Spiritual Crises:
1. In Catholic school, eighth grade, my Nun told me that everyone that wasn't a Catholic was going to hell, sorry, but that's the way things are.
I asked, "What about Protestants?"
"I'm not sure."
"What about all the people in India?"
"Yes, they are going to hell."
"But they don't even have access to Catholic teaching."
She didn't say anything else.
After that conversation I knew something was very wrong with everything I had been taught up to that point.
2. After 9/11/2001 I saw the president on television, and he was asking for people to volunteer for the National Guard. I have never felt connected to my country, I thought maybe something was wrong with me, and I saw his request as an opportunity to see if I could feel connected. My expectations were that I would end up guarding a base for a few months if the war with Afghanistan got bad enough, but then we all know how things unfolded - we got war fever as a country and invaded Iraq (Jung called it "Wotan," after the German pre-Christian war god, and defined it as a collective, national psychosis directed as a passion for war. People slip into the collective unconscious archetype of the Shadow, and as a group agree to do evil). My expectations about only having to guard a base were wrong, and I had to leave grad school in my final semester to go to Texas and train for a year long deployment in Afghanistan. This left me feeling really ambivalent because:
- My expectations were wrong
- I felt bad about fighting in a war
- It felt really great being outside and exercising and shooting rifles. I had a great time.
Having really strong feelings in two directions usually not identified together, brought on a period of intense self-reflection, which probably looked like depression to other people, but in retrospect I was unsure of what I was - and what looked like depression was more of a lack of commitment to a personality. I was pretty sure I should be nice to people, so I was nice when possible, but besides that it was all very vague. I felt vaguely humiliated that my country lionized pop-stars, and designer clothes, and felt that something Orwellian and sinister was happening to the world. My circumstances wouldn't allow me to resolve the internal conflict, but now that I am out of the National Guard I am internally able to understand my conflict more accurately.
When I came home for a two week leave, in the middle of my deployment from Afghanistan, I went to a Border's bookstore and walked straight to the philosophy section and picked up:
Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil"
Foucault's "Power"
and then I walked over to the psychology section, and not knowing very much about the subject bought every book authored by Sigmund Freud in the store.
I went back to Afghanistan with a backpack full of books. It was time to solve the riddle of existence, haha. The other soldiers didn't even really notice my reading, or if they did, they didn't say anything about it. Except one overnight guard shift, when I was reading the in the radio room, and the colonel came in and saw I was reading Foucault's "Power," and laughed. While reading the books in Afghanistan I got a lot more out of Nietzsche and Foucault than I did Freud, who seemed to be writing generally about an experience I wasn't having, if anything there wasn't enough "repressed drives."
But now I have found Carl Jung, and I feel a little like a religious convert - I want to spread the word, because Jung's explanations are very helpful while examining my life. I feel like a new person, like I can now clean my house/mind.
I can now identify when my witness consciousness is rambling/complaining, and just understanding that one concept, is saving a ton of time and struggle + I can get to my more productive thoughts easier - because I have started to be able to filter that little voice (witness consciousness) that complains and compares. Also, I can identify it in other people, and I can filter them, and have sympathy for them and their internal struggles instead of being annoyed.
I am in the process of seeing how far I can take a rejection of rational materialism. I would define rational materialism as the desire to spiritually fulfill yourself with two things:
- facts
- objects
I think rational materialism can work well in some specific cultural contexts, like medicine and science. But it is stupid for someone like me, an artist, to waste my time thinking like a scientist, because they are two different processes. Jung calls them directed and undirected thinking. The moment when an artist needs to use directed thinking is when they are editing work, or organising logistics for shipping work. The rest of the time they use their imagination/undirected thinking.
What we need as a people is a spiritual infrastructure that can survive in a non-isolated, multi-cultural, non-religious enviroment. This means we have to come to terms with the unconscious parts of ourselves which rational materialism either denies, tries to feed with objects, or explain with materialistic science, none of which can fill the void of the God-Image when trying to live a good and meaningful life.
I found this video after I googled the phrase "witness consciouness" and the word complaining, he wrote a popular book called A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle:
7 comments:
Bill,
re: 2 - lots of Americans didn't get a wotanic psychosis. There were literally millions of people all over the country rallying at anti-war protests, begging our elected leaders NOT to go to war. Lots of people in the group DID NOT agree to do evil. We just weren't strong enough to stop the people in charge from making a series of very bad decisions.
I thought you got bit by some weird bout of patriotic fervor, and that's why you joined. Personally, I think fealty to country/nationality/tribal group is pretty much a crock of sh!t, a vestigial survival mechanism that's about as useful as an appendix. We are all human, we all bleed red, and until people stop seeing themselves through this dichotomous lens of me/them or us/them, we will continue wrecking the planet we live on and causing other people to suffer.
Was some of the vagueness and de-selfing part of your military training (per the book On Killing, by Dave Grossman), or was it more because you were having these internal conflicts about pleasure, aggression, imperialism, and giving out M&Ms to Afghan kids because it would make them smile?
"What we need as a people is a spiritual infrastructure that can survive in a non-isolated, multi-cultural, non-religious enviroment. This means we have to come to terms with the unconscious parts of ourselves which rational materialism either denies, tries to feed with objects, or explain with materialistic science, none of which can fill the void of the God-Image when trying to live a good and meaningful life."
Can we construct this in a capitalistic society?
"Lots of people in the group DID NOT agree to do evil. We just weren't strong enough to stop the people in charge from making a series of very bad decisions."
I know millions of people protested, but the force behind them was emphemeral compared to the bloodlust of the collective. The News, which is a product of the same type of collective egoism that produced the war, downplayed the protests, and seemed to embrace the collective psychosis uncritically. There was a mindless force compelling people, and as more people gave into it the force became more compelling, and I think Jung would definately describe it as a psychosis of the collective unconscious. The only way to stop it is for more people to become self-aware of their unconscious.
I joined the Army right before the bloodlust kicked in, and I wouldn't have joined if I had waited till the Iraq talk started, because I saw how crazy things were going to get at that point, but I was already underwater, and being tossed around like a piece of seaweed in the surf.
Check out the video I added at the bottom of the post, Eckhart Tolle, basically he says that corporations and governments will collapse if enough people can become self aware. Of course, who knows what wreckage big companies and governments will cause as they come crashing to the Earth. This guy is good, because he is reaching normal people, his book "A New Earth" was endorsed by Oprah - so who knows maybe things can change. He is lecturing people not to be afraid of the current change in the economy, but that is a natural product of people becoming aware of the ego, and growing into more conscious beings.
It's obvious to me that the consumption in the USA has becoming disgusting, and hollow, and people are unhappy, I think a lot of people can see it too. But I don't know how a collective would operate more fairly on the scale of an organization the size of the USA... The change has to come from within the people themselves.
I think it would be good if the federal government was weakened, and that the president lost the ability to declare war. If war could only be declared by the Senate, and not just the funding for war, but actually calling it a war and at least the 100 Senators having to step up and agree and take the burden of it on themselves.
I am really into the alternative currency programs, for instance, Ithaca NY has a alternate currency called the "Hour," which is based on the unit of time/labor, and not a completely abstracted value like money.
The US Dollar is a prettty intense thing. I did some reading about the infrastructure behind the creation of the US Dollar, for instance, all money is created by banks as debt and bears interest, that is why the economy has to grow every year, so the people working can cover the interest payments. That is really what is happening, it's almost unbelivable. There is no money generated in America that is not collecting interest for a bank, pretty fucked up situation if you ask me. What if the money from the interest went into a social institution that produced healthy food, like community gardens, instead of banks - what if people directed their energy to having wonderful, healthy communities instead of avarice and greed, and trying to fill their "hungry bellies" to borrow a phrase Lewis Hyde borrowed from the Greeks that means someone consumed by desire and incapable of thinking, and because of that a slave to their unconscious - like an animal.
I don't think we should be angry at the people in charge. I think blaming politicians, especially President Bush, is actually a symptom of our collective disease and not the source of the problem - because if it is his fault then it is not our fault, and our ego is satisfied, but you know that ego satisfaction is empty. Bush was a symptom of rational materialism and egoism, he was the archetype for foolish greed, and he is a mirror of our system. It is a sad fact that the USA embraced him twice in National Elections, and is now rejecting him without introspection, and we are not allowing ourselves to heal by admitting to owning him.
"Was some of the vagueness and de-selfing part of your military training (per the book On Killing, by Dave Grossman), or was it more because you were having these internal conflicts about pleasure, aggression, imperialism, and giving out M&Ms to Afghan kids because it would make them smile?"
The thing that actually pushed me over the edge was that the same day that explosions were going off everywhere in Kandahar, Laurie was in Grenada in a Hurricane and the news was reporting the death toll.
This touches on so many issues I'm passionate about, yet I find it very difficult to have an online/written exchange about it all.
I fear that I might have been "filtered". I probably come off as being very negative at times.
However, I have to say that I find as I become more self aware and in touch with responsibilites, my frustration increases - which would by your account turn into negativity! Which is true....
I've already lost where I wanted to go with this comment... see I need to be having a conversation with you. I'll just add a few more points...
1. It has been clear you've been discovering yourself. It's wonderful. I think it's so important to understand your own mind, and know why you react certain ways. It's a good thing to recognise what trigers you have, what obsessions you have, weaknessed and so on. Not to mention what positive qualities you have - and what your contributing to humanity!!
It's been like getting to know someone new.
2. Would you say you can be spiritual without being religious? I would say yes reading this post. But I'd like to ask you that direct question...?
One of my main issues with "humanity" is that so many peoples actions/thoughts come from a place of fear - fear of not going to heaven and so on. I'd rather humanity found something within themselves that drove that same kindness (althogh I don't see religion as generating acceptance and kindness anyway). I think it's better to do/be someone because you want to be that way.
Oh Manz! You aren't being filtered, you are articulate and interesting.
The witness consciousness is coming out of someone when, and you can notice this, someone talking isn't conscious of what the heck they are saying, they are letting it well up without editing and are expressing very basic status/identity ideas, like:
Us versus Them,
Worries,
How someone didn't respect them,
How they have been treated unfairly,
Objects they need to increase their sense of identity,
Getting angry and enjoying the sense of being wronged,
I don't know about you, but my little brain spits this crap at me all day, and I have always been ok at ignoring it, but I like to be able to conceptualize it so that I can really block myself from thinking and acting based on these primordial animal type instincts. I think a lot of people in America used the phrase Muslim Extremist to designate an other that they could dehuminize, much to the pleasure of their ego, as it is a huge boost to their sense of identity - The logic is something like: They are them so I must be us. I guess the ego is always trying to clarify itself, and creating another group, the Other, is one of the best strategies to clarify who you are - you are not them, and you can compare your values to their values, and it doesn't really matter what their values are as long as they are different, and people will automatically be disgusted at the different values. Hence in America, we can't stand that Muslims practice Bigomy, and it's to the point where our dislike of it is a psychosis. That dislike clarifies our identity to us, and satisfies us/ego. Which is exactly the type of thinking that needs to disappear if we all want to live together in peace.
Marshall McLuhan said "Violence is the quest for identity." He was describing what I am describing, creating an Other and then attacking them builds identity, solidarity, and group strength. Of course, it is also terrible, and we need to get past this stage in our development...
Re: Can you be spiritual without being religious? For sure! I mean a religion is basically a myth, once you can conceptualize that, and then realize that the myth in a particular religion is part of a larger wisdom/mystery tradition, and that they have a lot of good information about how to live, and a lot of it is how to remain balanced psychologically. I heard someone call the Catholic Saints "Geniuses at living."
Jung says that humans are built to have a God Image in their thoughts, and that we can't really escape it. I haven't read everything I have on him yet, but he seems to contradict himself regarding wether he believes that the God Image is a real God, or if it is a trick of the unconscious, or if it is part of the collective unconscious of a culture...
"But I don't know how a collective would operate more fairly on the scale of an organization the size of the USA... The change has to come from within the people themselves."
I think it will take a return to smaller, knowable communities. I read somewhere that the human mind is only capable of knowing about 300 souls at a time, so people with 1560 facebook friends, they aren't all your friends or even persons known to you. Small efforts in actual locations to build community - daycare coops, gardens, going back to bringing your neighbors food when you know they can't cook for themselves anymore...my friend Jenn is married to a Scot, and she said it took him a really long time to get used to the idea that in the US, you're supposed to call before you show up at a friend's house. In Scotland, you just go and knock on the door if you want to see somebody. Maybe if a lot of people have less money and more time, they will start reaching out and building connections with the people who also live in the place where the live.
This problem of the media and our collective un/consciousness... I find most mainstream media production literally unwatchable, and so I don't watch, but a lot of people seem to treat it as either a companion to keep loneliness at bay or as a sedative drug. If the media were different, if it were only channels of puppies and kittens playing with baby foxes, scenes of majestic nature, lectures by great minds, images of sacred artwork, would our collective consciousness be different? Do we create culture, or does culture create us? Did the media merely reflect bloodlust, or did it whip the country into a frenzy and get the peasants to come out with their pitchforks screaming for the monster's head? Did it give the public what the people wanted to hear, or would people have tuned in no matter what the message was?
Different topic -- "hungry bellies"...Hyde...the Greeks...someone consumed by desire and incapable of thinking, and because of that a slave to their unconscious - like an animal.
Add to that the Hungry Ghosts from the Buddhist cosmology. Preta-gati in Sanskrit. Gakidō 餓鬼道 in Japanese. The realm of hungry spirits; characterized by great craving and eternal starvation.
A picture here: http://www.onmarkproductions.com/assets/images/scroll-hungry-ghosts-12thC-in-collection-of-Kyoto-Natl-Museum.jpg
So, Bill, I have struggled with this a lot and am wondering what your take is on this question:
What place does art have in all this becoming self-aware? Does "an artist" have responsibilities or a role that is any different from any other person? At some point, does art and making art become MORE important/vital/relevant, or does it fall away and become LESS important or necessary? Or both? Or neither? Maybe the term or designated role of "artist" is just another ego trapping/trap.
K, Oh - these are such big, tough questions.
Love the Hungry Ghost, saw one today in Target, lol. Well, maybe that is what the person's soul would look like if we could see it.
Re: The artist as ego trapping/trap. I worry about this, but would prefer this trap to others... It allows us to maintain a position where we don't have to identify too strongly with anything specific, and we are involved with our production. The trick is to get yourself to work enough, when present and working guilt/alienation disappears.
The drawing is in the mail.
Post a Comment