Let us suppose, counter-factually, that there was a planet sized object circling our Sun with a trajectory that is COMPLETELY different than that of all other planets. Let us further suppose that it is invisible. Lots of planets are invisible. Happens all the time. How many of them can you see? None. That proves my point. If you could see them they wouldn’t be invisible.
Now, as I continue to channel my inner Leftist intellectual urges, let us use this as a METAPHOR, as I think I have done in the past, but I can’t remember, for primal traumas which affect everything, but are invisible. This part is serious. I think humor is an Emergent Property of emotional conflict and feeling trapped. It is a way of untrapping yourself. Believe it or not, I can actually be quite funny. I make people laugh. Not sure if it comes from a healthy place, though.
Be that as it may, as we continue to circle with and like Nibiru–and I am now recalling for sure I’ve used this metaphor in the past six months–much psychological work revolves around beginning to notice patterns in your own behavior which are compulsive. Why did I do that? I don’t know. Any guesses? No, not really.
And as inner work continues, you notice these episodes, where some hidden program starts to run, and it is in some respects like watching someone else. What is he doing now? Why did he do that?
I am listening to Dan Siegels Mindsight, and he too talks about psychological parts, and adds the interesting idea that they need to be integrated in three ways: within themselves, between themselves, and in interactions with other actual people.
And he add the further interesting idea that a healthy self is a sort of coalition of parts. It is a group of, in some respects, disparate parts, choosing to work together for a common goal.
Well, for some of us, some bastard is sitting in the middle feeding all the secrets to the 1960’s Russians. Wherever you are, they always have your coordinates. I see this in dreams.
But on a long drive the other day, I found what my shaking and anxiety and shame was trying to hide from me. And I’m not going to talk about it. I am simply going to say it had a valid story. It was doing something legitimate, and to the extent one can speak of underlying gestalts when speaking of unconscious processes, noble.
This is good.
And wandering around Walgreen’s tonight, to buy some of the Fisherman’s Friend lozenges I am addicted to and some red hot Cheeto’s, I got to thinking about emotional superficiality. It is MUCH, MUCH easier to control people politically who exist intellectually on a superficial, but even more important on an emotionally superficial, level.
Gut instinct is a real thing. It will penetrate the most carefully crafted BS, if it is allowed to operate, and if it is listened to. That is why Trump is in this race, and still stands a good chance of winning it: ordinary people smell rats. I was reading today that Jerry Falwell’s son, who is a Trump supporter, claims to have more than a hunch that the Trump audio was released by REPUBLICANS. Please keep in mind that the last two nominees–McCain and Romney–as well as George H.W. at least (I could keep closer tabs on all this, but it disgusts me more than a little) have in effect endorsed Hillary Rob’em Clinton. (I couldn’t resist that, but will now slap my hand for going there).
But subordinary people–which by and large is to say the educated upper middle decadent class–sees nothing. They feel nothing. Their bullshit detectors are not operational.
What they feel is emotionality. What they feel is sentimentality. What they feel are superficial, labile emotions that can be manipulated like the score of a movie track. That ARE manipulated like a movie track.
I was reading some nonsense from Sean Penn in a book in some stationary store. And if you look at his picture, he has a worn face, and can easily carry the expression of someone who has led a deep and meaningful life. But my sense is that when he has his “Tree of Life” moment, he is really wondering inside: “I need to stop eating meatloaf. It really fucks my stomach up. To the left? Sure. Look deep. Feel deep. I wonder if Halle Berry is single? You know, I’ve never seen a tornado. Sadness? Sure. Think about dogs. Dogs are real, man, real as real dogs get. They get run over, and that is fucked up. Cut.”
And I was thinking that deep emotions need three things: attention, time, and space.
Attention: if you are looking at your phone continually, turning the TV on when you get up, and go to sleep with it on at night, you are not paying attention to yourself. If you are not taking quiet time regularly to allow things to rise up, to emerge like faint will ‘o wisps from who knows where, and welcoming them, and allowing them to do what they need to do, then you are compulsive. If you are compulsive, you have placed yourself on a continuum with Skinner’s rats. You are TRAINED, are you not?
Time is of course related. Do you have weeks where you do little, where by contemporary American standards you are lazy? How willing are you to lay around, not drunk, not chasing women or men, but just watching the waves or clouds for hours at a time?
I was feeling very relaxed the other day, and wondering what it would have been like to be at some kind of trading post or inn in Central Asia, and to go days without seeing anyone new. To just sit there, in the sun, watching the sky, all day. Doing chores as needed, reading a bit. Not worried. Not in a hurry. With the sky a big partner in your life.
Finally, space. How do you separate yourself from worry? How hemmed in are you by social obligations, by financial problems, by work, by continual stresses of various sorts? There needs to be daylight between you and all that if you are going to be able to allow your inner self to emerge.
And I look at our modern world, and it is virtually–and perhaps literally–calculated to make people stupid.
I was at a concert the other night watching people, and when I allow it–which is rare–I am absolutely an Empath. It is horrible. It is fantastic, too, but you cannot look at some crowds and not see horror story after horror story. Or so it seemed to me. I felt the anxiety. I felt the manias. I felt the dissociation. I felt the alienation. And I don’t think it was me. It was not projection. It was identification with all the countless myriads of feelings that I have felt.
Ah, that is enough for now. Perhaps it will prove of some use to someone.