPONSE-ABILITY

     It recently came-up in a conversation how this idea, "nobody makes me anything," (i.e., happy, sad, angry, behave in certain ways, etc.) is "completely impossible bullshit" (quote-unquote).  And, in spite of having righteously claimed it many times, I have to admit that, upon further examination, the idea seems impossible.  After all, how can anyone claim that "nobody makes me anything" when at the same time we are all "made" in Relationship with all otherness.  Yet, to believe that the personal and impersonal otherness totally "makes" us who and how we are steps perilously close to the edge of predetermination.  Such a belief threatens to absolve us of all personal responsibility for who and how we are in Relationship with all otherness.  Then again, to believe that every behavior is purposeful and internally motivated seems to threaten us with too much personal responsibility for who and how we are in Relationship with all otherness.
     Nonetheless, I still firmly believe that all behaviors are purposeful and internally motivated.  When I say this, however, I don't mean that the purpose is always consciously ego-driven.  For example, I love the story where a young man with a pregnant wife at home puts his own life at risk to physically restrain a drunken old homeless man from jumping off a bridge.  When asked, "What on earth were you thinking?" he couldn't explain other than saying he felt his own Life was completely dependent on the Life of that homeless man.  (Soon he would understand a similar feeling through parenthood.)  In a single moment the young man's purposeful, internal motivation transcended ego-consciousness.  I'm certain this happens all the time in military, disaster and other situations where the ego's wants and needs are overruled by deeper connections to all Life.  These connections, I believe, are purposeful beyond one's usual awareness and internally motivated even though completely connected to the external experiences of otherness.
     The critical understanding is that one is always consciously and unconsciously making purposeful and internally motivated responses to Life.  My claim today is that those who understand the RESPONSE-ABILITY of being "made" in Life as well as "making" a Life are having a different experience of being alive than those who don't.             

Consciousness

     Oh boy...  I can already picture my two readers anxiously manipulating their computers to find something of interest on Netflix, YouTube or Facebook.  "Please!  Anything besides a blog titled Consciousness."  I'm guessing I lost the other 11 readers back at the "Internity" post a few months ago.  But those are all forms of consciousness, too.  As far as we know there's no getting away from it because even the state of unconsciousness is another form of consciousness and vice-versa.

     Because this sort of pondering has been going-on for centuries all I'm going to say is that not long after birth, human consciousness begins to reveal and reflect ego coming forth from the limitless unconscious, the anima mundi, the world soul.  In other words, the moment the unconscious energy of animating Potential enters a baby's consciousness as images, instincts, sensations and emotions (mine, yours and the world's) it begins the Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions of a growing ego.  A healthy ego is precisely why children need the safety and good care of healthy adults!  After all, the healthiest aspects of "How I Am: Being Human" mean living an intentional life of intra-dependence between conscious and unconscious contents.  And the health or harm of this intra-dependence gets fostered or foiled in the generational cycles of mythological calling, biological birth, psychological birth, the experience of being alive, biological death and what's left-over as psychological remains.  

     It's the psychological remains, healthy or harmed, that become part of the unconscious animating Potential of the next generation's consciousness.  In this way “How I Am” right now tending to my consciousness, ego and the animating Potential of the limitless unconscious affects the images, instincts, sensations and emotions of the whole world!  So, the two eternal questions seem to be, "Is my ego consciousness healthy enough right now to be actively aware of its intra-dependence on the limitless unconscious, the anima mundi, the world soul?" and "How is my awareness and responsibility to this intra-dependence affecting the generations to come?"

     (Netflix, YouTube and Facebook, here we come...)

The Archetypal World of Internity

    One day a young songwriter "woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across [his] head" and recognized he had music in mind again.  But this time he felt that it was an already established composition, something he must have heard before, maybe from his musical father's generation.  He worked it out on the piano and assumed it must be a "standard."  He asked many others to help him identify the song but nobody could.  The song kept running through his consciousness (calling) and he continued to assume that eventually he'd realize what "standard" it was.  He hummed along with the melody but couldn't quite place the lyric.  So, he started singing gibberish until one day he sang, "Scrambled eggs..." and some other rhymes to go along with eggs.  One time, instead of "Scrambled eggs" the songwriter's gibberish came out as, "Yesterday..."  From that point onward the composition revealed itself in its entirety.  And it was, in fact, a standard waiting to be brought into the world and acknowledged as such.  In effect, the song used Paul McCartney as a conduit to make itself known.  The common emotionality of the song "Yesterday," as music does (and the rest of the arts do), revealed and reflected the shared pathways of human Potential, Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions from both our individual and collective mind.     

     It's these shared pathways of the mind, the psychic stirrings and callings of Internity, that I find so fascinating.  Jung described them by using the term "archetype" which I understand as an original image, ancient patterns, or "pre-existent forms...which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents."  (This is why the arts are vital to the experience of being alive: First, because they give conscious form to the psychic stirrings and callings of Internity.  Secondly, they point out hypocrisy, jingoism, cant, jargon, etc.  Finally, the arts abhor mediocrity.)  I understand archetypes as images, energies and emotions coming forth from the collective unconscious and made conscious through the use of symbol (the art and invention of imagination and image-making).  Another of Jung's claims is that "our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors."  This claim, as it concerns our bodies, in spite of their own complexities, is not really that astounding for our scientific and evolved brains to comprehend.  But the idea that our souls - the images of the mind as well as our instincts and emotions - are also "composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors," makes me wonder even more about the transcendence of human Potential, Relationship, Experience and Perception.  Jung also describes archetypes, these psychic stirrings and callings, as "the mind of our unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of experiencing life and the world, gods and men."  I think Joseph Campbell's research on the consistent and striking similarities of imagination and image-making throughout all mythologies is proof enough of ancient and shared pathways.

     The image below is how I've learned to think about the archetypes of the collective unconscious, the shared pathways of "How I Am: Being Human."  This is what I mean by the psychic stirrings and callings of Internity.   

The middle of the image is composed of the results - physiological, psychological, social, mental, emotional and spiritual - of all the individualized elements of the "How I Am: Being Human" diagram of previous posts.  This is the centering place of ego-consciousness where discoveries, expressions, connections and meaning of others and otherness take imagistic, instinctual and emotional shape as some level of awareness and Self-respect.  I think this centering place is what determines the level of guidance or hauntings from the psychic stirrings and callings of archetypes.  If the Potentials, Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions of "How I Am: Being Human" are given conscious form in protection, empathy, nurturance and sustenance then the archetypes have a better chance of making themselves known as purposeful behaviors guided by imagination and image-making.  Anything less makes one susceptible to purposeful behaviors based on the fear of archetypal hauntings (i.e., disconnected opposition).  In any case, consciously acknowledging the images of the mind (dreams, fantasies, memories, griefs, intuitions, half-baked ideas, unfinished songs, etc.), and the ancient instincts and powerful emotions of one's psychic stirrings and callings is an intentional step toward authenticity on the shared pathways of "How I Am: Being Human."
     My claim today is that the art of imagination and image-making is an instinctual and emotional relationship with the shared pathways of the collective unconscious.  Granted, there's only one McCartney, or Lennon, or Picasso, or Einstein, or Edison, or Leonardo da Vinci, etc., etc.  Nevertheless, we are all original in our divine capacities to discover, express, connect and make meaning out of the psychic stirrings and callings of "How I Am: Being Human."  My ultimate conviction is that every Potential, Relationship, Experience and Perception is symbolic of one's Self-respecting consciousness, ego, persona and personal unconscious in an ancient dance of atonement with the archetypal world of Internity.

And so I ask again, "How are you?"      johnmadowning@gmail.com                         

Self-respect

     I've written a lot about "How I Am: Being Human" but the essence of it all is encompassed by this idea: Self-respect is always and everywhere in the context of others and otherness.  "How" one tends to the complex tasks of Internity - the discoveries, expressions, connections and meanings of daily life - all reveal Self-respect.  The dependent, independent, interdependent and intra-dependent cycles of one's life each reflect realizations of Self-respect.  The healthy fostering of one's Potential physiology (survival needs), psychology (safety needs), sociology (belonging needs), mentality (fun and learning needs), emotionality (power needs) and spirituality (freedom needs) can only happen with Self-respect.  Intentional Relationship with one's genetics, family, community, peers, education, environment, temperament and calling is possible but only with Self-respect.  Original, sexual, imaginative and mortal Experiences contain the intensities of the heart's desire but can only be authentically honored and practiced with Self-respect.  Consciousness, Challenges, Choices and Changes can all be genuine and responsible acts of enlightened Perception but only through the lens of Self-respect.  To have, to feel, to act, to love, to speak and be heard, to see and to know all expose one's understanding and purposeful behaviors relative to Self-respect.  One's emotional integrity or disconnected opposition; one's empathetic or judgmental values and feelings; one's competent or overcompensating beliefs and thinking patterns; all display levels of Self-respecting awareness and guidance.  Both the awareness of, or dissociation from Self-respect present behavioral glimpses of one's interior story.  Self-respect, therefore, is a natural expansion of Internity - discoveries, expressions, connections and meanings - always and everywhere in the context of others and otherness - the "How I Am" of "Being Human."  So, I ask again...   

How are you?

    

     The Consciousness, Challenges, Choices and Changes of this question, "How are you?" live within the virtually infinite combinations of ego possibilities in the above diagram.  Self-evaluation is the main component and in the words of James Hillman, "The task is to find the gold in the volcano."  My main comment at this point is that each element can be considered singly but every element factors into and influences every other.  And as complex as all of that may be, keep in mind that there are no concrete answers - only clues to better questions regarding ego health.
     As vital as all the above realities are to healthy living within the world there are even deeper realities that reign within the divinity of "How I Am."  In my next posting I intend to address how "Being Human" gets more fascinating by looking specifically at the deeper psychological Self of the collective unconscious and its transformative Potentials, Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions.    

(Note: I don't have any directions on how to successfully respond to this blog.  I fail miserably when I try to respond to other blogs and when I do succeed I have no idea how.  If you wish to dialogue or comment or ask questions - which I think would be awesome - just e-mail me at: johnmadowning@gmail.com  Peace)

Common Sense

     Practically every day we are told to use common sense like it's the most valuable asset we have.  Yet, every day we also hear "there is no such thing as common sense anymore."  The "anymore" part is often added-on and implies that once upon a time there was more common sense than there is nowadays.  This, of course, is a perception and open to debate on multiple levels (consider that once upon a time it was common sense that the earth was flat).  Add to this the complication that what might be a common sense perception to one person or group or era seems absolutely crazy to another and vice-versa (consider that many people believe God is an elderly but muscly white man with white hair and beard in a white robe and a nasty mood who had a white son).  Or, what might be a common sense perception in one circumstance is carelessly stupid in another (think of speeding through town trying to get an injured child to the hospital versus speeding through town high on something like alcohol, amphetamines or godlike self-importance).  On one hand if enough people who have enough power support the merits of a belief or value then, regardless of its accuracy or consequences, whatever it is will be perceived and accepted as common behavior (think of racism).  On the other hand, sensible behavior is full of instantaneous transformations depending on the Potentials, Relationships, Experiences and resulting Perceptions of each individual story (think of Rosa Parks).  Add to all those circumstances the reality that whenever beliefs or values become common sense perceptions they are often blindly accepted as "just the way it is."  This chronic lack of examination always creates a slippery slope because it fails to serve both common and individual sensibilities (think of health care or the food pyramid).  It seems to me that the "common" element puts the individual into a constant relationship with otherness but the "sense" element originates in the moment with the interior formulations of the individual.  Common sense, therefore, exists as an untenable contradiction because common eventually leans toward biasing and obfuscating "sense" while the motivations of the individual eventually lean toward negating "common."
     These two words, "common" and "sense," though they can't logically be used together, are nevertheless both reliant on one essential quality: Self-respect.  Unfortunately, too many believe and value the societal norm that respect is achieved by creating some level of fear.  This belief is a prime example of how the common element biases and obfuscates individual sense.  The way I see it, Self-respect is impossible to attain by using fear as a tactic because fear causes emotional desperation.  And whenever there is emotional desperation one's original positive regard for relationship with Self and all otherness is poised to become withdrawn, manipulative, rebellious or dangerously compliant to the insidiousness of what's considered common and sensible.  These situations then mix together to cause one's ego-self (the daily interactions) and one's deeper psychological Self (character and calling) to become disconnected from and oppositional to each other.  This internal experience and relationship of disconnected opposition tends to create behaviors that are often perceived as "common" and "sensible" but at their core are emotionally desperate for Self-respect.
     I submit that disconnected opposition and the resulting emotional desperation is a painfully accurate description of common sense nowadays.  Without Self-respect the "common" is subject to become an undiscovered, unexplored, disconnected and meaningless waste of Potential (consider the violence of "screen time").  Without Self-respect the intuitive "sense" is no longer trusted making one subject to emotionally desperate and destructive belonging needs (think of suicide bombers, gangs and cults).  Those resulting behaviors are then judged by those wielding power as lacking "common sense."  This perspective then justifies further attacks on Self-respect in an unexamined and violent effort to change behavior and enforce respect (think of the rampant uses of punishment).  But that hypocritical approach is exactly what caused the emotionally desperate and destructive behavior in the first place!  Under the circumstances, it seems the most common and sensible effort we should all be making - as individuals, as families, as communities, states, nations and citizens of the world - is an intentional reexamination and resistance of the mindless contrivances known as common sense.

(Note: I haven't posted in a while because I've been busy working on other projects.)

Razing Children

     I think of Life and people with these ideas in mind: mythological Calling - biological birth - psychological birth - the Experience of being alive - biological death - psychological remains.  Each complex cycle of this human project is full of discovery, expression, connection and meaning, especially during childhood when emotions absorb and record every experience.  These core experiences characterize every element of one's personal life which then interacts with the otherness of life and creates Potential, Relationship, Experience and Perception.  All these individualized variations of this emotional human project - to have, to feel, to act, to love, to speak and be heard, to see and to know - begin during childhood.  In this way the generational oats we sow - i.e., the images, energies and emotions of children - symbolize the health of families, communities, nations and all the Earth.
     That being so, it is no longer possible for me to ignore how too many of the OATS we sow - Oppression, Addiction, Trauma and Shame - are negatively affecting the behaviors and emotions of "Being Human."  We know this negative affect is happening because we can see (if we learn how to name) and sense (if we still trust our instincts) the fear around us and within us.  After all, we live in a society of multi-leveled violence and this emotional state has, unfortunately, become the biggest influencing factor and most consistent personal response.  For example, the interior lives of too many are formed on barely "having" enough to get by; too many are merely medicating how they "feel;" too many believe punishment is the only "act" that gets results; billions believe "love" is about getting and doing instead of giving and being; billions more refuse to "speak" because they are convinced they won't be "heard" or fear they will; all of us are taught to judge and compete with who and what we "see" instead of understanding the interdependence of it all; and lots of us "know" years of formal and impressive information but are deeply ignorant of ourselves and the impact we are having on all of our exterior Relationships.  These fears result in personalized forms of withdrawal, manipulation, rebellion and shoulder-shrugging compliance.
     Such a state of affairs then creates an environment where too many wide-eyed children are vicariously living through media and technology, desensitized by sexual violence, their brains stimulated by flash-second imagery and instant access, their attempts at fulfillment conformed to pointless consumption and their imaginations disengaged from kinesthetic activity.  In effect, emotionally unhealthy children are now somewhat invisible because they are the accepted norm in society.  I say "somewhat invisible" because their purposeful behaviors are attempts to be seen.  As a society, however, we continue to "treat" the "symptoms" of unhealthy children (because there's a lot of money to be made) but we have yet to really see the new norm or name it for what it really is - the consequence of Oppression, Addiction, Trauma and Shame.
     Meanwhile, the always purposeful behaviors continue: obesity, bulimia and anorexia, attention deficit, hyperactivity, violence, promiscuity, loss of self-respect, "what's in it for me" attitudes, carelessness for the future, self-destructive devotions, emotional desperation, a general disdain for responsibility and an attraction to the anonymous and easily vicious behaviors afforded by group identity.  And yet it almost never fails that whenever the subject of "kids these days" comes up most grown-ups (as opposed to adults) absolve themselves of any responsibility for the situation.  They simply think and actually believe the solution is sowing more effective Oppression, causing more Trauma ("as long as you do it with love") and creating more Shame.  But dehumanizing individuals into submissive objects whose sole purpose then becomes avoiding the soul's purpose is at the core of what causes the various forms of Addiction, no matter whether the narcotic is alcohol, medication, the media, anarchy, political power or religious ideology!!  It's all wrong and it's all disastrous to the Relationships within us and around us.  The OATS we sow, these "four horsemen" - Oppression, Addiction, Trauma and Shame - have always and everywhere been the problem, not the solution.
     The solution is rooted in concepts of shared humanity - interdependence - throughout the generations (i.e., the physiological, psychological, social, mental, emotional and spiritual health of self and others).  In effect, "we don't so much build communities as we are already built into them.  Just by being here in the world our life is with others [and otherness]." (Hillman)  At this critical point in our shared story the Earth is demanding that we commit ourselves - as individuals, families, communities, nations and the Earth's consciousness - to raising fully awake and emotionally healthy human beings.  Of course, to begin this task we need to Change how we "have, feel, act, love, speak and hear, see and know."  Then and only then will we begin to create the emotional health necessary to stop the practice of razing children.
  

The Fear of God

"The world and the Gods are dead or alive 

according to the condition of our souls."  

(James Hillman)

  
     One of my earliest psychological births was in the mid-sixties at Catholic school.  I was formally taught to believe that God lived somewhere else and he was madder than hell at me for what a couple of my dubious ancestors did (something about not sharing apples).  As a child this dogmatic guilt by association, and my being "a sinner" because of it, didn't make much sense to me but it was a perpetual concern for the nuns and priests.  They often said, "God loves you" and "suffer the little children" but in reality some of them hated us "sinners" and were hell-bent on making us suffer.  To them the whole world was evil and the devil was three-and-a-half feet tall, had a bad haircut and wore a polyester sweater vest.  Too many of us imaginative and loving children took this abusiveness to heart and soul where the Potential of our world and the Gods began dying in agony.

     I still love learning but by the second grade I already had emotional reasons to be confused and hate school.  Fortunately, there were many adults in my life who weren't violent, even on school days when they found me hiding-out in the alley unable to verbalize my fear.  These adults practiced self-discipline and the Freedom of Responsibility so I trusted their love and loved them in return, even when they firmly held my hand and walked me to school where they mistakenly believed I belonged.  They didn't really know what was going-on other than hearing "his conduct is disruptive, he doesn't listen, he daydreams, he won't sit still, he teases the girls, he doesn't work up to his potential, he doodles pictures when he's supposed to be doing math" etcetera, ad nauseum.  (This report was actually saying, "From our perspective your son's main problem is that he's a child and a sinner and we're going to fix him good.")  It wasn't until many years later around the family table when the real stories of cruelty had their cynical telling.  The elders were confused and outraged but by then my ego was flooded with shame for instincts and distrust of my own Potential.  For almost three decades the condition of my soul drowned in the intoxicating hatred I fostered for the world and the Gods.  However, these experiences were also a "compare and contrast" push toward enlightenment.  To this day I thank the fates for sending me home from school to many loving and Responsible adults who used religion to guide instead of justify their behavior.  I can well imagine the shame in the hearts and minds of those children who experienced psychological fear and cruelty at home as well as school and to this day still think they deserved it.

     Enlightenment and healthy psychological birth are cyclical experiences of naming the world, intentionally holding one's Internity up to the light of solemn examination.  The purpose is to make some meaning out of it all.  And many psychological births later I now have empathy for those nuns and priests who were vicious.  I suspect they were systematically and maybe even ritually scared and hurt during their formative years.  There's no other way to explain how the condition of their rigid souls could have become so fearfully nailed to the crosses of their own neurotic dogmas.  They must have been scared to death of us children because as children they had been scared to death.  I now understand their behavior for what it was: projections of, and overcompensations for, their own unexamined fears being presented in the black and white costume of religion. 

     Righteously scaring and hurting children has been a terrible idea for too many centuries.  Throughout history and all around the world today - within individuals, families, communities and nations - the evidence of this common practice is found in atrocious acts of all kinds and all dogmas.  I am convinced that whenever people claim to know "God's will" they are actually revealing the unexamined, mean-spirited conditioning of their own damaged egos and dying souls.  The natural condition of a child's soul, on the other hand, allows for the whole world and all the Gods to be inspirational and alive.  To meet this truth with sanctioned cruelty has always been and will always be a fundamental act of terrorism against the psychological birth of the world and the Gods. 

Ideas

      I've been writing about ideas - ego and Self; reflections and revelations; Potential, Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions; etc., etc.  I've come to understand Life in the cyclical sense of mythological Calling, biological birth, psychological birth, the experience of being alive, biological death and psychological remains.  The constant theme is Internity.  The core idea is that one's Internity is always and everywhere in participation with always and everywhere. 

     Such an idea is fluid, subject to change and open to suggestion.  The diagram below is another one of the symbols I utilize to help me formulate ideas of Potential.  My unscientific name for what's inside the circle is "The Stuff of Life."  It's a mirror.  The top half and the bottom half continuously reveal and reflect the emotional components of one's Life.  The Violence/FEAR side and the Self-respect/SAFETY side are each generalized responses.  These responses, all of which have a core emotional element, then become personally specific formulations known as characteristics and schemas.  My conviction is that in the beginning of everyone's Life the Potential for "How I Am: Being Human" is either sabotaged by Violence/FEAR or encouraged with Self-respect/SAFETY to one degree or another.  However, regardless of developmental sabotage or encouragement, neither side is an unmitigated determinant of one's genuine Internity because the forces of Life are always presenting new Consciousness, Challenges, Choices and Changes.  

   

(I think and hope that you can click on the image to enlarge it.)

     

     The real determinant of Internity is whether or not one fully comprehends and practices the connection between total Freedom and total Responsibility right Here and Now!  This relationship between Freedom and Responsibility is unbreakable and non-negotiable.  It demands reality based Consciousness of purposeful behavior as it relates to and impacts the Challenges, Choices and Changes of self and others!  Unfortunately, most people believe Freedom and Responsibility are opposing ideas.  Such beliefs are actually a diffusion of Freedom and Responsibility.  And such diffusion is being demonstrated as detached and reckless behavior all over the World.  

     The focused intention of Internity, on the other hand, understands how the Freedom of Responsibility is what brings forth the genuine Self in Relationship with all otherness.  This focused intention transforms the meaning of Life into the act of finding and aligning with one's Calling regardless of anything!  In the words of James Hillman, "The task is to find the gold in the volcano."  Joseph Campbell sums it up by saying, "The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."  Not settling for the beliefs of who you think you are (ego) but finding the core of who you really are (Self).  When All is said and done in this Life the psychological remains, created as emotional memory within others, will mirror one's awareness and practice of how Freedom and Responsibility mirror each other as the same idea.   

Formulations

     I'm fascinated by the human capacity (particularly my own) to absorb and comprehend images that are both positively inspiring and hopelessly negative.  From our first sensations to our last breath we all play host to images in a continuous flow of projections and introjections.  And even though the images are primarily outward, the deeper realities they reveal are inward.  In the words of Joseph Campbell, "When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image."  My blog post just prior to this one talked about a meditation practice where all the images one comes upon are never to be attached to but instead are to be read as formulations of the ego-self, the deeper Self and the apparent intentions of Life.  Such a meditation practice contradicts our stimulus-response conditionings but, paradoxically, it's those very same conditionings that hold clues to absorbing and comprehending images with enlightened purpose.
     I'm also intrigued by cultural symbols.  I've learned, however, to see symbols as representational gateways to truth, not as holders of truth.  Symbols are functions of mythology and as such are meant to be looked beyond because they reference the mysterious unknown that is within and beyond each one of us.  Too often, however, our desperate egos get trapped in the literalism of symbols.  This trap almost always becomes manipulative of self and others.  We then interpret Life through that system of literal beliefs, thereby making all other symbols and beliefs oppositional.  Granted, the function of ego is to differentiate the Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions (the projections and introjections) of family and cultural symbolism.  But without ritually awakening to the deeper Potential beyond the symbols (the original function of Myth) we become stuck in differences.  Under such circumstances, I think it's accurate to say that all the violence in the world is the result of our inability to move beyond the rigid beliefs we attach to symbols.  These dogmatic attachments then keep us all separated from the spiritual and scientific truth of Universal connectedness.  In effect, the righteous fervor of "my symbol contains the one truth" completely denies truth.  I think this level of denial is symbolic of personally desperate and culturally disastrous formulations of emotion.
     The emotional formulations, "within you and without you" (thank you George Harrison), then interact with the personal and impersonal Potentials of Life.  Biological birth, psychological birth, the experience of being alive, biological death and one's psychological remains all tell a story of one's emotional formulations.  The discoveries, expressions, connections and created meaning are all symbolic signposts on a path (sometimes a hero path) to and from one's Calling.  The sense of having, feeling, acting loving, speaking/being heard, seeing and knowing are all projections and introjections of emotional ego development.  Ultimately, ego formulations reveal either fearful and ignorant diffusions of responsibility or the safety and freedom of total responsibility for one's Internity.  Either way, it seems that Life is pushing us all to have ego-formulations for the sole purpose of facing challenges, making choices and creating changes - "within you and without you" - toward a deeper awareness of Self-consciousness.  In effect, the apparent intentions of the collective Life seem to be teaching that living one's personal Life with anything less than focused intention on genuine Potential will result in emotional chaos.
     Finally, with a mindful focus on genuine Potential, my future posts will talk more specifically about understanding the energies of "How I Am."  Every element in the diagram of my May 18th post symbolically reveals and reflects personal and impersonal formulations.  My effort will be to systematically show how these formulations of image, symbol, energy and emotion are original, sexual, imaginative and mortal Creations that always and everywhere mirror the fluctuating truths of "Being Human."

The Well-Being of Internity

     The most powerful and challenging meditation practice for Well-Being I have ever encountered is based on this concept: All the World - every person, place, thing, event, idea and All there is, ever was, or ever will be - is Divine and enlightened except for me.  (The idea is similar to my previous post of being Alone in an eternal garden.)  This meditation practice involves my ego at the center of consciousness while my sensations consciously and unconsciously Perceive the World.  It's my ego, then, that does most of the interpreting of internal and external Potentialities, Relationships, Experiences and Perceptions.  This meditation practice, if effective, results in humbly Perceiving the World as trying to awaken my ego to deeper realities of the numinous Self!  This practice promises to create spiritually compassionate Relationships based on gratitude for All the World's images, symbols, energies and emotions - positive and negative.  In effect, this meditation practice turns the created meaning of my Life into a deliberate reunification of ego-consciousness with the a priori elements of the Self.  And this meaningful ego-Self unity then becomes a genuine path toward discoveries, expressions and connections of and with Well-Being.
     Practicing this meditation and achieving ego-Self unity means I have to be emotionally aware enough to take total responsibility for "How I Am: Being Human."  Most of us, however, have forgotten the Potential of emotional awareness; and most of us actively resist being totally responsible for how we are.  It seems that somewhere along the way we've been taught to believe that responsibility and freedom are opposites when in fact they are identical twins.  After all, learning the World's lessons demands full responsibility for how our projections and introjections affect the personal and interpersonal Experiences of being free.  Instead, we are more likely to learn and "believe" that our Experiences are uncontrollable reactions to erratic Otherness, a belief which then allows most of our Relationships to violently carry-on unimpeded by emotional awareness or personal responsibility.  Practicing this meditation also means Perceiving how feelings and values are conditioned by the presence, or absence, of safety within the context of Relationships.  But too often safety itself is conditional, created on the inequitable premise that, "As long as I am made happy, everyone else will be safe."  Of course, such a premise is completely antithetical to emotional awareness and personal responsibility.  Additionally, this meditation practice forces one to critically evaluate the beliefs and thinking patterns that justify behavior.  And this critical evaluation typically reveals dissociations from repressed and unsafe emotional Experiences.  (Freud nailed this idea when he wrote, "That which is repressed goes through no alterations with time.")  Fundamentally, this meditation practice creates freedom by demanding emotional awareness of, and personal responsibility for, the unity of ego and Self -  Internity.
     Imagine how freeing it must be to emotionally and responsibly move about Life with a unified ego-Self Internity!  Jesus of Nazareth did so and ultimately asked this question - Who are you to judge?  The Buddha acknowledged the attachments and sorrows of ego but then walked the path of the deeper Self, imploring us all to examine the thoughts, hopes, efforts, choices, words, awareness, livelihood and knowledge that create Internity.  Throughout the human story countless others have given us mythical clues to the unification of ego and Self.  It all seems to come down to this idea from Anais Nin, "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."  Therefore, I must become fully conscious of "How I Am: Being Human."  By embracing the challenges of these concepts I can choose gratitude for All the World as it attempts to guide me toward enlightenment.  In the final analysis, practicing this meditation means to examine the ego, see beyond ego to the deeper Self, and always participate in Life with the freedom of emotional awareness and personal responsibility.  The genuine result is the Well-Being of Internity.

All ONE's Divine Relationships

     Chances are you've heard of this one Mythic story (and there are many more like it).  It starts with an eternal and noble soul in this SELF-made garden paradise (right away creativity and expression establish the psychic norm of All is ONE).  ONE time (even though there wasn't a concept of time yet) the eternal being was walking in the garden (in a sensory yet unconscious Relationship with its own image) when All is ONE transformed into a concept - All ONE - and then into an experience - Alone (probably not possible for eternal beings but the story, like all "otherness," has its own purpose).  In response to this Aloneness (the original glimpse of consciousness) the eternal being followed its creative, expressive nature and made a second eternal being (out of some sort of garden material), again in its own image.  So now the garden had a significant "other" to relate to the next time ONE came to visit.
     Out of the ONE comes Two.  Two, however, soon needed something to do (the seeds of Calling were already present) and so was given the task of naming All the "otherness" in the garden.  Two was also given the privilege of using the "otherness" of the eternal garden (of course this "use" meant the killing and eating of the "otherness" but there isn't conscious differentiation of Life or Death or Need in eternity so it wasn't a psychological dilemma).  After Two finished naming All, which took an eternity, All One again transformed into Alone (the incessant stirrings of consciousness).  So Two goes to ONE and says, "Hey, everything in the garden here is really nice and convenient and well-cared for but something's missing."  ONE thought this over for an eternity.  ONE knew that up to now All was still unconsciously ONE.  But ONE also knew all about, and even predicted, Two's experience of the Alone transformation.
     ONE smiled in a peculiar way and then, out of different (as yet undifferentiated) garden material, created a third eternal "other."  ONE knew the timeless truth that out of ONE comes Two; out of Two comes Three; out of Three comes all things - consciousness.  Of course, it wasn't long before Three's Calling and Internity sensed and acted upon conscious discovery, expression and connection with ONE.  And ONE knew from the beginning that Three would choose the genuine purpose of walking the Hero's path.  ONE also knew that Three would consider hanging around in the eternal garden utterly meaningless.  That knowledge was behind ONE's peculiar smile.  That smile expressed ONE's eternal Love as Three said "YES" to consciousness and "YES" to Being Human and "YES" to a life-long relationship with Creation.
     In this way Three's consciousness brought Divine Relationship into the world.  Three then began to differentiate the Potential and mysterious duality of All Life.  Three's consciousness learned to honor the original sacredness of All that was revealed in the garden.  Three's consciousness of time and space impelled projections and introjections of sorrow and joy and fear and desire in the Experience of being alive.  Three courageously said "YES!" to Death because to do so made Perceptions of Life possible.  Without Three's consciousness ONE and Two would still be All ONE and Alone in the unconsciousness of the eternal garden.
     This Myth, of course, corresponds to the unconscious symbiotic union we all experience at the beginning of Life.  The garden story describes the psychological birth of Being Human.  The garden story, as a living Myth, is about bringing ONE's divinity - the images, energies and emotions - to full symbolic consciousness of and atonement with individual and collective Life.  Anything less than Mythic interpretation of this garden story is madness and puts the soul's nobility at odds with circumstances - All ONE's Divine Relationships.

From Here to Internity

     Myth-making is an ancient human endeavor.  (To really understand the important story of Myth-making one needs to study Joseph Campbell's work for about 80 years.  I only have 56 years remaining in my own studies!)  Jung refers to myth as one of the earliest forms of science.  Myth-making, after all, is the discovery, expression of, connection with, and attempt to find meaning in the fact that every single one of nature's species-specific phenomena are pushed to be and live.  (Consider a blade of grass pushing through the pavement.)  This Calling to life reveals and reflects how the internal and external potentialities of all nature are in a cyclical life-death-rebirth participation with the power of nature.  In other words, the life of nature and the nature of life contain relationships that demand specific tasks of consciousness and fulfillment from every organism, whether a single cell creature or complex human being.  As I understand it, the scientific and mythological task of "Being Human" then is to consciously acknowledge the sacred life-death-rebirth story contained within all of nature's relationships.  In the words of Joseph Campbell, Myth-making is the capacity and intention "to wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of ourselves and of the universe." 
     My conviction holds that "to wonder" about ourselves and the universe is a process of always going forth from, and returning back to, Internity.  In the beginning, as newborn unconscious potential, our sensory systems go forth as projections and return as introjections.  With every projection and introjection cycle one's Internity finds an expanding relationship to image and a new experience of energy and emotion.  Each time this cycle occurs there is a centering of consciousness within the newborn.  With each centering of consciousness the seed of ego takes root within Internity.  Sometime late in the first year of life the ego begins to consciously differentiate between the perceptions of self and otherness.  Around two years-old the ego begins to consistently declare, "I Am!"  The ego's consciousness of images, energies and emotions then goes through the innumerable physiological, psychological, social, mental, emotional and spiritual transformations of an individual lifetime.  And every transformation is a symbolic microcosm of the terrible and fascinating life-death-rebirth relationships that we each share with the universe.  Mythically speaking, the story of consciousness demands the ego's declarations of "I Am!" but must also involve movement toward discoveries of the deeper SELF (the unconscious).  From Here to Internity, therefore, always includes some level of both conscious and unconscious processes as we all go forth from and return back to wonder.
     The PBS series with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell called "The Power of Myth" starts with these words spoken by Joseph Campbell.  I don't know if it's his poem or not but for me it sums up part of what I'm trying to write about in this blog.

"We have not even to risk the adventure alone
for the heroes of all time have gone before us.
The labyrinth is thoroughly known.
We have only to follow the thread of the hero path.
And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.
And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.
And where we had thought to travel outward,
we shall come to the center of our own existence.
And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

     The adventure is Here and Now and it's ours alone.  Truly following bliss, "the thread of the hero path," is not all happy-go-lucky or fun and games but if it's a genuine Calling it is the right path.  One's ego, which is often emotionally unstable (more on that later), too often "thinks" the symbolic labyrinth is filled only with dark and scary threats to its own limited existence - the Minotaur.  But, as the words above say, if the conditioned ego will heroically risk the experience of self for the genuine adventure of SELF what's found is "the center of our own existence" - Internity.          

Myth

     I think the word "myth" is too often used to describe a falsehood, a fantasy, an untruth.  Misunderstanding and misusing the word that addresses the most fundamental discoveries, expressions, connections and meanings of life is one of our first clues to the limited and limiting human condition these days.  But the words falsehood, fantasy and untruth only describe the death of myth.  The truths of a living myth are intense revelations and reflections of divine image.

     I've learned how to conceive of a living myth from several different sources.  They each describe the power of myth as clues to our deepest potential; as our souls and bodies being composed of individual elements which were already present in the ranks of our ancestors; as turning inward and getting the message of the symbols; as the natural and indispensable intermediate stage of cognition between conscious (ego) and the collective unconscious (the deeper SELF); as opening our eyes to the kingdom spread-out before us; as the center being everywhere; as always and everywhere having a divine link with the infinite Guest we often call soul; as embodying an essential and finding meaning in life via what we each already embody; as welcoming the sacrifice; as a way to make sure that beyond our deaths we leave behind psychological remains that continue to serve love; as kindling a light in the darkness of mere being; as becoming fully human in this spiritual experience of being alive.  Myth is an attempt to describe the divine image within each one of us and surrounding each one of us; to realize (make real) and then bring forth one's genuine discoveries of potential, expressions of relationship, connections to experience and meaningful perceptions of it all; to find atonement (at-one-ment) between conscious information and the daily glimpses of the collective unconscious; to give form and the power of transformation to our most natural ability - imagination.      

     In this age, however, I think we've lost the necessary imagination for how a living and meaningful myth guides us in our daily psychological birth.  Sure, we have all kinds of religions that are founded on myth.  But too often religion becomes rigidly dogmatic and is then utilized to judge and justify beliefs and behaviors relative to some exclusive after-life instead of guiding the relationships to all life right Now.  I also think the historical and collective practices of too many religions have resulted in the sacred mysteries of the Earth being viciously reduced to expendable resources in a manipulative "holier than thou" quest to carry-out delusions of the "chosen" group.  Add to this the reality that the Earth is no longer the center of the solar system and much more ancient than many religions want to believe.  This scientific fact coupled with the lack of a living myth threatens to psychologically reduce our planet and the experience of being alive to mere interstellar good luck in an ever expanding cosmos.  And this boxed-in psychological perspective then leans perilously close to completely denying the relationships that define our role as stewards of the Earth's consciousness.  Consequently, without a living myth the spirit of the age has mostly failed to move beyond the poverty of dependence and independence toward more responsible and sustainable realities of interdependence and intra-dependence (Internity).  The externally focused egotistical pedagogy of it all then becomes even more rooted in oppression, addiction, trauma and shame while righteously running-off at the mouth and tripping over the emotional baggage between its legs.  Without a meaningful and living myth our psychological birth becomes instead a chronic limitation of human potential, relationship, experience and perception.  Without the divine revelations of a living myth the discoveries, expressions, connections and meaning of "How I Am: Being Human" forget how to look beyond the symbols, losing the beauty and intensity of our most important gift - imagination.

     I think the poet Kabir says it best:

To be a Slave of Intensity

Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think...and think...while you are alive.
What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time before death.
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
Just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.



Sensational

      Let's be sensible here.  What's the sense?  To come to our senses.  Sensate focus.  Sensory deprivation.  Enough of this nonsense!  Trust your senses.  A sense of time and place and home.  Sensing vibe.  Sensing danger.  Beyond sense.  Common sense.  Sixth sense.  Senseless.  Good sense.  A sense of direction.  A sense of humor.  A sense of well-being.  Making sense.  I'm sure we can all think of many more variations of the word "sense" because we each have a sense for what it means.  And as obvious and important as the five physiological senses are - seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching (there are many more, too) - it's also obvious that the process of sensing includes far more than physiology.  The Internity of "How I Am: Being Human," (discoveries of potential, expressions of relationship, connections to experience and the meanings of perception) is sometimes painful, sometimes pleasurable, always purposeful and without a doubt - sensational.
       Today Internity has me wondering about sensory deprivation tanks, meditation and dream states.  All of those experiences diminish the importance and functional norm of physiological sensations.  And without the stimulation of our time-space senses it seems that consciousness would also become unstimulated and therefore diminished.  But the opposite is true!  Sensory deprivation tanks, meditation and dream experiences dissociate from "known" sensations and usually enhance consciousness, oftentimes including images and symbols that one has never "seen" or other stimuli one can't possibly know through memory and has no clue how to interpret or associate or respond to (i.e., hallucinations).  I think these phenomena are best described as the return of consciousness to its original source - the ancient and ever-present collective unconscious (thank you Dr. Jung).
     Which brings me back to thinking about Internity and a baby suspended in the earliest sensory deprivation tank, mediation and dream state - the womb.  For me there is no convincing argument against the fact that the baby is having powerful sensations via the symbiotic union with mother's energies and emotions (which, of course, are in conscious and unconscious relationship with otherness).  And because the baby's ego consciousness (differentiations, attachments, identity, personal memories and dissociations, etc.) is still only a seed of possibility while in the womb and for several months after birth, I think it's likely that the baby is also experiencing sensational images of the collective unconscious that have yet to be seen and can't possibly be known, interpreted, associated or responded to.
     Therefore, my claim throughout this entire writing effort is that one's Internity, from the first sensations to the last, is both an a priori concoction of images, energies, emotions and symbols as well as an experiential condition of ego differentiations, attachments, identifications, personal memories and dissociations.  And it all comes from and returns to the original source - an ancient and ever-present flow of the collective unconscious.  In this blog I intend to consistently address Internity as a total reality of potential, relationship, experience and perception while also discovering, expressing, connecting and finding meaning in how the purposes of "How I Am: Being Human" are both consciously and unconsciously sensational.  







  
    




   

  

Internity

     In my first post I propose that the greeting "How are you?" is both an acknowledgement of separate egos but also a deeper and unconscious connection, personal and collective, attempting to break through to consciousness.  In my second post I stay with the idea of deeper connections and adhere to the philosophy that no one is born who isn't called first.  My third post is focused on the destructive behavior of zombies ( the effects of oppression, addiction, trauma and shame on potential, relationships, experiences and perceptions).  My most recent effort touches on how waking-up to the miraculous connectedness of it all (biology) and the ego's separation of it all (ideology) both demand a comprehensive evaluation of how Freedom and Responsibility mirror each other throughout one's nature, nurture and Spiritual Health.  In this post my claim is that every single aspect of "How I Am: Being Human" originates from and returns to one's Internity - the discoveries, expressions, connections and created meanings of life.
     My sense of Internity is based on this idea: All behavior is purposeful and internally motivated.  I throw this idea out there all the time (which, of course, is purposeful) and the usual responses run the gamut from "I totally agree" to "Well... um, all behavior?" or, "No way!  Why in the world...?  How do you explain...?" and so on and so forth.  The idea, however, isn't claiming that all purposeful behavior is well thought-out, or useful, or effective, or safe, or kind, or healthy, or awake, or even a function of ego-consciousness.  The claim is simply that the feelings/values and beliefs/thinking patterns of behavior are informed by the content of one's emotional core and though not always conscious, it is always purposeful.  And although the "internally motivated" part of the idea implies conscious choice it's obvious that the consciousness of "How I Am: Being Human" is sometimes inspired, sometimes routine, sometimes completely unexamined and sometimes reduced to instinct.  No matter how the idea is thought about by others (which, of course, is also purposeful), my conviction remains firm.  The discoveries, expressions, connections and meaning of all potential, relationships, experiences and perceptions, in every moment - the eternal NOW - are responded to with, and simultaneously created by, the internally motivated and purposeful behavior of one's Internity.
     The biological and psychological birth of one's Internity is pure potential, a dream-like calling filled with undifferentiated images, instinctual energies and powerful emotions.  As I've said before, simply holding a baby creates an awareness - personal and collective - of potential, relationships, experiences and perceptions.  (Those who don't dare hold a baby are also exhibiting internally motivated purposeful behavior.)  And because the conscious separations of ego are still only a seed of potential the baby is in a full participation (participation mystique) with the collective unconscious of "Being Human" (i.e., the psychological vibe within and without the baby).  The psychological birth of one's Internity began while still in the womb as a symbiotic union with the energies and emotions of the mother.  Once born into this world those energies and emotions take on a whole new dimension with the addition of sensory images as one's Internity begins it's struggle toward ego-consciousness.  The potential at this point is composed of unfathomable yet purposeful projections and introjections ("It's not what the eye sees, but what catches the eye that matters").   In essence, one's biology, psychological birth (ego) and the experience of being alive are set on a fateful trajectory with these first relationships, experiences and perceptions.  As time marches onward the Internity of the baby will grow into a complex of discoveries, expressions, connections and meaning (schemas), all revealed and reflected via the callings and conditionings of internally motivated purposeful behavior.
     To close-out this post I present the (corny) diagram below (I'm no graphic artist) to give some more specific ideas as they relate to Internity.  As you can see the emotional core is enveloped by these energies: To Have,To Feel, To Act, To Love, To Speak and Be Heard, To See and To Know (Yes, the Chakras).  In the beginning, most every healthy baby's Internity is impelled by the purely emotional survival energies of To Have, To Feel and To Act.  From this point onward the formation of the baby's physiological, psychological and sociological energies and emotions - healthy and unhealthy - relies almost entirely on how those first collective, yet still unconscious relationships, (ideally the mother, the father and the rest of the family), respond to the demands To Have, To Feel and To Act.  And even though the discoveries, expressions, connections and (primitive) meanings of the baby are unconscious and in a symbiotic union with all of the collective relationships, the whole process is nevertheless impelled toward the necessary awakening and conscious separations of ego.  The ego, "How I Am," then continues with the internally motivated purposeful behaviors of "Being Human" - the emotional core of Internity.

       

Waking Up To Miracles

     I'm certainly not a doctor so I won't attempt to speak to the physiological complexities of conception or birth.  Nonetheless, I am amazed how two people, out of billions of possibilities, and then (in most cases) one particular egg (out of how many?) and (in most cases) one specific sperm (Oi), join together to begin the creation of another completely individual story within the epic human story.  I mean, the conception seems so random and unlikely at the cellular level yet the birth seems specific, personally and collectively, to the needs and elements of the time.  Despite the complexities and my non-medical limitations, I'm going to claim that conception reflects biological mysteries while birth reveals mythological intentions and they both strike me as miraculous!
     [I can already hear the fundamentalists yelling, "Ah-hah!  So you do! believe life begins at conception.  You do! think abortion is the destruction of a human life.  You are! anti-abortion."  Hmm... this issue will never be that simple.  It is worth thinking about, however.  So, "Yes," I do believe life begins at conception.  But life began a few billion years ago (give or take) and at the cellular level alone has begun and ended more times than any of us could ever comprehend (and that's just human biology!).  Under those circumstances it's obvious that biological mysteries, always and everywhere, unalterably connect life to death, naturally transcending the distinctions of each.  And "Yes," I do think abortion is the intentional destruction of life.  But that reality must be comprehended with a full history of what can only be described as the biological and ideological destruction of billions of the already living.  So, from my perspective, the abortion debate is seeped in oppression and lost potential any way you look at it.  In other words, trying to defend the miracle of conception while simultaneously oppressing the miracles of life all around is spiritual ignorance.  And trying to defend the right to create and destroy life without understanding the unalterable connections between freedom and responsibility is also spiritual ignorance.  I trust, therefore, that if we were all willing to fearlessly examine biological and ideological oppression we would each begin to address the abortion issue much differently than "for or against."  Fundamentally, I'm protesting the whole debate until and unless it includes examination of how the issue is preceded by, and founded on, centuries of destroyed human potential.]
     Hmm...  I didn't set-out to write the second paragraph but the moment I finished the first one I got this image of a guy I know who is always using his religious beliefs to metaphorically punch me in the face.  If I mention how I believe people are miracles he gets this mean smile and insists that I answer whether I'm "for" or "against" abortion.  I refuse the debate based on the grounds that two men addressing this issue is complete and utter hypocrisy.  Besides, in his rigidity toward life he needs to start and "win" the debate in order to prove the righteousness of his faith.  And even though I try to practice empathy (a nonjudgmental effort to understand and care about another's experience) I too smile like a fist (Yes, I'm aware of my own hypocrisy).  I also know he has a history of childhood abuse.  From the beginning interpretations of his Potential were ideologically aborted by domestic violence which led to teenage withdrawal, manipulation and rebellion that included drugs, weapons and eventually time in prison for violent crimes.  Finding his personal salvation in a rigid belief system (i.e., attempting to organize the dissociations of his earlier traumas) is what he needs these days.  I wish him luck and hope his religion leads him to some healthy, loving relationships NOW! in this life.  But, because disagreeing with him might include some dire consequences, I have my doubts.  Nevertheless, I thank him for helping me wake-up to why I believe what I believe.
     Waking-up is what the "How I Am: Being Human" diagram (2nd post of May 18th) is all about.  Of the six "needs" and their corresponding health components I think truly waking-up starts with and finds its way back around to the "Freedom Needs/Spiritual Health" sphere.  As shown, the factors and influences immediately surrounding this sphere are Calling and Temperament; the other realities are Change, Potential and Mortality.  In the beginning most children have a natural grasp (no ideology) on these elements.  As we grow and experience the ideological conditioning of feelings and values, (nurturing?) the grasp on Potential begins to loosen, sometimes let go of completely, causing us to drearily fall into unexamined beliefs and conditioned behaviors (like zombies).  Essentially, throughout life, being human is continuously formed, conformed, deformed, informed and transformed by relationships, experiences and perceptions.  And it's all in relation to Potential and the "Freedom/Spiritual Health" sphere as they relate to one's current story, history, herstory and our collective story.  I think waking-up means to bring the unconscious material of the stories to consciousness and then taking full responsibility for "How I Am: Being Human" right NOW.  Life, after all, is about waking-up to one's Potential and "Freedom/Spiritual Health" while being in a conscious, meaningful relationship as, and with, a world full of miracles!