................................................................................................................................................................................
At the end of my first year of training, Dave Lewis again told me to fast for three days and then come see him on the fourth day of my fast. When I went to see him it was early morning and he took me up on a hill about a mile from his house. First thing I thought about were the ticks - you can get quite a severe illness from them. But I figured he knew what he was doing, so I went along with him.
Bear paw didn't live near me, but when I was in my early twenties he came to visit, and said, "I'm getting sickly now and way up in age. I don't have much time left to spend with you, but I do want to put you through this one test because it will carry you through many situations where you will need to exert self-control."
He took me out to a huge anthill near our house in the country - it was about three feet across - and he told me to lie on it. All I had on was a pair of trunks and those big red ants crawled all over me. I wanted to brush them off, but I was afraid I might kill one, so I just lay there and let them crawl. The sun was so hot I had to close my eyes, and they even walked across my eyelids, yet never did one bite me. That was one of my tests, teaching me how to exert self-control. Bear Paw told me, "The Bible says, if someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. It means that you don't have to resort to force, you don't have to defend yourself when you have faith. If you didn't believe that, there would have been resistance on your part and the ants would have bitten you. This lesson in self-control is to condition you to have acceptance and faith in your own life."
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 44-5
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He had already picked out a tree and said, "Wrap your legs around this tree, put your arms around it. You sit there like that, and I'll be back." Then he left, no more instruction than that.
[...] I had no idea when he would be back. Maybe nighttime. Maybe the next day. I wondered if he'd even be able to find me again! Still, I had to sit there wrapped around that tree, and the very first thing that came to me was that people would ask, "Did the tree talk to you?" And I'd say, "No, it barked."
[...] I understood what Dave was trying to teach me without telling me. He was teaching me to work through my own pride, my own ego, my own self-importance. I began to see that, when it comes right down to it, we are nothing until that nothing becomes so dedicated that it is like a vessel through which good things start to move, an instrument for receiving knowledge and sharing it with others who might be in need.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 52-3
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I used to go to the zoo and stare at the tigers. A tiger would look at me and I'd look back at him. I don't know how long I'd stand there, but I was determined not to look away first. I kept looking until the tiger finally looked away. I guess the barrier between us gave me some kind of confidence, but at the same time I felt I was making eye-contact with a hostile animal - he represented that to me. From there I'd go to a lion and do the same thing.
Eventually I gave the tiger commands, not verbally, but in my mind. I would project the thought "Turn away. Turn away right now. Turn." He was very stubborn, but he would eventually turn. I kept doing it until the time it took him to turn away got shorter and shorter. I got training in using the power of my mind like that.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 58
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The environment was our starting point in learning as much as we could from what was around us - the seasons, the things that grow, the animals, the birds, and various other life forms. Then we would begin the long process of trying to learn about that which is within ourselves. We didn't have any textbooks, we didn't have any great psychiatrists who lived years ago and presented theories in this and that. We had to rely on something else, and that was our senses. Rather than through scientific investigation, we sensed those things within and around us.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 65-6
................................................................................................................................................................................
To teach our young people how to get in touch with nature and their own intuition, out elders used to take them way out in the woods, blindfolded, and have them sit by a particular tree. "You stay here blindfolded until we come after you. Be with this tree, touch it, hug it, lean against it, stand by it. Learn something from it." After half a day or more, they would bring them back to camp, remove the blindfold, and say, "Go find your tree."
After touching a lot of trees, they could find the one they had spent time with. Sometimes they didn't have to touch a lot of trees - those with highly developed intuition could go right to their tree. They seemed to be drawn to it.
That's how we began to connect. It's amazing what you can feel from a tree. It can give us energy. When we take long hikes in wooded areas, we often put our fingertips on the ends of the cedar or the pine needles. Just standing there touching them, you're going to feel energy come to you. Trees are emitting energy all the time. Every needle of the tree, every leaf, is trying to make the atmosphere breathable for us. That's why my people have great respect for trees. The trees are our relatives - we call them 'tall standing brothers.'
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 69-70
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Showing posts with label Heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heart. Show all posts
Expand Your Awareness
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Dave had me spend an entire day doing nothing but observing from early morning to evening. I had to sit in a field all day long without moving my body - he told me just to move my eyes very slowly from side to side.
What was I observing? What direction is the wind coming from? Does that cloud seem to contain any large amounts of moisture? Is it dark on the underside and light on the top? If so, perhaps its going to rain. If you see birds flying, are they circling or going in a straight line? Are they birds flying to where there might be some water? If you're looking for water, perhaps you should head in that direction.
If you don't think observation is all that hard, try to sit still for twenty minutes. If your nose itches, don't scratch it. If your leg cramps, don't stretch it.
These are some of the things you have to content with in observation. It's a far reaching training that enables you to take in a whole situation in seconds.
There didn't have to be any particular significance to all the things I observed - the point was to not let anything escape my awareness, to master the difference between looking and seeing.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 57, 59
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Three practices make up the nature awareness phase of the Earth path: stillness, focus, and study.
Stillness requires that you slow down to nature's pace. At least once a week, go to a place full of non-human living things, find a place to sit, and spend at least ten minutes sitting still and noticing everything around you. Relax your body, and turn your attention away from the chatter of thoughts and worries that usually fills your mind. Sit still, watch, listen, and feel.
[…] Try to broaden your awareness - notice sounds, scents, wind, light and shadow, changes in the sky and in the distance around you. Let the world fill your mind and guide it.
[let] your field of vision spread out as wide as possible, instead of focusing tightly on something in front of you. Let your eyes soften and take in everything within your field of vision - to left and right, but also above and below.
Focus [...] involves paying close attention to what you encounter. You can learn this by focusing your mind and senses on the details of specific natural things: a stone, the bark of a tree, a handful of dirt, a pool of water, the crumbling end of a fallen log.
[...] Choose something and spend at least five minutes as close to it as possible, with every sense focused on it. Push aside all other concerns; simply look, listen, smell, and feel.
Study is the third step in expanding your awareness of nature.
Almost any source of information about nature can be useful [...] Paying attention to nature takes on new dimensions when you recognize the birds around you, the cloud types above you, or the varieties of stone and soil beneath your feet.
[John Michael Greer]
The Druidry Handbook, p. 146-8
................................................................................................................................................................................
Dave had me spend an entire day doing nothing but observing from early morning to evening. I had to sit in a field all day long without moving my body - he told me just to move my eyes very slowly from side to side.
What was I observing? What direction is the wind coming from? Does that cloud seem to contain any large amounts of moisture? Is it dark on the underside and light on the top? If so, perhaps its going to rain. If you see birds flying, are they circling or going in a straight line? Are they birds flying to where there might be some water? If you're looking for water, perhaps you should head in that direction.
If you don't think observation is all that hard, try to sit still for twenty minutes. If your nose itches, don't scratch it. If your leg cramps, don't stretch it.
These are some of the things you have to content with in observation. It's a far reaching training that enables you to take in a whole situation in seconds.
There didn't have to be any particular significance to all the things I observed - the point was to not let anything escape my awareness, to master the difference between looking and seeing.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 57, 59
................................................................................................................................................................................
Three practices make up the nature awareness phase of the Earth path: stillness, focus, and study.
Stillness requires that you slow down to nature's pace. At least once a week, go to a place full of non-human living things, find a place to sit, and spend at least ten minutes sitting still and noticing everything around you. Relax your body, and turn your attention away from the chatter of thoughts and worries that usually fills your mind. Sit still, watch, listen, and feel.
[…] Try to broaden your awareness - notice sounds, scents, wind, light and shadow, changes in the sky and in the distance around you. Let the world fill your mind and guide it.
[let] your field of vision spread out as wide as possible, instead of focusing tightly on something in front of you. Let your eyes soften and take in everything within your field of vision - to left and right, but also above and below.
Focus [...] involves paying close attention to what you encounter. You can learn this by focusing your mind and senses on the details of specific natural things: a stone, the bark of a tree, a handful of dirt, a pool of water, the crumbling end of a fallen log.
[...] Choose something and spend at least five minutes as close to it as possible, with every sense focused on it. Push aside all other concerns; simply look, listen, smell, and feel.
Study is the third step in expanding your awareness of nature.
Almost any source of information about nature can be useful [...] Paying attention to nature takes on new dimensions when you recognize the birds around you, the cloud types above you, or the varieties of stone and soil beneath your feet.
[John Michael Greer]
The Druidry Handbook, p. 146-8
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Stay Centred
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When we perceive any situation, whether it's an activity, a sport, a fight, or anything else, it's important to be able to observe without getting emotionally involved. When you see someone in great pain, your emotions may want to jump in so you can both have a good cry together - someone who cries with them might help a little, but very little.
You can be of greater help if you are strong enough to lift that person's spirits up and not allow your emotions to get in the way. It's called empathy - you put your mind in that person's situation, but only your mind, while you stand in a safe place and try to bring that person to the same point of safety you are at.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 55
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When we perceive any situation, whether it's an activity, a sport, a fight, or anything else, it's important to be able to observe without getting emotionally involved. When you see someone in great pain, your emotions may want to jump in so you can both have a good cry together - someone who cries with them might help a little, but very little.
You can be of greater help if you are strong enough to lift that person's spirits up and not allow your emotions to get in the way. It's called empathy - you put your mind in that person's situation, but only your mind, while you stand in a safe place and try to bring that person to the same point of safety you are at.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 55
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Growing down
Roots - Branches
Deflation - Inflation
Tethered - Free
Earth - Sky
Real - Ideal
Flawed - Perfect
Plato's tale of descent is the Myth of Er which I shall condense from the last chapter of his Republic:
The souls are all hanging around in a mythical world, having arrived there from previous lives, and each has a lot to fulfill. This lot is also called a portion of fate (Moira) that is somehow representative of the character of that particular soul.
For instance, the myth says the soul of Ajax, the intemperate and mighty warrior, chose the life of a lion, while Atalanta, the fleet young woman runner, chose the lot of an athlete, and another soul chose the lot of a skillful workman.
"When all the souls had chosen their lives according to their lots, they went before Lachesis [lachos = one's special lot or portion of fate]. And she sent with each, as the guardian of his life and the fulfiller of his choice, the genius [daimon] that had been chosen."
Lachesis leads the soul to the second of the three personifications of destiny, Klotho (klotho = to twist by spinning). "Under her hand and her turning of the spindle, the destiny of the chosen lot is ratified." (Given its particular twist?) "Then the genius [daimon] again led the soul to the spinning of Atropos [atropos = not to be turned, inflexible] to make the web of its destiny irreversible.
"And then without a backward glance the soul passes beneath the throne of Necessity," sometimes translated as the "lap" of Necessity.
The Platonic myth says the soul descends in four modes - via the body, the parents, place, and circumstances. These four ways can be instructions for completing the image you brought with you on arrival.
First, your body: Growing down means going with the sag of gravity that accompanies aging. ([Josephine] Baker told people she was sixty-four while she was still in her mid-fifties; she wore old clothes and gave up covering her baldness.)
Second, admitting yourself to be one among your people and a member of the family tree, including its twisted and rotten branches.
Third, living in a place that suits your soul and that ties you down with duties and customs.
Last, giving back what circumstances gave you by means of gestures that declare your full attachment to this world.
[James Hillman]
The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, p.44, 45, 62
If
we began with Saturn, we would be far more reconciled with our givens,
including everything that doesn't work and is imagined to be a trauma, a
curse and bad luck, and we would be far less impatient about our
growth.
As I've grown older, I've come to realise that the curses, the frustrations, and the character faults visited on me by Saturn mean something completely different than what I thought when I was younger.
I took them literally as curses, and I cursed my stars for not giving me what I believed I needed and wanted. That is, I cursed Saturn, to use the old language.
But it isn't Saturn who curses us; we curse him. We make him into that poor, shunned, limping old God because we don't understand his mode of blessing. What a curse it must be to keep giving gifts that are received as punishments!
The faults and frustrations he visits on us are his way of keeping us true to our particular image. No way out.
The old lore attributed the last years of life to Saturn. That makes sense. Only now can I begin to reconcile myself with and not rebel against what I am and what I am not.
[James Hillman]
with Michael Ventura
We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy - And the World's Getting Worse
We remember the Baal Shem Tov, that genius of the spirit in the early eighteenth century in Poland, would not let his young men read certain spiritual texts until they were thirty-five.
The souls are all hanging around in a mythical world, having arrived there from previous lives, and each has a lot to fulfill. This lot is also called a portion of fate (Moira) that is somehow representative of the character of that particular soul.
For instance, the myth says the soul of Ajax, the intemperate and mighty warrior, chose the life of a lion, while Atalanta, the fleet young woman runner, chose the lot of an athlete, and another soul chose the lot of a skillful workman.
"When all the souls had chosen their lives according to their lots, they went before Lachesis [lachos = one's special lot or portion of fate]. And she sent with each, as the guardian of his life and the fulfiller of his choice, the genius [daimon] that had been chosen."
Lachesis leads the soul to the second of the three personifications of destiny, Klotho (klotho = to twist by spinning). "Under her hand and her turning of the spindle, the destiny of the chosen lot is ratified." (Given its particular twist?) "Then the genius [daimon] again led the soul to the spinning of Atropos [atropos = not to be turned, inflexible] to make the web of its destiny irreversible.
"And then without a backward glance the soul passes beneath the throne of Necessity," sometimes translated as the "lap" of Necessity.
The Platonic myth says the soul descends in four modes - via the body, the parents, place, and circumstances. These four ways can be instructions for completing the image you brought with you on arrival.
First, your body: Growing down means going with the sag of gravity that accompanies aging. ([Josephine] Baker told people she was sixty-four while she was still in her mid-fifties; she wore old clothes and gave up covering her baldness.)
Third, living in a place that suits your soul and that ties you down with duties and customs.
Last, giving back what circumstances gave you by means of gestures that declare your full attachment to this world.
[James Hillman]
The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, p.44, 45, 62
As I've grown older, I've come to realise that the curses, the frustrations, and the character faults visited on me by Saturn mean something completely different than what I thought when I was younger.
I took them literally as curses, and I cursed my stars for not giving me what I believed I needed and wanted. That is, I cursed Saturn, to use the old language.
But it isn't Saturn who curses us; we curse him. We make him into that poor, shunned, limping old God because we don't understand his mode of blessing. What a curse it must be to keep giving gifts that are received as punishments!
The faults and frustrations he visits on us are his way of keeping us true to our particular image. No way out.
The old lore attributed the last years of life to Saturn. That makes sense. Only now can I begin to reconcile myself with and not rebel against what I am and what I am not.
[James Hillman]
with Michael Ventura
We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy - And the World's Getting Worse
We remember the Baal Shem Tov, that genius of the spirit in the early eighteenth century in Poland, would not let his young men read certain spiritual texts until they were thirty-five.
Some say that the man's task in the first half of his life is to become bonded to matter: to learn a craft, become friends with wood, earth, wind, or fire.
[Robert Bly]
Iron John, p.60
By the expression asceticism, which I have already used so often, I understand in the narrower sense this deliberate
breaking of the will by refusing the agreeable and looking for the
disagreeable, the voluntarily chosen way of life of penance and
self-chastisement, for the constant mortification of the will.
[...] suffering in general, as it is inflicted by fate, is also a second way of attaining to that denial.
Indeed, we may assume that most men can reach it only in this way, and that it is the suffering personally felt, not the suffering merely known, which most frequently produces complete resignation, often only at the approach of death.
For only in the case of a few is mere knowledge sufficient to bring about the denial of the will, the knowledge namely that sees through the principium individuationis, first producing perfect goodness of disposition and universal love of mankind, and finally enabling them to recognize as their own all the sufferings of the world.
We always picture a very noble
character to ourselves as having a certain trace of silent sadness that
is anything but constant peevishness over daily annoyances [...] It is a
consciousness that has resulted from knowledge of the vanity of all
possessions and the suffering of all life, not merely one's own.
Such knowledge, however, may first of all be awakened by suffering personally experienced, especially by a single great suffering, just as a single wish incapable of fulfilment brought Petrarch to that resigned sadness concerning the whole of life which appeals to us so pathetically in his works; for the Daphne he pursued had to vanish from his hands, in order to leave behind for him the immortal laurel instead of herself.
If the will is to a certain extent broken by such a great and irrevocable denial of fate, then practically nothing more is desired, and the character shows itself as mild, sad, noble, and resigned.
We
cannot help but regard every suffering, both those felt by ourselves
and those felt by others, as at least a possible advance towards virtue
and holiness, and pleasures and worldly satisfactions, on the other
hand, as a departure therefrom.
This goes so far that every man who undergoes great bodily or mental suffering, indeed everyone who performs a physical labour demanding the greatest exertion in the sweat of his brow and with evident exhaustion, yet does all this with patience and without grumbling, appears, when we consider him with close attention, somewhat like a sick man who applies a painful cure.
Willingly, and even with satisfaction, he endures the pain caused by the cure, since he knows that the more he suffers, the more is the substance of the disease destroyed; and thus the present pain is the measure of his cure.
[Arthur Schopenhauer]
The World as Will and Representation, p.392, 395-7
Adulthood, one could say, is when it begins to occur to you that you may not be leading a charmed life.
[Adam Phillips]
On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, p.82
The way my people take care of something that we're not happy with is
to honor it and say, "Thank you, you've taught me a lesson." If it's
anger, if it's hate, if it's a drinking problem: "Boy, you've been with
me for a long time. Now I'm going to try something else. But I want to
thank you for teaching me something about myself."
Never try to just get rid of it. You can't, it's too strong, it's too embedded. Instead, honor it and say, "Thank you."
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother: The Life and Teaching of a Native American Shaman, p.113
Time To Leave (2005)
Becoming vulnerable, and 'giving in.'
His illness becomes a spiritual experience, his head-shaving a form of tonsure; a symbolic act signaling an inner shift.
In 'giving in' to a higher power, the ego is finally, mercifully, put in perspective. It has taken this illness to remind Romain that there are things bigger than he, things that are out of his control; but from his forced surrender he is able to discover a new way of relating to the world, one not so dominated by the self-aggrandising concerns of his ego.
His illness unites him with his vulnerability, allows him to "grow down" into the earth. He becomes a part of things, connected in a way that he wasn't previously; his ego in its place, no longer pulling at the leash.
From the position of surrender he is able to experience things anew; to smile, to listen, to look.
No doubt about it, the things that once had been natural and a relief, a jubilant cry to the birds in a tree, a marching song chanted aloud, swinging along the road in a light, rhythmical dance-step - these would not do any more.
They would have come out stiff and forced, would have been foolish and childish.
He felt that he was a man, young in feelings and youthful in strength, but no longer used to surrendering to the mood of the moment, no longer free, instead kept on his mettle, tied down and duty-bound [...]
As he engaged in this sudden self-analysis, he realised that he had incomprehensibly grown into the hierarchy, become part of its structure. His constraint came from the responsibility, from belonging to the higher collectivity.
This it was that made many young men old and many old men appear young, that held you, supported you, and at the same time deprived you of your freedom like the stake to which a sapling is tied. This is was that took away your innocence even while it demanded ever more limpid purity.
[Hermann Hesse]
The Glass Bead Game, p. 179
Stefania, mother and woman, you’re 53, with a life in tatters, like the rest of us.
Instead of acting superior and treating us with contempt, you should look at us with affection. We’re all on the brink of despair. All we can do is look each other in the face, keep each other company, joke a little. Don't you agree?
['Jep Gambardella']
Dialogue from 'The Great Beauty' ('La grande bellezza')
If you’re walking down the street judging everyone - “I don’t like that person’s skin colour … she’s not attractive, that guy’s fat, this person’s a loser, who put this in my way…” - the more you judge the more you’re going to separate yourself.
You’ll feel good for an instant - “I’m better than that” - but then you’ll feel lonely. You’re going to see negativity everywhere. The world reflects your own feelings back at you - reality is neutral, it has no judgements.
[Naval Ravikant]
‘Joe Rogan Experience #1309 - Naval Ravikant’
Living by principles is not living your own life. It is easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are.
If you are trying to live by ideals, you are constantly plagued by a sense of unreality. Somewhere you think there must be some joy; it can't be all "must," "ought to," "have to."
And when the crunch comes, you have to recognize the truth: you weren't there.
[Marion Woodman]
Addiction to Perfection, p. 61
All stages in the acquisition of important ritual status seem to be accompanied by the novice undergoing an ordeal and pain, as a kind of payment.
This process makes ritual knowledge, as some Pintupi say, "dear." The right to make sacred objects follows on having fingernails pulled out and holes stabbed in one's palms and inside one's elbows. In this way, older men "give" knowledge.
An instructee, returns this prestation with pain, meat, and obedience, but he cannot offer the genuine equivalent of what he is given. He becomes more than he was, now having the right to make sacred objects himself.
Throughout the seclusion period, novices are expected to subordinate themselves to those who look after them. Talking, inattention, misbehavior, or insolence can result in beatings and threats of dire consequences.
Over time, the combination of discipline, physical ordeals (tooth evulsion, nose-piercing, circumcision, subincision, fire ordeals), and revelation of sacred knowledge produces marked changes in personality.
[Fred R. Myers]
Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self, p.174, 238
Once liberals might have favored working-class realism over the middle class conception of the body as a machine requiring "perpetual treatment." The authors, however, drew the opposite conclusion.
A stoic acceptance of bodily decline, they argued, reflected a "damaged self-image."
[Christopher Lasch]
The True and Only Heaven, p.463
Self-realization, so far as anyone ever achieves it, is manifested by the widest exercise of the individual's potentialities combined with the attainment of a mature relationship with others.
Subjectively, it seems to be attended by a sense of being fully adapted to, rather than attempting entirely to direct, the course of one's own development. This latter attitude is, in the wide sense in which Jung uses the word, religious: for it implies that the individual is acknowledging his ultimate dependence upon forces which may be depicted as either inside or outside himself, but which are nevertheless not of his making.
[Anthony Storr]
The Integrity of the Personality, p.174
Related posts:-
Everything is connected
Status Quo
Top Down / Bottom Up
[Robert Bly]
Iron John, p.60
[...] suffering in general, as it is inflicted by fate, is also a second way of attaining to that denial.
Indeed, we may assume that most men can reach it only in this way, and that it is the suffering personally felt, not the suffering merely known, which most frequently produces complete resignation, often only at the approach of death.
For only in the case of a few is mere knowledge sufficient to bring about the denial of the will, the knowledge namely that sees through the principium individuationis, first producing perfect goodness of disposition and universal love of mankind, and finally enabling them to recognize as their own all the sufferings of the world.
Such knowledge, however, may first of all be awakened by suffering personally experienced, especially by a single great suffering, just as a single wish incapable of fulfilment brought Petrarch to that resigned sadness concerning the whole of life which appeals to us so pathetically in his works; for the Daphne he pursued had to vanish from his hands, in order to leave behind for him the immortal laurel instead of herself.
If the will is to a certain extent broken by such a great and irrevocable denial of fate, then practically nothing more is desired, and the character shows itself as mild, sad, noble, and resigned.
This goes so far that every man who undergoes great bodily or mental suffering, indeed everyone who performs a physical labour demanding the greatest exertion in the sweat of his brow and with evident exhaustion, yet does all this with patience and without grumbling, appears, when we consider him with close attention, somewhat like a sick man who applies a painful cure.
Willingly, and even with satisfaction, he endures the pain caused by the cure, since he knows that the more he suffers, the more is the substance of the disease destroyed; and thus the present pain is the measure of his cure.
[Arthur Schopenhauer]
The World as Will and Representation, p.392, 395-7
Adulthood, one could say, is when it begins to occur to you that you may not be leading a charmed life.
[Adam Phillips]
On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, p.82
Never try to just get rid of it. You can't, it's too strong, it's too embedded. Instead, honor it and say, "Thank you."
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother: The Life and Teaching of a Native American Shaman, p.113
Time To Leave (2005)
Becoming vulnerable, and 'giving in.'
His illness becomes a spiritual experience, his head-shaving a form of tonsure; a symbolic act signaling an inner shift.
In 'giving in' to a higher power, the ego is finally, mercifully, put in perspective. It has taken this illness to remind Romain that there are things bigger than he, things that are out of his control; but from his forced surrender he is able to discover a new way of relating to the world, one not so dominated by the self-aggrandising concerns of his ego.
His illness unites him with his vulnerability, allows him to "grow down" into the earth. He becomes a part of things, connected in a way that he wasn't previously; his ego in its place, no longer pulling at the leash.
From the position of surrender he is able to experience things anew; to smile, to listen, to look.
They would have come out stiff and forced, would have been foolish and childish.
He felt that he was a man, young in feelings and youthful in strength, but no longer used to surrendering to the mood of the moment, no longer free, instead kept on his mettle, tied down and duty-bound [...]
As he engaged in this sudden self-analysis, he realised that he had incomprehensibly grown into the hierarchy, become part of its structure. His constraint came from the responsibility, from belonging to the higher collectivity.
This it was that made many young men old and many old men appear young, that held you, supported you, and at the same time deprived you of your freedom like the stake to which a sapling is tied. This is was that took away your innocence even while it demanded ever more limpid purity.
[Hermann Hesse]
The Glass Bead Game, p. 179
Stefania, mother and woman, you’re 53, with a life in tatters, like the rest of us.
Instead of acting superior and treating us with contempt, you should look at us with affection. We’re all on the brink of despair. All we can do is look each other in the face, keep each other company, joke a little. Don't you agree?
['Jep Gambardella']
Dialogue from 'The Great Beauty' ('La grande bellezza')
If you’re walking down the street judging everyone - “I don’t like that person’s skin colour … she’s not attractive, that guy’s fat, this person’s a loser, who put this in my way…” - the more you judge the more you’re going to separate yourself.
You’ll feel good for an instant - “I’m better than that” - but then you’ll feel lonely. You’re going to see negativity everywhere. The world reflects your own feelings back at you - reality is neutral, it has no judgements.
[Naval Ravikant]
‘Joe Rogan Experience #1309 - Naval Ravikant’
Living by principles is not living your own life. It is easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are.
If you are trying to live by ideals, you are constantly plagued by a sense of unreality. Somewhere you think there must be some joy; it can't be all "must," "ought to," "have to."
And when the crunch comes, you have to recognize the truth: you weren't there.
[Marion Woodman]
Addiction to Perfection, p. 61
All stages in the acquisition of important ritual status seem to be accompanied by the novice undergoing an ordeal and pain, as a kind of payment.
This process makes ritual knowledge, as some Pintupi say, "dear." The right to make sacred objects follows on having fingernails pulled out and holes stabbed in one's palms and inside one's elbows. In this way, older men "give" knowledge.
An instructee, returns this prestation with pain, meat, and obedience, but he cannot offer the genuine equivalent of what he is given. He becomes more than he was, now having the right to make sacred objects himself.
Throughout the seclusion period, novices are expected to subordinate themselves to those who look after them. Talking, inattention, misbehavior, or insolence can result in beatings and threats of dire consequences.
Over time, the combination of discipline, physical ordeals (tooth evulsion, nose-piercing, circumcision, subincision, fire ordeals), and revelation of sacred knowledge produces marked changes in personality.
[Fred R. Myers]
Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self, p.174, 238
Once liberals might have favored working-class realism over the middle class conception of the body as a machine requiring "perpetual treatment." The authors, however, drew the opposite conclusion.
A stoic acceptance of bodily decline, they argued, reflected a "damaged self-image."
[Christopher Lasch]
The True and Only Heaven, p.463
Self-realization, so far as anyone ever achieves it, is manifested by the widest exercise of the individual's potentialities combined with the attainment of a mature relationship with others.
Subjectively, it seems to be attended by a sense of being fully adapted to, rather than attempting entirely to direct, the course of one's own development. This latter attitude is, in the wide sense in which Jung uses the word, religious: for it implies that the individual is acknowledging his ultimate dependence upon forces which may be depicted as either inside or outside himself, but which are nevertheless not of his making.
[Anthony Storr]
The Integrity of the Personality, p.174
Related posts:-
Everything is connected
Status Quo
Top Down / Bottom Up
Where mind goes, body follows
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Rationality has ruled many once-possible things out as 'irrational' (therefore impossible), and it must now find its way back to these things on its own terms. What was once accepted in the pre-rational world will once again be accepted in the trans-rational world; only it will reappear in a new guise, with a new terminology.
Moderns can no longer believe in non-rational techniques (of healing) because we have looked behind the curtain and seen the wizard, and from this there is no going back; his image is forever imprinted in our memory. We cannot return to the pre-rational state without willfully shutting off (repressing) an important element of our psyche.
................................................................................................................................................................................
[One] method of harnessing the healing powers of the body in an indirect or passive way is the use of placebos. As commonly used a placebo is an inert substance, prepared to resemble an active drug and given to patients in experiments so as to have a basis of comparison for the results of that drug.
Usually the placebos have an effect as well, and the difference in degree between this effect and that of the drug is taken as a measure of the drug's effectiveness. For a drug to be marketed, it must outperform the placebo. If the investigators find no difference between real pills and placebos, they are led to believe that the physical medication was ineffective.
There is room for question here, however, because placebos can have powerful effects. In fact, a considerable part of the effect of most prescriptions is considered to be the placebo effect.
Placebo effects are real and powerful. Who is doing the healing when one takes a placebo? Why can't we just say to our minds, "repair this ailing body"? Why must we fool our minds in order to enlist our own powers of self-healing?
Placebos, hypnosis, autosuggestion, faith healing, visualization, positive thinking, bio-feedback are among the many ways we have learned to invoke these powers. Each can be seen as a device for changing mindsets, enabling us to move from an unhealthy to a healthy context.
The more we can learn about how to accomplish this mindfully and deliberately, rather than having to rely on these elaborate, indirect strategies, the more control we will gain over our own health.
The treatment of warts makes a graphic illustration of this self-healing power. Believed to be caused by viral invasion, warts qualify as a "real" physical condition: they are visible, touchable, and lasting. Yet they respond to hypnosis. As the biologist Lewis Thomas wrote, "warts can be made to go away by something that can only be called thinking or something like thinking ... It is one of the great mystifications of Science: warts can be ordered off the skin by hypnotic suggestion."
Despite the part we play in the healing that takes place under hypnosis, the process still feels somewhat passive. What are the ways we can work on our health more actively? First of all, we have to regain the control taken away by the experience of consulting an "expert" in a mindless fashion.
Ever since we relied on our mothers to make a bruised knee better with a Band-Aid and a kiss, we have held on to the assumption that someone out there, somewhere, can make us better.
Whenever we try to heal ourselves, and not abdicate this responsibility completely to doctors, each step is mindful. For example, we question destructive categories of disease (such as the image of cancer as a death sentence). We welcome new information, whether from our bodies or from books. We look at our illness from more than a single perspective (the medical one). We work on changing contexts, whether it is a stressful workplace or a depressing rather than a positive view of the hospital. Finally, the attempt to stay healthy rather than to be "made well" necessarily involves us with process rather than outcome.
Consider how you learned to ride a bike. Someone older and taller held on to the seat to keep you from falling, until you found your balance. Then, without your knowledge, that strong hand let go and you were on your own. You controlled the bicycle without even knowing it.
The same is true for all of us for most of our lives. We control our health, or the course of our diseases, without really knowing that we do. On the bike, however, at some point you realized that you were in control. Now may be the time to learn how to recognize and use our control over illness.
In a sense, we should be able to "take" a placebo instead of a pill. Conceiving of the mind and body as one means that wherever we put the mind, we may be able to put our bodies. For most of us, at present at least, the mind may have to be fooled to reach a healthy place. Once we learn to put it there consciously, the evidence suggests that the body may well follow.
[Ellen Langer]
Mindfulness, p.188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195
................................................................................................................................................................................
There are many factors involved [in healing], but the belief of the patient also must be there because that's what initiates the healing process.
A man who was born blind was brought to Jesus. The first thing Jesus did was spit on some dirt and put it on those eyes. Then he told the blind man to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. When he did, his eyes opened and he could see again.
Where was the healing? Was it in the dirt? In the spit? In the pool? If it was, why don't we make a pilgrimage to that pool now? Or use dirt and spit for blind people?
Jesus, being the son of God, had divine powers. He could have commanded those eyes to see again; he didn't have to go through all those steps, but he did. The placebo effect was taking place. Every step increased the faith of that blind man: "This is going to help me. This will do it."
Eighty or even 90 percent of that healing came from within the patient. It wasn't the dirt, of the spit, or the pool. That patient had within himself the necessary power to open the way to make healing a reality.
Suppose you had a throbbing headache and I said, "Hold this stick for two minutes and your headache will go away." You come from a culture that has to prove everything - this must square with that - so you analyse it as you hold it. "What in the world can cure me of my headache? The colour here? The kind of wood? The length of the stick?" You're still analysing it and two minutes later you still have that throbbing headache.
But let's say you respond with, "You told me that if I hold this, my headache will go away. I'll do that." Finally two minutes pass and, sure enough, your headache is gone. What healed you? Was it the stick? The colour? The kind of wood? You had it within you to cure yourself in the first place and I just pressed a little button for you to make yourself well.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 88-9
................................................................................................................................................................................
Related posts:-
Construct it differently
The Power of Context
Look again
Keep it real
Guiding Ficiton
Making it up as we go along
Pre/trans
Rationality has ruled many once-possible things out as 'irrational' (therefore impossible), and it must now find its way back to these things on its own terms. What was once accepted in the pre-rational world will once again be accepted in the trans-rational world; only it will reappear in a new guise, with a new terminology.
Moderns can no longer believe in non-rational techniques (of healing) because we have looked behind the curtain and seen the wizard, and from this there is no going back; his image is forever imprinted in our memory. We cannot return to the pre-rational state without willfully shutting off (repressing) an important element of our psyche.
................................................................................................................................................................................
[One] method of harnessing the healing powers of the body in an indirect or passive way is the use of placebos. As commonly used a placebo is an inert substance, prepared to resemble an active drug and given to patients in experiments so as to have a basis of comparison for the results of that drug.Usually the placebos have an effect as well, and the difference in degree between this effect and that of the drug is taken as a measure of the drug's effectiveness. For a drug to be marketed, it must outperform the placebo. If the investigators find no difference between real pills and placebos, they are led to believe that the physical medication was ineffective.
There is room for question here, however, because placebos can have powerful effects. In fact, a considerable part of the effect of most prescriptions is considered to be the placebo effect.
Placebo effects are real and powerful. Who is doing the healing when one takes a placebo? Why can't we just say to our minds, "repair this ailing body"? Why must we fool our minds in order to enlist our own powers of self-healing?
Placebos, hypnosis, autosuggestion, faith healing, visualization, positive thinking, bio-feedback are among the many ways we have learned to invoke these powers. Each can be seen as a device for changing mindsets, enabling us to move from an unhealthy to a healthy context.
The more we can learn about how to accomplish this mindfully and deliberately, rather than having to rely on these elaborate, indirect strategies, the more control we will gain over our own health.
The treatment of warts makes a graphic illustration of this self-healing power. Believed to be caused by viral invasion, warts qualify as a "real" physical condition: they are visible, touchable, and lasting. Yet they respond to hypnosis. As the biologist Lewis Thomas wrote, "warts can be made to go away by something that can only be called thinking or something like thinking ... It is one of the great mystifications of Science: warts can be ordered off the skin by hypnotic suggestion."
Despite the part we play in the healing that takes place under hypnosis, the process still feels somewhat passive. What are the ways we can work on our health more actively? First of all, we have to regain the control taken away by the experience of consulting an "expert" in a mindless fashion.
Ever since we relied on our mothers to make a bruised knee better with a Band-Aid and a kiss, we have held on to the assumption that someone out there, somewhere, can make us better.
Whenever we try to heal ourselves, and not abdicate this responsibility completely to doctors, each step is mindful. For example, we question destructive categories of disease (such as the image of cancer as a death sentence). We welcome new information, whether from our bodies or from books. We look at our illness from more than a single perspective (the medical one). We work on changing contexts, whether it is a stressful workplace or a depressing rather than a positive view of the hospital. Finally, the attempt to stay healthy rather than to be "made well" necessarily involves us with process rather than outcome.Consider how you learned to ride a bike. Someone older and taller held on to the seat to keep you from falling, until you found your balance. Then, without your knowledge, that strong hand let go and you were on your own. You controlled the bicycle without even knowing it.
The same is true for all of us for most of our lives. We control our health, or the course of our diseases, without really knowing that we do. On the bike, however, at some point you realized that you were in control. Now may be the time to learn how to recognize and use our control over illness.
In a sense, we should be able to "take" a placebo instead of a pill. Conceiving of the mind and body as one means that wherever we put the mind, we may be able to put our bodies. For most of us, at present at least, the mind may have to be fooled to reach a healthy place. Once we learn to put it there consciously, the evidence suggests that the body may well follow.
[Ellen Langer]
Mindfulness, p.188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195
................................................................................................................................................................................
There are many factors involved [in healing], but the belief of the patient also must be there because that's what initiates the healing process.
A man who was born blind was brought to Jesus. The first thing Jesus did was spit on some dirt and put it on those eyes. Then he told the blind man to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. When he did, his eyes opened and he could see again.
Where was the healing? Was it in the dirt? In the spit? In the pool? If it was, why don't we make a pilgrimage to that pool now? Or use dirt and spit for blind people?
Jesus, being the son of God, had divine powers. He could have commanded those eyes to see again; he didn't have to go through all those steps, but he did. The placebo effect was taking place. Every step increased the faith of that blind man: "This is going to help me. This will do it."
Eighty or even 90 percent of that healing came from within the patient. It wasn't the dirt, of the spit, or the pool. That patient had within himself the necessary power to open the way to make healing a reality.
Suppose you had a throbbing headache and I said, "Hold this stick for two minutes and your headache will go away." You come from a culture that has to prove everything - this must square with that - so you analyse it as you hold it. "What in the world can cure me of my headache? The colour here? The kind of wood? The length of the stick?" You're still analysing it and two minutes later you still have that throbbing headache.
But let's say you respond with, "You told me that if I hold this, my headache will go away. I'll do that." Finally two minutes pass and, sure enough, your headache is gone. What healed you? Was it the stick? The colour? The kind of wood? You had it within you to cure yourself in the first place and I just pressed a little button for you to make yourself well.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 88-9
................................................................................................................................................................................
Related posts:-
Construct it differently
The Power of Context
Look again
Keep it real
Guiding Ficiton
Making it up as we go along
Pre/trans
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