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