Replying to LO27514 --
Dear Gavin and Learners All,
I will not cite/quote your mails, nor mine, nor anyone else's on this
knitted ;-) thread here because then, maybe, others who are inclined by
the idea that Love Expands Intelligence and tripping over it here in some
darkness for the first time might trouble to go back and find a useful
contemporary source not with you or me in but with Humberto Maturana. I
wonder what happens if you typed in that phrase, "Love expands
intelligence" at Google.com ?
Of course, 'Love', 'expansion' and 'intelligence' are words to be
understood with care if we are to take them to the common destination and
unbroken, not disfigured. I think a lot of people might be inclined to
interpret 'expansion' as an increase in mechanically measurable terms,
Expand=Larger. Expansion could equate to an intensification. It could
mean...this, that and the other and all those meanings would have intended
and unintended consequences. But this morning I think it means that in a
state of Love our capacity to think/act well expands outwardly-reaching.
And in this I might like to imagine that is what an image does. Let's say,
to be uncontroversial and engaging most here, as a Van Gogh painting does
this and let's say his late yellow blue orange 'Cafe' scene with the stars
in the sky. Why, how could that giant neurotic transfer;-) his emotioning
intelligence into a square meter of canvas with some oily liquid and call
into question positively the schism between our sense of lowliness and our
sense of holiness? How and why does the image 'sing'. Is it the forces
between light and dark being played out in the cafe's interior, or between
the canopy of the cafe and the canopy of canopies the star vaulted heavens
and in the marks and colour combinations there is the tingling hand, the
cutting edge of our supreme technology (our imaginations) the possibility
of self meeting Self. He shines the very light Plato said we are all
afraid of as our children fear the dark. Van Gogh fear neither dark nor
light and fused the two. George Bernard Shaw described the phenomenon..."
This creature Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the
backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero."
Like you talked with Dilts I talked with CG Jung ;-) listen up then
partner;-) " All those personal things, tendencies and other childish
tunes are mere surface; what the unconscious really contains are the
greater collective events of the time. In the collective unconscious of
the individual, history prepares itself..." People speak, act on, with too
much reverence these mish mash concepts served up from so many Harvardians
as sauces for endless soldiers rations 'plain meals', like "visions and
current reality". All too often a covert term for what...propaganda,
brainwashing? As Jung said before the full horrors of the war had taken
hold of the collective psyche...Before the Fist World War all intelligent
(sic) people said " We shall not have any more war, we are far too
reasonable to let it happen, and our commerce and finance are so lace
internationally that war is absolutely out of the question." -" And now
(1939) they begin to talk that foolish kind of talk about reason and
peace plans and such things, they blindfold themselves by clinging to
childish optimism- and now look at the reality! Sure enough, the
archetypal images decide the fate of man. Man's unconscious psychology
decides, and not what we think and talk in the brain chamber up in the
attic."...I would not advise anyone to read what Jung says after that...
Dear Gavin, I sense you sense you have a great gift to bring this
community. Maybe it is something like Jung's 'The Secret of the Golden
Flower'. You know;-) Anona and I make wines from flowers...imagine getting
drunk on flowers...had Vincent done that well he may not have cut his ear
off ;-) I expect you know something about art, well enough to not call a
Rothko or a van Gogh the work of a madman, idiot. Artists work hard night
and day, day and night to bring forward what Senge calls the background.
Last night I brought to life the words of Whitman, I went out with my coal
scuttle into the vaulted room of Creation that is literally just outside
our cottage's back door..I know it is, I have seen it;-) and looked up.
Took my breath away. TOOK MY BREATH AWAY. I wonder what kind of archetypal
message that contains?
Here is how I see myself becoming/being in this world living as I do as a
freelance human. I have used Jung because he is IMO a suitable guide for
us both and this community if the vehicle of care in this is transference,
the fourth and final stage of which he calls the objectification of
impersonal images. An essential (Jung) part of the process of
individuation (achieving a maximisation of singularity of complexity as
autopoietic self in world?) is the goal to detach consciousness from the
object so that then individual no longer places the guarantee of his
happiness, or of his life, in factor outside himself, whether they be
persons, ideas, or circumstances, but comes to realize that everything
depends on whether he holds the treasure or not." - "If the gold is
realised, then the centre of gravity is in the individual and no longer in
an object upon which he depends."
My sense, maybe even our sense, is that there is today a upward movement
from gut level to mind level, a streaming through, and onward rush of some
chemistry or other that is shifting some deeply, others knot, which
depends critically on open communications. And the opening of these
channels will one day create conditions for a new life. A new way of life?
That is what I sense people here want. But they rarely ask for it in
public realms, but it's about al they dream of. Artists can help make
imaginings into realities. Jung reckoned that these deeper feelings
(archetypal) had to find forms of expression.
When an artist in any media does that the artwork becomes alive and moves
people 'hither and thither', and then even in confusion, learning takes
new place. (Bohm) Going freely to the edge then... the 'non ego centre'
(Jung) - 'Tis the nature of fire to burn and of water to wet' (Shakespeare
from memory) I have a new paiting at the back of my imagination, it is
something like a streaming river of fire that does not burn...be careful
when you are playing with fire Gavin..."for alchemy such as yours;-) was
once the work of doctors who were busy with the mind." (Jung Tavistock
Lectures.V)
Giving life, for life, among others.
Light in darkness.
Agape.
Here, none of you would know this from a private letter by Vincent van
Gogh..." I think, when thwarted in our natural development, we find that
germination foiled and we are placed in circumstances as hopeless as they
must be for that grain of sand between millstones. When that happens to us
and we are utterly bewildered by the loss of our natural life, there are
some amongst us who, though ready to bow to the inevitable, are yet
unwilling to relinquish their self confidence, and determine to discover
what is the matter with them and what is really happening. And if full of
good intentions we search in the books of which it is said that they can
illuminate the darkness, with the best will in the world we find precious
little that is certain, and not always the satisfaction and personal
consolation." 1887.
You know Gavin, I offer to facilitate (make easy) the movement from
whatever someone purports to be to becoming a visual artist...and it is so
easy I get very few takers. It's expressed well enough by this..Take a
line for a walk! But who will take that line for a walk and follow where
it leads?
Love and Chimo
Andrew
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