The short lecture by Arnaud Maitlin I posted in the last post got me to thinking/feeling. In how many ways are we fractured, is our consciousness fractured? It seems to me that there is a dimensionality in, for example, feeling how something looks or sounds; or in visualizing a feeling or scent. The goal is synaesthesia, which is full integration. The goal of Kum Nye is to open sensuality.
Is it not a terrible misfortune that we more or less equate sensuality with sex? Your typical work hard/play hard business executive is winding down with golf, some drinks, and an attractive woman. That is his world. I have met this man many times, gotten drunk with him, paid attention.
I can achieve much, much higher qualitative states, much higher order sensuality than he can, even if the room is filled with attractive women, as was sometimes the case with Tiger Woods.
Why run when you walk?
Time: as a culture do we not lack time? It seems to me that you need time to process things, to process feelings, to become a complete human being. If people are becoming less “real”–and I think in some respects this pattern, which I view as real, can be seen expressed mythically in zombies and “body snatchers” of the sort seen in “The Worlds End”–it seems to me that the first aspect is simply that they have developed the habit of being always task motivated.
The second aspect is that we have many alternatives to being real. Often times, depth comes from processed emotional hurt. But you have to walk through that dark tunnel and come out the other side. In our era, you can distract yourself very, very easily. Distractions are hanging like lotus blossoms from every tree. Our rooms are filled with them.
I have not had TV for many years now, and it is hard for me to imagine, but in many homes the TV is almost never off. They turn it on first thing in the morning, it’s in the bars and medical offices you go to, and people fall asleep watching it. Most TV’s have a sleep timer, in my understanding.
There is never silence. We fear silence.
And I think in many marriages, they fear silence because both people have emotional realities that they can’t quite express even to themselves–they are distracted all day every day–and thus can’t share with their spouse, and some of these realities frighten them. Who did you marry, anyway? Why? Who were you then, and are you that person now? You don’t know who you were then, because you STILL don’t know who you are today. You haven’t taken the time to figure it out.
And importantly, you haven’t had access to a good emotional technology like Kum Nye or Holotropic Breathwork.
We constantly hear about people trying to “find themselves”, but not as often do we hear about people “finding themselves”.
Every person has in my view, my feeling, an essence, some subtle quality of energy that makes them unique. If it is true that every snowflake is unique, surely it is also true that most of them look alike, and only sustained inspection allows one to differentiate them. This inspection is worthwhile, with people. It is fun. It is something innate in us, something which resonates with what is best about being human.
Evil: I was laying in my bed today watching the Joker. I am fortunate in that I set my own hours, and my boss sometimes decides it’s best to lay in bed for several hours in the morning.
I have a sort of TV in my head. Images will just sort of appear, and I watch and follow them. I’m not asleep, just in a sort of trance, but it is almost always useful.
Again, I was watching the Joker today, and it occurred to me that he is split. His outer persona is a superficial disguise he put on to get through some trauma, which he has learned to identify with. His head and heart are split. His actions are guided entirely by his heart, by deep unprocessed feelings, but the feelings he allows himself to feel are associated with his disguise.
Could we say there are “thought-feelings”, which is to say affective states that are really just robust abstractions, but which come to substitute for real, nutritive experience? I don’t know.
But it seems to me that we need to look at evil as a sort of multiple personality disorder. The hurt child is still in there, locked in a room. It simply lacks a means by which to escape, no alternative to misery.
For me, my current growth spurt only came about because I have found in my Kum Nye practice a means by which to generate positive feelings. None of us are strong enough to endure powerful negative feelings without feeling an alternative to them. You run out of space to hold them. You shut down. You have to. There is a sort of emotional circuit breaker that does not let us transmit more voltage than we can handle.
I’m not quite done with this, but I’m not sure where it’s going. I’m going to leave it for now. I did say it would be rambling.