Monday, June 15, 2009

A Wish for the Oppressed
































Perhaps for some the recession has led to fruitful solutions and opportunities that would never have emerged in times of prosperity. I hope so. A person appears to my mind who is afflicted in these times with failed self-efficacy that leads to paralysis and depression. Perhaps this portrait represents someone you know.

The subject of this portrait is people who have managed to avoid the abuse of their internalized shame-source voices with their financially successful endeavors until recently. Because of the harshness of those latent voices, they feel effects of the economic downturn are their personal failures because of the resonances of the subtle but never silent inner tyrants ever displeased with what this individual does. In these times, the voices roar with negativity, which lead individuals to desperate measures, lashing out at spouses, friends, children and strangers, either verbally, physically or attitudinally in a fashion typical of someone in the great pain of self disapproval.

For a person in this situation, I hope now becomes a time of allowing those internalized voices to appear for what they are, merely negative films over reality that tyrannize and oppress the individual. I hope that in this state of economically derived paralysis she or he finds the stillness necessary to observe the internal critics, strong but unconscious forces intermixed with the personality, until they become discrete, particular, subjective energies viewed fully in the light of day, where they can and will ripen to nothingness. In the mirror of the mind, let the demons appear and hide no longer, to show that they are made of the same clouds and smoke as everything else, and let the dreamer know herself as the clear, unspeakably perfect lens in which all things appear and disappear.

10 comments:

Cotton Wool & Silk said...

Dear, dear Amarilla,
This is one of the loveliest prayers I have heard in days -- thankyou for all your good thoughts.

ps -- I'd have you writing liturgy if you were one of my parishioners :)

KD

amarilla said...

Thank you so much.

Robin Morrison said...

It is indeed a lovely bit of prescription but I, ever the contradictator (a term my wife invented for me) note that "merely negative films over reality" could as accurately read "merely negative reality over films", seeing as how the only foundation for beings like ourselves is the moment's passing fancy.

amarilla said...

Kenmeer, I welcome your contradiction, contradictator.

I understand and very much appreciate what you're saying about our inescapable subjectivity. Still, would you say the knower a passing fancy?

Robin Morrison said...

Depends on the duration you assign to "passing"

Does three score and ten qualify?

The river has tiny eddies, large eddies, simple eddies and complex eddies. It even has standing waves that last a few years or decades. But eventually the boulder or outcrop or sunken log that causes that standing wave passes too.

The wonder of our reflective consciousness is that it can comprehend not only its inability to comprehend the "true' nature of reality, but also its inability to comprehend itself.

Makes us very flexible; thus today's reality becomes tomorrow's film et vice versa.

By the way, today's password (the word verification I had to enter in order to post this comment) is delism.

One could assign so many interesting definitions to this accidental neologism.

BTW, I like to think of blogs as houses, bloggers as their primary residents, and commentators as ghosts.

BOO!

amarilla said...

Kenmeer: "Makes us very flexible; thus today's reality becomes tomorrow's film et vice versa."

This reminds me of a wonderful quote by Jung which I can't bring to mind at the moment. Something like "Today's perceptions are tomorrow's deceptions."

Delism. Delusion. Diluvium. What definition, ghost? Objective subjectivity? That might define Mahamudra.

Robin Morrison said...

I'll go dor 'delish' today. Haven;t had breakfast yet. Pacific Northwest time, luv.

The password now is:

himoncla

Not as naturally facile but might make a great name for a medical oddity.

Robin Morrison said...

And, just because we canz, a bit of Moondog:

Yes

amarilla said...

Lovely song, thanks. I am ashamed to say Moondog is new to me.

Robin Morrison said...

Ashamed? Someone's tragically hip slip is showing, ma'am. If one were so hip as to already know all the fascinating things to be known, one would not only be an arrogant boor but would bore oneself as well.

Ignorance IS bliss, for it leaves room in the vessel to be filled.

Password: catica.

plural of caticum: tiny datum regarding cats.