Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
Tuesday, December 3, 2002 - issue #1277 - editor - michael
"If I had it to do all over again, I would
just sell water down by the river."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--- In NondualitySalon@y..., "JP "
wrote:
GRADUATE STUDENT IN CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY:
"Dr. Laing, I still don't understand the theoretical basis
of your
therapeutic approach to schizophrenia. Could you please explain
it?"
R.D. LAING:
"Certainly. The basis is love. I don't see how you or I can
be of
any help to our clients in a visionary state unless we are
capable
of experiencing a feeling of love for them. Therapy, as opposed
to mere treatment, requires that we have a capacity for
lovingkindness and compassion."
GRADUATE STUDENT (perplexed):
"But Dr. Laing, what is your clinical methodology for
developing
this approach?"
- Overheard at a talk given by R.D.Laing in New York
------------------------
Friends
We read - we write - sharing our shining hearts together. We
learn together. The wisdom flows within each heart to each
heart. One to one.
Sometimes on lists like NDS, we read words from hearts and
minds that may seem to be tormented, disjointed,
confused. We may quickly search for a label - a pathology - to
categorize or dismiss the person.
We each in our own way - have experienced the agonies of living
and dying - of feeling torments and confusions.
We may look for a way to distance ourselves - protect ourselves -
push the strange "other" away. Look for a way to close
our hearts
from a fuller encounter with another human heart.
Perhaps our encounters with each other - in our diversity and
eccentricity - in our intellectual or visionary expressions -
help
us in deep ways to open wider our hearts - accept the awesome
beauty of Life expressing through each and every one of us.
-------------------
"Few people are aware that the "schizophrenic
break" - when not
artificially blocked by medical intervention - is a temporary
phenomenon. The acute visionary phase naturally lasts for about
forty days, after which the psyche gradually returns to a normal
state of consciousness.
The interesting thing is that the visionary content of the acute
phase centres around the destruction and reintegration of the
ego, symbolised not only by powerful hallucinations of personal
death and rebirth, but also by an overwhelming subjective
experience of Apocalypse and the end of time.
Jung's trailblazing approach to schizophrenia as healing
process has since been brought to fruition by a growing number
of mythologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists,
artists, and visionaries whose investigations into non-ordinary
states of consciousness make it quite clear that there is a kind
of inner Apocalypse which some human beings may sometimes
have to undergo in order resolve the crises which naturally occur
along the path of life.
Since the human species is now approaching a global crisis,
the time has come to face this psychological counterpart to the
end of the world, the Apocalypse within. This text attempts to
show why, if it is our serious intention to develop a sustainable
form of civilisation before it is too late, we shall need to
restore
the visionary experience to its proper - indeed sacred - place in
our private and public life.
Allowing ourselves to experience the inner Apocalypse may be
the best medicine to prevent an external one."
--Michael O'Callaghan
http://www.global-vision.org/dream/
--- In GuruRatings@y..., "Betsy"
responded to:
> On 2 Dec 2002 20:41, Jan wrote:
> That has been one of the incentives to write the story -
knowing
> how a bag of concepts rarely leads to what is termed
"clear light,
> primordial mind".
The problem is that way too much is 'known'. People adopt
these tidbits of wisdom and add them to their properties.
This for the purpose to enhance their concept of themselves,
which in this case applies to seeing oneself as spiritually
enlightened. Even 'Clear Light' and 'Primordial Mind'
can be concepts, arising from the desire to escape one's
actual reality. Writing a story to share this wisdom will not
help people, if anyone understands it then they will just add
it to their intellectual collection. In the end these steps have
to be experienced. One has to see for themselves why they
adopt these concepts, and later how they cling to all self
expression for the main concept - that to survive.
> In a discussion, terms like "ego" soon will behave
> like ping-pong balls...
Just to clarify, that the term 'ego' doesn't have this
behavior... It's people identification with their
own interpretation, and their need to defend it,
that creates the affect. There must be more
responsibility, ownership and desire to question
one's own reactions.
> The mind has a full time job already - interpreting
> observations and experiences according the opinions,
> (forcibly) accepted since early childhood (like on playing
> in the mud). When the mind is "at leisure" again,
perceives
> without interpreting/judging activity like it did shortly
after
> birth , there's the proverbial "aha" :-)
Only there is one's interpretation that comes from one
past growing experience. What counts is how one responds
to that. If one is full-time identified with one's reactions,
then
one is full-time turning around oneself, much like playing in the
mud.
Is it a fact that there can be perception without interpretation?
Isn't it more like you have an interpretation, which is your
'view',
and from this you can respond in a more creative way if you are
not identified with what *was* your view? I don't know if this
is the case or not, because it is dependent on one's need to
defend oneself. Where are you in this picture?
Betsy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unnatural Possiblities
by
Mace Mealer
The drive to dominate
is the core of desire,
and the anathema
of enlightened compassion,
in animals, it is a predisposition
determined by their nature,
in humans it is a tragedy
that precludes the possibility
to be more than an animal.
<Http://www.artbyelaine.com/images/ (link may no longer be working)