Friday, September 30, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Radical Empiricism
"Just so, I maintain, does a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one context of associates, play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of 'consciousness'; while in a different context the same undivided bit of experience plays the part of a thing known, of an objective 'content.' In a word, in one group it figures as a thought, in another group as a thing. And, since it can figure in both groups simultaneously we have every right to speak of it as subjective and objective, both at once".
- William James
Ralph Waldo Emerson's Immortalised Experience of Nature Mysticism
"Went yesterday to Cambridge and spent most of the day at Mount Auburn [Cemetery]; got my luncheon at Fresh Pond, and went back again to the woods. After much wandering and seeing many things, four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see not to eat, not for love, but only gliding; then a whole bed of Hepatica triloba, cousins of the Anemone, all blue and beautiful, but constrained by niggard nature to wear their last year's faded jacket of leaves; then a black-capped titmouse, who came upon a tree, and when I would know his name, sang chick-a-dee-dee; then a far-off tree full of clamorous birds, I know not what, but you might hear them half a mile. I forsook the tombs, and found a sunny hollow where the east wind would not blow, and lay down against the side of a tree to most happy beholdings. At least I opened my eyes and let what would pass through them into the soul. I saw no more my relation, how near and petty, to Cambridge or Boston; I heeded no more what minute or hour our Massachusetts clocks might indicate I saw only the noble earth on which I was born, with the great Star which warms and enlightens it. I saw the clouds that hang their significant drapery over us. It was Day that was all Heaven said. The pines glittered with their innumerable green needles in the light, and seemed to challenge me to read their riddle. The drab oak-leaves of the last year turned their little somersets and lay still again. And the wind bustled high overhead in the forest top. This gay and grand architecture, from the vault to the moss and lichen on which I lay, who shall explain to me the laws of its proportions and adornments?"
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal, April 11, 1834
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close".
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Re:Stacks
(c) RebekaJane - In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Chaldean myth, the character Utnapishtim releases a dove and a raven to find land, however, the dove merely circles and returns. Only then does Utnapishtim send forth the raven, who does not return. Utnapishtim extrapolates from this that the raven has found land, which is why it hasn't returned.
Everything that happens is from now on
These lines open re: stacks, the final song on Bon Iver’s debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. Kumran (usually spelled ‘Qumran’) is the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947. It symbolizes a personal catharsis for Justin Vernon, the band’s sole member; Vernon retreated to his father’s Wisconsin log cabin for three months to record the album, chop wood, and generally be alone. He explains the Kumran metaphor himself here:
When they found them it changed the whole course of Christianity, whether people wanted to know it or not. A lot of people chose to ignore it, a lot of people decided to run with it, and for many people it destroyed their faith, so I think I was just looking at it as a metaphor for whatever happens after that is new shit.
The song also hints at a slow shedding of the skin, rather than a complete catharsis. In the last verse, Vernon sings:
This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be safe with me
It’s not a ‘crispy realization’ or a click of a lock in the door - a clean break from the past. In the final line he says that some of the past’s love will continue with him, like a pendant or a memory that won’t fade.
Not convinced? Vernon’s mom, Justine Vernon (real name, we assume), totally agrees. In this very adorable feature featuring several indie rock moms she says, “To me, it is not about getting over things and moving forward, it is about going through the sadness, taking some of it with you and being made whole because of it. I cry every time I listen to it”.
What ís good enough for Mrs. Vernon is good enough for us.
(courtesy of Wordsworth)
Re:Stacks – Bon Iver – For, Emma. Forever Ago.
This my excavation and today is Kumran
Everything that happens is from now on
This is pouring rain
This is paralyzed
I keep throwing it down two hundred at a time
It's hard to find it when you knew it
When your money's gone
And you're drunk as hell
On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks are your load
In the back with your racks and you're unstacking your load
I've twisting to the sun I needed to replace
The fountain in the front yard is rusted out
All my love was down
In a frozen ground
There's a black crow sitting across from me; his wiry legs are crossed
And he's dangling my keys he even fakes a toss
Whatever could it be
That has brought me to this loss?
On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks of your load
In the back with your racks and you're unstacking your load
This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be
Safe with me
A perfect re-birthday present.
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The Calm
from The Storm Before the Calm, released 10 August 2011
I let you in, I showed you round, I talked you up
But things got bad and you just said that I'm too much
I know now the distance made your heart fade
You're always sad, always down but you never cry
And always smart, always knowing but you're never wise
I know now that having makes your heart stray
Next time I go I won't come back
And I'll be taking all I've lacked and I will
You'll be needing me but I'll be leaving your heart
Your heart's gone down
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Beautiful Introduction to the book American Transcendentalism
"In 1869, Louisa May Alcott, under the cognomen Tribulation Periwinkle, submitted to the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican a tongue-in-cheek letter with the "Latest News from Concord," Massachusetts. The town had long been associated with such residents as Ralph Waldo Emerson; her father, Bronson Alcott; and other representatives of the Transcendentalist movement that had flourished in New England thirty years before. "No gossip concerning this immortal town seems to be considered too trivial for the public," she observed, and thus she thought it her duty to add "the last rumor afloat."
Her humorous report was filled with jokes and puns today accessible mainly to scholars but in her time in common circulation. A new hotel was about to be established, she reported, called the Sphinx's Head, where "pilgrims to this modern Mecca" would be entertained in the most hospitable and appropriate style. "Walden water, aesthetic tea, and 'wine that never grew in the belly of the grape'" would be on tap for the refreshment of thirsty guests. "Wild apples by the bushel, orphic acorns by the peck, and Hawthorne's pumpkins, in the shape of pies," could be had "at philosophic prices." The accommodations themselves were special, for the inn would be furnished "with Alcott's rustic furniture, the beds made of Thoreau's pine boughs, and the sacred fires fed from the Emersonian woodpile." Moreover, the thoughtful proprietors would provide telescopes for those who wished "to watch the soarings of the Oversoul, when visible." The innkeeper would supply, gratis, samples of "Autumn Tints, Mosses from the Manse, Rhodora, and herbs from the Garden," as well as "photographs of the faces divine which have conferred immortality upon one of the dullest little towns in Massachusetts."
Most important to those eager to catch a glimpse of the community's famous residents (who by this time included Alcott herself), the hotel also would provide a daily bulletin to announce "the most favorable hours for beholding the various lions" who still roamed Concord's landscape. It would look something like this:
Emerson will walk at 4 p.m.
Alcott will converse from 8 a.m. till 11 p.m.
Channing may be seen with the naked eye at sunset.
The new Hermit will grind his meal at noon, precisely.
The ladies of Concord will not be exhibited on Sundays.
The need for such an establishment, Periwinkle concluded, had been long and deeply felt, especially because each spring brought "with the robins, a flock of reporters" who, like the inquisitive birds, "roost upon Concordian fences, chirp on Concordian door-steps, and hop over Concordian fields and hills, scratching vigorously, as if hoping to unearth a new specimen from what is popularly believed to be the hot-bed of genius."
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Tree Of Life
I took heart in this depiction of the sephirot and main hindu chakras side by side. If you click it, it gets a lot bigger! ;-D
Pinchbeck thorough Marx and Levi-Strauss...
"The dialectical process that creased the possessive mind-set of the capitalist and the 'rational' outlook of the technocrat requires destruction of the premodern vestiges of communal and animistic beliefs, whether these beliefs were found in isolated pockets of Europe or in the indigenous populations of the New World. This destruction was part of the process that Karl Marx described as the alienation of all of our physical and intellectual senses into one sense: the sense of having.
Of course, "the sense of having" is not really a sense – it is an illusion of fulfilment that seems to extent outside of the self.
Modernism created a profound shift in the way we use our senses. In his book Myth and Meaning, Levi-Strauss admitted his initial shock when he discovered that Indian tribesmen were able to see the planet Venus in daylight, with the naked eye – "something that to me would be utterly impossible and incredible". But he learned from astronomers that it was feasible, and he found ancient accounts of Western navigators with the same ability. "Today we use less and we use more of our mental capacity than we did in the past," he realised. We have sacrificed perceptual capacities for other mental abilities – to concentrate on a computer screen while sitting in a cubicle for many hours at a stretch (something those Indians would find "utterly impossible and incredible"), or to shut off multiple levels of awareness as we drive a car in heavy traffic. In other words, we are brought up within a system that teaches us to postpone, defer, and eliminate most incoming sense data in favour of a future reward. We live in a feedback loop of perpetual postponement. For the most part, we are not even aware of what we have lost".
- Daniel Pinchbeck
The Mind and the Vagrant Senses
"The mind is attached as by an elastic cord to the vagrant senses".
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Henry Miller
"The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it".
- Henry Miller
Another Fantastic Passage from Pinchbeck's Breaking Open The Head
"Piece by piece, the pattern of my past began to flare up in my mind. For the next several hours, I forgot about the tribesmen watching me. I was witnessing a "memory theater", a scrupulous replaying of all the elements of my early life – my parents' separation, my father's absence from my childhood, the imprint of my mother's loneliness and depression, my own solitude and love of reading, the many months I spent in a hospital bed at the age of eleven with a bacterial infection in my spine. I went back to the secret, baroque sources of childhood nightmare and fantasy – the primal fear of the monsters under the bed, the cave of darkness inside the closet, I saw the desperate, desolate parts of my life and the flashes of power and invention that were also mine. Separate from myself, yet enclosed within myself, I followed the traces of the being that I was, that was given to me, as it unfolds over time.
Laid out for me was the entire, intricate process of my self-development. The process was complex yet ultimately organic. The extension of the self was, I realized, a natural process, akin to the blossoming of a plant. While a plant extends towards the sun throughout its life, human beings evolve internally. We rise up and flourish, or become stunted, involuted, as we react to the forces that press against us. Our growth takes place in the invisible realm of our mental space, and the unreachable sun we rise toward is knowledge – of the self and the Universe.
Henry James once described human consciousness as "a helpless jelly poured into a mold". Iboga compelled me to perceive the exact shape of that mold; at the same time, it allowed me to escape that sense of helplessness. I felt a mingling of wonder, sorrow and freedom. By letting me perceive the shape of my past self, Iboga also seemed to be freeing me from the burden of that past. The action of the medicine actually was – as I had heard it described but wouldn't believe – the equivalent of ten years of psychoanalysis compacted into one interminable night…
… Through Iboga, I recognized my existing self as the product of all the physical and psychological forces that had acted upon me. Yet there seemed to be something beyond all of it, something that was "mine," an energy projected from outside of my biographical destiny. That energy was the self – and the self's tremendous capacity for transformation".
- Daniel Pinchbeck
Temple of Transition
Dear Temple of Transition from Ian MacKenzie on Vimeo.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Accepting the Little Demons
"Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon".
- Emily Dickinson
RT@TrishNowland
Monday, September 12, 2011
"Waking is a Dialectical Moment..."
"[Walter] Benjamin describes awakening as a historical and generational process as well as an individual one. History is the effort made by each age to bring the "not-yet conscious knowledge of what has been" into awareness. Waking is a "dialectical moment" suspended between the dreamworld of the past and the transformative energy locked within the present".
- Daniel Pinchbeck.
For the Bay Area...
Fave:
All my little plans and schemes,
lost like some forgotten dreams.
Seems that all I really was doing
was waitin' for you.
Just like little girls and boys,
playing with their little toys.
Seems like all we really were doing
was waitin' for love.
Don't need to be alone,
No need to be alone.
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real.
From this moment on I know,
exactly where my life will go.
Seems that all I really was doing
was waitin' for love.
Don't need to be afraid,
No need to be afraid.
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real.
Thought I'd been in love before,
but in my heart I wanted more.
Seems like all I really was doing
was waitin' for you.
Don't to be alone,
No need to be alone.
It's real love, yeah it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes, it's real love, it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love....
Second Fave:
Third Fave:
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Little
So you just put me away
I'm something you don't need now but just might one day
There's nothing much for me to say
I'll probly say it all once you have gone away
When you're too tired to raise your little head
Just raise your little hand instead
I know it still doesn't seem glad
But this is my first song in years that isn't sad
I heard you singing through the wall
I told you that it wasn't any good at all
When you're too tired to raise your little head
Just raise your little hand instead
from The Storm Before the Calm, released 10 August 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Band of Horses @ The Fillmore in San Francisco
Can't wait for this excellent twist of fate tomorrow night...
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
My Favourite Quotations so far from Breaking Open The Head
"Being prepared to receive what thought is not prepared to think is what deserves the name of thinking". - Jean-Francois Lyotard
"Whenever there is a reaching down into innermost experience, into the nucleus of personality, most people are overcome by fear and many run away. The risk of inner experience, the adventure of the spirit, is in any case alien to most human beings. The possibility that such experience might have psychic reality is anathema to them". - Carl Jung
"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul". - Carl Jung
"The reader, the thinker, the flaneur, are types of illuminati just as much as the opium eater, the dreamer, the ecstatic. Not to mention that most terrible drug - ourselves - which we take in solitude". - Walter Benjamin
"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship". - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
William Carlos Williams
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
- William Carlos Williams
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Robert Hass
"Images are not quite ideas; they are stiller than that, with less implica- tion outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have that explanatory power; they are closer to pure story"
- Robert Hass
A Retreat from Poetry: Concretization and Reification
A flurry of posts from this great paper: The Opening of the Field: Thoughts on the Poetics of Psychoanalytic Treatment, by David Shaddock
"Both therapists and patients are likely to retreat from the shared conjunction of metaphorical space into the relative safety of the literal and concrete. In this they are enacting, or reenacting, a retreat from a self sustained by selfobject relationships into a self sustained by concretization and reification. Such a retreat accomplishes two goals: It shores up a shakily organized subjective world, and it withdraws from an ambiguous and potentially disappointing relationship context into the protection of a separate and inviolable belief in the objective reality of one's thoughts and feelings (Stolorow, Brandchaft, and Atwood, 1987). Concretization is a universal hallmark of subjective experience, but it comes to dominate psychic organization when "early, validating responsiveness has been consistently absent or grossly unreliable" (Stolorow et al., 1987, p. 133). Then a retreat to the literal, or to the compulsive, as in psychosexual enactments, dominates and isolates psychic life. One way of understanding the therapy process is to see it as elevating concretizations into metaphors—vehicles of shared understanding. Adequate therapeutic treatment lifts the patient's communications out of their literal heaviness and lets them float in the room as mutually held conduits for understanding. In this sense, a life of rigidly held, even delusional beliefs, a life of compulsive sexual enactments or psychosomatizations, is a life without poetry. And from my perspective as poet and therapist, I add it is a life in search of poetry—of a metaphor replete with shared meanings.
If patients are prone to reduce metaphors to the literal, therapists are prone to move in the opposite direction, to elevate metaphors into reified universal truths. Reification involves a withdrawal from the poetic, from the intersubjective. To speak of a patient's Oedipus complex as something that exists as an entity is to withdraw from the intersubjective power of metaphor in which a patient's description of being "shot down" when he asked his father for a loan interacts with the therapist's own construction of meanings—based perhaps on trace memories of his own childhood shame and rage, his reading in a college survey course of Sophocles' shocking play, his reading of Freud and subsequent theorists. The reification of metaphors withdraws them from the intersubjective field and coats them with a kind of pseudoscientific Teflon. Metaphors, on the other hand, are adhesive—they draw meanings to them".
David Shaddock - The Opening of the Field: Thoughts on the Poetics of Psychoanalytic Treatment
"We do not read poetry primarily as evidence of the poet's strange or enlightened consciousness, we read poetry to leave our own isolation and enter a communal world of shared meanings".
- David Shaddock - The Opening of the Field: Thoughts on the Poetics of Psychoanalytic Treatment
Jorge Luis Borges on the Intersubjective Existence of Poetry
"Poetry lies in the meeting of poem and reader, not in the lines and symbols printed on pages of a book. What is essential is ... the thrill, the almost physical emotion that comes with each reading"
- Jorge Luis Borges
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
The Empathic Power of Enactments
"In spite of the seeming experiential incongruity between enactments and empathy, clinical observations and recent neurobiological research are providing new ways to examine these two intersubjective processes and consequently expand our understanding of important empathic aspects embedded within enactments. Exploring interpersonal communication, neuroscience has started to delineate neuropsychological processes that similarly shape and underpin both enactments and therapeutic empathy; illuminating what mechanisms they have in common. Of particular interest are findings regarding mirror neurons and the right brain's sensitivity to nonverbal aspects of emotional communication. These have greatly advanced our understanding of the ever-present nonconscious communication between people and its obvious implications for the inevitability of enactments within the psychoanalytic dyad. By allowing implicit relational and emotional patterns to be fully experienced within the analytic process, enactment enable both participants, and especially the analyst, attain an unmediated connection with what cannot be yet verbalized, a connection that essentially construes an empathic resonance. Furthermore, the analyst's eventual awareness of the enactment and her disclosure of her participation in it create an empathic reflective space leading the patient to self-reflection, enhanced awareness and emotional integration".
From The empathic power of enactments: The link between neuropsychological processes and an expanded definition of empathy - Efrat Ginot, Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 26(3), Jul 2009, 290-309
RT@TrishNowland
... so below.
A road I do not want to tread, is paved before my eyes.
I know the trampling of this ground.
I am its pummelled stone.
I am its hurried flux.
I am its unseen earth,
a silent eternity of fertile potential hidden underneath
the ouch, fuck, why?, of every single heavy step
away from the pregnant, silent, possibility of just right here.
A road I couldn't stop treading is paved before my quivering eyes.
A road I didn't ask for.
I don't know how to trample this ground.
I didn't have to be its pummelled stone.
I don't want to be its hurried flux.
I want to dig its unseen earth,
In the silent eternity of fertile potential given
to every single smile, glimpse, and wonder
of simply being known in the pregnant, silent possibility of just right here.
A road I didn't want is thrust under my uncertain toes.
Boots too small for this unknown road.
Boots not made for pummelled stone, and hurried flux, and lost pregnant quivers
along this pointless run.
A road I don't want to tread is offered, alone.
Why trample this ground?
Heads of stone,
Hurried "Fuck!"s,
Seeing nothing
of the silent eternity of fertile potential hidden underneath
the argh, cry and sigh of every single heavy step
not chased to find me, all along, just right here.
The threshold of this unwanted road is always just right here.
Never a soul behind, never a soul in front.
Nothing to chase. Most certainly never chased.
Just boots too small, quivering on a line paved in the pummelled unseen,
just right here.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Bertrand Russell
"I must, I must, before I die, find some way to say the essential thing that is in me, that I have never said yet - a thing that is not love or hate or pity or scorn, but the very breath of life, fierce, and coming from far away, bringing into human life the vastness and the fearful passionless force of non-human things".
Bertrand Russell - From a 1918 letter to Constance Malleson
RT@AlbertKlamt
Sunday, August 21, 2011
More Nature lines from uni readings
"Research supports the hypothesis that humans have evolved specific habitat preferences that mimic certain aspects of the ancestral savanna terrain. People like natural over human-made environments, habitats with running water and terrain to house game. They like places where they can see without being seen (a "womb with a view"). They like environments that provide resources and safety, prospect and refuge, lush vegetation and fresh fruit"
"Certain key features of the ancient physical habitat match the choices made by modern human beings when they have a say in the matter" — a pattern that repeats in parks, cemeteries, golf courses, and lawns. "It seems that whenever people are given a free choice, they move to open tree-studded land on prominences overlooking water".
More from my Nature and Health readings
"It was when I walked through that building, perfectly quiet, filled with green and growing plants and the sweet smell of healthy soil that my anxiety began to ebb away. In its place came a tranquility I had not experienced since the day of my stroke".
- Swee-Lian Yi was aged 29 when she suffered a severe stroke, and was hospitalised in New York's Rusk Institute for rehabilitation. She found her first visit to the hospital greenhouse a turning point.
Oliver Sacks on Nature, Health and Sanity
"This was a great joy to be out in the air for I had not been outside in almost a month. A pure and intense joy, a blessing, to feel the sun on my face and the wind in my hair, to hear birds, to see, touch, and fondle the living plants. Some essential connection and communion with nature was re-established after the horrible isolation and alienation I had known. Some part of me came alive, when I was taken to the garden, which had been starved, and died, perhaps without my knowing it".
- Oliver Sacks
(a memorable passage in Oliver Sacks' 1984 account of his recovery from a serious leg injury. After more than 2 weeks in a small hospital room with no outside view, and a third week on a dreary surgical ward, he was finally taken out to the hospital garden).
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
The Storm Before The Calm - Hazzy Bee
The album I was involved in with Hazzy Bee (http://hazzybee.com/) has finally been released. You can get a copy here on the bandcamp site (http://hazzybee.bandcamp.com/).
released 10 August 2011
All songs written by Hazzy Bee
Lyrics to "Holler" written by Akisiew
Recorded by Brian Campeau at Impure Cabana
Mastered by Andrew Edgson at Studios 301
Artwork by Max Berry (www.maxberry.com.au)
Hazzy Bee - Vocals, guitar and harmonica
Kate Adams - Cello
Pat Harris - Bass
Joseph Liddy - Banjo and mandolin
Luke Fullagar - Drums
Elana Stone - Accordion
Luke Moseley - Slide guitar
Contact - hazzybee@mail.com
www.hazzybee.com
All songs written by Hazzy Bee
Lyrics to "Holler" written by Akisiew
Recorded by Brian Campeau at Impure Cabana
Mastered by Andrew Edgson at Studios 301
Artwork by Max Berry (www.maxberry.com.au)
Hazzy Bee - Vocals, guitar and harmonica
Kate Adams - Cello
Pat Harris - Bass
Joseph Liddy - Banjo and mandolin
Luke Fullagar - Drums
Elana Stone - Accordion
Luke Moseley - Slide guitar
Contact - hazzybee@mail.com
www.hazzybee.com
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Early lines I loved from Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending
"Our parents thought we might be corrupted by one another into becoming whatever it was they most feared: an incorrigible masturbator, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnatory libertine. On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent friendship, the predatory behaviour of strangers on trains, the lure of the wrong kind of girl. How far their anxieties outran our experience".
"Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of out parents, who would approve, wile privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simple, and therefore superior. None of this, of course, was ever stated: the genteel social Darwinism of the English middle classes always remained implicit".
"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation".
Monday, August 15, 2011
Michael Waters: Music as a Spiritual Practice
Michael Waters: Music as a Spiritual Practice from Jordan Stratford on Vimeo.
"The difference between approaching it as a spiritual practice and approaching it as a craft is that when approaching is at a craft the question is "How good can I get in my lifetime?", and that's what you work on, nothing else really matters. But when you focus on something as a spiritual practice what you are doing is personally you are approaching it in a context of that which is before you were born and after you are gone, and those places count. In other words, your whole trajectory through life, whatever you encountered is on that table when you approach that art. All of your questions and answers, challenges and accomplishments, they're all involved when you put your finger to string, or your pen to paper, or your foot to the dancefloor. And this changes everything to approach it in that way. It is not like a craft at all. A whole different set of parameters are in play if you approach it in this way".
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Walk the Talk - Wittgenstein
"If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God".
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
(courtesy of Simon Clark and his popdarkness FB page).
Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
More fantastic warping of impression, memory, modus operandi and time from this entertaining novel.
I was saying that the chief characteristic of remorse is that nothing can be done about it. That the time has passed for apology or amends. But what if I am wrong? What if by some means remorse can be made to flow backwards? Can be transmuted into simple guilt, then apologised for, and then forgiven? What if you can prove you weren't the bad guy she took you for, and she is willing to accept your proof? Or perhaps my motive came from an entirely opposite direction and wasn't about the past, but about the future? Like most people I have superstitions attached to the taking of a journey. We may know that flying is statistically safer than walking to the corner shop. Even so, before going away I do things like pay bills, clear off correspondence, call someone close.
"Suzie, I'm off tomorrow"
"Yes, I know Dad, you told me".
"Did I?"
"Yes".
"Well, just to say goodbye".
"Sorry Dad, the kids were making a noise. What was that?"
"Oh nothing, give them my love".
You're doing it for yourself, of course. You're wanting to leave that final memory and make it a pleasant one. You want to be well thought of uncase your plane turns out to be the one that is less safe than walking to the corner shop. And if this is how we behave before a five night break in Majorca, then why should there not be a broader process at play toward the end of life, as that final journey, the motorised trundle through the crematorium's curtains approaches? "Don't think ill of me. Remember me well. Tell people you were fond of me. That you loved me. That I wasn't a bad guy. Even if, perhaps, none of this was the case.
- Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending.
Heinz Kohut
"the state of the selfobject is intimately connected to the degree the psyche is integrated: the more integrated the mind, the less its reliance on archaic selfobjects and the more opportunity for growth. By implication, this suggests that some dimension of the self would have to take up the "slack," as it were, regarding the requirements for self-regulation. This movement toward self-generated effort to tolerate tension and undertake self-sustaining efforts that do not rely on regressive solutions is at the heart of new structure. In other words, the nature of our dependence changes in favour of the development of our own inclination and ability to manage it".
- Heinz Kohut
"His conclusion is that the firmness, cohesiveness, and functional vitality of the self are central, insofar as these states protect the self from disabling regressive experiences in instances of selfobject failure".
"Once bridgeheads to the most vulnerable, guarded, and dangerous dimensions of self experience have been established in an empathic environment, it may then be possible for the forward edge of hopeful possibility to function in a growth-promoting way. This requires that the analyst acknowledge the functional survival value of the archaic solutions, and is able to help the patient see its expression in the selfobject transference. The patient's experience that the analyst recognizes the adaptive value of these early solutions is a mainstay of the development of the ability to proceed to the next level of opportunity. Specifically, we need selfobjects in order to grow into our own capacities; the subsequent evolution of these capacities provides a sense of independence that is a crucial component of self- esteem, and which eventually may become self-generating".
Mark J. Gehrie - From Archaic Narcissism to Empathy for the Self : The Evolution of New Capacities in Psychoanalysis.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
"The next day when I was sober, I thought again about the three of us, and about time's many paradoxes. For instance, that when we are young and sensitive we are at our most hurtful, whereas when when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learned how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully. These days, I might try to get under Veronica's skin, but I would not flail it from her bit by bloody bit".
- Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending.
Julian Barnes, The Sense of An Ending
"When people say "She's a good looking woman", they usually mean "She used to be a good looking woman". But when I say that about Margaret I mean it. She thinks, she knows, she has changed, and she has, though less to me than to anybody else. Naturally I can't speak of the restaurant manager, but I put it like this: She sees only what's gone, I see only what's stayed the same. Her hair is no longer halfway down her back or pulled up in a French pleat. Nowadays, it is cut close to her skull and the grey is allowed to show. Those peasanty frocks she used to wear have given way to cardigans and well-cut trousers. Some of those freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots, but it's still the eyes we look at, isn't it? That's where we found the other person and find them still. The same eyes that were in the same head when we first met, slept together, married, honeymooned, joint-mortgaged, shopped, cooked and holidayed, loved one another, and had a child together, and were the same when we separated. But it's not just the eyes. The bone structure stays the same, as do the instinctive gestures. The many ways of being herself, and her way, after all this time and distance, of being with me".
- Julian Barnes, The Sense of An Ending
More excellent lines from Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending
"I remember what old Joe Hunt said when arguing with Adrian, that past mental states can be inferred from actions. That's in history with Henry VIII and all that, whereas in the private life, I think the converse is true - that you can infer past actions from current mental states. I certainly believe we all suffer damage in one way or another. How could we not except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions. And then there's the question on which so much depends: of how we react to the damage. Whether we admit it or repress it, and whether this affects our dealings with others. Some admit the damage and try to mitigate it, some other spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged, and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves at whatever cost, and those are the ones who are ruthless and the ones to be careful of. You might think this is rubbish - preachy, self-justificatory rubbish. You might think I behaved towards Veronica like a typically callow male and that all my conclusions are reversible. For example, "After we broke up she slept with me" flips easily into "After she slept with me I broke up with her". You might also decide that the Fords were a normal middle class English family on whom I was chippily foisting bogus theories of damage, and that Mrs Ford instead of being tactfully concerned on my behalf was displaying an indecent jealousy of her own daughter. You might even ask me to apply my own theory to myself, and explain what damage I'd had suffered a long way back and what its consequences might be. For instance, how it may affect my reliability and truthfulness. I'm not sure I could answer this to be honest".
- Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending.
Ravi Ravindra
"It is understood in the practical schools of yoga that one needs to prepare the whole of the psychosomatic complex in order not only to understand truth, but also in order to withstand truth"
- Ravi Ravindra, The Spiritual Roots of Yoga
RT@TimHulbert
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
- Ravi Ravindra, The Spiritual Roots of Yoga
RT@TimHulbert
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
:'(
Perfect song for the hardest days...
We built up dreams on shaky ground
Soil rich with hope but the rains never came
So the seeds didn't sprout
And now all we do is holler and shout
No love here now
The ground is rotting through and rotting through
Your hand reaches up to pull me out
But I grab at thin air cos you're not there
You see the rains never came
So the seeds didn't sprout
No love here now
No good words spoke
No love here now
No, none at all
So you're taking off again and leaving me
To holler and shout, no no-one to care
And our dreams are rotting through and rotting through
I stand alone, forlorn and scared
There's only me and just myself
Because the rains never came so the seeds didn't sprout
But I'm a big boy, not going to
Holler and shout, no not here now
No love here now
No good words spoke
No love here now
No, not at all
But rain clouds come
Then rain drops fall
Monday, August 8, 2011
8 Beatitudes
The 8 beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12 during the Sermon on the Mount are stated as Blessed are:
- the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (5:3)
- they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. (5:4)
- the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (5:5)
- they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (5:6)
- the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. (5:7)
- the pure in heart: for they shall see God. (5:8)
- the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. (5:9)
- they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (5:10)
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Earl Grey
These days I chuckle but I never seem to laugh
Guess it's because I'm no longer your worst half
It's easy enough to say that I'm over you
I wouldn't mean it even if I wanted to
So I surround myself with lots of friends and jobs
It's might be easier if I believed in god
You said sorry because you forgot my name
But I was just glad when you remembered my face
All the good parts left but the bad ones stayed
But you can still be my earl grey
I went and drew a pretty picture on your street
It's just so on your way home you might think of me
Then I saw one day you'd written on the wall
If you'd show me mine, then I'd show you yours
All the good parts left but the bad ones stayed
But you can still be my earl grey
FRIDAY, MAY 23, 2008
Earl Grey
Within the
hidden world
we disclose
through
the simple joy
of being noticed
I wouldn’t
dare admit
how the
bergamot on
your tongue
conjures
childhood
reminders of
Grandad’s
aftershave.
hidden world
we disclose
through
the simple joy
of being noticed
I wouldn’t
dare admit
how the
bergamot on
your tongue
conjures
childhood
reminders of
Grandad’s
aftershave.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
Great photo from the 1st Epic Water Pistol Fight at Sydney Uni
Courtesy of Orion Mitchell
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Models, Metrics, and Measurement in Developmental Psychology - Integral Review - June 2009, Vol. 5, No. 1
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Fantastic Line from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row
"Nuts?" he asked. "Oh, yes, I guess so. Nuts about the same amount we are, only in a different way". Such a thing had never occurred to Hazel. He looked upon himself as a crystal pool of clarity and on his life as a troubled glass of misunderstood virtue".
How often do I feel like this! ;-D
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Another Deida line I really loved...
"Closing down in the midst of pain is a denial of a man's true nature. A superior man is free in feeling and action, even amidst great pain and hurt. If necessary, a man should live with a hurting heart rather than a closed one. He should learn to stay in the wound of pain and act with spontaneous skill and love even from that place".
- David Deida.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Deida
"The superior man practices opening during these times of automatic closure. Open the front of your body so your chest and solar plexus are not tense. Sit or stand up straight and full, opening the front of your body, softening your chest and belly, wide and free. Breathe down through your chest and solar plexus, deep into your belly. Look directly into the eyes of whomever you are with, feeling your own pain as well as feeling the other person. Only when the front of your body is relaxed and opened, your breath full and deep, and your gaze unguarded and directly connected with another person's eyes, can your fullest intelligence manifest spontaneously in the situation".
- David Deida
David Deida
"This force of attraction, which flows between the two different poles of masculine and feminine, is the dynamism that often disappears in modern relationships. If you want real passion, you need a ravisher and a ravishee; otherwise, you just have two buddies who decide to rub genitals in bed". ;-D
- David Deida
Why are we afraid of male sexuality?
We may have gone a long way towards liberating women, but male desire is increasingly seen as a problem
Ally Fogg
Is there anything good to be said about male sexuality? That might seem a daft question. Apparently it brings a lot of pleasure and excitement to the lives of men and women alike, it's inspired some of the greatest art, music and literature through the ages and has played a fairly substantial role in sustaining our species and populating the planet. Nonetheless you'll need to search very, very hard to find any positive appraisal of male heterosexuality.
Since the era of the permissive society and the mainstreaming of modern feminism, western society has gone a long way towards liberating women's sexuality. Younger women have, to an unprecedented extent, been encouraged to believe they can be as sexual as they like and to experience and express their desires as they wish. Even the age-old proscriptions on female promiscuity have been largely broken down, exemplified by the glorious flowering of the SlutWalk movement.
Simultaneously, and perhaps not coincidentally, male sexuality has been increasingly seen as a problem. You can hear it in the gentle, dismissive mockery that says men are simple creatures who "only want one thing" or, at the extreme, outright vilification. The male gaze threatens, male desire is aggressive. Our primal instincts are pathologised with the jargon of gender studies. Righteous and necessary efforts to reduce sexual crimes have had the unwelcome effect of teaching generations of men that our sexuality can be dangerous and frightening.
Don't believe me? Look back at the Bailey review into the early sexualisation of children, and the surrounding media hoo-ha. Leaving aside any concerns about the veracity and accuracy of the report itself (and I have plenty myself) it is striking that acres of print were devoted to the impacts of these social trends on girls, their self-esteem and body image; their developing sexuality; their safety and security. Barely a word was spoken about boys, beyond fears that they are being turned into beasts.
Again and again the message came out: girls have problems. Boys are problems. And yet does anyone doubt that there should be concerns about how easy access to porn impacts upon boys' sexual development, their self-esteem, their body image or performance anxieties? It's not as if young men bask in perfect mental health and happiness ñ young men commit suicide at nearly four times the rate of young women, and sex and relationships rank high on their list of concerns.
At the other end of the age range, sexually active older women are now widely eroticised (albeit often with a rather misogynistic undertone) as "cougars" or (forgive me) "Milfs" while their male equivalents are disparaged as dirty old men. Observer columnist Viv Groskop recently went further, opining about any older man who has sex outside marriage, even the mild-mannered old janitor John Major, saying "Unfortunately it's not against the law to be an old lecher. Maybe it should be. Or at the very least you shouldn't be rewarded with the highest office in the land."
Perhaps the greatest concern for men and women alike should be the way male sexuality and sexual expressiveness balances on a narrow tightrope of acceptability. One step off the wire and you tumble into the realm of perversion. As feminist blogger Clarisse Thorn noted last year, any man who hits on a woman and gets it wrong risks being branded a "creep" ñ sometimes deservedly so, of course, but often for no greater sin than being insufficiently attractive or socially skilled, or having misread a perceived signal of invitation. I've never heard of a woman being stigmatised or disparaged for expressing an attraction to big men, rough men, geeky men or whatever. A man who expresses similar desires for women who don't conform to standard norms of beauty is a perv, a fetishist, a weirdo.
All of these prejudices are rehearsed and reiterated by men and women alike, they reside in the intangible web of social norms, conventions and culture, but they can and must be challenged and changed. If we can begin to openly and joyously celebrate the positives to male sexuality, it might become easier for men to be happy and confident sexual partners, and in turn become better lovers, and sometimes better people.
Male sexuality is no less diverse, complex and wonderful than women's or, for that matter, no more base, coarse and animalistic. Sure, most men might be slightly more likely to let our gaze linger on eye-catching curves, and slightly less likely to giggle about our lovers' proclivities with our friends, but in the grand picture women and men are surprisingly similar, in this respect as in so many others. Women have been entirely justified in asking that we blokes respect their rights, autonomy and wishes, that we respect them as sexual beings. It shouldn't be too much to ask for a little of the same in return.
Joe Bageant
"So stay strong. Transcend. Find reasons to love. Nobody ever gets out of this world alive, anyway".
- Joe Bageant.
RT@ChristiaanZuur
Monday, July 18, 2011
Stages of Sutra Mahamudra - Daniel P Brown
I. Motivational Practices
A. Generating interest
B. Causing faith to arise
II. Preparatory Practices
A. Preliminary Practices
1. Ordinary preliminaries
2. Extraordinary preliminaries
3. Advances preliminaries
B. The isolations
1. Body
2. Mind
3. Speech
III. Essential or ordinary meditation practice
A. Concentration with support
B. Concentration without support
C. Special insight
1. Emptiness of self
2. Emptiness of phenomena
3. Nonelaboration of time
IV. Extraordinary practice
A. One-taste yoga
B. Nonmeditation yoga
V. Enlightenment and post-enlightenment practices.
A. Generating interest
B. Causing faith to arise
II. Preparatory Practices
A. Preliminary Practices
1. Ordinary preliminaries
2. Extraordinary preliminaries
3. Advances preliminaries
B. The isolations
1. Body
2. Mind
3. Speech
III. Essential or ordinary meditation practice
A. Concentration with support
B. Concentration without support
C. Special insight
1. Emptiness of self
2. Emptiness of phenomena
3. Nonelaboration of time
IV. Extraordinary practice
A. One-taste yoga
B. Nonmeditation yoga
V. Enlightenment and post-enlightenment practices.
Daniel P Brown on Simultaneous Mind
"Understanding the nature of the mind in mahamudra is conveyed by the term 'simultaneous mind'. The term signifies that the mind's awareness and its manifest events literally "arise together" in each moment of experience. Another way to say this is that the mind's awareness and the events of ordinary consciousness form an inseparable pair, and that the perception of a duality is erroneous. Direct realisation of the mind's duality is an essential prerequisite to awakening the mind".
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Ajahn Chah
"The Buddha who passed into parinibbana 2,500 years ago is not the Buddha who is a refuge." - Ajahn Chah
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Friday, July 15, 2011
What is the Psy.D. Degree?
From: http://www.internationalgraduate.net/psyd.htm
The Psy.D. or Doctor of Psychology is a professional doctorate in Clinical Psychology. There are two models through which a student can be trained in Clinical Psychology ñ one is the Psy.D doctorate which places more emphasis on clinical practice, the other is the PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) which places more emphasis on research. Read more to discover what the Psy.D. degree entails and how it compares to the PhD in Clinical Psychology.
How was the PsyD degree established?
The Boulder Model
Until the late 1960s, professional training for psychologists followed the Boulder Model whereby a psychologist earned a PhD which qualified them as both a scientist and a professional. However, there was mounting concern that the PhD did not sufficiently prepare psychologists for clinical work.
The Vail Conference
In 1973, the Vail Conference recognized that the development of psychological science had sufficiently grown to warrant the introduction of explicitly professional programs, in addition to programs for training scientists and scientist-professionals. It was felt that professional training was required that would be responsive to societyís need for psychologists to function in a variety of practitioner roles.
The Ph.D. and the Psy.D. would now both be available as two different paths by which to be trained as a psychologist.
Both types of doctorate are growing in number, therefore it is important that you consider which degree is the most appealing to you.
PsyD and PhD Degree ñ Similarities
Both Psy.D. and Ph.D. programs require internship placements
All Ph.D. programs and most Psy.D. programs require a doctoral dissertation
Both programs take about 4-7 years of full-time study to complete.
In the USA - all States license Psychologists with a Psy.D. or Ph.D.
Depending on intended career goals, both Psy.D. and Ph.D. graduates work with individuals, groups, and families, in institutions, hospitals, and schools, and in the corporate, public, educational, and religious sectors as consultants. Graduates can also find work in applied research, academia, administration, and as psychotherapists.
PsyD and PhD Degree - Differences
Psy.D. graduates receive a Doctorate of Psychology upon graduating, while Ph.D. graduates receive a Doctorate of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology.
The most important difference between the two degrees is that the Ph.D. program focuses more on research, whereas the Psy.D. focuses more on clinical training.
Most Psy.D. graduate students receive more training in psychological testing than do Ph.D. students.
A Psy.D. prepares the student to work in a variety of clinical settings.
A Ph.D. prepares the student to work as a researcher, teacher, and practitioner.
Another important difference is between the kinds of money that a Psy.D. and Ph.D. program can offer. PhD programs tend to be able to give greater financial aid as the research involved in the degree can count as working for the university.
Will I be able to teach or work in academia with a PsyD Degree?
Yes, you will have the opportunity to be a professor at a college or university; however, graduates of Ph.D. programs tend to find it easier to secure a job in academia.
Are internship placements easier to get with a PhD than a PsyD?
Absolutely not. Many internship sites are looking for students who are capable of handling a wide range of clinical responsibilities. As part of a Psy.D. program, you will gain extensive knowledge and experience in the areas of clinical assessment and treatment. This is the type of expertise and diversity that many internship sites seek in a candidate.
APA accreditation
The APA (American Psychological Association) offers accreditation to both PhD and PsyD programs provided they meet and maintain certain APA developed standards. Many internship sites and employers require or prefer that the psychologist they hire come from APA approved programs. When considering which programs to apply to, make sure you pay attention to APA accreditation status.
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
The Psy.D. or Doctor of Psychology is a professional doctorate in Clinical Psychology. There are two models through which a student can be trained in Clinical Psychology ñ one is the Psy.D doctorate which places more emphasis on clinical practice, the other is the PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) which places more emphasis on research. Read more to discover what the Psy.D. degree entails and how it compares to the PhD in Clinical Psychology.
How was the PsyD degree established?
The Boulder Model
Until the late 1960s, professional training for psychologists followed the Boulder Model whereby a psychologist earned a PhD which qualified them as both a scientist and a professional. However, there was mounting concern that the PhD did not sufficiently prepare psychologists for clinical work.
The Vail Conference
In 1973, the Vail Conference recognized that the development of psychological science had sufficiently grown to warrant the introduction of explicitly professional programs, in addition to programs for training scientists and scientist-professionals. It was felt that professional training was required that would be responsive to societyís need for psychologists to function in a variety of practitioner roles.
The Ph.D. and the Psy.D. would now both be available as two different paths by which to be trained as a psychologist.
Both types of doctorate are growing in number, therefore it is important that you consider which degree is the most appealing to you.
PsyD and PhD Degree ñ Similarities
Both Psy.D. and Ph.D. programs require internship placements
All Ph.D. programs and most Psy.D. programs require a doctoral dissertation
Both programs take about 4-7 years of full-time study to complete.
In the USA - all States license Psychologists with a Psy.D. or Ph.D.
Depending on intended career goals, both Psy.D. and Ph.D. graduates work with individuals, groups, and families, in institutions, hospitals, and schools, and in the corporate, public, educational, and religious sectors as consultants. Graduates can also find work in applied research, academia, administration, and as psychotherapists.
PsyD and PhD Degree - Differences
Psy.D. graduates receive a Doctorate of Psychology upon graduating, while Ph.D. graduates receive a Doctorate of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology.
The most important difference between the two degrees is that the Ph.D. program focuses more on research, whereas the Psy.D. focuses more on clinical training.
Most Psy.D. graduate students receive more training in psychological testing than do Ph.D. students.
A Psy.D. prepares the student to work in a variety of clinical settings.
A Ph.D. prepares the student to work as a researcher, teacher, and practitioner.
Another important difference is between the kinds of money that a Psy.D. and Ph.D. program can offer. PhD programs tend to be able to give greater financial aid as the research involved in the degree can count as working for the university.
Will I be able to teach or work in academia with a PsyD Degree?
Yes, you will have the opportunity to be a professor at a college or university; however, graduates of Ph.D. programs tend to find it easier to secure a job in academia.
Are internship placements easier to get with a PhD than a PsyD?
Absolutely not. Many internship sites are looking for students who are capable of handling a wide range of clinical responsibilities. As part of a Psy.D. program, you will gain extensive knowledge and experience in the areas of clinical assessment and treatment. This is the type of expertise and diversity that many internship sites seek in a candidate.
APA accreditation
The APA (American Psychological Association) offers accreditation to both PhD and PsyD programs provided they meet and maintain certain APA developed standards. Many internship sites and employers require or prefer that the psychologist they hire come from APA approved programs. When considering which programs to apply to, make sure you pay attention to APA accreditation status.
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Hereafter - Parallel Lions - Redux
THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2010
Hereafter - Parallel Lions
Long day
into a long night
Someway
through my life
Found you,
cold street,
cold hands,
cold feet.
You were so pale,
so lost
and lonely.
You said
“Someday,
someone
is gonna want me”.
I tried to save your life,
but you’re always on the edge of it
And every little comfort I found in you,
I’m becoming less of myself it’s true.
I don’t want to stumble in your hereafter.
I ask about the places that you have been.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
.. and you,
talking isn’t something you do.
Long day
into long night.
Someway
through your life
You say,
“No way,
no one
could ever want me”
I tried to save your life,
but you’re always on the edge of it.
And every little comfort I found in you,
I’m becoming less of myself it’s true.
I don’t want to stumble in your hereafter.
I ask about the people that you’ve been seeing.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
… and you,
talking isn’t something you do.
We’re becoming less of ourselves it’s true.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
… and you, talking isn’t something you do.
into a long night
Someway
through my life
Found you,
cold street,
cold hands,
cold feet.
You were so pale,
so lost
and lonely.
You said
“Someday,
someone
is gonna want me”.
I tried to save your life,
but you’re always on the edge of it
And every little comfort I found in you,
I’m becoming less of myself it’s true.
I don’t want to stumble in your hereafter.
I ask about the places that you have been.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
.. and you,
talking isn’t something you do.
Long day
into long night.
Someway
through your life
You say,
“No way,
no one
could ever want me”
I tried to save your life,
but you’re always on the edge of it.
And every little comfort I found in you,
I’m becoming less of myself it’s true.
I don’t want to stumble in your hereafter.
I ask about the people that you’ve been seeing.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
… and you,
talking isn’t something you do.
We’re becoming less of ourselves it’s true.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
… and you, talking isn’t something you do.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Solar Adoration
Extend thy light that I may see,
but dim thy glory that I be not blinded.
- Solar Adoration Practice: Aurum Solis Order
but dim thy glory that I be not blinded.
- Solar Adoration Practice: Aurum Solis Order
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Daniel P. Brown
"... as Freud notes in Civilisation and Its Discontents, successful psychoanalysis merely alleviates neurotic suffering but does not address everyday unhappiness. Buddhism picks up where successful therapy leaves off, addressing ordinary unhappiness and how to overcome it".
- Daniel P. Brown, in his book Pointing Out The Great Way.
Journal: I've been adoring Offspring...
... and this still frame from where I paused it yesterday captured the kind of fresh, intelligent hilarity of the whole thing. Asher has a depth of expression which is simply captivating.Sunday, July 10, 2011
What Is Love?
"The infant must come to accept the ontological fact of dependency, neediness, and incompleteness in relation to his or her mother, father and siblings (family) and must learn to accept the humility of dependency and incompleteness as a fact of nature. Along with this recognition infants must learn to appreciate what they receive from their nurturing. They then introject, not the object, but the legacy of their experience with the object, the experience designating the appreciation. It may take us a lifetime to learn that we are unable to posess or really 'introject' a loved one. All we can hope for is continuingly meaningful experiences with the object, really the ineffable, unpossessable other. As we then incorporate the legacy of the object that has been appreciated, the appreciated object experience 'appreciates' within us, filling us with gratitude, the feeling of being profoundly loved and cared for. The infant grows, develops and matures, fed on the milk of loving kindness, the foundation for a sense of being real, alive, vital".
- James Grotstein in What Is Love?, a preface to Judith Pickering's book Being In Love: Therapeutic Pathways Through Psychological Obstacles to Love.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Great lines from Steppenwolf #15
"Hermine looked tenderly in my eyes with that dark look that could so suddenly come into her face. Lovely, fearful eyes! Picking her words one by one and piecing them together, and speaking slowly and so low that it was an effort to hear her, she said:
"I want to tell you something today, something that I have known for a long while, and you know it too; but perhaps you have never said it to yourself. I am going to tell you now what it is that I know about you and me and our fate. You, Harry, have been an artist and a thinker, a man full of joy and faith, always on the track of what is great and eternal, never content with the trivial and petty. But the more life has awakened you and brought you back to yourself, the greater has your need been and the deeper the sufferings and dread and despair that have overtaken you, till you were up to your neck in them. And all that you once knew and loved and revered as beautiful and sacred, all the belief you once had in mankind and our high destiny, has been of no avail and has lost its worth and gone to pieces. Your faith found no more air to breathe. And suffocation is a hard death. Is that true, Harry? Is that your fate?"
I nodded again and again.
"You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and sacrifices, and then you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds and no sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and wireless. And whoever wants more and has got it in himóthe heroic and the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the saintsóis a fool and a Don Quixote. Good. And it has been just the same for me, my friend. I was a gifted girl. I was meant to live up to a high standard, to expect much of myself and do great things. I could have played a great part. I could have been the wife of a king, the beloved of a revolutionary, the sister of a genius, the mother of a martyr. And life has allowed me just this, to be a courtesan of fairly good taste, and even that has been hard enough. That is how things have gone with me. For a while I was inconsolable and for a long time I put the blame on myself. Life, thought I, must in the end be in the right, and if life scorned my beautiful dreams, so I argued, it was my dreams that were stupid and wrong headed. But that did not help me at all. And as I had good eyes and ears and was a little inquisitive too, I took a good look at this so-called life and at my neighbors and acquaintances, fifty or so of them and their destinies, and then I saw you. And I knew that my dreams had been right a thousand times over, just as yours had been. It was life and reality that were wrong. It was as little right that a woman like me should have no other choice than to grow old in poverty and in a senseless way at a typewriter in the pay of a money-maker, or to marry such a man for his money's sake, or to become some kind of drudge, as for a man like you to be forced in his loneliness and despair to have recourse to a razor. Perhaps the trouble with me was more material and moral and with you more spiritualóbut it was the same road. Do you think I can't understand your horror of the fox trot, your dislike of bars and dancing floors, your loathing of jazz and the rest of it? I understand it only too well, and your dislike of politics as well, your despondence over the chatter and irresponsible antics of the parties and the press, your despair over the war, the one that has been and the one that is to be, over all that people nowadays think, read and build, over the music they play, the celebrations they hold, the education they carry on. You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours"
She looked down and fell into meditation".
"I want to tell you something today, something that I have known for a long while, and you know it too; but perhaps you have never said it to yourself. I am going to tell you now what it is that I know about you and me and our fate. You, Harry, have been an artist and a thinker, a man full of joy and faith, always on the track of what is great and eternal, never content with the trivial and petty. But the more life has awakened you and brought you back to yourself, the greater has your need been and the deeper the sufferings and dread and despair that have overtaken you, till you were up to your neck in them. And all that you once knew and loved and revered as beautiful and sacred, all the belief you once had in mankind and our high destiny, has been of no avail and has lost its worth and gone to pieces. Your faith found no more air to breathe. And suffocation is a hard death. Is that true, Harry? Is that your fate?"
I nodded again and again.
"You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and sacrifices, and then you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds and no sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and wireless. And whoever wants more and has got it in himóthe heroic and the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the saintsóis a fool and a Don Quixote. Good. And it has been just the same for me, my friend. I was a gifted girl. I was meant to live up to a high standard, to expect much of myself and do great things. I could have played a great part. I could have been the wife of a king, the beloved of a revolutionary, the sister of a genius, the mother of a martyr. And life has allowed me just this, to be a courtesan of fairly good taste, and even that has been hard enough. That is how things have gone with me. For a while I was inconsolable and for a long time I put the blame on myself. Life, thought I, must in the end be in the right, and if life scorned my beautiful dreams, so I argued, it was my dreams that were stupid and wrong headed. But that did not help me at all. And as I had good eyes and ears and was a little inquisitive too, I took a good look at this so-called life and at my neighbors and acquaintances, fifty or so of them and their destinies, and then I saw you. And I knew that my dreams had been right a thousand times over, just as yours had been. It was life and reality that were wrong. It was as little right that a woman like me should have no other choice than to grow old in poverty and in a senseless way at a typewriter in the pay of a money-maker, or to marry such a man for his money's sake, or to become some kind of drudge, as for a man like you to be forced in his loneliness and despair to have recourse to a razor. Perhaps the trouble with me was more material and moral and with you more spiritualóbut it was the same road. Do you think I can't understand your horror of the fox trot, your dislike of bars and dancing floors, your loathing of jazz and the rest of it? I understand it only too well, and your dislike of politics as well, your despondence over the chatter and irresponsible antics of the parties and the press, your despair over the war, the one that has been and the one that is to be, over all that people nowadays think, read and build, over the music they play, the celebrations they hold, the education they carry on. You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours"
She looked down and fell into meditation".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #14
"Just as the gramophone contaminated the esthetic and intellectual atmosphere of my study and just as the American dances broke in as strangers and disturbers, yes, and as destroyers, into my carefully tended garden of music, so, too, from all sides there broke in new and dreaded and disintegrating influences upon my life that, till now, bad been so sharply marked off and so deeply secluded. The Steppenwolf treatise, and Hermine too, were right in their doctrine of the thousand souls. Every day new souls kept springing up beside the host of old ones; making clamorous demands and creating confusion; and now I saw as clearly as in a picture what an illusion my former personality had been. The few capacities and pursuits in which I had happened to be strong had occupied all my attention, and I had painted a picture of myself as a person who was in fact nothing more than a most refined and educated specialist in poetry, music and philosophy; and as such I had lived, leaving all the rest of me to be a chaos of potentialities, instincts and impulses which I found an encumbrance and gave the label of Steppenwolf.
Meanwhile, though cured of an illusion, I found this disintegration of the personality by no means a pleasant and amusing adventure. On the contrary, it was often exceedingly painful, often almost intolerable. Often the sound of the gramophone was truly fiendish to my ears in the midst of surroundings where everything was tuned to so very different a key. And many a time, when I danced my one step in a stylish restaurant among pleasure seekers and elegant rakes, I felt that I was a traitor to all that I was bound to hold most sacred. Had Hermine left me for one week alone I should have fled at once from this wearisome and laughable trafficking with the world of pleasure. Hermine, however, was always there. Though I might not see her every day, I was all the same continually under her eye, guided, guarded and counseled - besides, she read all my mad thoughts of rebellion and escape in my face, and smiled at them.
As the destruction of all that I had called my personality went on, I began to understand, too, why it was that I had feared death so horribly in spite of all my despair. I began to perceive that this ignoble horror in the face of death was a part of my old conventional and lying existence".
Meanwhile, though cured of an illusion, I found this disintegration of the personality by no means a pleasant and amusing adventure. On the contrary, it was often exceedingly painful, often almost intolerable. Often the sound of the gramophone was truly fiendish to my ears in the midst of surroundings where everything was tuned to so very different a key. And many a time, when I danced my one step in a stylish restaurant among pleasure seekers and elegant rakes, I felt that I was a traitor to all that I was bound to hold most sacred. Had Hermine left me for one week alone I should have fled at once from this wearisome and laughable trafficking with the world of pleasure. Hermine, however, was always there. Though I might not see her every day, I was all the same continually under her eye, guided, guarded and counseled - besides, she read all my mad thoughts of rebellion and escape in my face, and smiled at them.
As the destruction of all that I had called my personality went on, I began to understand, too, why it was that I had feared death so horribly in spite of all my despair. I began to perceive that this ignoble horror in the face of death was a part of my old conventional and lying existence".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Great lines from Steppenwolf #13
"Hermine," I said, "an extraordinary thing happened to me the other day. An unknown man gave me a little book, the sort of thing you'd buy at a fair, and inside I found my whole story and everything about me. Rather remarkable, don't you think?"
"What was it called," she asked lightly.
"Treatise on the Steppenwolf!"
"Oh, Steppenwolf is magnificent! And are you the Steppenwolf? Is that meant for you?"
"Yes, it's me. I am one who is half-wolf and half-man, or thinks himself so at least."
She made no answer. She gave me a searching look in the eyes, then looked at my hands, and for a moment her face and expression had that deep seriousness and sinister passion of a few minutes before. Making a guess at her thoughts I felt she was wondering whether I were wolf enough to carry out her last command.
"That is, of course, your own fanciful idea," she said, becoming serene once more, "or a poetical one, if you like. But there's something in it. You're no wolf today, but the other day when you came in as if you had fallen from the moon there was really something of the beast about you. It is just what struck me at the time."
She broke off as though surprised by a sudden idea.
"How absurd those words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men."
"How do you meanóright?"
"Well, look at an animal, a cat, a dog, or a bird, or one of those beautiful great beasts in the zoo, a puma or a giraffe. You can't help seeing that all of them are right. They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky. Don't you agree?"
I did.
"Animals are sad as a rule," she went on. "And when a man is sadóI don't mean because he has a toothache or has lost some money, but because he sees, for once in a way, how it all is with life and everything, and is sad in earnestóhe always looks a little like an animal. He looks not only sad, but more right and more beautiful than usual. That's how it is, and that's how you looked, Steppenwolf, when I saw you for the first time."
"What was it called," she asked lightly.
"Treatise on the Steppenwolf!"
"Oh, Steppenwolf is magnificent! And are you the Steppenwolf? Is that meant for you?"
"Yes, it's me. I am one who is half-wolf and half-man, or thinks himself so at least."
She made no answer. She gave me a searching look in the eyes, then looked at my hands, and for a moment her face and expression had that deep seriousness and sinister passion of a few minutes before. Making a guess at her thoughts I felt she was wondering whether I were wolf enough to carry out her last command.
"That is, of course, your own fanciful idea," she said, becoming serene once more, "or a poetical one, if you like. But there's something in it. You're no wolf today, but the other day when you came in as if you had fallen from the moon there was really something of the beast about you. It is just what struck me at the time."
She broke off as though surprised by a sudden idea.
"How absurd those words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men."
"How do you meanóright?"
"Well, look at an animal, a cat, a dog, or a bird, or one of those beautiful great beasts in the zoo, a puma or a giraffe. You can't help seeing that all of them are right. They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky. Don't you agree?"
I did.
"Animals are sad as a rule," she went on. "And when a man is sadóI don't mean because he has a toothache or has lost some money, but because he sees, for once in a way, how it all is with life and everything, and is sad in earnestóhe always looks a little like an animal. He looks not only sad, but more right and more beautiful than usual. That's how it is, and that's how you looked, Steppenwolf, when I saw you for the first time."
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #12
"It was for Tuesday evening that I had invited the charming and remarkable girl of the Black Eagle, and I was a good deal put to it to know how to pass the time till then; and when at last Tuesday came, the importance of my relation to this unknown girl had become alarmingly clear to me. I thought of nothing but her. I expected everything from her. I was ready to lay everything at her feet. I was not in the least in love with her. Yet I had only to imagine that she might fail to keep the appointment, or forget it, to see where I stood. Then the world would be a desert once more, one day as dreary and worthless as the last, and the deathly stillness and wretchedness would surround me once more on all sides with no way out from this hell of silence except the razor. And these few days had not made me think any the more fondly of the razor. It had lost none of its terror. This was indeed the hateful truth: I dreaded to cut my throat with a dread that crushed my heart. My fear was as wild and obstinate as though I were the healthiest of men and my life a paradise. I realised my situation recklessly and without a single illusion. I realised that it was the unendurable tension between inability to live and inability to die that made the unknown girl, the pretty dancer of the Black Eagle, so important to me. She was the one window, the one tiny crack of light in my black hole of dread. She was my release and my way to freedom. She had to teach me to live or teach me to die. She had to touch my deadened heart with her firm and pretty hand, and at the touch of life it would either leap again to flame or subside in ashes. I could not imagine whence she derived these powers, what the source of her magic was, in what secret soil this deep meaning she had for me had grown up; nor did it matter. I did not care to know. There was no longer the least importance for me in any knowledge or perception I might have. Indeed it was just in that line that I was overstocked, for the ignominy under which I suffered lay just in thisóthat I saw my own situation so clearly and was so very conscious, too, of hers. I saw this wretch, this brute beast of a Steppenwolf as a fly in a web, and saw too the approaching decision of his fate. Entangled and defenceless he hung in the web. The spider was ready to devour him, and further off was the rescuing hand. I might have made the most intelligent and penetrating remarks about the ramifications and the causes of my sufferings, my sickness of soul, my general bedevilment of neurosis. The mechanism was transparent to me. But what I needed was not knowledge and understanding. What I longed for in my despair was life and resolution, action and reaction, impulse and impetus".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse.
Great lines from Steppenwolf #11
"It did not altogether suit me to have the old gentleman avoid my questions and accusations in this sportive manner, and I looked at him reproachfully. At that he bent forward and brought his mouth, which had now become quite like a child's, close to my ear and whispered softly into it: "You take the old Goethe much too seriously, my young friend. You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
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