Forever Becoming

Feed Your Imagination!

The fact is that people must not take jobs that they find stifling - or if they cannot avoid this, they must organize their weekends so as to feed the imagination, even at the worst moments of boring routine.

It has been said that it is easier to keep the imaginative life going in a truly boring routine than in an area of somewhat interesting work.

[D.W. Winnicott]
Home Is Where We Start From: Essays By A Psychoanalyst ('Living Creatively'), p.43

................................................................................................................................................................................

Truth to tell, I have a very high opinion of fantasy.

It is true that there are worthless, inadequate, morbid and unsatisfying fantasies whose sterile nature will be quickly recognized by every person endowed with commonsense; but this of course proves nothing against the value of creative imagination. All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy.

The creative activity of the imagination frees man from his bondage to the "nothing but" and liberates in him the spirit of play. As Schiller says, man is completely human only when he is playing.

[C.G. Jung]
Modern Man In Search Of A Soul ('The Aims of Psychotherapy'), p.67

................................................................................................................................................................................

Related posts:-
Come on Youth

Carry Each Other

It is human beings who are likely to destroy the world. If so, we can perhaps die in the last atomic explosion knowing that this is not health but fear; it is part of the failure of healthy people and healthy society to carry its ill members.

[D.W. Winnicott]
Home Is Where We Start From: Essays By A Psychoanalyst ('The Concept of a Healthy Individual'), p.37

Weeds, he said, don't exist. We call plants we don't want "weeds," but to Rolling Thunder all plants have a purpose that should be respected.

[...] For him there are no weeds, no mosquito bites, no unwanted rains. There are no dangerous plants or animals.

For him there is no fear.

The wind and the rain, the mosquitoes and the snakes are all within him. His consciousness extends to include them within its very being.

[Doug Boyd]
Rolling Thunder, p.9, 72

In Native American lifestyles, seldom is anything thrown away unused - including people.

A Crow traditionalist says, "We don't waster people, the way white society does. Every person has their gift."

[Walter L. Williams]
The Spirit and the Flesh, p. 57

As you have by now surely noticed, I don’t know enough about politics to ponder a solution and my hands are sticky with blood money from representing corporate interests through film, television and commercials, venerating, through my endorsements and celebrity, products and a lifestyle that contributes to the alienation of an increasingly dissatisfied underclass.

But I know, as we all intuitively know that the solution is all around us and it isn’t political, it is spiritual. Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

If we want to live in a society where people feel included, we must include them, where they feel represented, we must represent them and where they feel love and compassion for their communities then we, the members of that community, must find love and compassion for them.

[Russell Brand]

[...] It is not self-defense but self-mastery that the adepts have learned.

To maintain and assert the illusory sense of a separate, contending self, to encourage and nourish a preoccupation with adversity and defensiveness - this is precisely what martial arts is not. Self-mastery involves developing a concept of self quite different from the contemporary meaning implied when using the English words "self" and "defense."

Self-mastery involves overcoming the illusion of the isolated self.

This basic principle of self-mastery must be what Aki's karate master had in mind when he told his new students, "Do not get hit."

Aki's style and philosophy seemed to suggest a sense of collective self - of an interplay between mutual and individual will and intent. Because of the interrelatedness of all things, each "self" is a responsible participant in the collective will of all of life.

One way of saying this is that both "hitter" and "hittee" are co-creators of the scenario in which someone hits someone.

Such a thought threatens those who prefer to hold onto a we-they, victim-consciousness point of view. But a we-they point of view is threatening in itself.

It will be a co-creation philosophy, rather than a self-defense philosophy, that will provide workable solutions for our contemporary social problems.

[Doug Boyd]
Mystics, Magicians and Medicine People: Tales of a Wanderer, p. 59-63, 65-6

Going to extremes

Leading By Example

If a prisoner wants to free his companions in misfortune, he must first break out of his own chains. It's the only way to do it. You have to gain in strength to act appropriately.

The spiritual path begins with a period of retreat from the world, like a wounded deer looking for a solitary, peaceful spot to heal her wounds. Here, the wounds are those inflicted by ignorance.

To be able to help beings, there should no longer be any difference between what you teach and what you are. A beginner might feel an immense desire to help others, but generally doesn't ave sufficient spiritual maturity to be able to do so.

In the case of the lama I spent most time with, Khyentse Rinpoche, he spent some seventeen years in solitary retreat in his youth, interrupted only by visits to his teachers from time to time. Then, when he was thirty-five, his teacher told him, 'Now the time has come for you to transmit your knowledge and experience to others.'

[Matthieu Ricard]
The Monk and the Philosopher, p.154

[...] I must point out that would-be teachers of my work must be trained to put the principles and procedures of its technique into practice in the use of themselves in their daily activities before they attempt to teach others to do likewise.

Herein lies the difference between the proposed training and all other forms of training. For students may take courses of training in medicine, physiology, theology, law, philosophy, or anything else without the matter of the use of themselves being called into question. But in the training for this teaching a considerable amount of work must be done on the students individually so that they may learn to use themselves satisfactorily, and it is only when they have reached a given standard in the use of themselves that they will be given the opportunity for practical teaching experience.

A training in the satisfactory direction of the use of his own mechanisms is essential to the medical man's personal equipment [...]

[F. Matthias Alexander]
The Use of the Self, p.88, 117

Cree children play together hunting porcupine and in this way develop the skills and understanding needed for hunting larger and faster-moving animals. Later, a boy will travel with a hunter and watch how he moves through the snow looking for signs, setting traps, moving across great distances, and always knowing where he is.

In this learning, no one instructs or tells the child what to do; rather, the child watches and takes things in.

Then, one day, that child is allowed to go out alone and set traps, for the testing of a piece of knowledge is always done in private. And, finally, there will be some form of public acknowledgment that skills have been learned and that the young person has acquired new knowledge.

This system of learning was once common in the West. From barrel making to Renaissance painting, the apprentice system was the way most people learned their trades.

Dr. Ruth Dempsey, who is an educational researcher at the University of Ottawa, has told me that if an adult wishes to learn something new the most effective way is not to ask a professional teacher, but an expert in the field. Most experts have never analyzed their skills and knowledge and may not even be able to tell a person how they do a particular task, but by hanging around them a person will pick up their skills.

By contrast, a professional teacher analyzes, structures, and articulates knowledge in a series of programmed steps which, at least in Dempsey's opinion, appear to hamper the natural processes of learning.

[F. David Peat]
Blackfoot Physics, p.70, 73

Optimism (as cultural rebellion)

Optimism is the vital force that entangles itself with, and then shapes, the future. Nihilistic cynicism is a dominant force within culture and leaves no space for useful visions of the future. This has been a problem for a long time now.

Interestingly with Obama this spirit has shifted slightly in the last few weeks. Most people find it hard to imagine change until it happens. This means that artists who can, have to keep moving away from dominant and institutionalised ways of thinking, and create useful visions of the future. They can also extend the boundaries of what has been considered possible. Today this is a cultural rebellion.

[Matthew Stone]
Interview in Urban Canvas (Vice supplement)

Rosenthal: I wanted to pull you back to two things; first of all the idea of orchestration and how much control you execute over the ‘scene’, and then how much of a pre conceived idea you had of what you wanted the squat in Peckham to become?

Stone: I think that in all situations it has to be a balance of both; having an idea of where you want something to go and then using your control to guide it there.

Rosenthal: I agree with you entirely, and then you go with the flow because you never quite know what you are going to find. I am a great believer in just finding things or people, rather than looking.

Stone: But your eyes must be open!

Rosenthal: Yes, your eyes have to be open. You walk in the street and you never quite know who or what you are going to find round the next corner and that is why you don’t go out looking, you go out in a vague haze.

Stone: But you need to ‘leave the house’.

Rosenthal: (laughs) I am not sure about all these metaphors but yes, you need to ‘leave the house’ or ‘pick up the book’ or whatever it is, but searching for something is not a good idea if you ask me. I am also a huge believer in fate.

Stone: For me fate is a very limited and traditional view of optimism, this idea that everything will work out or the world is inherently a good place. Psychologically it has been proven to be a useful mental position, but that’s not enough for me.

Rosenthal: Ok so that brings me back to the essence of your philosophy. How would you essentially define your philosophy of Optimism?

Stone: I have to be conscious of many things when I am describing this here, as there are many valid reasons that people in recent history have avoided this term ‘Optimism’. We stand in the shadow of a vast century…

Rosenthal: In which, if I may say so, the two historically decisive ideologies, i.e. communism and fascism, if you were one of those to be included, were in fact promoters of a certain kind of crude optimism.

Stone: I saw an interesting cartoon recently that showed Mao in front of thousands of Chinese people with a speech bubble reading “Yes we can”. I think we have to be mindful of blind optimism.

Rosenthal: So what’s the difference between blind optimism and Optimism?

Stone: Blind optimism ignores the reality of suffering and is passive to reality. Without a place in culture for new visions of the future we are just left with nihilism and apathy. Optimism must be more than a naïve faith that the future will be OK; actually I’m going to quote myself here “Optimism is the vital force that entangles itself with, and then shapes through action, the future.”

Rosenthal: Considering we are such good friends I have seen a few of your exhibitions but I haven’t ever managed to witness one of your performances. From what I have seen though, you appear to be interested in interaction and the warmth between humans. Can you describe your own work a little bit?

Stone: It’s about interconnection and optimistic visions of social interaction. I really believe that the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts.

Rosenthal: What does the whole consist of?

Stone: The whole consists of everybody and everything and takes in the vast interconnected nature of the universe. For example, when I am making an image, I want you to see a group that is confusing with regard to who's who. Where does one person start and the next begin? I perceive that we do not finish at the end of our fingertips.

Rosenthal: What do you mean by that?

Stone: I mean that the effect we have as individuals on the world has a far greater reach than that of our physical bodies. I have been developing sculptures recently that consist of intersecting solid cubes covered with images of bodies. These cubes, as they interlock, share an invisible space beneath their surfaces, like a Venn diagram. I am really interested in the way two separate ideas can at the same time be completely opposite, but that there can also be an acknowledgment of a shared space.
The cube sculptures illustrate a commonality between objects that are seen as distinct and are symbols for a way of thinking that maintains simultaneously oppositional stances. All at once! (laughs)
I have been toying with the invented term “Multidox Theory”, which is basically a paradox, but with the potential for more than two aspects. I think the future lies in the idea that you can effectively hold two opposing opinions at the same time.

Rosenthal: That is why I have always loved opera, because you can hear two or sometimes many more people, with different thoughts, singing simultaneously. I love the contrariness of it.

Norman Rosenthal and Matthew Stone in conversation, AnOtherMan magazine. See the full thing here.

Related posts:-
Bright spark

Feed Your Imagination!

Carry Each Other

Leading By Example

Optimism (as cultural rebellion)

Search Forever Becoming

Archives