I’m quite unhappy with what I have written here, but I also feel that I want more connection, more two way conversation among the study group. So, here goes.
Learning to embody psychology alchemy.
This was influenced by my trying to answer the first question for class #8.
In the case of the Bain Marie double boiler vessel (p.41) what would be an example of the method of indirection protecting the substance from elemental warfare, loosening and relaxing stubborn resistance by means of gentle warmth?
In reading the material of this class and trying to find relationship between “the questions” and the text, and in trying to find/make sense in/of the text, the text eludes the literalistic intellectual grasper that I habitually use to transplant an idea into my mind, understanding, memory, and my point of view. I’m finding in this course that I cannot directly grasp the ideas in the text in order to make them part of my idea of the world. I’m endeavoring to imagine the inadequacy of my understanding as an insufficiency or symptom that allows an activity/experience other than understanding. Perhaps that other experience might be image-making or image-receiving, or image-awareness and I’m not sure what image-making image-receiving are. Perhaps my facility with image-making/receiving, my image-sense, my imagination, is so impoverished or undernourished though, that I must wait patiently with no expectation of reward, no attainment, (Might charcoal have something to offer here?) while my capacity moves or opens enough, or my “negative capacity” (Keats) is practiced enough to receive the ideas and/or images that reside in the material, process, experience, imagination, mundus imaginalis. Perhaps this way is related to what the Daoists call wu-wei and also to the indirect method of approaching the material and the work. (Listen not only to what is said but for how the idea is explored and expressed. cf Moore A Blue Fire, last para. page 2.) Could my need for, my habit of, “understanding” be too hot a fire from the imaginal, the images in the work of alchemical psychology? (images don’t want to be “understood” they want to be remembered/acknowledged, seen, listened to, and lived with). At the same time, can I sense that there is something in my coming to the work that is calling for more discipline? In Daoist practice, Tso Wang/Zouwang (what Zen calls “Just sitting”) needs to be learned before engaging in the practice of the Golden Elixer, or micro-cosmic orbit, which is a form of alchemy in which a person sits in stillness and at first imagines, then senses (image-sense?) and finds and participates in the activity of the alchemical process within themselves. (which mirrors that of the cosmos) This reminds me of the “desirelessness” of alchemical charcoal.
At this time I’m looking for, musing about, another way to approach the text, the ideas, the work, and myself. I’m trying to not press too hard, with my desire for understanding and knowledge (healing, power, “control”, etc.). As a Daoist priest once told me in a practice retreat, “The conceptual thinking will never experience attaining the Way[Dao]. ... Relax. When you can.” and “Don’t bear down too hard on life.” Maybe something in all this has something to do with loosening and relaxing my own style of stubborn resistance, or style of stubborn grasping for what I think to be a valuable result. Maybe it has to do with the tightness of the cultural view point within which we are working. Maybe if I were not to bare down so hard with my hopes of what I want to get from this activity, the images in the work may see me as being more friendly to approach. -More interested in them and less interested in me. From 4/17/14 class Q.5- I’m entertaining the idea that in sticking with the reading and the class some heat is made which may begin to melt (soften?) the innate resistance I experience to sticking with my unclarity. As I’m seeing it, sticking with it and not pressing or “bear[ing] down too hard” by engaging in too much “intellectual work”or self-judgement, may be a way of applying a “gentle warmth” in my approach to these ideas and images. I’ll see, perhaps in this soft approach there may not be enough “fierceness” to gather momentum for continuing. I have more work to do with all this, and as usual I feel that I have just said something stupid or confused or any number of other embarrassing things in attempting to contribute to our experience here in these realms, and in an attempt to be seen. “Esse is percipi”, to be is to be seen. And so it seems to me that to be seen, or heard, is to be (to exist). When I think these thoughts the next thought to arrive is- Hillman: “What do you do to keep from going insane? ...we try to go out on a limb. ...We try to go to unsafe places. We risk. With our minds, we risk.”
Hillman: I think that in order to protect yourself against insanity, you must every day propitiate madness.
~~~
Hillman: Crazy means “cracked,” the cracks that let things in. It’s not smooth, it’s not safe. So what do you do, then, to let the madness in? What do you do to keep from going insane?
~~~
Hillman: ...we try to go out on a limb.
~~~
Hillman: We try to go to unsafe places. We risk. With our minds, we risk.
Ventura: With our work. In our work. Whether that work ultimately stinks or not is for others to judge, but it’s risky, that’s a fact.
~~~
Hillman: It makes me most happy when I can go the farthest out. ... it is not enough to go out on a limb, you’ve got to be willing to saw it off.
~~~
H: ...something is trying to get in...
We’ve had a Hundred Years... p.171-173
Joseph
Replies
So many words and thinking - tiring. Wish I could be more succinct.
1) Paragraph beginning, "In reading the material..." Sentence: "I’m finding in this course that I cannot directly grasp the ideas in the text in order to make them part of my idea of the world." I'm not saying that the ideas should be able to be grasped in this way, a direct way. I'm actually continually looking for my ideas to be shifted to more closer match the world view of archetypal psychology, it's ideas, and the imaginal reality of which it speaks. So the statement is an acknowledgement of where I am, and where I want to go, with my psychological point of view. I think my POV continues to shift and I'm entertaining the idea that in that shift, the method of indirection could be seen to play an important role. Again, my understanding of the Daoist idea of wu wei and alchemical charcoal comes to mind. There is work being done, and I'm trying to see to it that the fire/desire-despiration/intellectual work that I bring to the process/activity isn't so overbearing that it "scares" away the images who are there to visit me. I think this connects to the idea that in becoming familiar with the imaginal realm/world we should approach it on its own terms. And though I may be mistaken, I somehow connect the indirect with the imaginal - maybe I'm associating "the direct" with "the literal". That may not be accurate, but I haven't entertained that idea until I got to this point in this writing. Anyway, I'm trying out the idea that seeing my frustration (symptom) with reading the text, addressing the questions, and working the ideas, is not only personal but that it could belong to PointOfView of "the culture of efficiency and progress”. A substantial aspect of our cultural myth includes the view that the direct way is the only way or the best way. While what is seen as the direct way might be more complex than it represents itself to be, still it does get a good amount of play.
2) Corrections - Paragraph beginning, "In reading the material..." Sentence: "Could my need for, my habit of, “understanding” be too hot a fire from the imaginal, the images in the work of alchemical psychology?" "from the imaginal" should read "for the imaginal"
With much gratitude to the group, especially Holly, Debra, Nuala for helping me with the difficult emotions accompanying my around the two original posts of yesterday, and as every-Robbie and Pat,
In Psyche (Soul of the World) and trying for Eros (Connection)
Joseph
This isn't my first time reading this material. Over the course of the last year I have begun to experience how it is to be the alchemist, the material, and the vessel. I find myself impatient with concepts that are not experienced. I find myself reading and rereading passages that expand my ability to attend to the material and my experience of it. Phrases that speak to me don't necessarily speak to anyone else, but when I am talking to someone about it, we identify the writings that we each associate with how we understand it, just as you have done here.
For me the most powerful tool is attention, and being able to "enter" the "other", be it dream image or real. It is a participation in or mimetic response perhaps. I understand it as a kind of patient attention-- waiting for the "other" to reveal itself. The material in the book is still not clear, but so much clearer than the last time I read it.
I think you are right. It is something waiting to get in.
Dorothy, Your comment that you find, “Phrases that speak to me don't necessarily speak to anyone else”, reminds me of Hillman saying that the results that one alchemist obtained were not necessarily those that were experienced by another alchemist.(Not sure where it is that he said something like that) It's helpful for me to be reminded of this. / I appreciate that you have some experience of “being” other images, I am working with/for this. That you have begun to experience “how it is to be the alchemist, the material, and the vessel”, reminds me of something Hillman and Shamdasani speak about in Lament of the Dead: Psychology After Jung’s Red Book. (p.99 para 1 Hillman, to p. 101, para 2 Shamdasani) (It is of course a/the(?) major theme of Hillman's) I’ve just reached p. 102 so I don’t know what else they might say in Lament... regarding this. p.99-1Hillman-the point of view in Jung’s Red Book offers ‘an idea of ourselves’ that differs from the one that is characteristic of our culture. The profoundly personal is found in the figures of the imagination, and in the depths of human history. p.100 Shamdasani and Hillman-the profoundly personal are the powers that move in our depths. p.100, para. 9-We are one participant among others in fantasy. p.101-1 Hillman-We are one image among others… “There are a lot of people in your house. You don’t live alone.” p.101-2 Shamdasani-We are not a fixed human being. / Thank you for your thoughts and for telling us your point of view as one who, having read the material before, has gone before us.
Chillax. :) You're making it too complicated. You have awesome answers to the questions. You're just doubting yourself.
And don't be mortified about the emails. Nothing made me happier this afternoon and more excited about tonight's class. :)