A New Wrinkle
In addition to being in contact with Jungian colleagues around the question of hierarchy and groups, Eros, and more, I have also been in touch with some friends and colleagues from other disciplines. The following is a comment Antero Alli sent in response to The Third (the post below). I've known Antero since 1980. He is an independent film maker, an actor, a self-created scholar of ritual, an astrologer, and an original...of the highest order. He has come into my dreams a few times since meeting him, always carrying the spirit of the creative animus. His website address is at the bottom of these comments, wherein lie treasures.
Cedrus
The support you give these important ideas involving the cultivation of receptivity (emptying), empathy and the embodiment of Eros express a very high level of consciousness that, I believe, can only be absorbed, integrated and transmitted at the level of the individual. I do not believe this can ever be realized at the level of any institution, no matter what ideals that organization was supposedly based on, due to two key factors. Perhaps in ideal but not in reality.
First, it seems the spectrum of consciousness finds its highest point of expression in the individual experience and its lowest point in crowds, with the lowest common denominator to ratchet lower still with each increase in numbers. Secondly, there follows a natural (and some say regretful) progression from the numen of originating epiphany towards its gradual corruption of consciousness by encasement in beliefs, assumptions, doctrines, systems of hierarchy, defining typologies and stone tablet dogmas as demonstrated by the world's religions and also, by many institutes of higher learning.
In response to these two factors, I choose to participate in a silent revolution of self-work that nurtures and challenges the innate autonomy in myself and those I meet and create with. I no longer seek the respect, approval and regard of institutions of any sort. I do attempt to learn from their unique evolutionary cycles something about the corruption of what once began as a perception so pure as to stand naked before God and simply die to be reborn.
Truly,
Antero Alli
www.paratheatrical.com
In the end, I'm afraid I must agree with him. Perhaps this is my dilemma.
The Artist creates "something out of nothing," which is the process described in many a creation myth. New growth needs this impulse, "...the cultivation of receptivity (emptying)...." Without it, calcification sets in and things commence to rigidify.
Indisputably, I've been having considerable trouble with my joints lately.
3 Comments:
Does the artist create "something out of nothing"? For me, the artist is the one who gives aperspectival, asocial, atemporal form to chaos. Chaos for me is EVERYTHING. The pregnant VOID. Polarities but not opposites. Like the Navajo or Tibetan sandpainting, a form that is a temporary expression of the incarnate soul relating to its source. The creature naked before Creator. The creator receptive to Creature. Polarities but not opposites. Isn't this always a dissolving experience? Methinks when the terror of this dissolution threatens to overwhelm me, I draw a magical circle around it so I can share the 'terrible beauty' with another. And then that circle becomes a wall, and then a fortress, and then an institution... "We have come to this place in the wind where we see trouble and beauty... and that far wandering star still calls us on..."
The pregnant Void. Yes! that's what I meant. No-thing. Not "nothing," as in nobody home. This no-thing coming out of emptying as much as possible and from which all things can arise, especially that which needs to be given voice to in the moment. As a visual artist, I am often terrified by the no-thing-ness of blank paper, unformed clay. But I know that if I can empty enough, what is ready to emerge will indeed do just that. Same thing with movement and the body. If I drop all expectation of right-doing and wrong-doing, if I can empty as much as possible, what needs to be given voice to will arise.
I also wanted to say that this line is very moving...the movement of solidification going into rigidification. You write:
"Methinks when the terror of this dissolution threatens to overwhelm me, I draw a magical circle around it so I can share the 'terrible beauty' with another. And then that circle becomes a wall, and then a fortress, and then an institution..."
Yes, death, in any form, is terrifying to an ego-centered perspective. And if you are trying to be important and famous on any level, there might very well be a prejudice for life.
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