Red Book Lecture 2 February 2-16
Welcome all and especially newcomers to the second chunk of the RED BOOK.
As Robbie compares Jung’s experiences of image both as metaphor and as an embodied experience, we are presented with a great challenge. How to be with the Red Book both from Jung and Robbie’s perspectives in a state of Negative Capability-- being in the unknown without going right to meaning even, and, especially when an insight comes.
There is the great example of the desert and how Jung at first is experiencing it as an embodied state and then almost immediately is pulled to meaning-- desert as soul.
Robbies says:
“The Spirit of the Depth is teaching Jung to be a phenomenologist. How to wait on images... to get into their true becoming and then he can find the seeds for them and find what they are doing and who they are. If we want to honor him we have to try to move through this material without understanding. And of course, Jung fails miserably and so will we.”
So then the question comes: What are we to ‘discuss’ in this forum as we endeavor to be in the ‘waiting’, experiencing the Red Book and what Robbie and each other have to say, as an environment, a place?
Well Janet asked me a question this morning when we talked about this: “What was your experience as you listened to this section?”
I told her I had spread out the big Red Book on my bed along with the little one and as I listened I took notes and stopped the recording, re-listened to parts .... then I worried oh ,oh, I was trying to make meaning, but no, I really felt like I was diving into the experience in a deeper way than the last time I listened. I was thrilled, confused, excited, and worried.
So let’s continue on as we go slowly, waiting, being with the discomfort of not knowing and share what that is like for us and perhaps noticing other places where Jung (and we) go to metaphor, to embodiment and back again.
Chris and Janet
Replies
On negative capability, this is more information, cited from a website called Brain Pickings. It references Keats' idea a bit more and gives his single quotation to it:
Keats uses the phrase that has come to be the single most emblematic phrase of his entire surviving correspondence, even though he only makes mention of it once: “Negative Capability” — the willingness to embrace uncertainty, live with mystery, and make peace with ambiguity. It is triggered by Keats’s disagreement with English poet and philosopher Coleridge, whose quest for definitive answers over beauty lays the foundations for modern-day reductionism; the concept suggests that life is about living the question, that ignorance and uncertain drive inquiry, that the mysterious is worth holding onto without immediately answering. This is a strange concept for us in our times. The spirit of the times wants answers, now.
Keats writes:
Ava, thank you! What a wonderful discovery, Keats Negative Capability! I was totally ignorant!
that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason ...
You're right, this is a hard argument to make when:
"The spirit of the times wants answers, now. "
This, for me, is without question a Shamdasani "shard."
Thanks again!
Yes - the spirit of the times wants answers now. In some circles, like ours of TRB study group and other spiritually minded, some are fascinated by the idea of negative capability. We might even choose to practice it for this module and on.
But, most people -- now as then -- wish answers immediately, or at least after a rational, decent period of time in which to figure it out. This is tonight's dilemma accompanying a feeling of slight depression, or maybe I'm just tired, returning to NYC on a flight into LaGuardia, after a day of speaking. My sponsors and audience are lovely people; I like them a lot; they are smart; they are experienced; they invited me to speak to which I was happy to accept; and, yes, they want answers, now. Even mentioning the mystery, the waiting, the allowance of negative capability and negative space is ignored. It is not criticized; it is as if I didn't say it; it is ignored. (Did I say it? Even I'm not sure, but I believe I did talk about negative capability.)
But, since conferences exist within the space of short talks and time constraints that are enforced since there are many speakers, all of whom are honored and happy to be speaking and have prepared carefully -- one ends up having to state conceptual platforms in definitive ways. So strong, so strong, is the orientation for productive insights that give answers that solve problems that meet goals. Even I have become caught up in it despite my fascination with negative capability.
So, when one is invited to speak about an area of knowing that I am known to know, how does one speak to an audience who wants to know about non-knowing?
Ava, Such a great question!! And so difficult, so uncomfortable. So in the "how" of the question I think is the key. At risk of answering the "how" of being with, living the question, what is it like to do that with this big question here's what's here for me.
When I sit with this what comes up is that discomfort, that worry of not being understood, thought of as crazy (more on that later in a post on being with some of my 'pus'!) as I try to respond and be with your question.
I think one possibility is to share what you are actually experiencing while speaking about negative-capability, how uncomfortable it is, how vulnerable it is. (what I am trying to do now) Wow! I think I am in the depths here :) Perhaps share an experience of being with discomfort (like Robbie did) what that's like and how you may have changed (not necessarily linearly)
Thought I'd give it a try.
Not putting together my own 'pus' experience. If you don't see it right away know I am probably scared to post.
Where is the like button?
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