The Steps in Losing Our Ground

One Lens Among Others

We are both always interested in theories that relate to our craft as psychotherapists. That’s “theories” in the plural: theories both old and new. We see them as signposts, or maybe better, as lenses, through which we can see another view of a situation which our clients and we find ourselves in.

But theories, we believe, have to be held lightly; held in the service of our clients, rather than as a straightjacket for thinking. There’s always more than one lens for the complex situations that we find ourselves in, as ever-mysterious individuals.

And it’s worth remembering that any theory didn’t include, in its development, the unique individual to which we might potentially want to apply it.

So with that proviso, here’s a model that can help in understanding depression, addiction and self-esteem issues. It’s both old and new, coming from both ancient contemplative practices, and from Freud and beyond.

And just to reiterate: we’re not saying this theory is the one answer to, say, substance addiction (which is, potentially, a complex individual set of responses to both societal and chemical factors – with the emphasis on individual). The article’s an invitation to contemplate on whether there’s value in this theory for you.

So, following through the steps in the diagram above:

Separation from the Ground of Being

Spiritual traditions East and West have spoken for millennia in different words of the Ground of our Being – as Source, Tao, the Divine, Self, Brahman. In this view, our (largely unconscious) oneness with the Ground is as a deeply loving embrace, a primordial unity of our individual sense of ourselves and an Infinity that is unnamable.

If, however, the individual decides to “go it alone”, there can be, and usually is, an idea to separate from this eternal Home – an idea we term “ego”. It’s not that a separation has actually occurred; it’s just that the person has believed it to have occurred.

Unconscious Guilt

This “going it alone” can be experienced by some individuals as a contraction (the world is on my shoulders), felt so strongly (but not understood for what it is) that it causes a deep sense of guilt. A guilt so disagreeable in fact that the individual pushes the guilt out of their awareness – where it lives an unconscious life, as an energy ready to be activated.

The person is left with an indefinable sense of great loss; a sadness that can never be fully understood because its activating roots have been pushed so far out of awareness. This sadness can play out in many ways in the world (not all of which look sad!).

Judgment (Projection)

One way out of this painful situation is by the psychological mechanism of projection: I can attempt to alleviate the negative affects of my guilt by judging others. An extensive system of judging, on a daily basis, can be developed – judging everything from the world and politics down to my family and the lateness of my bus this morning.

Grievance (Victim Stance)

We end up exacting our grievances on anything we consider to be “outside” of ourselves. It becomes the “song” of our everyday consciousness. We learn the stance of “victim of the world”. Everything would be better if just this … (outside of ) me would change.

More Guilt

At some level (usually, again, unconscious) we feel guilty for all this finger pointing we’re doing. It leaves us with a bad taste. We decide we’re “not a good person” for habitually doing this. Our original unconscious guilt for having left Home is compounded by our actions to cover up what we originally did.

Expectation of Punishment

Burdened by this sense of guilt, it’s a small step to expecting that we’ll be punished for what we did; doesn’t the whole world work on the basis of punishment following crime?

Fear

So we live in fear; again, not a fear we can necessarily put our finger on, but maybe a lingering sense of anxiety; or a protracted depression; or an acting out in addiction or eating disorder.

The Cycle

In acting out our fears we undertake more judgments, more projections. How can we get clear of these habitual negativities? Only by more of the same behaviour.

Maybe the “good” is out there in the drug, the drink, the food (projections); maybe by consuming this “good” I can have back the Good – what I already had at the beginning ,as my primordial Home (and actually still have).

A Way Back

Our experience is that people can find a way back Home, can find relief from this negative cycle of guilt, fear and projection. And it sometimes takes just a willingness to investigate habitual defenses to find relief.

There’s potential magic in reflecting upon theses defenses, in bringing them to the light of conscious awareness. The shared space of the psychotherapeutic setting can be the ideal place for exploration.

We’ve worked as relationship counselors and psychotherapists for nearly ten years and truly believe we’ve been instrumental in many couples finding a greater sense of intimacy in their relationships.

Others we have helped to respectfully find closure in relationships that have come to an end.

We invite you to visit our relationships site, Therapy Duo, to find our more on how we work with couples.

Six Generator-Receivers (Pencil and pen on paper)

From The Lost Writings of Wu Hsin – Pointers in Non-Duality in Five Volumes, tr. Roy Melvyn:

The animating presence is
The building block upon which
You have been erected.
Even after you have been torn down,
The building block remains.
Centering your attention there is
The direct means to gain
Primordial insight.

The image is a little reflective drawing by Ron on the idea of how presence, (“The building block of which you have been created”) is the ground from which consciousness rises and falls. These Generator-Receivers produce (generate) a sense of personal consciousness, and also receive it, experience it, and so find its connection back to the ground from which it arises.

David Bohm, in his book Wholeness and the Implicate order, wrote about how our experienced reality is unfolded, (“explicated”) from a ground state, which is his so-called implicate order.

It’s an interesting idea, one that people can reflect on in their contemplative work. It’s another one of those ideas that can take the sting out of difficult situations we may find ourselves in – to reflect that (in the view of wise minds, both poetic and scientific) we ourselves may be generators of a situation, and that the arising and falling of such a situation is always relative to an unperturbed, “primordial”, underlying order. “This too shall pass”.

Ice Angel – Hessen Yachts’ 50 meter Luxury Yacht

We wrote recently about Regina Dawn Akers’ lovely work The Inner Ramana. Regina speaks of using the mantra, “I Am That I Am”, which is a central part of her teaching.

“I Am That I Am” is ancient, God’s answer to Moses’ question as to his name (Exodus 3:14):

And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

In Regina’s (Inner Ramana’s) teaching, the mantra is treated as precious, to be repeated not as mental busyness nor vacant intoning, but as something held in the heart, treasured, given over to and given time to. The spaces between the words are allowed to open up, the words to become markers for a deeper space, the mind to become settled and freed from its busyness.

There’s no point repeating the mantra at a semi-conscious level while mentalising happens over the top.

In this vein some people are drawn to taking a mantra into my inner life, into contemplation and into the busy moments of the day. And they can be impressed at how (like all ideas deeply held), the mantra can grow in its perfection, can thrive in its pure freedom from the material.

And Ramana Maharshi himself held the view that “I Am That I Am” encapsulates the truth:

Your duty is to be and not to be this or that.
“I AM that I AM” sums up the whole truth.
The method is summed up in “BE STILL”.
What does “stillness” mean?
It means “destroy yourself”.
Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. (Ramana Maharshi, Talk 363)

We can think of the mantra as a perfect vehicle, a means for quickly returning to the stillness of the ground, deep beneath the mentalising mind.

An unalloyed vehicle, with no taint, in fact, of the material.

It’s like the multi-million dollar luxury yacht we each already own (always have and always will do). There’s no need for the material yacht, in fact that would less, would be the imperfect version.

We’re born with this perfection, both of the vehicle and of its destination; we’re all born rich.

Constructor and Destructor with Fishes (Painted wire, pages from encyclopaedia, 1993)

Going way back, here’s another work of Ron’s from 1993, when he was studying at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney. This one appeared in a first year exhibition, and it seemed to fall out into reality quite easily.

The work relates to the previous post (on the Circus and the Meadow). Here, the meadow’s the underlying plane of fishes, of nature; and the constructor and destructor devices serve the purpose of explicating the implicate order (to use David Bohm’s terms).

The devices are enablers of mind, which arises only to inevitably fall again, at some point, back into its plane of fishes. (There’s also a reference to constructors and destructors in object-oriented software programming.)

Inner Ramana and The Meadow

We’ve been looking at Regina Dawn Akers’ The Teachings of Inner Ramana recently, and have been struck by the beauty, practicality and power of this simple teaching. It consists of a series of messages received by Regina over a period of three months in 2009, following her introduction to the work of Ramana Maharshi.

Regina has a history as a Course in Miracles student and teacher, and this framework enables a rich understanding of Ramana Maharshi’s message. Here she is in the message titled The Circus and the Meadow (PDF):

The mind is very active. If you watch it you will see it is much like acrobats in a circus. It is always jumping this way and that, bending and turning, and it has some very amazing moves. But it is a circus. It is not at all representative of reality. In fact, it is a complete distraction from reality. You will never notice reality if you remain focused on the circus act of the mind.

Reality is the meadow, and “one’s toes will wiggle and curl delightfully as they feel the coolness of the meadow’s ground beneath them”. (The meadow stands for the unified implicate order from which arises mind.)

(The image is from a strenuous but exquisite day walk in the Abruzzo National Park, Italy, in May this year.)

Alfred Wallis – The Blue Steamer

We wrote a while ago about watery movement in the work of Alfred Wallis, and here’s another of his pieces on a similar theme. This one signals “flow”: the way the plucky blue steamer finds its watery path laid out before it, entering a channel of brine that’s deliciously Taoist (“The Watercourse Way”).

And it’s the framing of the work that makes it so appealing, and gives it strength (“chaos within order”, the basis of all good works, as a painting teacher once told us).

Move this now to the practice of psychotherapy, and these aspects arise too in the meeting that occurs. The chaos, the flow part, is what we experience if it’s all running along well; a psychic watercourse which sometimes reveals shoals and reefs, and sometimes inundates. Our approach to flow depends on our chosen modality, and so does our attitude to the frame to that flow.

In this regard and in the form of timing, some therapists choose the strict 50-minute limit, come what may, seeing any deviation from this as evidence of possible loss of the frame (inundation of the therapist?). Others take a more relaxed view, extending the session to “about an hour”, and dealing with any inundations as they’re perceived. Who’s right? It depends on the therapist and the place they choose for themselves in relation to the work.

For us, it’s the reality of our connection to flow, the extent to which we are really in the Tao with our client, that is the determiner of the health of the psychotherapeutic relationship. And it’s this that excuses, in fact redresses, any potential minor faults in the frame. We’ve done good-enough work, as has Wallis.

Joseph Garlock, Untitled (Mountain Lake), 1954

Recently, reading this obituary of Louise Bourgeois in the Guardian (from 2010), this statement stood out:

Nothing could withstand the sheer artistic elan and commercial drive of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, and the backing of Clement Greenberg, a critic whose thumbs up or down meant life or death. It was not until the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) gave Bourgeois a retrospective in 1982, when she was already 70, that she at last took her place as queen of New York, one of the most inventive and disturbing sculptors of the century and, later, the first artist to to tackle a commission for a temporary work to command the vast spaces of the turbine hall of the new Tate Modern, in London.

Bourgeois was an amazing artist, an intelligent inquirer into the murky depths of the family – an uncommon subject for the arch-modernists upon whom Greenberg heaped his accolades. (But then, maybe we’re biased, as psychotherapists and couples counsellors.)

What is striking is the power of art-as-business; how artists become manipulated by critics, galleries and theorists. There’s nothing wrong or new in this, let’s just not kid ourselves that the situation doesn’t exist (particularly now as art works become rare treasures for the super-rich.

As Aristotle said, in a oft-used quote:

Where your gifts coincide with the needs of the world, there lies your vocation.

(Some people prefix “needs” with “crushing”!)

In this model, for many artists, as for the rest of us, vocation (what we need to do to survive in the world) lies at the intersection of the gifts we can bring and the insistent world of commerce. And it’s the reverse of this situation that’s often interesting about Outsider artists: no intersection is required, because the true Outsider doesn’t take into account the needs of the world. Some are older (“retired”); some are physically disabled in some way; some living in institutions to support their mental mis-fit with the mainstream.

So gifts tumble out, in disarray and possible naivety; captured sometimes in raw and found materials just sufficient to hold the insight (for the time being anyway). Thoughts of provenance and identity are diminished or perhaps even non-existent. Potentially, rich sources of psychic energy are accessed.

Which brings us to Joseph Garlock’s exquisite piece, pictured above. The image is from an Outsider Artist calendar from 2010. There’s a crisp simplicity in the work; the sharp demarkations of the hill tops and the energised sky above; the white caps on the water and the mirrored, active landforms. It’s all in synchrony, a dance movement of form and colour. Here are gifts, so evidently coming through!

Garlock started late, at age 65 after a life of hard work, and experimented for about 15 years. His is a rich kind of experiment.

Madein Company – Xu Zhen – Under Heaven 20121018 (2012) detail

MadeIn Company (Xu Zhen)

We visited White Rabbit Gallery a week or so ago and Under Heaven has stayed with us. It has energy: seventy kilos of oil paint (which will take presumably years to “dry”) dolloped onto a large canvas from an icing bag. Meanwhile it gives off the exquisite scent of fresh oil paint.

We’ve been thinking of this work as a visual metaphor for the “wisdom life” that we all have as our own, hidden under our egoic day-to-day thinking; a life we all have the potential to access.

Thinking of these oil dollops with their insistent freshness and colour as the protuberances of ancient songs that we are all still singing (often unbeknownst to ourselves)…

Someone dreams as follows:

I’m in a vast stadium or parade ground with a teacher. We are locked arm in arm and have to walk across the empty extent. What makes it scary is that thousands of people are in the stands surrounding the ground, all watching us.

The teacher says I have to sing so, under duress, I begin a false, self-conscious rhythmic chant to accompany our strides.

But gradually I find my chant deepening, until it becomes rich and deep, welling out of me as though a primordial force is acting through me, carrying the song with it. I’m no longer concerned by the thousands of people around me and see that what we’re all witnessing is real: an ancient song.

That’s the promise offered in Under Heaven – we get a hint of something else below the surface, enlivening and enriching that surface. And of course it’s the promise of the contemplative life – and indeed of a kind of psychotherapeutic journey (that walk, arm in arm, across the empty parade ground) in which the therapist acts as guide to the inner processes of the client.

Wisdom comes then not from the therapist, but from the unlocked wisdom layers within the client.

And as The Course in Miracles says (Manual for Teachers, 2.5):

When pupil and teacher come together, a teaching-learning situation begins. For the teacher is not really the one who does the teaching. God’s Teacher speaks to any who join together for learning purposes.

he Abrading Tool (Typewriter parts, 1993)

And another little work of Ron’s from back in 1993. It’s a tool for ego abrasion – just the right tool for the kitbag of any serious follower of an apophatic way!

When Ron made the work ego abrasion was for him about dismantling constructed identity, and about how hard he found it to critique the straightjacket of personal identity.

There are moments when ego construction drop away, and we see how unnecessary they are, but we can often also catch ourselves in the process of reconstructing the tight jacket once again. But not to say it’s necessarily as tight as it was before; maybe now it seems more loose and accommodating.

This reading on identity and ego is influenced by readings in A Course in Miracles (ACIM). (“The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever be unbelievable.”)

The way we read it, ACIM stresses unconscious guilt as a significant driver of the ego, and it can be valuable to reflect on the way this guilt rules our systems of psychological projection upon things and upon other people; and fuels the seeming reality of attack and defence in the world.

And this can be hard stuff to get at, because the guilt is unconscious. (What we are unconsciously guilty of is our having separated from the divine.)

mirror facing mirror
nowhere else

– Ikkyu

Read Nowhere Else

Ron’s pleased to publish a small book of poems Nowhere Else on Issuu. Most of these poems started life as tweets, during 2011. Here they are now as a book, reconsidered and gathered together.

Hekate’s Barrow (Typewriter parts, 1993)

Here’s another work of Ron’s from 1993, this one inspired by the Greek goddess Hekate and what he imagined she had need of: a serviceable barrow for her underworld meanderings, particularly in relation to the dead and carriage thereof; in service of the nekyia.

And the barrow’s perhaps also in service to her work in supporting the third way, rather than one of two more obvious choices… her foils to the Yes and No, the Left and Right, dare we say even the “clear” polarities we can strive for in Gestalt, the single “themes” in our work? (As in: “Has a theme emerged, or is it yet to do so?”)

She’ll have none of this, conferring the fate of three ways, the tri-via (various Trevi locations in Italy), with no longer a clear way forward (quite different from a crossroads, which could be more amenable to Hermes) but a point where a decision has to be made: the three ways end significantly – where, for example, Oedipus met Laius and killed him. And it was said that only she and Hermes could negotiate the three-headed Cerberus.

Bernini
Rape of Proserpina (detail of Cerberus), Galleria Borghese, Rome

Machine for Converting Mozart (Wood, wire, speaker, cardboard letters, 1992)

As James Hillman wrote, in his lecture Anima Mundi: Return of the Soul to the World, 1981:

Eros descends from being a universal principle, an abstraction of desire, into the actual erotics of sensuous qualities in things, materials, shapes, motions, rhythms.

And here’s a little machine which attempts to convey something of this idea, a work of Ron’s from 1992. The idea was that you could hook it up to a (then, cassette tape) audio player and have it play Mozart.

This it reliably did, in a tinny way that was also haunting and almost heart breaking. (Eros descending?)

The idea of converting classical Mozart in this way into tender tinkles – the result being text glyphs deposited on the ground – was appealing. But it was the eery sense of otherness, of something conveyed from another realm, that was surprising about the actual “playing” of this work.

A Conversation with Things – Double Bay

There is a beautiful passage in James Hillman’s lecture Anima Mundi: Return of the Soul to the World (1981):

But at that moment when each thing, each event presents itself again as a psychic reality – which does not require the magic of synchronicity, religious fetishism, or any special symbolic act – then I am held in an enduring intimate conversation with matter.

Then grammar breaks its hold: subject and object, personal and impersonal, I and thou, masculine and feminine, find new modes of intermingling; plural verbs may disagree with their singular nouns as the imagination in things speaks its language to the heart.

We’re encountering here something different from what’s usually thought of as mindfulness, (i.e. the cultivation of a “no thoughts”, aware presence). Instead, Hillman wants us to embrace anima mundi, the soul in the world; the living nature from which we are not separate.

We can think of this as potential healing alchemy: to cultivate and contemplate images such as this mystery of harbour and sky; to consider and encounter a realm far greater than our everyday fears and concerns; to hold a real conversation with nature; to fall in love with things in all their guises.

Alfred Wallace – The Steamer

Following on from the third plate of the Splendour Solis (see An Inundation of Baby Waters) here’s another work with lots of water and hints of inundation.

This one’s a delightful work by Alfred Wallis, in the Auckland Art gallery collection. He’s painted a craft which seems to be content in its waters; yet there’s also a hint of the vessel being enveloped by these waters. (See the way the smokestacks deform the shore.)

(You can see more on the work at the Auckland Art Gallery site.)

Wallis began painting in his 1970s, after his wife died. She was 21 years older than him. Earlier, he’d suffered the loss of two of his infant children. He evidently turned to painting “for company”, and produced a rich body of work. (You can see more images on the Tate Gallery site.)

His work has fluidity; the canvases seem comfortable with their extents of water, the boats always seeming at home, often appearing to bob along. Yet potential inundation is apparent; the sea has its dangers and menaces and he knows his boats are subject to these. He also knows about the protection afforded by harbours and bays, and depicts these lovingly in some of his works.

We can wonder about the inner life of this man, how it came to pass that through the death of his wife an opus of watery works was created. This (religious) man does not appear to have barricaded himself against this flow of water and work – although, as Ben Nicholson noted on visiting him, he read only two large black books: a Bible and a Life of Christ.

Michael F Brien (“The Count”) – The Dream of a Waterspout

More on the recent inundation theme. Here’s a wonderful gift we received a few months ago from Michael F Brien. The painting now happily hangs in our therapy rooms in Double Bay. We’ve had the time to live with this work for a while, to check in on it often. We love its energy, proclaiming as it does the possibilities of physical and psychic transformations in every moment.

In its outpouring is evidence of a rich crossover between sea and the depths of earth. And all this is framed in a naive and totemic land, the energised brushwork on the plumes and crests adding to the sense of urgency. Another alchemical fountain.

There’s more of Michael’s work at the Callan Park Gallery site.

Splendor Solis – Plate 3

Perhaps it’s the dagger from the previous post (Meteors and the Roots of Alchemy) that’s now held high by this battle-ready knight! His garb and the waters are all greys and golds, mercury and sulphur, opposites to be united. As the Splendor Solis text states:

Nature … comes from the creation of the metals, and makes the metals out of mercury and sulphur…

…Do not combine the common quicksilver and sulphur, but those which Nature has combined, well-prepared and decocted to a fixed fluid.

…begin where Nature has left off, and take the sulphur and quicksilver which Nature has united in their purest form. For in them has taken place the rapid union which otherwise no one could achieve through Art.

There’s certainly some combining happening here: the little characters (babies) atop the fountains produce steady streams of urine – the girl a golden (masculine) flow and the boy a silver (feminine) flow. These outpourings generate an intermingling of urine and lead to the progressive inundation of the landscape. And of course this can all be considered internally.

There is something we might not want to see about ourselves – a young uninhibited need for a pissing initiation, a release of what might have been blocked for a long time. Yet our guardian knight with his seven-starred helmet appears resolute in his knowledge of the way forward.

Aren’t there times in life when we know we can’t stay where we are, let alone go back; that the only way is (possibly painfully) forward?

Our knight’s shield says:

From two waters make one, whereby seek to make the sun and the moon. And prepare to drink the wine of the antagonists. And you shall see with the Dead. Thereupon, make water-earth. And multiply the stone.

Meteor Falling on a Slope and Meteors over a Field (linocut, collage, 2008)

Here are two works of Ron’s from 2008, which look at the passage of meteors (aeroliths) and their arrival on earth.

Aeroliths in ancient cultures were considered sacred, and were as precious as gold. Their arrival on earth and discovery instigated rich and diverse mythologies.

In this way they can be seen as some of the earliest evidences of anima mundi, the soul in the world, matter having a magical/religious significance. To work on such material that had arrived from Heaven was to work on something alive; the work was to transform them, to perfect them, in much the same way as later the working of ferrous metals from the earth was also seen as a mystical transformation. And as alchemy also attempted to do, to help nature perfect itself.

Analogously, it’s these operations we can look for in our inner psychic work – at the transformational energies behind psychic phenomena, at our resistances to transformation and at the inner “operations” we might invoke to achieve these transformations.

As Mircea Eliade says in The Forge and the Crucible – The Origins and Structures of Alchemy:

We shall do well to bear in mind the early religious significance of aeroliths. They fall to earth charged with celestial sanctity; in a way, they represent heaven. This would suggest why so many meteorites were worshipped or identified with deity.

And Eliade makes clear the connections between the metal worker and the alchemist in his secret society:

We shall present a series of documents concerning the ritual function of the smithy, the ambivalent character of the smith and the links existing between the ‘magical’ mastery of fire, the smith and secret societies.

Jahangir Dagger Forged from Meteorite

A Faculty for Circumambulation

A person dreams as follows:

There’s a long period during which I have to find a university faculty. The faculty is circular in plan and it’s huge, covering a large square city block. It’s a lovely day and when I find the faculty I start to walk around it on a pathway (in an anti-clockwise direction).

The faculty is split into sectors like the segments of an orange, and in each sector is a laboratory. I go in the front door of some of these and see people working diligently with lots of equipment. Evidently every sector has a busy laboratory.

Finally I concentrate on one laboratory and investigate further. I see a cooker with a square pot on it and a liquid being reduced. Lots of steam is rising and people are tending the pot. The liquid has to be reduced to fifty percent of its original volume. It seems very important and potent.

The dreamer is involved in the kind of ambulation depicted in Splendor Solis Plate 2. In fact, it’s a circumambulation. And the leftward direction is a hint of this being an internal journey, towards depth and inner experience. The walking can happen only once the dreamer has developed the faculty for it, the faculty to circumambulate.

Jung said (in Memories, Dreams, Reflections) "The goal of psychic development is the Self. There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the Self” and our dreamer already has some experience of this truth in order to undertake the journey.

The city square within which the faculty resides? This opens the topic of the squaring of the circle and the way Jung described the quarternity (depicted in many square mandalas) as being the stabilising force for the process; or as Edward Edinger says (Ego and Archetype):

Quaternity, mandala images emerge in times of psychic turmoil and convey a sense of stability and rest. The image of the fourfold nature of the psyche provides stabilizing orientation. It gives one a glimpse of static eternity.

(And of course not to forgot that the ribbon in Plate 2 says we are seeking the nature of the four elements.)

Although the squaring of the circle is impossible in the physical realm, this was not so for the alchemists ("The extraordinary or spiritualized threefold man is the outgrowth of the four-square-man"). And it’s this four-square man who has sought and achieved an understanding of the four elements. (For more on the squaring of the circle – quadratura circuli – see Richard Cayce’s notes.)

This entire faculty is energised with laboratories and industrious work of many segments and specialities. And it ends with a view of the reduced liquid, possibly that reduced golden fluid we saw in the journeyman’s flask in Plate 2. How appropriate that in this dream it should appear in an uncommonly square pot.

Splendor Solis – Plate 2

The Development from Plate 1

In Plate 1 of the Splendor Solis there’s a depiction of two quite different tendencies within us (which we could summarise as the difference between the sick and the healthy sun), and a sense that some work has to be done.

And here in Plate 2 this work seems to be underway – with the protagonist walking over fields outside a town. Possibly by so doing he’ll connect more with nature; and with a natural, grounded part of himself outside of the constructions of the city. Note also that (despite his fine robes with golden thread) he’s bare-footed. A ritual ambulation has begun.

The Vessel

The figure points to a vessel, the alchemical cucurbit, which contains a golden fluid, and which is obviously (by being pointed to) important to the work being undertaken. There’s a sense of the fluid having been reduced in some way, as though just its essence is left. A process has possibly already been undertaken by which things have been reduced to their essentials.

The Ribbon

And arising from the cucurbit is a ribbon stating Eamus Quesitum Quatuor Elementorum Naturas ("We are seeking the nature of the four elements"). These elements are Earth, Air, Fire and Water. To seek the nature of these could be to understand their genesis (in the thinking of Aristotle) in initial chaos (in the prima materia with which alchemy was relentlessly concerned), under the influence of the four qualities of matter: hot, cold, wet and dry; and to understand how they can be transformed into the lapis, or sacred stone (which was also said to contain four aspects, but at a higher order).

Circumambulation

This ceremonial ambulation could in fact be a circumambulation of the town; for as Marie-Luise von Franz says in Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology:

The whole process [of individuation] is then described as the earth changing into water, water into air, air into fire, and fire into earth. There you have the classical idea of circulatio, of moving through the four elements, of repeating the process again but always on another level. There is the classical idea of circumambulation of the Self through the different elements and different forms; that is, among other things, the circumambulatio, the process of individuation through the four functions [in Jungian thought: thinking, feeling, seeking, intuition, sensation] and different phases of life.

Hope and Integrity

For us, there’s a strong sense of hope and integrity in this figure’s passage through the land. Hope that he will fulfill the expectations of the work; and integrity in his being "on the way", on the right way. The ambulation may be a life’s journey – forever unfinished – yet it’s the right journey to be made and in knowing that he can relax into the process. And the deer know it – just check out their eyes!

A Sick Sun and Healthy Sun – Detail from Plate 1

There’s an interesting reference to the two suns of the Splendor Solis Plate 1 in Dyane Sherwood’s article:
Alchemical Images, Implicit Communications, and Transitional States: The Splendor Solis in the Consulting Room (PDF) .

(The above image is from her article; see our previous post on some reflections on the two suns of Plate 1.)

In the image above we can clearly see the difference in the countenances of the two suns: that on the left conveys layers of suffering; the one on the right is confident and healthy. That on the right is able to be penetrating, to affect its world (with its strong, pointed rays); while the rays of that on the left are turned away from contact; they become like barbs, possibly ensnaring this sun itself.

Sherwood’s reflection on the suns points to a way we can work with the complex images, such as these suns, in the Splendor Solis:

Let’s look more closely at the strange coat of arms, in which there are two suns, one that appears – what? Serene? Thoughtful? Wise? Slightly sad? And the other on a shield, which seems to be falling off the banner into three-dimensional space, askew, so that we cannot easily make the eye-to-eye contact that we so innately prefer. What is even more disturbing is that where the eyes and mouth should be, we see three more faces, hence a further fragmentation. How are you affected internally when you see these images? When you take into account the two men conversing [see my previous post for the two men], does that change your internal response?

Sherwood points out how exquisitely attuned we are as babies to the distance between ourselves and our mothers; and to the emotional state of our mothers, as interpreted from their facial expressions. So much is conveyed to the infant, and there is so much potential for connection and health (or its opposite). Sherwood is inviting us to reflect deeply on these images, to enter the world of the painter of the Splendor Solis images and to be moved by the inner truths that she/he’s portraying.

(“A Sick Sun and a Healthy Sun” is a chapter title in Joseph Henderson and Dyane Sherwood Transformation of the Psyche – The Symbolic Alchemy of the Splendor Solis.)

Coat of Arms – Splendor Solis Plate 1

As we mentioned in a previous post, we want to write on each of the plates of the Splendor Solis. Well, we’ve not got far: the first plate is so compelling we’re posting on it again. Others have commented on it (Adam McLean, Joseph Henderson, Dyane Sherwood) and what we know about the plate is informed by them. The feelings, however, are ours.

A commoner/knight is coming to the end of his road; he’s an empty husk, a carapace. The brown helmet is tilting, as was customary for burgher arms. And while the mantling is impressive, it’s also empty and somewhat overdone.

It’s the escutcheon (shield), though, that’s the real give-away: dropped and bearing a “sick sun” (Henderson’s term). There’s possibly hell in those eyes. As Wikipedia says:

The escutcheon can be a metaphor for a family’s honour. The idiom “a blot on the escutcheon” is used to mean a stain on somebody’s reputation.

In contrast, the upper, confident sun has dropped from the sky; and possibly holds knowledge of a way of redemption – through a process of incarnation into this shell (outworn persona). This, we are shown, can only occur via the feminine (shown by the lunar crests atop the coronet). There’s a sense of a potential union of solar and lunar energies, a possibility of injection by the solar barbs.

A man had this dream:

[First there are many, interminable scenes of darkness, exploitation, betrayal, excruciating torture and fear.] Then he finds himself in a celestial room, in plan the shape of one half of the yin-yang symbol. He calls it the tear-drop room. In this room are are many exquisitely beautiful maidens clad in diaphanous gowns. Each one carries a huge hypodermic syringe filled with a rainbow-coloured liquid, called Chroma. He has great fear of these syringes, but finally can no longer escape: one of the maidens injects him in the thigh with a syringe the size of a sword. He sees his body filling with Chroma. Then a beetle nips him.

The dream points to a transformation through (unwanted) injection, at the hands of the feminine. It is only through this process that the beetle can nip him (i.e. that a shift in consciousness can occur).

In this Plate, what’s depicted is the plight of this commoner/knight. It’s a poignant scene, observed and probably discussed by the alchemist and his adept/student; by therapist and client. The scene’s laid out for us to observe, before a rich red banner; to consider the suitability of the path it proposes.

(As as aside, the Splendor Solis was written and painted at a time when the power of the knight was under attack by the developments in warfare and changes in society in general associated with the Renaissance.)

James Turrell – Within Without, National Gallery Canberra

Psychological inquiry is like shining a light into a basement where a creaky old furnace that you never knew existed is spewing noxious gases through the house. Inquiry opens the door and shines a light in the basement, so you can see and realise “No wonder I feel sick in body and mind”.

And shining a light is what James Turrell’s Within Without, at the National Gallery Canberra certainly does.

The metaphor of light in psychological and spiritual inquiry is a favourite, in ancient and contemporary practices. But Turrell’s not content with metaphor; his opus (over the past 50 years or so) has been about the experienced luminosity and materiality of light, of what light actually does to spaces.

He’s in a sense a modern alchemist, not content with the concept, but committed to the material. (The alchemists understood the Hermetic axiom “as above, so below” – the microcosm is the macrocosm, and vice versa. That’s why, for example, not content with the idea of dew as a prima materia to be collected, the alchemists went out and actually collected dew.)

James Turrell – Within Without, National Gallery Canberra

Referring to the first plate of the Splendor Solis (see our recent post), it’s relevant particularly for the start of the work, to the opening of the door to the basement mentioned above.

In the Splendor Solis plate there are two light-giving suns. But the light they give is very different: that from the sun above is healthy, but that from the sun below is in some ways neurotic; producing (and seeing by) a false light. It’s inquiry that enables us to see by the light of the upper sun.

James Castle
Barnyard scene/Garden Valley
Soot and saliva on paper, 25 x 32 cm

We last posted on James Castle about three years ago (“artist of silence, grayness and folded cardboard”).

Here are two more pieces of Castle’s work, made with soot and spit, from the Greg Kucera Gallery.

The gallery site has some interesting notes from a Village Voice article: Home Alone – Visual art review from the exhibition at The Drawing Room, New York by Jerry Saltz:

Castle was especially good at establishing complex stratas of space. In one drawing of a farmhouse, he positions himself just beyond the building, so that the porch is very close-up, then there’s the yard, some trees, a stable, then another house, hills, then sky. By the time your eye reaches the back of the drawing, you’ve traveled an enormous metaphysical distance.

In the indoor drawings, he might focus on a door seen from the side, just a molding, two plates on a cupboard, or the ceiling as seen from the floor. His pictures of beds and bedrooms can stand beside van Gogh’s without losing much. One features an open door through which we catch a tantalizing glimpse of an old-fashioned wood-burning stove in the kitchen and a shaft of sunlight through a window. Everything is quiet, private, and almost unknowable. Back inside the bedroom, the eye relishes a messy dresser top and Castle’s own pictures hung crookedly on wallpapered walls. In another work, he moves about three feet to the left and redraws the scene, this time conjuring a more contained space. Finally, he goes around the side of the bed and draws it again.

James Castle
Landscape with house
Soot and saliva on found paper, 14 x 20 cm

The notes describe a meditative life of rich internal spaces, exquisitely depicted. Castle was deaf and evidently uninterested in signing. One wonders if such spaces served the purpose of maintaining inner health. Winnicott spoke of the potential space between mother and baby, the learning ground by which the authentic self is nurtured. And an augmentation and deepening of space can be a powerful aspect to contemplative practice. Further, ideas of building internal space continually arise in the therapeutic work with those in recovery from addictions (drug and alcohol, shopping, eating, subtle cravings). The space between therapist and client is another powerful potential space.

To appreciate Castle’s works, to hold on to and relax into his spaces, is the same work (from Winnicott’s point of view, it’s true play) – a deepening of our sense of what it is live richly in the world, in this sacred moment; to be able to hold on to ourselves. This is Winnicott’s “going on being” (his words for this skill the child learns in its true playing).

Winnicott’s true Self understands space; the person with a developed sense of the authentic (for them) is able to withstand, by authentically inhabiting internal space. It’s the false Self that collapses internal space; the addictive personality, for example, finds no space between themselves and the desired object. The good news is that with psychotherapeutic work the space develops, the person is relieved to experience it, to experience internal stratas that are inhabitable, making the moment bearable. Such spaces are like those that Castle depicts.

Splendor Solis – Plate 1

I am the Way and even Road,
Who passes here without a Rest,
Will find a goodly Life abode,
And in the End be ever Blessed.

Here’s the beginning of an intention: to post each of the 22 plates of Splendor Solis, over the coming months (or years, as moved to do so), along with some thoughts and reflections on each plate.

And here’s the first of the 22 plates. It’s an introduction to the work, and an immediate indication (due to its complexity) that this is not stuff to be understood by the mind alone.

And a personal admission: we know little about this work; and can only do what us think its creator, Salomon Trismosin, intended of me: to meditate on the text and on these plates; to let the work in (in true alchemical fashion) and to allow it to operate upon us if and as it will.

Here’s the PDF version of Open Library’s Splendor Solis; we’re grateful for its availability. We’ll also refer to my (paper) version of the book with commentaries by Adam McLean.

From the explanatory notes by JK (Open Library version):

Trismosin in veiled language and by means of artistic Symbols reveals his mind about that mysterious and disputed subject – the Red Tincture – the Philosopher’s Stone.

At a psychic, transformational level, this is the “heart” of the work for me: how we can bring the Red Tincture into our lives, can live as fully as possible from the heart, can have a powerful connection to spirit, to essence.

And to further emphasise the meditative level at which Splendor Solis works, here from the Preface:

…the Philosophers have founded this art in a natural beginning, but of a very hidden operation.

This hidden operation is called by Trismosin Mercurius – an extensive concept that held a great fascination for Jung, and with which he equated the unconscious (Mysterium Coniunctionis, p526).

So with this preamble let’s turn to the plate. If we take the view that each element has been intentionally placed to impart meaning, it’s a rich depiction of the nature of what’s to be achieved. (There are explanatory notes at page 41 of the Open Library version.) Some elements that appeal to us now follow.

Two men appear to be entering a grand edifice from a landscape. There is a dialogue between the man in red and the man in black. Two suns are presented; the upper valiant and somewhat serious; the lower tilted and more human. This lower sun is rich in symbolism: each eye and the mouth is a face; as JK says (Open Library):

Three faces shown in the one. The eyes themselves seem as if suffused with tears, the mouth as if the tongue was slightly protruded and parched, the face blotched or mottled as from Smallpox, or impure living.

The rich blue drapery is studded with golden stars around the helmet; I get a sense of emptiness, as of a shielded and defended character, defending something that does not in fact exist.

The text Arma Artis refers to the heraldic arms of the Art of Alchemy, indicating how the series of plates is to be taken. The replication of threes in the faces in the lower sun and in the crescents above the heraldic arms mirrors the three principles of alchemy, the Salt, the Mercury and the Sulphur.

Adam McLean says of the suns and the shield:

This is a picture of the alchemical work of incarnating the spiritual in material form; it brings the macrocosmic sun into the lower world (symbolised here by the emblazoning of the image of the sun on the shield). The shield is the blank tablet of matter, the ground into which the alchemist must lead the spiritual. (Page 95 of his commentary, Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks.)

We can think of the plate as a summary and introduction to “the way and even road”, a transformational way in which matter has the potential to become spiritualised through certain operations which are in some ways secret, and yet also in some ways extremely natural to us, while paradoxically being also contrary to our current nature. (Alchemy was, of course, the work against nature; the work of becoming our deepest potential rather than our current fixation.)

Cave, Vanuatu

We read an interesting article recently on The myth of the eight-hour sleep, deconstructing the commonly held view that this is what we should be having: one block of uninterrupted sleep, of about eight hours long. It turns out this (at least in part) is a socially constructed behaviour, driven by the upheavals of the industrial revolution. Yet two sleeps per night seems to be more natural, with a waking period between.

As the article says of pre-industrial days:

[sleep psychologist Gregg] Jacobs suggests that the waking period between sleeps, when people were forced into periods of rest and relaxation, could have played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally. In many historic accounts, Ekirch found that people used the time to meditate on their dreams.

Well, for those with a contemplative bent this is not news. To be awake in the depths of the night, to hear traffic or the rain falling (we have no shortage in Sydney at the moment), to listen for the calls of birds and maybe of bats… This is a part of life for those who have befriended the night, who love darkness, who know its softness as their trusted pillow.

Perhaps the article can help normalise the concerns of some that their sleep patterns are not “correct”, and that wakeful night and gentle darkness are experiences to be turned from.

Tools Of Alchemy

It’s only when someone’s had spontaneous fantasies or dreams with alchemical symbolism (to which they’ve otherwise not in any way been exposed) that Western (medieval) alchemy can become a problem for them. The problem comes in trying to figure out the symbols, or read the mediaeval literature to get even an introductory understanding of what alchemy could have been about then, and what it means for them now.

Without really experiencing symbolic material, it’s simple: alchemy’s just a muddled proto-chemistry. (So read no more if that’s the case for you, otherwise…)

One of us (Ron) caught the alchemy bug some years ago, but his understanding hasn’t moved very far. Alchemists contradict each other as to the meaning of symbols and processes. Even a single alchemist can contradict himself within the same work. None of that helps. But what we’d like to do over the next few years is to post on areas of alchemy that currently interest us both, with a view to getting deeper into the material.

The image above seems like a good place to start. Here the alchemists tools are laid out on his table, ready for work. An alembic (two vessels forming a still), two furnaces, jugs, and various other pieces of paraphernalia… it’s all waiting for the processes to begin. There’s a great stillness about this image, and care taken in drawing it. (The image is from Volume 1 of the Manly Palmer Hall collection of alchemical texts in the Getty collection.)

What does this have to do with contemplation? To Jung, the alchemist was primarily working at the psychic level, trying to perform a series of transformational operations on himself. What he sought was the rich archetypal symbol that would perform the internal changes he felt were necessary, by bringing unconscious contents into consciousness (a process called the opus contra naturam, the work against nature).

This is work we too can do in contemplation. Here’s Jung from Mysterium Coniunctionis (p526):

Take the unconscious in one of its handiest forms, say a spontaneous fantasy, a dream, an irrational mood, an affect, or something of the kind, and operate with it. Give it your special attention, concentrate on it, and observe its alterations objectively. Spare no effort to devote yourself to this task, follow the subsequent transformations of the spontaneous fantasy attentively and carefully. Above all, don’t let anything from the outside, that does not belong, get into it, for the fantasy image has “everything it needs” (Omne quo indigent is frequently said of the lapis). In this way one is certain of not interfering by conscious caprice and of giving the unconscious a free hand. In short, the alchemical operation seems to us the equivalent of the psychological process of active imagination.

I hope you can check from time to time and see how we’re going on the topic. (Look for the Alchemy tag.)

Walking in a Dark Land

In some peoples’ lives, a contemplative practice becomes the still axis around which all else revolves. They eagerly await the time set aside for contemplation.

Or, something deep and still comes upon them unbidden when in nature (or in a crowded room). This is contemplation too, for the intention is there to walk in the dark land. And meditation itself can offer images and visions of ways forward, of natural places that could and do themselves become future loci of further deepening.

The contemplative truly becomes the “pilgrim of eternity” when he or she gives high priority to this deepening. There’s no conflict here with worldly priorities, even with the priorities of love and intimate relationships, because paradoxically to closely hug the practice in one’s heart means all others in that life are also closely hugged.

Yet contemplation requires will, resilience, commitment. An experience of the presence of eternity is not guaranteed, and many mystical writers have spoken of the tracts of desolation that can be encountered. It’s then that the words of these mystical writers are valuable, as way marks and humbling references. We may never attain the states of which they speak, and that’s of no matter. By their words we are encouraged to keep walking.

Here’s George William Russell (known as AE) on the subject, speaking of when he was still a boy:

I began to be astonished with myself, for, walking along country roads, intense and passionate imaginations of another world, of an interior nature began to overpower me. They were like strangers who suddenly enter a house, who brush aside the doorkeeper, and who will not be denied. Soon I knew they were the rightful owners and heirs of the house of the body, and the doorkeeper was only one who was for a time in charge, who had neglected his duty, and who had pretended ownership. The boy who existed before was an alien. He hid himself when the pilgrim of eternity took up his abode in the dwelling. (AE, The Candle of Vision)

Sacral (Pen and colour pencil on paper)

Belly (Pen and colour pencil on paper)

We’ve recently been thinking about what “mindfulness” means and about what “contemplative therapy” means.

The word mindfulness is charged with many meanings. (See, for example, this Wikipedia article.) In a psychological context, the Wikipedia Mindfulness (psychology) article also has lots of good stuff. (However, the Gestalt section is fairly scant!) Because we didn’t come to our approach thorough these practices we do not tend to use this word.

For us, contemplative therapy is an inner process that’s discovered, rather than taught, with and for each client. It aims to be true to the uniqueness of each client; and to remain open to what is revealed. It’s a process in some ways akin to the incubation practices in ancient Western cultures.

Contemplative therapy is an ongoing practice for us as well; one we’ve been involved in, in various ways, for many years, and one that gradually reveals deeper levels of truth and understanding. We doubt we’ll ever be finished.

Our experience is that there’s an ongoing deepening of connection to, and understanding of, the truth that all the answers we need are, and have always been, inside ourselves. The Master is within, a deeply intimate and ever-to-be-trusted guide.