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Entries in intention (11)

Monday
Sep112017

Jung Institute

“A dream is an unfulfilled wish,” answered a kid with a Ph.D. in Psychoanalysis from the Jung Institute.

“What else did he say?”

“He said, ‘There is no royal road to wisdom. To arrive at the future I must journey into the past. To attain the sanity of oneness with the One, I must risk the whirling madness of the possessed.’”

One year I spent three days at the Jung Institute of Psychoanalytical Study while hitching south toward the Mediterranean and Israel.

In June 1976, I slept on the lawn behind a stonewall at a biological institute on the outskirts of Zurich. Every morning women cleaning glass sang, Get up. Get up. I stashed my sleeping bag and backpack in a garden, walked to the Banhof for a roll and coffee and uphill to the Institute that opened at 11 a.m.

In a fine old brown stone residential castle with turrets and secret unconscious passages the institute offered classes and lectures on Jungian work. Professionals from around the world studied, attended seminars and completed their post-graduate education or audited classes for personal growth.

Between lectures, lawyers, theologians, teachers, philosophy majors and academics, some with a Ph.D. in Life, discussed Jungian thought.

The common thread was how their life, their quest for knowledge and greater insight into the human condition had led them through various disciplines and years of study to the institute. They said something totally incomprehensible was missing from their lives.

The truth is in the mystery.

The only book I pulled at random from a shelf in the Jung library was The Third Eye by T. Lobsang Rampa.

One morning people crowded into a lecture room. Languages filled space waiting for a lecture on the “Symbolism of Fire.” I took a small hourglass out of my pack and turned it upside down. Sand flowed.

“Jung talked about the spiritus contra spiritum, a god of ecstatic vision,” said the speaker. “He talked about the need for ecstasy without the chaos and how the archetypal ecstasy was for a god and soul.”

“Is the female ego in charge of the animus?” said a man.

“Yes. The animus speaks of women with a deep connection. It is a force that can seize you.”

“Is that why there is pain and delight in human relationships?” said a woman.

“Yes. The collective unconscious is too big to live out our personality so we create outer projections saying ‘bear my anima for me.’ This creates the pain and suffering. When there is individuation there is a strong ego personality.”

“Can you please give us an example?”

“Well, war is like a falling in love experience. The shadow, the dark side exists with the bright side and is misunderstood. The shadow is projected in dreams. Veterans carry images of losing, darkness, violence, destruction and evil inside them.”

“What is the healing tendency?”

“One must find meaning. It requires self-honesty. One respects dreams and the unconscious. They play. Fantasy is good, dynamic play. It is about symbolic levels. The collective unconscious is manifested in all cultures. This is why Jung was attracted to Asian symbols. He believed they existed near the bottom of their unconscious in an instinctual life.”

“People in the western cultures are afraid of death. Why?”

“Old age is a value feeling. Unfortunately, in some cultures it is perceived as insulting. It is the archetype of the old fool. It is fuller than the wise man. We create meaning. The imagination is the reality of the psyche combined with pure play. We listen to the wisdom of the dream. Everything we do is from the heart.”

When I was Jung I was Freudened. Ha.

I attended a lecture on the symbolism of fire. Cosmic creation energy...fire or water first in Oriental thought, quality of energy and quantity of substance. Satori fire-power emanating life and consciousness. Fire is spirituality. Yogic symbolism. Applied in India the thunderbolt kills the enemy and brings rain.

Surya is reception and light. Dream analysis symbolism of passions. Negative burning fires of hell.

Dream interpretation changes psychic energy into new conscious arrangement.

Bohme, said ‘then your heart is a dark valley where the devil kindles the heat. Leads to forty questions of the soul.’ In yoga Indian texts the soul essence is energy consciousness. Fire consumes ignorance: source of fire in soul and spirit. The yogic fire meditation is with the noon sun, meditating on physical process, digestion, and identifies with sun and fire to reach experience. Tapas transform energy. Concentrated introversion consciousness.

A Tibetan fire mandala with five colorful flames is a spiritual place. Created as psychic energy with five elements through creation. Fires of transformation creates spiritual regeneration as catharsis. Solar and lung energy and integration through dream interpretation.

Tibetan Book of The Dead = freedom. Fire is a driver, sexual desires. Soft wood and hard wood together create energy. Psychological use of fire, inner psychic fire from the lowest chakra spine sleeping serpent rising, united through to ‘eat the fires of energy’ as the libido is a power of regeneration through consciousness.”

During the lecture a worn copy of the I Ching, the Chinese book of divination translated by Wilhelm fell out of my bag. A female lawyer preparing to unlock the unconscious motivations of incarcerated juveniles saw it.

“Ah,” she said in a German accent. “I see you are reading a great book.’”

“Stumbling through it. I am curious about it.”

“Interesting. Have you heard of Madame Chang?”

“No. Who is she?”

“She’s a Sinologist. She is an authority on the I Ching and gives consultations. She has her office near here. Perhaps you could visit with her.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

I called her up and made an appointment to see what would happen. I arrived at the house, went through the back gate, approached a door and rang a bell. I entered a foyer. I looked up through a long ornate spiral staircase. At the top stood a woman. I climbed and climbed. Madame Chang was slight with close cut brown hair, glasses, about fifty.

“Hello, I’m the fellow who called your secretary asking to see you.”  I offered my hand.

“Yes,” she said taking my hand momentarily and then dropped it. “I was expecting you. I am Miss Chang. Won’t you come in?” She gestured to the open door.

The room was narrow. Along the walls were shelves holding stacks of books. To the left was a table with old Chinese books. One was open to a map. She offered a chair in the middle of the room under a slanting roof. I took a seat and she sat opposite me where she could gaze out the small window into blue sky.

She didn’t say anything for a moment and then looked at me. I felt penetrated as a fraud. Her gray eyes were distant. My first impression after sitting down was that I was in way over my head, that I was after some arcane knowledge and she knew it. Madame Chang sat silent and never said anything forever. She just sat there and let me look around. I realized I was out of my depth.

“I shouldn’t have come,” I said. “I am wasting your time.”

“Why did you come?”

I knew that her wisdom of the book was greater in scope than I’d ever begin to understand. Her vision was far away. I realized my small self.

“I’m not sure,” I blurted frightened by the sound of my voice. “It’s something about the I Ching about finding out the truth.”

“I usually give consultations to groups but am willing to meet with individuals. What is it you wish to know?”

“I came because someone said you could answer questions about the I Ching and I am curious about the book.”

“How many times have you thrown the coins?”

“Once. What should I do?”

“You should just study it. I would advise you to read the hexagrams and see the symbolism in the meanings of the text. See the intentions of the summary. It’s a very powerful book.”

I sat there looking at her and her books. It seemed like forever as my mind whirled around trying to come up with some semi-intelligent conversation. 

“It’s a long walk. Nothing more. It’s a long walk,” she said.

As if in a dream I got up and walked to the door.

“I usually accept contributions,” she said. I fumbled in my pocket, brought out a note and asked for half of it back in change. She returned the balance and showed me out.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your seeing me.”

I descended the spiral staircase to the ground floor. When I looked up she was standing on the top looking down at me. We waved goodbye.

Out on the street I looked up at the window. It was impossible to see the crease in the roof. There was only sky. I walked down the street as if in hypnosis, bought an apple and sat on a stone sidewalk meditating on our meeting. I opened the Book of Changes to #25, Wu Wang, Innocence, The Unexpected. “The firm comes from without and becomes the ruler within.

“I like it,” said a listener. “Inner directed like Rumi. What else?”

“Well, here’s a cool thing Jung said. ‘I liken the formation of a character to weaving a garment. You know what happens when you make a mistake? The whole pattern is spoiled. Then you have a choice: you can finish the garment, but it will always be botched and ugly, or you can unravel the weave right back to the first mistake and start again. That’s basically what analysis is about. It’s a tedious job. The patient is sometimes scared and hostile. The analyst has to lend patience, honesty and courage.”

A Century is Nothing

Friday
Jun092017

The world is made of stories not atoms

I’m filled with wild passion.

A mind-expanding drug of curiosity, delight and freedom increases my awareness.

The eternal present is a long now.

My power is big medicine. It’s a sacred connection to Gaia after 60,000 years of paying attention to details.

I observe a spider meticulously wrapping an insect with thin microfilaments. Spider recycles her old web on the periphery. They haul it to a diamond center. It vibrates in a soft breeze.

Does the spider have any intention when building the web of catching the insect?

Does the flying insect have the intention of finding the web?

Where does instinct end and intention begin?

One instinct is to sit in meditation. Another instinct is to take risks.

 

To do great things you must take great risks and suffer greatly.

JUMP over the abyss.

My serenity is not purchased over the counter with pharmaceutical coupons. No dust collects on my mirror reflecting an elegant universe in my heart. In my expanded state I am a breath of fire, a lightning bolt sacrificing fear, doubt and uncertainty.

I shatter myth.

Lightning bleeds off my charge creating transformation.

I am an unemployed fortuneteller. I am ahead of the future. The day after tomorrow belongs to me.

I am a gravedigger/archaeologist. Soil is my groundwork. Look at my hands. I know two things. See good dirt under fingernails. I am the soft sand of sleep calming tortured hearts.

Abracadabra! My feminine nature hurls her lightning bolt even unto death. She is a death deferred. She is on death row with a short reprieve. My tranquility is a lethal injection of travel.

It’s 100 degrees in blistering sun. I work hard and fast pounding typewriter keys, digging graves, discovering artifacts.

I dust history off history. I destroy the present to discover the future.

I hammer keys in a new form of construction business. Before bits, bytes and gadgets.

The world is made of stories, not atoms.

Shovels plow archaeological deserts reflecting passion and curiosity. An archaeologist inside a tomb waving Diogenes’s lamp yells, “Every bit we dig out tells a little more about the story.” They unearth a story revealing communities, customs and cultures.

A digger explains how it works. “This stuff we roughly estimate is between 1,800 to 1,990 years old. We use a method called carbon dating. It measures the amount of carbon-14 remaining in ancient material.”

“What is it?”

“Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon found in all organic matter. Scientists determine the age of fossils and artifacts by comparing test results to an international standard. We’ll send it to a lab for analysis.”

“Beautiful. Let me know what you discover, what you learn.”

Tourists find. Travelers discover.

Explorers sift discoveries through mesh screens. A delicate camel hairbrush caresses historical fragments. They dig toward 8,000 well-rested Chinese terra-cotta warriors in battle formation standing ready for excavation.

Chariots, horses and supplies with trapped Mandarin survivor voices echo toward the surface causing vibrational shifts.

Confucian scholars join them. Buried since 210 B.C., guarding Qin Shi-huang-di, the first Emperor of China, their collective consciousness breath creates tremor waves near Xian, the capital of Imperial China.

Warriors stand silent on the edge of the Gobi desert along the Silk Road. Voices sing swirling word storms. They hear brushes shovels, earth moving equipment and hammering keys approach their hidden truth.

“They are coming for us,” said a warrior.

In my inner garden of crimson stimulus I tend wild roses. Nostrils scent sense.

I have a responsibility to the thorns.

Sunday
Sep042016

Intention and motivation

Attention

To: Secret Agent Wordsmith.

From Godot: Nobody shows up. Nothing happens.

Discernment is everything in his mute Turkish life. Silent speculative tongues babble on community islands. Hustle tea with brown details. Clown town. Mother leads fashionable daughters. An old man’s shoulder weights a box of hazel’s nuts. A battered pewter teacup sits empty. A flaneur primps.

Inbreeding statistics reveal genetic truth and future medical issues at rural population control centers. Confront basic Turkish insecurities – loss and awareness with repressed aggression, sullen anxious attitudes, pervasive psychotic disorders and phobia.

What you don’t see between unemployed words is fascinating.

A cripple without legs heard laughter’s lymphatic memory. They were amused by a smile stirring sugar’s anger. A reader read a weather forecast to a friend. Rain. A black bearded man carried a chainsaw into a Giresun forest with intention and motivation.

The Invisible Ghostwriter

 

Down below love’s labyrinth looking for sexual partners 50,000 symbolic woodcarvers gesturing possibilities fostered benign footsteps telling 4,000-year old stories behind fish markets hearing catatonic voices seek meaning.

Quest-ions ran around looking for answers, Where are you? Come out come out wherever you are my bright little star.

Worry beads between male fingers worried themselves to death.

Alone and feeling cold, an old man stirred tea with ambivalence.

Love conspirators sang the blues.

Harmonic convergence polished black dress shoes.

A beautiful Trabzon university girl with shattered dreams and zero hope of being a boat captain attended an economics class.

Do the numbers. ABC. 


Chance

 

It’s come to our attention, said Deep State, we need more police – yes that’s correct...more police...moreguns, ammunition, uniforms, plastic hats, plated belt buckles, shields, face masks, tear gas canisters (made in Brazil) water cannons, green parks in Istanbul, collapsed mines in Soma killing 301, authoritarian boredom, fear, self-censorship, zero social networks, NO judiciary, more imprisoned journalists, more GREED and less wisdom, compassion, freedom and tolerance.

A new directive was issued. Verb 3.

Eating is important for a balanced diet.

Turkish female robots with bored black eyes conducted international surveys wearing skintight jeans promoting small chattels.

Remember to accessorize your demeanor with high heels and a serious facial expression of:

1) disgust

2) stupidity

3) monochromic awareness

4) worry

5) anxiety

6) fear

The die was cast.

Fate and Destiny sang a duet.

Timing played Danishan melodies at 1644 hours.

 

Giresun Before Dawn Mid October 2012 6:02 a.m.


Mild air outside designer storm windows fitted with rubber air current verb modifiers played through grammar-based pine trees eating kabobs in The Department of the Forest.

Mother, may I sleep forever? Yes my sweet, she purred stirring tomatoes content in the context of creating a lifetime of dependency while baiting a sharp fishhook sentence snaring a gentle reader, Let’s Eat the alphabet.

Are you a victim or participant, asked Quest-ion.

A victim, said Turkish student-citizens. We are (free) willing victims. We eat loss for breakfast with twenty-eight varieties of olives. I am a proactive participant, said a linguistic Chinese waif. You are Other, said victims, a barbarian and a rouge element. We share everything, said Other. Eat your freedom like Lone Wolf, said a reliable narrator having their ears cleaned with sanitized stainless steel tools by a Cambodian woman waiting for Mr. ATM.

I have nothing to say and I’m saying it. That’s nothing, said Milling Around in Asia. I have nothing to do and I’m doing it. I sleep, eat and fuck. So what, said Curious, I have no reason to live except to find out what happens next in this adventure. I don’t have time for negative losers. Get a life.

Inside a frozen sterilized room planning his great escape under the cover of Sacrifice, a national holiday 26-31 October, Lucky scribbled by tenor sax. Blue Train echoed through empty rooms with acoustic memory.

This geographical derivation detour wasn’t his glass of tea or chai in local lingo.

I agree, said Z, Ya got get a move on. Get back where you belong. You did your work here, brought people some luck, helped others develop courage, made field notes and street photography, I don’t belong anywhere, he said, It’s ok, where you go there you are, your heart’s in Asia.

Where’s Franz Kafka when u need him? He’s living in Anatold you so as an unmuting amusing assumed mute protagonist so he is. The bureaucrazy night dream mare plays on...

Write another chapter, said Z to calm your tortured heart.

Scene: Giresun, 4,000 years later. I’ve been here before, said a fish in a bowl. What’s water? It’s all I know. It’s the first thing an infant needs and the last thing a dying person requests.

I am amused by Freedom said a woman opening her legs getting to the verb.

One word. One vision. One day. One dream. One chance.

Make it new day-by-day. Make it new.

Opportunity cost. Return on investment. Cost-benefit ratio.

Lucky paid now.

Putting profit before people, Trabzon English Language School paid later.

The Language Company

Saturday
Oct312015

wisdom mind of intent

November spills blue industrial ink

Next to attention deficit disorder

All of 10 seconds down dances dirty.

Write short, fast, deadly.

Ikat designs on silk drape well.

Non listeners living their abject cause and effect seek meaning with suffering and loss, accepting no responsibility.

Milling Around, a fine art, embraces kindness and compassion. 

The final conversation of a Cambodian is, Goodbye, good luck to you and your family.

The end.

Learning how to pay attention at a private elementary school in Vientiane. Love.

Listening. Heart-mind wisdom.

Wisdom mind of intent, not the emotion mind of fire & water.

Flame your life.

The joy of sharing, motivating human potential. BE specific.

All the letting go with pure heart-mind wisdom.

Balance b/t compassion and wisdom.

Sentimental vs cold heart.

Sharing laughter, visions, stories, ideas, dreams, instinct and imagination. 

Saturday
Mar072015

What did you expect?

I am a cognitive psycho-neurolinguist.

Wandering deep into the Tarim Basin along the Silk Road in Central Asia I discovered the Tokharin language and Afansievo culture dating 4,000 years. It was a proto-Indo European language with Celtic and Indian connections established by trade caravans and explorations. I suspect it is Qarasahr or IA, based on an Iranian dialect.

A change of context changes experience. On the loom of time the three fates weave the word context from Latin.

Con (with or together) and texere (to weave).

A change in context is an essential and active process. Weaving directs thoughts, emotions and actions.

A kairos shuttle passes through openings in the space-time continuum. The loom binds or connects the weaver’s ability and power to speak.

Dancing in dunes away from precious oceans the wise spirit of Hsuan-tsang, a Chinese Buddhist monk recitesThe Diamond Sutra, the world’s oldest printed book dated May 11, 868.

As Gascoigne, the author of The Dynasties and Treasures of China said, “The text is printed from six large blocks, each of them two and a half feet long by almost a foot broad. The scroll is a worthy and complete ancestor of all subsequent books, for it contains not only a superb woodcut as a frontis-piece...”

Hsuan-tsang was a Chinese pilgrim. He traveled to India along the Silk Road seeking out original Indian Buddhist holy books. He discovered 1,000 deserted monasteries destroyed by Hun invasions in the 5th century. He wandered through India for sixteen years visiting Buddhist places. He collected Indian holy books and carried them back to China.

While turning pages between Sanskrit words, mlecchita-vikalpathe art of secret writing, Hsuan-Tsang tells us existence is formless. The human condition is actually hopeless, humans will never really know the universe and the concept of soul is an illusion.

Suffering is an illusion. Abracadabra!

Curious to see more to know less, I glide on after removing a grain of sand from my shoe. It isn’t the mountain that’s hard to climb it’s the grain in one’s shoe.

Years later in Colorado I met a mountain climber who, after confronting trial, error, doubt and fear reached a rocky mountain summit.

“Well, how did I do?” she asked her instructor.

“Are you still alive?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what did you expect?”

I asked her, “Where do you step from the top of a 100 foot pole?”

Down in the southern province of Suhag in Egypt where King Scorpion lived 5,300 years ago I worked with archeologists discovering clay tablets.

Humans recorded taxes on oil and linen; a material Egyptians considered ritually pure under the protection of the goddess Tayt. The hieroglyphic line drawings of animals, plants and mountains revealed stories of economies and commodities.

In Nevali Cori we found 9,000 year-old shards of ceramics pottery depicting dancers.

“These images,” said a metaphorical digger, “reveal a common ancestor creating to integrate their community.”

A camelhair brush cleaned shards. “Anything else?”

“Well,” one said sifting dust, “we surmise these images established a collective discipline in their community. See how the figures are holding hands? What do you see now?”

“I see a circle of movement. A connected unity, a language in space.”

“It’s more than that. There are five rhythms in dance. You start with a circle. It’s a circular movement from the feminine container. She is earth.”

“Earth?”

“Yes, then you have a line from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.”

“Fire is the driver.”

“Chaos is next, a combination of circle and lines where the male and female energies interact. This is the place of transformation.”

“I see. And then?”

“After chaos is the lyrical, a leap, a release. This is air. The last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.”

Language dances in space.

Every fourteen days a living language dies on Earth. The last speaker says good-bye.

6,100 and counting.

Storytellers sing oral traditions. They memorize stories, songs, poems, seasons, celebrations, rites, magic and ceremonies. They create and exchange family, clan, tribal myths and legends. Their children listen, memorize, chant and recite ancestor songs.

An historian’s job is trying to understand what happened through time.

An anthropologist’s job is to understand how people told their creation stories.

Mircea Eliade, a historian of religions, said, “Myths tell only of that which really happened.”

Myths suggest that behind the explanation there is a reality that cannot be seen and examined. A myth is a story of unknown origins. Myths are sacred stories of religion based on belief, containing archetypical universal truths. They are in every place and no particular place. The world is sacred.

Myths, legends, stories.

Neurons fire on all cylinders. Seven trillion human cells dance. The honorable monkey mind trickster sleeps, sensing pure purpose, destination, goals and reflections. If I do not pay complete attention the monkey mind identifies with a mental movie and runs wild splashing green jealous slashes, red anger strokes and blue attachment colors on pure empty canvases. I respect wild monkey mind. Keep a meditative eye on it. Mindfulness.

Magic words grow here.

Old roots expose wired genetic guilt and illusionary fear traps.

Intensity propels ten claws across twenty-six keys. Reed-like digits reflect use and neglect.

Psychology handles the branches. Mindfulness swims with roots.

Evolution flashes flickering beams of incandescent auras and pulsating electro-magnetic fields evolving character, attitude, values, behaviors and intention.

Intention is karma.

Perpetual transformation.

A Century is Nothing