I'm sure we agree about all of this? — frank

Probably. Except...
When does anyone ignore the messenger of pain? I think only when something really important is going on, like a football match, or a ballet.
A baby screams about something, you don't know and they can't say, cold hot hungry tired bored frightened but whatever it turns out to be, they give a damn about that.

When does anyone ignore the messenger of pain? — unenlightened

A woman ignores it when she doesn't think she has the strength to leave the guy who is abusing her. A man ignores it when his culture doesn't allow him to feel that. A whole population ignores it when their souls would be torn to shreds if they had to face it. A spiritual pilgrim ignores it when he thinks Zen is the higher magic to take him out of his woes. Nope. Woes are still there.

All of these things can result in misplaced emotion. Because I wore a poker face in all those situations, I exploded inappropriately in these others. Because I didn't know how to deal with the deaths of those people, I shut down altogether like the Pawnbroker.

I think I might be misunderstanding your point.

poem about the cover-up, as a cover-up.

I mean what else can you do?

Because I didn't know how to deal with the deaths of those people, I shut down altogether like the Pawnbroker. — frank

Yes, the source, in general is trauma, and the shut down person is shut into the trauma and forever reliving it as flashback and recreating it out of the materials and characters of the present. Which explains why tyrants and abusers get elected by the traumatised.

poem about the cover-up, as a cover-up.

I mean what else can you do? — csalisbury

Uncover, dear boy. Does not Ashbury reveal the tragedy of the fragmentation of mind, and surely in the uncovering is the possibility of healing? Do you know if he ever wrote or spoke about being gay?

He was forever interrogating what it is to be in a moment with these facts and things and culture and feelings all existing at once, BUT in this interrogation was the enlightened recognition that we are not simply co-existing but are in relation to and, therefore, like a wave, affecting everyone and everything—and vice versa. He shows us how to be more fully, to inhabit each moment intentionally and consciously, to expand it, and he makes it look as easy as breathing, as if the air itself is alchemy, and we just need to relax, breathe it in and speak past the societal overlay of what is true towards otherwise:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2017/09/and-the-occassion-changed-a-tribute-to-john-ashbery

There is the moment, and the trauma one brings to it; at each moment there is the possibility of seeing the fragmentation, and seeing it, not from another fragment as observer, but fragmentation seeing itself - a whole seeing.

the shut down person is shut into the trauma and forever reliving it as flashback and recreating it out of the materials and characters of the presen — unenlightened

Shut down means there's no emotion at all. It's bliss, btw. It can make a person wonder why we have to feel at all. What is so important about feeling that we can't all just be silent inside?

Speaking of death...

Shut down means there's no emotion at all. It's bliss, btw. — frank

If there is no emotion, then what is shut down? I think you should watch the film again.

New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called it a "remarkable picture" that was "a dark and haunting drama of a man who has reasonably eschewed a role of involvement and compassion in a brutal and bitter world and has found his life barren and rootless as a consequence. — your link

Bliss? I think not.

I'm sure you know more about it than I do.

I'm sure you know more about it than I do. — frank

I'm sure I know nothing at all about your feelings, I'm just trying to make sense of your posts.

I know. This is from my little song and dance:

...forever reliving it as flashback and recreating it out of the materials and characters of the present. — unenlightened

That stuff is an unconscious attempt to resolve a problem. But it also generates persona, so it's like the work of a doctor: if she was successful in ending all disease, she would simultaneously destroy her own identity as a doctor.

That doesn't have much to do with PTSD or scruples, though.

But the theory you were trying out was that the intellect can't be the realm of unique identity because the format shows signs of being necessarily communal.

Lacan said the same thing about the content of emotion. Babies have no aboutness to their emotions until it's given to them.

So what's at stake with the idea of a true self?

One is allowed and expected to feel sadness, loss, confusion, but one might well also feel relief, anger, indifference, even pleasure. — unenlightened

I have often felt that the feeling of losing a loved one falls somewhere on a spectrum, at one end devastation and the other end emancipation and then a million points in between. Perhaps the sudden and unexpected loss of a child would be at the far end of being pure devastation and the loss of a horrible abuser pure emancipation, but the rest points in between. When it's someone you've seen suffer, it does move toward emancipation to some degree. The emancipation can be confusing and even guilt provoking and perhaps in some cases the feeling of devastation might make little sense.

I remember as a child watching my mother's casket lowered into the ground thinking thank God it was finally over, but it never really is. We carry such things to our graves.

I remember as a child watching my mother's casket lowered into the ground thinking thank God it was finally over, but it never really is. We carry such things to our graves. — Hanover

I felt the same thing when my dad died last year, but I had schizophrenic feelings of relief, emancipation, and sadness all at the same time. He suffered for a long time which I felt empathy for, but I also felt relief because he was often horrible to me. I felt sadness because his emotional suffering was in part due to my rebellion from his sometimes abusive behavior that I also had somewhat of a form of Stockholm syndrome about. He was my dad, the only dad I will ever have, for better or for worse, and the relationship strongly shaped me into who I am.

“We carry such things to our graves.”

I agree. This is true of any close relationship that shapes us.

Do you know if he ever wrote or spoke about being gay? — unenlightened

From another poem in the same collection (self-portrait in a convex mirror)


"Once I let a guy blow me.
I kind of backed away from the experience.
Now years later, I think of it
Without emotion. There has been no desire to repeat,
No hang-ups either. Probably if the circumstances were right
It could happen again, but I don’t know,
I just have other things to think about"

There is the moment, and the trauma one brings to it; at each moment there is the possibility of seeing the fragmentation, and seeing it, not from another fragment as observer, but fragmentation seeing itself - a whole seeing.

Well i am sitting here on my porch trying to think of what to say to that. I just saw Quentin Tarantino's new movie with a friend and his friend. Its a movie brimming with Identity (cool music, violence, confident, seamless dialogue) and I walked back feeling more sure of myself and my presence, and out here with my cigarette and beer and coming home to everyone else asleep, it feels like a movie, which feels like being watched over and approved.

I also know this is a temporary feeling, since I've had the experience a few times. We all agreed the movie wasn't really good -- except my friend's friend, who had been the one to suggest we see it, seemed to be unsure about that. He and my friend were the first to say it wasn't good, or at least as good as it was supposed to be. But he - my friend's friend - had told us, over margaritas at the mexican restaurant we went to beforehand, that this was his first night out in months (married, two kids.) He convinced me to buy a ticket, even tho he knows me and my friend have a track-record (thats become a running joke) of getting bored and walking out of movies halfway through.

Earlier today I bought a book while at work about how to do self-therapy using the " internal family system"model.

During the movie I kept finding myself trying to theorize the movie and it took effort to let the thoughts fizzle out instead of pursuing them to some synoptic sum-up of What Is Really Happening In This Movie, What this Movie is Really Doing.

I have weird hives on my arms lately I've been scratching and halfway through the movie I went to the bathroom and took a piss and looked at my forearms, and got fascinated with the shape of the hives and was looking at them as I walked out, and a pretty teenager was on a bench outside and looked at me and I felt vile and strange. I had also just been looking at myself in the bathroom mirror and trying to see myself as my friend's friend saw me.

At the mexican restaurant, with my friend, before my friend's friend showed up, I was trying to speak directly, and I was trying to do that by resisting impulses to make jokes in the emotional beats I always makes jokes during. It seemed to actually be working, which felt miraculous, and I resented the friend's impending arrival and the movie.

Last night a girl who I've been hanging out with casually for a year, and who, in the past few weeks, I've begun to spend more and more time with and open up more and more to asked me via text if we could hang out that night and I said yes but in a way that signalled no and the conversation went just that way and I went home and laid in bed with a feeling of satisfaction that repulsed me but that I also allowed to lull me to sleep. The memory of this cut repeatedly into tonight.

I dreamt the night before of a woman on 'neighborhood arrest' in a beach community who called me and asked if I could borrow my roomates car to bring her somewhere.

The dream followed two different paths after that.

In one path we walked through a series of interconnected beach houses in her neighborhood, where it got progressively more crowded, until the final beach house gave out onto a beach choked with hooded figures in weird iridescent water and I said we had to turn back. I had thought we were going to an empty beach.

In the other path, I picked her up in the car and we left the neighborhood and we drove and drove and I got frustrated because there was nowhere to go to at all and I finally desperately suggested we see a movie but she didn't want to.

But that of course is too tidy so another quote, this time lyrics.

'What’s redacted will repeat,
and you cannot learn that you burn when you touch the heat,
so we touch the heat,
and we cut facsimiles of love and death
(just separate holes in sheets
where you cannot breathe, and you cannot see).

And I cannot now, for the life of me, believe our talk—'

All of which is a shaggy dog to: a wonderful life a as a gift of faith versus a fruit of decision. I can't imagine how you can see the fragments as they are (as one is) - as fragmented, as the wave, not as one fragment observing - without some visitation of grace. Only a fragment can decide! And in deciding, will always redact. And so repeat.

So in the meantime (yea rilke but no one has yet said it better):


Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Orders?

And even if one were to suddenly
take me to its heart, I would vanish into its
stronger existence.

For beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us.

Every Angel is terror.


And so I hold myself back and swallow the cry
of a darkened sobbing.

Ah, who then can
we make use of?

Not Angels: not men,
and the resourceful creatures see clearly
that we are not really at home
in the interpreted world.

Perhaps there remains
some tree on a slope, that we can see
again each day: there remains to us yesterday’s street,
and the thinned-out loyalty of a habit
that liked us, and so stayed, and never departed.

That stuff is an unconscious attempt to resolve a problem. But it also generates persona, so it's like the work of a doctor: if she was successful in ending all disease, she would simultaneously destroy her own identity as a doctor. — frank

Yea exactly

I've probably mentioned this before on here, but I've thought of this for a long time as both Hal in 2001 + the hero trying to shut him down. The greatest threat to hal is his not being in control of threat-handling. Once the threat is gone, he's the threat and the threat to him becomes the people he was supposed to protect but can no longer , and so threaten him.

[so a really smart hal would make the hero identify with him....something something about how Lacan's real seems a lot like outer space around a spaceship w/ life support.]

I have often felt that the feeling of losing a loved one falls somewhere on a spectrum, at one end devastation and the other end emancipation and then a million points in between. — Hanover

Well it is rather like being left by one's lover, one can be liberated one can be imprisoned, one can be sad or glad, enraged, one can feel murderous towards the dead. One's relationship with the person has been complex, and it does not become simple in death; all these feelings mingle and rise up at different times.

When my father died, (I was 20) I wasn't much bothered, which is of course the most inappropriate of all. As if there is a feeling debt that ought to be paid. He was brought up a Wee Free, no toys on Sunday, Christian Miserablist, and became a Communist and then a good socialist. I guess he did well enough to live a peaceable life with wife and children through the war and pass on less trauma than he inherited.

There is the moment, and the trauma one brings to it; at each moment there is the possibility of seeing the fragmentation, and seeing it, not from another fragment as observer, but fragmentation seeing itself - a whole seeing.

Well i am sitting here on my porch trying to think of what to say to that. — csalisbury

Well you have said a lot, but I will not answer just this...

I can't imagine how you can see the fragments as they are (as one is) - as fragmented, as the wave, not as one fragment observing - without some visitation of grace. — csalisbury

Let's just say that there is that possibility, and that it is not something willed or performed or achieved, but a visitation of grace, as you say, or if that is difficult, a natural phenomenon like the coalescing of drops of water, or the seeing of one scene with two eyes. Let's say there is no 'how' any more than there is an action to relaxation. One can prepare a little by doing whatever is necessary, and dropping whatever is not... make some space, get some rest, sow a little kindness...

Or if the poet insists on science, http://ift-malta.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-cybernetics-of-self-A-theory-of-alcoholism.pdf

I've probably mentioned this before on here, but I've thought of this for a long time as both Hal in 2001 + the hero trying to shut him down. The greatest threat to hal is his not being in control of threat-handling. Once the threat is gone, he's the threat and the threat to him becomes the people he was supposed to protect but can no longer , and so threaten him. — csalisbury

Maybe HAL and Dave are aspects of consciousness. The fuel of consciousness is problems: unanswered questions for the mind, unredeemed sins for emotion, wounds for flesh.

Dave relies on HAL to bring these problems to his attention. It seems like Dave is in charge. He thinks is. But HAL can move Dave like a puppet.

But if HAL is taken off line, doesn't Dave become blind and deaf?

When my father died, (I was 20) I wasn't much bothered, which is of course the most inappropriate of all. As if there is a feeling debt that ought to be paid. He was brought up a Wee Free, no toys on Sunday, Christian Miserablist, and became a Communist and then a good socialist. I guess he did well enough to live a peaceable life with wife and children through the war and pass on less trauma than he inherited. — unenlightened

Old school traditional father son relationships were odd. My dad was omni-present but never really there. I thought he was just quirky, regimented, certain, duty bound, but maybe he had Aspergers. That makes more sense to me. I over compensate now nicely with my kids, so they can have something to dissect when I'm gone.

Miserablism - nice term. It describes my brand of childhood religion well. The Sabbath was a day you were freed of all joy.

I like this subject. It is indeed wonderful this life. And this is my argument.

Maybe HAL and Dave are aspects of consciousness. The fuel of consciousness is problems: unanswered questions for the mind, unredeemed sins for emotion, wounds for flesh.

Dave relies on HAL to bring these problems to his attention. It seems like Dave is in charge. He thinks is. But HAL can move Dave like a puppet.

But if HAL is taken off line, doesn't Dave become blind and deaf? — frank

I think of Hal as being programmatic. He has a certain cybernetic quality that, yes, seeks certain problems, certain sins, but only insofar as they are particular cases of general problems, using those problems in such a way that he replicates himself. I think Hal is in charge only as long as Dave identifies with his problems. Ive been thinkinh lately something that, transposed into this metaphor, would be: Dave does have free will, but not to choose something different. It's the free will to choose not to listen to Hal. Which leaves him deaf and blind for a moment, but only until the roar of hal quiets and he actually realizes what he called seeing and hearing were, as you said, puppet strings. There's another hearing and seeing I think

Dave does have free will, but not to choose something different. It's the free will to choose not to listen to Hal. — csalisbury

Reminds me of a Tibetan thing:

May I be free of fear
May I be free of anger
May I be free of craving and aversion.
May I be free of suffering and the root of suffering.

May you be free of fear
May you be free of anger
May you be free of craving and aversion.
May you be free of suffering and the root of suffering.

In the real, there is no distinction between me and you, so the two paragraphs sort of say the same thing. Fear is the emotion of the victim and anger is the emotion of the sinner. Together they make up a type or "general problem" that generates identities small to huge.

I think of it as briefly peeking out of my own identity and I'm nameless in a cocoon in the real.

Kind of like turning down the volume on Hal.

Meaning that wasn’t intended by the artist is the best kind of meaning of all, IMHO.

Let's just say that there is that possibility, and that it is not something willed or performed or achieved, but a visitation of grace, as you say, or if that is difficult, a natural phenomenon like the coalescing of drops of water, or the seeing of one scene with two eyes. Let's say there is no 'how' any more than there is an action to relaxation. One can prepare a little by doing whatever is necessary, and dropping whatever is not... make some space, get some rest, sow a little kindness...

Or if the poet insists on science, http://ift-malta.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-cybernetics-of-self-A-theory-of-alcoholism.pdf — unenlightened

The frame of preparation is good. It seems to complement (no pun intended) the Bateson piece. I found myself relating very well to the cycles he describes - not just with alcohol, any number of things.


The decision to stop the cycle ends up being a key part of the cycle. It seems like each part of the cycle is experienced by a different 'I' - all these 'I's are superficially similar (they'd scan as the same person if subjected to a demographic/whats your favorite food/movie/etc quiz) but with radically different implicit values and beliefs about what is the best thing to do. The implicit bubbles under the sheen of regular talk - a good diagnostician might be able to spot early signs - until a phase change happens and the implicit become explicit in some action which climaxes and denouements into the beginning of the next stage.

But it's hard to be cognizant of that fact and keep track of this continual recurrence if you're always one of those 'I's because each I will try to rewrite the (fragmented) whole in its own terms. So even if you catch on to what's happening, you've still got a room of subselves tracking the same events yet deriving from them wildly different policy proposals. (I wonder if the power of AA springs in part from having a group of people whose cycles are out of sync and so, as a whole, naturally balances those who participate in it.)

Much of my ambivalence toward the OP springs from a mistrust that its thrust could be taken as the Noble Image the implicit relapse-ready I cloaks itself with. Even if its right, I know myself well enough to know I can't be sure what shadowparts of me are counseling me to heed to an eloquent paean to a certain way of being in order to satisfy their own ulterior motives (themselves ulterior motives of the cycle.)

I think any expression of values carries with it the potential for two contradictory ways of illustrating it, each equally powerful. The libertine is both Voltaire or a weak yellow-toothed lecher. And either frame can be as imaginatively powerful and persuasively forceful as you like. So too with the most wonderful life.

But still there's something about the post of yours I've quoted above which seems different than that.
As Bateson says the cycle will continue until a deeper nonwilled change happens. The idea of preparation seems to both admit the powerlesness of oneself to stop a cycle by force, but leaves room for a different kind of thing, an attentiveness maybe while it goes on and on, to maybe change things in little ways just enough to leave a little space for something outside to come through?

But still there's something about the post of yours I've quoted above which seems different than that.
As Bateson says the cycle will continue until a deeper nonwilled change happens. The idea of preparation seems to both admit the powerlesness of oneself to stop a cycle by force, but leaves room for a different kind of thing, an attentiveness maybe while it goes on and on, to maybe change things in little ways just enough to leave a little space for something outside to come through? — csalisbury

I'm so glad you're seeing somewhat what I'm trying to get at. Yes 'I' can't change/stop 'the cycle', because whenever 'I' act on 'the cycle' I'm just moving it on, or going around it some more. But 'the cycle' has that freedom ...

'Seeing without division', as the man has it.
https://www.dreamsalive.com/download/KrishnamurtiA.pdf

I find that mood stabilizers (for me, 400 mg of Lamotrigine daily, a rather high dose which is needed) stop the cycle almost altogether. One hundred milligrams of Loxapine daily helps me, in the sense that I no longer think and speak poetically, something that never actually helped me anyways. Cognitive behavioral therapy doesn’t seem to be helping anyone here.

But if one values being inaccessible to people, then have at it.

Reminds me of a Tibetan thing:

May I be free of fear
May I be free of anger
May I be free of craving and aversion.
May I be free of suffering and the root of suffering.

May you be free of fear
May you be free of anger
May you be free of craving and aversion.
May you be free of suffering and the root of suffering.

In the real, there is no distinction between me and you, so the two paragraphs sort of say the same thing. Fear is the emotion of the victim and anger is the emotion of the sinner. Together they make up a type or "general problem" that generates identities small to huge.

I think of it as briefly peeking out of my own identity and I'm nameless in a cocoon in the real.

Kind of like turning down the volume on Hal. — frank

I went to the park today (a particular park high up on a hill in Portland, where you can pick a spot to post up and look out over South Portland.) I like this park because my usual feeling of disconnection feels ok there, I think similar to the peeking out you described. I still have a weak grasp on my 'self', but I feel the pressure of needing a self less. It helps that the park is very pretty and often empty. I was there for like five hours, just sitting, sometimes reading, sometimes listening to podcasts. It was really nice, and I even got a tan.

I did want to ask : why do you say that anger is the emotion of the sinner? I struggle badly with irritability, which I guess is the expression of anger restrained (like in cartoons where someone plugs a dam with their finger and water breaks out somewhere else.) Anger is something I'm trying continually these days to understand. I was curious about what you meant by that since you said it with what struck me as an earned declarative assurance.

...if one is depressed when one's experience is uplifting, then one is in some sense absent - not present with the trees and sunshine... — unenlightened

Indeed.

Cognitive behavioral therapy doesn’t seem to be helping anyone here. — Noah Te Stroete

Well, I have a marked distain for modern day therapy.

Learning how to come to acceptable(different) terms with the same events is crucial to looking at the world differently. Looking at the world differently is crucial for feeling different about what you're looking at. This requires an other, and I'm left nonplussed about current methods(therapists and pills)...

Learning how to come to acceptable terms with the same events is crucial to looking at the world differently. Looking at the world differently is crucial for feeling different about what you're looking at. — creativesoul

It’s been 39 years in the making for me. I think I’m finally making progress there, but medication is still necessary to keep at bay the psychotic episodes and manic and depressive episodes. I’m having a good week, month, year so far.

Well, I have a marked distain for modern day therapy. — creativesoul

Me, too.

I have a long-standing grudge against CBT because I think it plum doesn't work. I've had a few hospitalizations and have come to the conclusion that CBT has spread thru the mental health landscape like wildfire because its (simple, not too helpful) ideas are easy to transmit and so require little training, while also being easily chunkable into sessions which makes insurance codes easier and streamlines the billing process. I think there are pockets of insight but its mostly ineffective. Ineffective, but easy.

That said, I've also had little luck with mood stabilizers but I know many people who have deeply benefitted. It seems like mental health treatment ought to be an art (with herbs and prayers and guidance and etc. tailored to the individual case) but is being progressively turned into a flowchart.