Our emotional lives are patterned and structured, otherwise there would be no reason for therapy and psychiatry. We could just throw darts at a target with nostrums and remedies for our psychic ailments.
Emptying (Kenosis) and Filling (Plerosis) are two examples, two ends of a spectrum process that spans space and time and consciousness.
The Emptying is exemplified by Lent and Ramadan and mortification practices and fasting. This practices are talked about and reasoned about in many ways, but in their simplest form, they are Patterns of behavior, the body and mind and soul interacting with each other, and the main process is emotional, affecting everything by changing habits, reducing the intake of necessary nutrients, eliminating sleep, foregoing human society by escaping to the wastelands...
Then there are the Filling times, times of feast and festival and indulgence; everything associated with a process leading to satiety - being filled to the brim - is the master of the course of life.
Ramadan is a lunar month and Lent is 40 days. Each day is a miniature recreation of every other, recurring patterns re-enforcing each other over time.
Christmas and Hannuka and the Two Feasts are defined in various ways: the days of Hannuka, the Sundays of Advent and the following Twelve Days, the time of preparation for the 'eid.
Life is shunted from the ordinary and intermittent emotion to a state of evocation of Emotion enduring and frequent.
What others? Pain & Pleasure, Giving & Receiving, Inclusion & Exclusion, Activity & Rest, Tension & Relaxation, Increase & Decrease... these are some of the dyadic behaviors. They are not just spots on a time-line, like "I play basketball... 1 hour later I rest"; they are process and reality.
My Tension in love and my Relaxion in satiety are not like a drive-by shooting; they are crest and trough of waves on the beaches of reality. They are patterns which form my life. They are symbolic chains of activity.
What is Process and Reality, that genius of Alfred North Whitehead? It is this:
The Bible says not "In the beginning God created heavens and earth..."
The verb bereshit is in the Construct state and should be closer to: "In the beginning of God's process of creating the heavens and the earth..."
As Avivah Zornberg points out, in the next verse the "waters" are mentioned as already being there, so they pre-existed the heavens and the earth, but their creationary period and process is ignored. (This small but large distinction of the Construct nature of the verb destroys the notion of the 5,000 year old Earth, or the limit of 7 solar days on the Creation itself, for that matter.)
The flow and chain of Language is replicated in the flow and chain of Music and in the flow and chain of Emotions: all of them all patterned codes...
All are capable of producing Algorithms that will lead us to self-defeating infinite loops... or to the Promised Land.
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4 comments:
This is a bit hard to get my head around, especially comparing the story of the creation of the universe with patterns and change. Essentially, are you saying that the universe is infinite in space and time? No beginning and no ending, but simply periods of change - sometimes vacillating between opposites of a spectrum? So, to put it in terms of the Genesis story, there is, throughout infinity, creation (one end of the spectrum or yin) and destruction (the other end, or yang), pain / pleasure, inclusion / exclusion, etc?
Also, what do you mean in terms of self defeating infinite loops, or the way to the Promised Land? Do you mean that a balance has to be struck in the here and now, between the opposites, in order to free oneself?
Ben
Sorry, you'll have to bear with me for a while. Don't forget that some blog posting are no more than arrant nonsense, either, although I do not think this is one.
What I meant was:
just as we use (and are right now using) Language to find our way around our reality-environment,
so also do we use other things, like Music (Music is not just plug in and hear tunes; it is fully an equal to Language for getting around an environment.. although obviously very different.)
Emotional Behavior is another way; it is not just a knee-jerk reaction to something, but is a structured pattern of behavior: a habitual way of responding to our environment using the Symbols of Emotion... which are very different from Language and Music.
I was trying to establish one class of Emotional Symbols: the polar opposite class, one of which was Filling vs Emptying.
One example: Lent, is an Emptying that is a symbolic structure that lasts 40 days and culmiates in the Filling event of Easter.
Just like we talk a long time, so do we interact for a long time in these actions which use Emotions.
Yin and Yang speak of the Irony of reality as seen by intelligence.
If one opposite, Yin, is exemplified by Pride and the other opposite, Yang, is exemplified by Being-Humbled, then the maxim "Pride goes before a fall." is an observation that Pride (Yin) contains within itself its sudden and surprising opposite (Slipping and falling on a banana peel, and losing one's top hat.)
It seems to me that it is the reality of Emotional Life that most closely is involved in a process called Yin/Yang, but the process yin/yang is not primary: it is the living, feeling man or woman interacting with their environment via Emotions that is the primary phenomenon; yin/yang is a generalized description of them.
Sorry. Clear as Mud.
Keep in mind:
(1) these can be more like notes to remind myself where my head was at a little while ago, and
(2) I may change it all in time.
Thanks for the clarification, Montag. And it can be fun to ramble on! Rambling often leads to the best thoughts. :)
I think with the emotional behavior occurring in patterns can only be classified such because the patterns apply more or less to ALL humans, which is another nail in the coffin of racism and a lift up for those who see a oneness between all humans, no matter how separate, how disparate in whatever ways. And it also allows for the opening of compassion, which I believe is the most important quality we can develop, and there ought to be enough to go around (like the Jesus story of making abundant food from very little - that particular story seems to meld the dyads of emptying and filling together - symbolic of the emotional changes from one to the other).
I think in terms of Genesis and the "water" being there, shows...I guess the water (which perhaps is plerosis in a way) is "filled" with the vibrant universe and the cosmos that we know, and God is the mediator - the creator of the "pattern" from one to the other. So God had an "emotional pattern", which allowed the conversion from water to world.
Ben
That last sentence is very interesting.
We always think of God as SAYING (language) "Let there be light!"
Language makes it so clear. Emotion is only clear to another emotional being, and probably a compassionate one.
Thanks.
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