Marianne
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Shaheda,
It makes me so happy that you enjoyed this essay I wrote, because it gave me such joy to write it–the joy I had in writing it was almost as numinous as the first time I ever saw The Nutcracker Ballet.
I was indeed so blessed to have the childhood I had, imbued with the arts. My mother was a huge fan of music, musicals, drama of the theater, and ballet. She was also an avid reader. My father claimed to be tone-deaf, and while true he mostly sang off-key, he still sang, coming close to hitting the pitches of the notes. He loved all the old American folk songs and folk songs from all over the world, and often would just break out in song as an event would make him associate it to that song. For instance, on someone’s birthday, he would often as a joke start singing “She’ll be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain” after we all sang the Happy Birthday song because of the verse “And we’ll all have cake and ice cream when she comes…” My parents both loved film, also, and shared their love of the classics with me when I was a child. My dad would spend hours with me watching all the classics as well as the classic cartoons. My dad was a huge fan of folklore and pop culture. I include this writing about my parents here as a tribute and thank you to them; also, I have felt the magnetic draw to share the arts with my own child and grandchild–and my daughter shares the arts this way with her child. I think this can be so important to keeping the arts alive by passing them on and from an early age all the better perhaps! I could say that the arts were what were emphasized in the household I grew up in.
I have heard so many stories of parents throwing out their child’s baby or childhood blanket once they think the child is supposed to outgrow it at a certain time and yes I think it can be as tragic to a child as a broken toy. I was also lucky that my parents never threw away my baby blanket which lasted me all through my toddler years. But after I was no longer a toddler, it was never thrown out–just put away for me in the cedar chest. I think the pain one experiences when a blanket is thrown away in and of itself validates the pain. Maybe one child would not be as attached to the blanket at a certain age as another–but it could be the violence in the child’s mind or heart of seeing it simply discarded (and how many times do we hear about parents getting vehement about it and arguing about it with the child or yelling as it is disgarded?) that can add to that pain even after a child is not as attached to it as when younger. Here I think of the fairy tales in which a beloved pet is killed, such as in The Chinese Cinderella when the evil stepmother kills the CInderella character’s pet. I would say, yes, a discarded blanket thrown to the “trash” can be as upsetting as a broken toy. And when broken toys can be fixed, the compare-contrast is that the blanket is so seldom retrieved from the trash or the “dump.” The images of “trash” and “dump” are so drastically awful to the psyche of the child, I would think, when “attached” to the child’s beloved blanket. It is not always so much a matter of the child not being able to give up the blanket at a certain age but is a beloved collectible after a while. I think a parent could find somewhere to keep the blanket, such as in a storage closet, or have it preserved like an afghan kept folded at the bottom of the bed for a while and let the child discard it as and when they wish.
Shaheda,
I find what you write so beautiful:
In my own experience, it was in the odd, in the most unimaginable, yet very real and true — that weird, impossible, improbable thought took over my entire being. And when the beloved image looked back, there was no effort to hold the gaze, the gaze was held by an energy far stronger than any other energy before this. As if time stood still?
In that moment of stillness, my image of myself changed. Previous images of self dissolved, and the information gathered through that one gaze, permeated my neural pathways.
When you say, “When the beloved image looked back” is so very akin to Indian viewpoints in viewing art. In India, when the art object is viewed, it is viewed with the notion that as we gaze upon the object, the object is gazing back at us. As we see it with our eyes, it sees us with its eyes, and we see ourselves through the object’s eyes as it sees itself through our eyes. It seems as though this notion and way of viewing and seeing ourselves reflected in the eyes of the art object comes naturally to you–for me, it was an exercise I had to do for a class I was in. I suppose this may however come naturally to many others–when we put ourselves into the frame of a film through our identification with a character, or put ourselves into the photo of the house seen on the border of the forest, or see ourselves on a sunny tropical beach in the middle of a northern winter storm…yet that is still seeing ourselves in the frame and not necessarily seeing it looking at us–we are busy projecting ourselves into the frame but not always thinking about how the frame is regarding us…I love that phrase you wrote.
I wrote a poem about this for a class I took in which we viewed slides of Indian art and then were asked to be mindful of the image looking back at us as we looked at it. Thus, there is transcendance. And stillness in the eyes, I see. I will include the poem in the forum where we can share our own work. In viewing the slides, I was pulled to the slide of the deity Ganesha, and wrote about Ganesha; in much of it I project myself and my own ideas onto Ganesha (as this idea of being seen by the artwork was new to me and as I was getting used to it) and then in some parts in the poem I do acknowledge Ganesha looking back at me. It was a wonderful exercise by instructor Al Collins at PGI.
Thank you, Joanna, for your kind response–I deeply appreciate your thoughts about the difference between a transition and transcendence, in answer to my question, which provides such a clear explanation and definitions. I love how you pinpoint attention as the key–this has given me a lot to think about as I reflect on various experiences of my attention or lack thereof. This may be my own idiosyncratic interpretation of this concept (among other interpretations I might add), but it immediately comes to mind to me now how there have been times in which not paying attention to what was going on in different transitions in my life led to making some errors in decision which turned my direction off my “true” path when the experience might have otherwise been transcendent; however, I am not sure if what I am asking here would be so naturally built-into in these time periods of change. What are your ideas on that–I am wondering if, if there is indeed any “real” material/matter here in my question, or any sensible question at all, if you could offer some opinions or ideas on this? I am not sure I asked the question well–I mean, it is probably not that we can turn on transcendent experience as if it were a lightswitch. However, perhaps exercises such as yoga and archery and such can help us experience more transcendence more of the time, or as Stephen mentions, to experience more of Nirvana here on earth. Then again, sometimes the failures to make the right decisions have turned into transcendent experiences when going backwards from a dream, for instance–not paying enough attention to answer the call, times when we are afraid to answer the yes to the hero’s adventure…we return home then before we have ever left–and even this experience in all its deflation of a hope may that yet be transcendent in the sense that in that still moment of sadness or even disbelief we stop almost dead in our tracks feeling that failure to launch?–can that moment of turning backwards from a dream still be transcendent because it is still? I have done that a few times in my life when I felt I was not up to a certain task. I wonder at times about that type of suspension–being half-way out in the middle of bridge and instead of looking and going forward going backward in fear or trepidation–fear of the unknown, fear of (as mentioned above) not being up to the task, etc. But the main question for me through all this wonderment is, perhaps, how much “say” do we ourselves have in whether an experience makes for one that is either transcendent or transitional–and is there even an in-between bridge for those in which it can be almost half and half? I did hear in what you wrote about the attention–about paying attention–I gather that being more mindful in general would help–I am thinking that many of the still moments I have had that were pleasurable or of that “artistic arrest” have been surprise moments, unexpected–kind of like synchronicity but not always could be categorized as such per say…but maybe contained a hint of synchronous experience just in that synchronicity seems another still time when two worlds meet or inner and outer. I am going to have to re-read Campbell’s Inner and Outer Spaces–Maybe I will have some coffee with that half-and half as I keep reading about your Mythblast, the responses. Thank you so much.
–Marianne
Stephen, and Everyone,
I have so much enjoyed this Mythblast and all the responses to it–this mythic exploration of time and space is really at the heart of so many hearts–and maybe of all matter, as Richard’s posts explore, or as yoga, as Chris’s, and as Shaheda’s description of experiencing this feeling or sensation.
Thank you, too, for your question, Stephen, which sends my mind rolling right now into a passion of the heart. When questions like this come along, I think they can be a place where mind and heart–thinking and feeling meet–transcending that gap between thinking and feeling–and when both happen at the same time, it is another bridge or transcendent “stillness,” even as our minds and heart are moved–for a moment we are standing in the middle of a bridge from here to there–from mind to heart and from heart to mind. I think/feel (because I am feeling all the words of what you and others are saying in these posts deeply–it seems we are all hitting upon some truths of the heart that Joanna inspired) that yes, that suspense can be “aesthetic arrest”–this is one of those aha! moments for me–we are suspended for a moment or for a “time-being” in that web of beauty–it somehow does go to that center people have mentioned here and spins our thoughts out into outer space or the outer spaces as well as into the inner spaces at the same time. It is like the inner and the outer worlds folding together–or unfolding together, depending on which way we look at it.
Thank you, All, for the winds of inspiration set into my sails today!
–Marianne
Chris,
The quote from Eliot is so aptly placed here in consideration of Joanna’s Mythblast. I enjoy your geometrical description and mentioning that this stillness is what is sought for in yoga. This is reminding me of Zen, and the stillness one can find in Zen and the Art of Archery–as described by the book of that title. Thank you.
–Marianne
Richard,
These scientific facts you give us create such a beautiful, large, and largely beautiful, image to ponder–and for a moment, does bring us, in pondering this, a moment of eternity in which moving space stands still in time as our minds move outward to imagine the galaxies and this movement of the universe. Thank you.
–Marianne
Thank you, Stephen! I am so glad to hear you enjoyed this piece and its inclusion of Vasilisa–I love the Vasilisa tales, too! I would love to approach more about those later. Would continued discussion go on here or would it better as its own category somewhere else in the forum? I also love hearing about the classes you taught that included Helen Keller’s dolls in The Miracle Worker. Now I am inspired to return to that story!
There is a brief yet wonderful discussion of Vasilisa on pp. 192-200 in Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales (Revised Edition, 1995, Shambala Books) by Marie-Louise von Franz. Maybe this book is already in the mythological resources page of this website or else could be added.
The Nutcracker and “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” brought such joy to me as a child–and I love Tchaikovsky’s music–and then to my daughter when she was little, and then to my granddaughter–so I had such a lovely time writing this paper.
I very much enjoyed this Mythblast in its storytelling, descriptions, and the idea about time. To me, the passage of time–as natural as it is–can in many ways feel like such a ‘strange’ thing. Time is probably one of my biggest complexes in life–how much time I have to do this or that or even to stay here on earth (!), how time goes by, etc. I love the quote below:
“The still point follows the last thing and precedes the next thing.”
Transcendence: When “the still point follows the last thing and precedes the next thing,” when there is a bridge between the two, between the one thing and the “other,” whether from here to there, this object to that, or me to you or you to me. Or, a transition. What if any difference might there be between transcendence and transition?
Transcendence is thought to have a “risen” quality–one that rises above the moment–therefore it rings of a feeling of the numinous–or mysterious. Transition can be more “mundane” such as making a transition from one plane to another plane on a flight, or making a transition from one paragraph to another–not that those paragraph transitions are never numinous! We transition from one place to another or one thought to another.
That moment “of perception when past and future both hold the baton of our awareness. It reverberates with memory and foreknowledge, echoing into eternity” is transcendent, a time when, Joanna writes, in our consciousness, “duality relaxes its grip.” I think here about how in the Tao the circle holds the pair of opposites in one place—within that sphere– and in that circle there is also its center. Transcendence is when the people or places or objects meet in the center or the middle. I also here think about the “memories and ideas of foreknowledge echoing into eternity” as experienced when a loved one dies as Joanna writes about. We perceive that moment we hear about the death as a still moment–we have a hard time thinking of that person as dead and still envision our loved one as alive and the wonderful moments we have had with that loved one—as if they are still moving, animated, alive, and not still. Yet, we feel still. I am finding this idea of stillness interesting to think about and find myself musing about it in terms of transcendence.
Here I wish I had the right Campbell quote to insert!
Here I could also insert a definition of Jung’s theory of transcendence. You can find a good description of it on Daryl Sharp’s Jung Lexicon which can be found online.
Jack Kornfield, in an essay on “Finding the Middle Way,” writes,
The middle way describes the middle ground between attachment and aversion, between being and non-being, between form and emptiness, between free will and determinism. The more we delve into the middle way the more deeply we come to rest between the play of opposites. Sometimes Ajahn Chah described it like a koan, where “there is neither going forward, nor going backward, nor standing still.” To discover the middle way, he went on, “Try to be mindful, and let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. All kinds of wonderful, rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly see the nature of all things. You will see many strange and wonderful things come and go, but you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha.” (Retrieved from Kornfield’s Buddhist website) (emboldened emphasis mine) (I did not put the link in here because I usually have a hard time doing it in this forum)
In this Mythblast about stillness, it is very moving to heart and soul that Joanna opens her essay with the story of the death of her father, of receiving the news, then describing the landscape where she then goes hiking in the mountains. Suddenly, I am imaginally taken to the mountains out west from the flatter lands with no mountains where I live in the east. That is transcendence. Then I feel in sympathy with Joanna about her father’s death, feel her moment of stillness when she hears he has died; I remember that moment of stillness when my father died, and when I first heard the doctor tell him, “You can either get treatments or ride this out for a few months, Joe.” I remember watching my father’s face so closely while my dad made his decision and the whole room went still—or felt like it was. There again is transcendence in that still moment when two different people (a pair of opposites) have similar experiences that bridge them; we make associations and go from one thing to the other and they are held there together though in a way that “rises” above the opposites. The “play of opposites” can be the imaginal associations we make.
Then I think about death as that still moment when the body becomes still at the moment of death when just a moment before the body held a person who was “still alive” (we use the word still that way too—to show something that yet sustains as if that something is suspended in time. Then I think of how blatantly death or hearing that a person has died shows that difference between “being and non-being”, and “form and emptiness,” as Kornfield writes above.
The word time has the word “emit” in it: times emits history of people and things, the being and non-being of things, and invokes to emits our feelings about these things.
Suspend or suspension shares the root word with suspense. When we hear something that emits that sense of timelessness, that stillness, when we entertain imaginally our memories of our loved ones who have passed on before us, we are is a mode of suspension on the bridge or suspense—as we go from here to there and back again.
I included the Buddhist quotes above not because I think this experience is only Buddhist, but just because I liked some of the descriptions used to explain that sense of timeless moments and bridging gaps of here to there. I think about the universality of these still moments as part of the human experience (and I think animals have these too, like in that moment that they are playing with a favorite toy and hear the word “vet” and freeze for a moment before dashing off to hide, or in that moment that a deer hears a tree branch snap when it stands up alert ready to run out from under the tree. I wonder about symbols in various myths/religions that demonstrate that suspension in time between here and there, such as Christ hanging in suspended animation on the cross and the cross being even in the shape of the four directions and then he is said to have ascended upward into heaven, transcending that pain of the crucifixion. I am also thinking of various myths about trees and hanging, such as the Hanged Man of the Tarot, or Odin hanging on the tree in Norse Myth.
A few years back, I wrote a paper on The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy that involved notions of time and transcendence that was published in a depth psychology journal. I will share it in the forum where we can share our own work–it is timely now in this holiday season also for those who love The Nutcracker.
I have seen this book on social media and have been wanting to order this book–I so appreciate this reminder! Plotting my personal myth is one of my big writing goals in this lifetime as it is for many others I know. This looks like a great book.
This strikes such a common chord with me, Stephen, when you write:
“Looking back, I notice those early unsuccessful efforts exhibit two common characteristics:
First, I would try to detail exactly what happened during the day – the order and times in which events occurred, who said what to whom, etc. – an impossible journalistic task. It had taken me all day to live it; writing it all down would take another day – hence I found the process time-consuming and impossibly overwhelming. No matter how enthusiastic I was at first, my efforts faded and entries soon dribbled away to nothing.”
I have often had the same thing happen or this same feeling–so overwhelmed by the amount of information that yes time consuming and how to get all the details down. I then worry about what my writing might lack is if it needs to be full in order to read it a year later and understand it, let alone remember what I meant by it at all or what the circumstances really were. I often do this when I want to write a journal entry or a blog entry and end up not writing or posting it. Sometimes I will simply write down the general idea like” I had a dream last night I want to write down later.” Often, later never comes from that point on with that. The same sort of thing is going on with me with a writing project I have going on now–this one is not a journal, not about me, but about the characters. But what you wrote here just gave me a gift of understanding something: If I worry about not getting the right or enough details as I write (or feel apprehension about the daunting task of organizing the details of the material) I make it about me when what I really want and what the characters want is for it to be about the characters! I guess the advice here for this type of circumstance would be to make it about the characters and get out of the way! (Insert smile emoji!) Or, if it is writing about the day’s events: what I gather from your words here, Stephen, is to again make it about the subject matter and get out of one’s own way–for instance, if writing about a dream, make it about the dream and not what you (here I mean general you, as in anyone) are superimposing over the dream–unless analysis is what you are after but then you can always go back and analyze later and step out of the way of the dream for a minute and “give” it its own life it already has. (Here I am also thinking about the forum discussions we’ve had on dreams and Hillman’s theories on animal dreams. And I see here too that if I were worried too much about organizing this material in my response that I would never have written this parenthetical comment!) I just came into this forum just now because I just read something from Campbell that made me think of this forum topic, so I came here to share it. It is about writer’s block–all the things that block us, whatever they are, we can all get over our blocks perhaps if we consider what Campbell expressed:
Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.”
― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
Thank you Stephen, and thank you, James, for this topic on writing during this pandemic.
Wishing blessings to all,
Marianne
John, thank you for the helpful answers to my questions, and you have given me a lot to think about here. I am going to think on these things before responding, except for now to say that I really “get” what you say about a negative teacher not being a mentor since the negative (“bad”) teacher is not invested. The word “invested” here is so clearly definitive–thank you so much. I also like the ideas you give about mentoring in smaller groups aside from a larger group where mentoring is less apt to take place. I recall some college profs who would sometimes join in at writing students’ discussion circles much like a round table whether the table was round or not and whoever was there that evening had that sense of being mentored, developing that closer relationship. Wine and poets, yes, that was a classic key!
–Mary Ann
Hi Shaheda,
It was wonderful hearing your lovely story the other evening in our chat, and here I love too all the extra details you have provided that really put in into context and create strength in sense of place. It all sounds like a historical novel with all its romance of one’s memoirs. And yes, when I brought up the senex/crone/Hillman I also included the reference to James N who brought it up and discussed it in this forum. I have to say thank you for being open to sharing some of your personal myth with us in this story. The railroad is such a powerful symbol/metaphor in and of itself and so is perfume/fragrance, and psychologists have mentioned that one’s sense of smell is the most powerful memory-bringer that we have, as you and most here are probably aware of already. Whenever I smell roses, I think of my grandmother, for instance, sinch she always had rose water and roses around.
As children we sometimes have less impulse control to resist something so aesthetically pleasing as a bottle of perfume that not only smells good but is most likely beautifully designed as well! I suppose we adults still have a bit of that lack of resistance in us when we see or smell chocolate and we eat it, but are by then less apt to eat it if we would have to sneak it out of our uncle’s coat pocket or from his dresser! You say you and your uncle were opposites when you were that age, yet knowing you now, I would find it so difficult to believe that you were so totally without ethics back then (as you say he was ethical and you were not at that time, and that you lacked nobility). Children all slip off and away with their hands into the mysterious world of discoveries of all the things they have to touch, smell, taste, and experience while still learning so much about our sensory world. I question if such nobility as yours (as I know you to possess) could grow out of the 12-year old child you were who you say had no nobility. And your uncle was in on the secret, which I find so sweet and endearing! It was obviously excused!–at least by your uncle.
From what you told me about him, he seemed to have impeccable taste, and a certain sensory appreciation of life, which you have seemingly obviously inherited.
You reminded me of how much I loved the smell of my grandmother’s rosewater.
I don’t know how many of us could resist opening the genie bottle! Perhaps your daimon needed you to open the bottle and let her out! Let us chat some more soon–I have a collaborative idea. This is so numinous to me that you write about this now when I consider an experience I had the other day that I have been meaning to blog about. It is about a message in a bottle. I will include a photo with the story here below if I can. I just love it when the archetypes in myths become part of our personal myth(s).
So here is the story in a nutshell, or the Message in the Bottle Blowing in the Wind:
The other day the wind was very strong. It had that lake effect, when/where it blows in from the south and wraps around the lake atmosphere somehow to circle back from the north making leaves and everything else in its path swirl around, like little mini-tornadoes that can lift small objects off the ground. When I went outside on the porch, I saw a glass bottle that had been sitting on the ledge “caught” by the thin rope that pulls the blinds up and down, and it was hanging there in suspended animation swinging back and forth in that wind and sometimes bumping into the wooden porch fence rail. I hope my photo below will “stick.” I could also try to upload the video I took of this. In regards to mentors, when thinking of the daimon as one’s genii, I hope I have not steered too far off the forum topic (as I do tend to free associate a lot).
Message in the Bottle Blowing in the Wind
(Photo taken my M. Bencivengo, mid-November 2020)What messages are waiting in the bottle, whether from genii or magician mentor or human mentor? I have been wanting to write on this as I meditate on it.
(Oh, and if anyone is wondering, that is an old delivery truck with historical plates–it comes in handy now and then, and we had wanted to have it converted into a camping/RV type van by now! Sorry I did not move the trash can out of the pic but it was one of those spontaneous pics. I figured maybe the genii wanted to tell me about all the things I could use less of in my life, all the things I could let go of!)
–Mary Ann
(I know my name spelling is confusing–I recently switched the spelling of my name to “Marianne.” I will try to change it here on this website/forum, too. )
James,
I loved reading that you bring up the senex/crone archetype and the puer, and your thoughts on these, such powerful symbols for those still open to be “seekers” in life on their paths, who never stop being curious and never stop learning, and also one of my favorite Hillman books.
–Mary Ann
Thank you for sharing your wonderful thoughts and your book with us, Toby! I am going to put it on my wish-list! The holidays are coming, and maybe while shopping for others I will be able to add to an order a gift for myself!
Joanna,
I so totally appreciate the honesty and forthright expression. I hear you–I end up sounding very negative sometimes when I say “That damn covid, I hate it!” It is because I hate what it has done that my mother is sitting more isolated then ever in a nursing home and for all the elderly people who are losing their memories of loved ones and their touchstones to other memories about their lives since they cannot visit them. It makes me get teary eyed for infants and very young children whose first impressions of their parents is often as people wearing masks and who are introduced to a world of isolation of social distancing. For all the children losing parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, siblings, and their teachers at school, sometimes I cannot stand the thought and have to force myself to think of something else (which I do also when I turn off the news). I try to remain optimistic that this will be temporary and that the children of the world will grow up finding a better world soon. Yet I immediately think now how my daughter had hoped covid would go away by now so that she could host her first Thanksgiving at her own new house, but cannot do so since it is all Red Zone around here in Ohio and because there are 18 Covid patients currently where she works. She does get tested 3x per week with a rapid test. But yet I go back to hope: perhaps next year she can do so. And when I say that I mean that for all of us–that perhaps next year we can ALL have a more normal Thanksgiving and holidays–hope that this vaccine helps alleviate the issues we have at hand. I also think of how many people live with the isolation of illness all their lives in various ways/forms, and that perhaps they are more used to it than those who have never had a lengthy illness–thinking of that boy in the bubble story about the boy who had such awful auto-immune allergies that he had to live in a “bubble.” Right now most of us are experiencing that bubble to an extent.
