Holding the Tension

Some years ago I met a lady who lived in a small town in Ireland. She spoke of her fear of flying and what she said evoked something about the pace of the modern world. She was someone who worked primarily from feeling, a devotional lady. What was evoked from this encounter is that our manas-driven age of accelerating technology, information-overload, over-analysis etc is going too fast for the ‘being’ to keep up with. Many seem to be living in the manas world whilst the level of being, feeling etc remains unaffected by the ‘information’. I think there is, for many, an existential split which has occurred. (We can, of course also apply this to ‘spiritual information’.)

The radical psychiatrist R D Laing suggested that most of us are to some degree schizophrenic. Then the person labelled as ‘schizophrenic’ is simply someone who is more deeply split (or who has become more deeply aware of the split in themselves and is greatly disturbed by it). I don’t know if this is the whole story but it fits with SOMs experiences shared elsewhere about the layers of mind that were revealed to him. Some psychological techniques, of course, seek to remove the ‘tension’ by expression of that which has been repressed. I don’t advocate this. But also, I feel that the inner sense of division, the tension, the dis-ease must somehow be resolved or understood.

The image is from a photo I took at the V&A Museum back in the summer. Coming back to our earlier discussion on mythology, it is interesting to note how the image connected with something 'within' that the analytical mind doesn’t immediately ‘get’ but something, somewhere knows it’s important. In the statue, Mercury lifts Psyche with his eyes fixed above on the vial that psyche holds. Do we not often see, and is it not a symptom of our age, that Mercury and Psyche are separated? Mercury is stuck in a world of information or ideals that become disconnected from the emotional being. Or the emotional being remains unaffected by higher knowledge. The deep seated samskaras don’t change?

All this fits back with earlier conversations. We have the ‘words of the wise’. Those who have seen further. Or we have our own glimpses of true insight but these become covered again. (Perhaps these may be considered to be the contents of the vial, the distilled essence of wisdom and experience?) Then we have the ‘emotional truth’ of our day to day experience. To deny the former is to deny the possibility of anything higher than our current experience. To deny the latter is to begin to live in an abstract world, at worst a hypocritical world. How to hold the tension between the two? How to allow the two to converge rather than retreat into ideals or the comfort of ‘the known’ ? I don’t claim any answers but a couple of possibilities arise after some reflection on this:

- On our earlier subject of myth, I believe that there is something in myth that penetrates deeper into the being than analytical knowledge. Just like the initial effect of seeing the Mercury and Psyche statue. I think we make a mistake if we consider myths primitive or irrational. Maybe they are in some sense irrational, but they are endeavouring to describe a world that is at least partially irrational - so why not? A study of the myths can perhaps bring light and harmony into the workings of Psyche? Interestingly, Shastri, in his introduction to his Gita translation, claims the Puranas are of the same source as the Gita.

- The image also evokes the practice of simply holding the world of Psyche in awareness. (Mercury is also a symbol for consciousness.) By this, I mean just watching without indulging or repressing (as a Buddhist teacher put it). The metaphor that arises is: allowing simple organic growth in the light of the conscious sun. This, as opposed to genetic modification; the artificial, ‘forced’ interference of judgment, criticism, expectation, manipulation etc. (I also relate this back to the Elephant Whispering post.)

There's more than I can express here because I don't have this worked out. I relate Psyche to chitta, the heart-mind of a real or mythical people of greater integration and wholeness. The words 'creative tension' also arise. Is there creativity whilst the tension is there? Does the creativity vanish when retreating to one pole or the other? Does any of this mean anything to anyone else?