La Vida Boliviana

When I read the quote below and I try to understand it in an analytic manner, it makes very little sense to me.
However, if I try to understand it silently, using the tacit understanding and empathy of the body and my memory of such silent understandings of the past, then it shines.

Regardless of whether we think it nonsense or genius, there is a great truth here in that there is an unlimited number of therapies for helping people... an infinite number, actually, for a new way of helping will pop into being from the void tomorrow.

At the end, there is a great truth, which I emphasized.

Bolivian Express
Constellating the Unconscious
29 Jun, 2015 | Valeria Wilde
http://www.bolivianexpress.org/blog/posts/constellating-the-unconscious

You walk into a room and see a group of people in a circle watching a young lady in the middle moving her right foot back and forth, crying desperately. Next to her is an elderly woman dancing with a big smile, surrounding the lady with wide open arms. Also in the circle is a young man trying to reach the crying woman, but he seems invisible to her. She is too consumed by her tears and begins to shout that she cannot stop dancing ballet as yet another woman tries to comfort her without success.

What would you make of this scene? The common assumption may be that you are watching a cast of actors rehearsing a play. For some conservative observers, however, it would be easy to believe that an evil force has somehow possessed these individuals. The truth is that this is a session of an unorthodox therapy called, Family Constellations.

Bert Hellinger is the founder of this therapy, which is heavily influenced by systemic psychotherapy, psycho-genealogy, and transgenerational psychotherapy. Usually the practice takes place in a room with a large group of people who are standing in a circle. The subject selects individuals from the group to represent members of his or her family system.

In what follows, the spontaneous actions of those selected reveal the inner conflicts that the subject of the therapy is attempting to solve. As the session advances, these actions change and evolve, shedding light on a way to resolve the inner conflicts at hand. Organically, a natural order is eventually reestablished in the family portrayed at the heart of the circle.

“There is a force that overtakes me and does all the work through me. That’s why a phrase or a movement comes to me,” says Rosa Scardino, a Family Constellations therapist currently working in La Paz. This force, which is known as the collective consciousness, is what prompts the actions and behaviour of the people participating in the therapy.

[...]

Healing is our duty in this lifetime...

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Benighted Twits

That's us.

I just watched Brian Williams interview with Matt Lauer.
Being asked why he told whoppers on late night TV, Mr. Williams answered that it "... must have been ego..."

As soon as I heard that, I put on my glasses (I don't wear them at the computer), turned my arthritic back, and looked right at the TV screen.
I knew that Mr. Williams did not believe in his heart what he was saying. Somebody talked him into some pop psych explanation and understanding of what happened, but it did not "click" with his intellect, but he accepted the explanation, because that's what he had to do.

He reminds me of not only PTSD victims (and PTSD exists on a range of severity and the trauma varies also), but others, such as Wendell Furry, friend of Oppenheimer, who invoked the fifth amendment during the McCarthy Era interrogations. After retirement and the death of his wife, he woke up yelling that the FBI was after him.

I also believe that Bill O'Reilly probably did not knowingly distort reality in his account of being in Argentina.

There is something going on, and we idiots do not understand it.

I really hate seeing a nice guy feel that he has to grovel to a bunch of benighted twits, such as we are.

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Archetypes

I was reading about someone interested in the history and understanding of the Warrior archetype in our society.

Hmm...

There is the Hero / Heroine. The Hero is Odysseus, unwillingly thrust into someone else's war, and living by his wits and skills until the day he can return to normal life.
In his journeys, he goes is transformed from Everyman into the Hero. This is accomplished by his or her ability to find deep sources of energy and knowledge within themselves.

The Warrior is Achilles or Ajax.
The live for war, and the blood they spill boils on their red hot skin. The best Warrior is the beserker, a war-machine.

We have been mislead by movies and books into thinking Warriors are anything but those members of society which serve our communal blood lust.

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A Feeling Of Inadequacy On Christmas

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

- Those dying generations - at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

W.B.Yeats

I know a young person who is worried whether they will measure up to the demands of their job.

In fact, I know a lot of people who are worried about such hypotheticals: will I measure up to the demands of my job? will I measure up to the demands of my family?
A lot us us wake up in the night watches and face stark fear in the face, perhaps because sleep lets down our defense mechanisms, and as we sail to Byzantium of dreams, we find it is No Country For Old Men (and Women), or for that matter, perhaps for young men and women, too.

We often read of celebrities who we think have got life by the tail, and have a wonderful life. Yet we find in interviews that they are beset by fears and self-doubts.
Just like we are.

The emotional state of feeling inadequate leads to our marginalization; it is a natural selection of the cards we deal in a game where we always fold, because we think the game is "too rich for our blood".

It is illogical.
Recognize it as such.

This Inadequacy Emotion  is the modern day remnant of the Flight Instinct.
When faced with a situation of potential danger, an entity may fight, and perhaps die, or it may flee, and live to fight some other day. The Flight Instinct preserves the entity by causing it to flee, maintains its existence and gene pool, and indeed live on to another day.

We may construct a hypothetical scenario like the above which illustrates why the Flight Instinct may indeed be naturally selected over the Instinct to Fight (or to Approach, or to indulge in Uncautious Curiousity).

The Instinct of Flight may lead to a preponderance of cautious individuals.
The Instinct to Fight may become predominant in other situations, particularly situations where the probability of our surviving a fight are rather good. For example, if we have tools and weapons, our chances of fighting and winning are quite a bit better than if we had to fight with hands and teeth.
Or if we have money;
Or if we have power to compel.

Our feeling of Inadequacy is nothing but the instinct to flee, surviving into the modern world, putting on the new clothes of our modern age, transforming itself into a new form of the very same emotion of old-time fear of the unknown.

Inadequacy can always be quantified. It can be measured.
If I cannot run more than 2 miles this morning at a rate of 6.25 mph, there is no hazy area in my sweaty awareness of it: it is very clear with every gasp.

If we are inadequate, there is no doubt: we are in the midst of battle and we fully and clearly know what's going on.

Very many scripts and many images are available in our society to assist people to marginalize themselves, to give themselves over to vices and weaknesses which tend to destroy, rather than to enrich.
How many cities were able to say no to casinos?
Not many.
Opening the door to weakness and vice has become the new "rational" and "normal" in our lives. By officially cutting the symbolic ribbon and opening the new way into new palaces of vice, whether they be casinos, or pornography, or viciousness and violence, or even the unthinking slaughter of innocent lives by improperly used guns...
If we officially do such, it is clear that as a society we are officially are giving our stamp of approval to marginalizing great numbers of people, that we are giving our OK to establishing a great divide between those who have and those who have-not....

Do not let ourselves be marginalized by old fear in new dress.
Be strong, be honorable, and be virtuous.

--

The Undiscovered

Consider the shooting of Ms. McBride by Mr. Wafer: a man sees a young black woman at his front door at an early hour and shots her in the face through the still closed screen door.

What was the motivation?

If we are to agree that racism was not the cause, what was?

The defense has cited findings that there was alcohol in the young lady's blood. Having alcohol in one's blood does not indicate threatening behavior usually.
There is so much consumption of booze and drugs in our society that merely acting somewhat intoxicated had best not be an adequate reason to be shot at, or we shall all be in danger. Especially since we all have guns, too.

What is going on in our heads?

We cannot come together to have a discussion on race, and perhaps a reconciliation, so what are we going to do? How are we going to handle the Undiscovered motives for our behaviors that lead us to kill each other?

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Further Thoughts On Group Mentality

I am impressed by the resemblance between normal group behavior and definitely abnormal individual obsessive behavior. It is as if abnormal psychology is the proper study of crowds and groups. What, then, is the dynamic of abnormal psych that renders it appropriate for groups?

Why should groups composed of normal individuals find their only form of expression in abnormal behavior? Why should many non-obsessives find themselves in groups that become obsessed and trapped by the symbolic gravity of their mental focus about a conceptual black hole that imprisons their minds?

Even things like the (a) enormous demand for entertainment products coupled with (b) a growing exhaustion of new creative material, such as we see on the talent-ravenous cable TV, strikes me as obsession: we strip-mine the possibility of stories, combining and recombining them like so many trash ponds of talus.

Religion has perverted itself into a telescoping focus onto itself.
If we recall the discussion of the quarterback, Mr. Tebow, and his penchant for kneeling at random places on the football playing field, and we recall the quotation: Matthew 6  5-6

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for  they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward  in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your  Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in  secret, will reward you.

we may readily perceive that much of modern religious belief and feeling is not only at variance with its own holy writ, but is intent on creating a focus on itself.
What do I mean by "a focus on itself"?
I mean that Religion was meant to free people. In the context above, Religion was meant to free people from the external displays of piety, from Celebrity Cult of Religion (TV evangelists, political pastors like Franklin Graham, etc.), and  from a class system based on perceived religiosity.
Instead, Religion now seeks to put people within the prison of a belief system that is not only mental, but physical: the external forms must conform, that which is seen on TV church service must conform and be iconic!, the actions and thoughts jointly are conformed and imprisoned!
This emphasis on externals is in good accord with the present age's emphasis on security, intelligence, tracking devices in iPhones, data mining, etc. for it allows a better Judgement upon the individual, and will ultimately do away with those other bothersome scraps of Scripture, which tells us to;

Judge not, lest You be judged.

or

Let he among you, who is without sin, cast the first stone 

Judgement is vastly easier when everyone's private actions and thoughts are open for inspection. We may judge people by their expressed views and opinions, and judge their piety by their display of Prayerful Preening!

Modern Religion considered as as group - not the individual people who are most often pious and devote - is failing miserably. Religion is unto itself an idol, created by the obsession of the group mind, and seeks to enforce the ethics of the obsessional group.

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8 1/2: The Final Dance

I was asked about overcoming Fear, so I had to think more about it.
I had to go back through all the deep archives of my mind.

The Dance at the end of Fellini's film "8 1/2" is Triumph over Fear, and thus is Life's rejection of the Danse Macabre, or the Dance of Death, an icon of the Plague Years.  It is the response of the sunny Mediterranean to the cold north of "The Seventh Seal".

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Upbeat

I had a downbeat post this morning. Now I feel more upbeat... or beaten up. Anyway, I perused a book by someone named Mark Steyn about how everything is being destroyed, and Armageddon is a-coming, and the US of A is going to be going down for the count.
On the back jacket, there were positive blurbs from Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter.
Once I saw that, I knew it was tripe. Those two are nay-sayers because they do not like President Obama. They had nothing but praise for the trends of events that were ocurring pre-Obama, such as out of control budgets, wars fought off-budget and on-the-cuff, and loss of manufacturing.

There is infinite detail.
We can see good and evil by the bucketful everywhere we look. We can see bad, even when things are going good. It takes no brains to be downbeat when things are down... look at me this morning! It takes brains and guts and perseverance to set one's course to better things when things are down, and similarly it takes guts to call a spade a spade when our country is doing stupid and vile things in times which seem good, such as the things Mr. Cheney is now striving to rehabilitate with his own book.

We have to have the strength to switch our focus from the siren song of destruction to the symphony of creation and life. Fear is a powerful focus. It fascinates and pervades the body and soul.  It is an ancient Medusa whose glance turns men to stone!
Do not look the Gorgon in the eye, lest you be turned to to stone, to a pillar of salt... lest we become rigid with unnatural panic.
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