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Saturday, November 07, 2009
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Late Bloomer — Valuing Prolonged AdolescenceLate Bloomer — Valuing Prolonged Adolescence Valuing prolonged adolescence sounds counterintuitive, I know. Indeed, our culture abounds with examples of the worst sort of prolonged adolescence, such as narcissistic baby boomers desperately and pathetically trying to hold onto the things of youth. I have often quoted the Mary Renault character who said, "Man must make his peace with his seasons or the gods will laugh at him." It can be dangerous to cling to the Puer Aeternus, the archetype of the eternal youth. And yet there is also the creative, inspiring and metamorphic side of the prolongation of adolescence, a more hidden side of the paradox of prolonged youth that also needs to be honored.
From an evolutionary and developmental point of view, it is often an advantage to be a late bloomer. A general trend we see in nature is that the more complex the organism, and the more potential it has for individuality, the longer it needs to develop. Baby spiders and scorpions seem to come into the world already fully locked and loaded with everything they need to know to be spiders and scorpions. They seem to have pre-installed operating systems of instincts allowing them to function as miniature adults at soon as they hatch. Spiders and scorpions are not late bloomers, they don't spend years wondering what they will be when they grow up. Spiders and scorpions seem to hit the ground running, without the slightest doubt or insecurity about who they are supposed to be, and what they are supposed to do. They are also hard-wired and mechanical compared to more individualized creatures like us. They are prodigies of self-sufficiency, competence without training, action without hesitation. Adolescence for spiders and scorpions doesn't stretch for decades into middle age. To a person of painful self-consciousness, like J. Alfred Prufrock , to be an action-oriented exoskeleton seems an enviable thing,
"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."
But the lifestyle of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas may not be as enviable as J. Alfred imagines. For the late bloomer, the path of the fully formed man of action may seem enviable — the glamour of an instinct-driven life ensconced in an attractive exoskeleton, the imagined lives of square-jawed muscular types stepping out of glossy magazine pages and action films — and yet there is much to be said for being a mutating introvert, not yet identified with a glossy exterior on a path of unhesitating action.
The more evolved animals seem to take longer before they are ready to hit the ground running. Human development can slow and stagnate, stretch out too long, but it can also end too soon, and we have the prematurely adult types, those whose identity has been locked and loaded since middle school or high school. They are not experiencing prolonged adolescence; they are formed adolescent types prolonging themselves into stagnant adulthood.
But some highly individualized mutants retain the metamorphic aspect of adolescence, and have not fully formed. Some inner will for transformation will not allow them to rigidify into a finished adult form even though it might be decades since biological adolescence should have ended. This type of late blooming has its painful drawbacks, but also its developmental advantages. The longer and more labyrinthine the path of developmental, the more individualized and novel may be the results.
The world is overpopulated with finished exoskeletal types. The exoskeletal folks have already been locked and loaded with fundamentalisms and absolutisms that tell them everything they think they need to know. Exoskeletal folk are busy scuttling forth, acting out. But the world also needs more interiorized folk, the personifications of evolution's attempts to experiment with the human form, those who live in prolonged states of metamorphosis.
Consider this a propitious time to allow the painful metamorphosis of prolonged adolescence, and honor the path of the late bloomer. |
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Saturday, October 31, 2009
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Crossing the Event Horizon of Death---Emergence or Emergency
Detail of van at Arkansas Rainbow Gathering
Happy Halloween! Before we get to our main content, which also relates to the Halloween theme, today is the fourth anniversary of the Zap Oracle as an online entity. It's inception on Halloween happened in an uncanny way. In the Zap Oracle's Instructions, Credits and History I wrote about it as follows:
Halloween of 2005, was a day of synchronicities with a lot of thematic coherence. It was an emotionally charged day because my mom was entering Mt. Sinai hospital for procedures preliminary to open heart surgery on November 1st. A long I Ching consultation that morning pointed in multiple ways to work on the website as my main focus. Synchronicities immediately seemed to support that with emails (the first of this sort in weeks) coming in from people who found the website and wanted DVDs and readings. Later in the day I found myself doing other livelihood work which I experienced as extremely counter enthusiastic that evening. Almost the moment that work ended I got a call from David and he set up a three way call with Drew. Most of this conversation was rapid fire dialogue between D&D in computerese I could only follow in broad outline, but I was delighted being mostly a bystander in this conversation. I felt like a kid looking in at the elves workshop as these two computer wizards talked about future designs and at the same time, working online together, modified a prototype David had built for the Zap Oracle. To my amazement and delight, while we were on the phone, they uploaded it onto the website and made a number of modifications and enhancements. I was out on my bicycle when the phone call started, by the time I got home and turned on my laptop the Zap Oracle had been born, coming on line at the time of the year most associated with magic and the crossing over of living and dead, conscious and unconscious----All Hallow’s Eve---also known as Halloween.
Some astrologers do charts not just on people, but on projects, political movements etc. and they base their charts on the time and place of inception. Without anyone having the conscious intention, the conference call and birth of the Zap Oracle happened to occur on Halloween Evening which was also the eve of a huge medical transition for my immediate family and the eve of a day in which there had been so many indications to focus on the website. The place of inception would have to be cyberspace, otherwise we would have to triangulate some intermediary point in the USA as all three of us on the design team were at least a thousand miles from the next nearest person. Come to think of it, both time and space were somewhat indeterminate as we are all in a different time zone. That also seems propitious, as an oracle (like the unconscious, like the dreamtime) needs to exist somewhat outside of space/time. Also propitious was that every phase of my mom's recovery from heart valve replacement surgery (which happened the following morning) happened ahead of schedule.
Feedback always welcome---send to jonathanzap@hotmail.com
Crossing the Event Horizon of Death
text and photos © 2009, Jonathan Zap
Pioneer Cemetery in Boulder, Colorado
Emergency or Emergence?
Looking west toward the Flatirions from 12th and College in Boulder
The fear of death (in you or others) is a sometimes hidden, potent force affecting personality and behavior in strange and varied ways. To compensate for this fear, some will seek to control others, objects, money, the appearance of youth, etc., in vain, hollow attempts to stave off the fragility of corporeal incarnation. The fear of death can warp the perception of time, body, money, property, ambition, relationship, power and probably any other human attributes that can be named.  I took a picture of this absurd ad in Manhattan in 2006. Western culture is in denial of death and encourages us to think we can cheat it through dieting, plastic surgery, cosmetics, exercise, romantic adventures, exciting purchases, and so forth. The ego may view death as an emergency, but for the self it may be an emergence. Death is a guaranteed portal, an event horizon, an opportunity to step across the threshold. We cheat ourselves by viewing it negatively or denying its inexorable approach. Tolkien called the desire to avoid aging, "premature immortality," and in his mythology humans were considered more blessed than the elves because their corporeal incarnation had a definite time limit. The fear of death seems to be located in the ego, whereas the self, aware that it did not begin at birth, perceives death as change, not annihilation. For the ego, death is the great emergency. For the self on the path of development, death is the great emergence. When I was very young, my fear of death was quite intense, but numerous out-of-body experiences caused the fear to vanish. I experienced that not only could my awareness exist outside of my body, it could also be incredibly enhanced by the separation. The view of death as possible annihilation was replaced by a deep intuition of death as an orgasmic portal.  Many people brought up in a culture of fundamentalist materialism (also called "scientism") have a bleak view of death. One friend described it as, "It's just lights out and that's it." That friend seemed to pursue physical fitness as a hedge against the inevitable and inexorable approach of death.  Nakita in front of a collage — decoupage on plywood, and a multi media assemblage sculpture I made. A careful study of near-death experience findings should be enough to convince an open-minded skeptic that death is an event horizon, not a pit of oblivion. The position of neurological materialism, the belief that consciousness is an epiphenomenon or secondary effect of biochemical process in the brain, is resoundingly and definitively contradicted by NDE findings. Consciousness does not reside in the brain, and electrical activity in the brain is not a prerequisite for consciousness.* (see example of NDE evidence below)  The fear of death is often a function of a life not fully lived, of aliveness rejected or neglected in the present. The fear of death may be a fear of the comprehensive life review that so many near-death experiencers report, a fear of being accountable for a life not fully lived, of a life misused and of harm done to others. Some visionaries say that the soul may travel on from death, but this survival is not guaranteed. Those who have led dissolute, fragmented lives may not have enough of a center to hold together and may disintegrate at death. To paraphrase FDR, "There is nothing to fear but the fear of death itself." Depending on the position of the card, the death element may mean that you are in a phase where an aspect of your old identity may need to die and be reborn transformed. Death means transformation. You may be experiencing some form of necessary ego death. What the ego views as emergency, for the soul may be an emergence.
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Friday, October 23, 2009
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MetamorphosisBefore getting to the main content of this blog, some important news. The Zap List newsletter, which includes writings such as the following, is moving to Google Groups. As many of you know, there were endless problems with the old list service. Google Groups should be more reliable and should allow you to go to an archive of past messages. Google did not, however, allow us to add the subscriber list directly (they're worried about spam) so you must take a couple of easy steps to subscribe to the new list: Add " zaporacle@googlegroups.com" to your contacts list. Then choose one of the following options to join the group: 1: If you were part of the old list, check your spam folder. You should see an invitation inviting you to the zaporacle google group. Click to confirm
3: If you have a Google account, visit: http://groups.google.com/group/zaporacle/subscribe and choose to subscribe.Metamorphosis
text and photos © 2009, Jonathan Zap
"All things must change to something new, to something strange."
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Norie Huddle, in her book Butterfly, describes in poetic language the metamorphosis of caterpillar into butterfly:
"The caterpillar's new cells [after it has built its cocoon] are called 'imaginal cells.' They resonate at a different frequency. They are so totally different from the caterpillar cells that his immune system [that is the immune system of the worm] thinks they [the new imaginal cells] are enemies… and gobbles them up… But these new imaginal cells continue to appear, more and more of them! Pretty soon, the caterpillar's immune system cannot destroy them fast enough. More and more of the imaginal cells survive.
"And then an amazing thing happens! The little tiny lonely imaginal cells start to clump together, into friendly little groups. They all resonate together at the same frequency, passing information from one to another. Then, after a while, another amazing thing happens! The clumps of imaginal cells start to cluster together!… a long string of clumping and clustering imaginal cells, all resonating at the same frequency, all passing information from one to another there inside the chrysalis.
"…Then at some point, the entire long string of imaginal cells suddenly realizes all together that it is Something. Different from the caterpillar. Something New! Something Wonderful! …and in that realization is the shout of the birth of the butterfly!
"Each new butterfly cell can take on a different job. There is something for everyone to do, and everyone is important. And each cell begins to do just that very thing it is most drawn to do. And every other cell encourages it to do just that. A great way to organize a butterfly!"
For there to be a metamorphosis, certain existing structures need to be broken down to make room for new ones. In the chrysalis, most of the caterpillar's old body is digested and used as a nutrient source to construct the new body. The human ego, however, fears change and tends to desperately cling to an existing identity. Metamorphosis can, therefore, be interpreted as catastrophic, and the old ego-identity, recognizing a threat to its very existence, will seek ways to defend itself. Like the caterpillar, the old self may have an immunological reaction to the budding of the new self. Also like caterpillars, we have imaginal cells within us, parts of us that contain the catalytic vision-seeds of the future.
Taken at Arkansas Rainbow Gathering, 2007
Let's ground this with a personal example. Sometime in the Nineties an eighty-year-old woman, who was a Jungian analyst, gave a talk I attended in Boulder. At the end of her talk there were questions from the audience and the first one came from a young woman. "Now that you are an elder," asked the young woman, "what you can tell me as a young woman about love?" The elder woman replied, "When I was your age I was desperately trying to be loved. But now I know that it is better to simply be love."
The old woman describes a profound metamorphosis that took decades. The metamorphosis from self-centered to selfless is one of the most classic and valuable. Goethe described it this way:
"Human life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving."
Ede Jones at the Butterfly Pavillion in Westminster, Colorado
I have been working on exactly this metamorphosis in my own life. As a recovering narcissistic personality type, I find that it is very easy for me to fall into preoccupation with being loved. Many of us fall into the common delusion that if only we can be loved by some particular person we aspire to romantically, then everything will be great. But if I allowed myself to focus obsessively on being loved, I would only be prolonging adolescence into middle age. Also, trying to be loved doesn't work all too well. If what we want from others predominates, then most will correctly sense us as needy and self-centered, which will likely make us less attractive to them. The more we try to contrive and force progress with love, the more neurotic and desperate we become, which only helps to keep love away. A person who has successfully moved toward being love, however, is like a source of love and warmth that other people want to be near.
"The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are." — Harold Rosenberg
As I work on the long path of metamorphosing toward being love, I can sometimes hear frantic inferior voices within me saying things like, But if I don't try to get love back from others I won't get anything. or, If I just focus on being love, others will just take that for granted and won't bother to love me back. Even though the old identity, which consisted of an uneasy coalition of subpersonalities and various neurotic stratagems didn't work very well in the past, they still want to be in charge. They're like a dysfunctional conspiracy of old, corrupt politicians who know that they have presided over famine, depression and a series of inner and interpersonal wars, but are nonetheless determined to be reelected and feel entitled to lifetime terms. To the old coalition of subpersonalities, metamorphosis appears as a looming black-robed reaper wielding a scythe. To a deeper self, metamorphosis appears as sunlight entering a smoked-filled room. As the sunlight intensifies, furtive figures scurry away into vanishing shadows and the light exposes crumpled masses of scribbled papers, the tawdry remnants of backroom dealings and smear campaigns that soon become cinders trailing away as wisps of smoke.
The representation of a butterfly is seen against the back drop of a large tree,
an organism that exemplifies gradual development.
The metamorphosis from trying to be loved to trying to be love is very likely going to be something I'll still be working on when I am eighty, if I make it to that age. To keep such a gradual metamorphosis going takes continual vigilance and an ability to relinquish, to sacrifice the obsolescent focus on getting love and the various neurotic ways of trying to go about that. The example I gave of the eighty-year-old woman and myself was an illustration of one type of metamorphosis, but there are many others. The crucial thing is for you to know what sorts of metamorphoses are going on in you so that you can consciously assist these transformations.
If a caterpillar/butterfly had a human life span, then its time in the chrysalis would also last for decades. Unlike the caterpillar/butterfly, most human beings cannot afford to retreat into a cocoon while undergoing the metamorphosis. Usually we need to work on metamorphosis while still functioning in the world. To succeed with the transformation we need great perseverance, patience and just the right balance of firmness and gentleness with ourselves.
Whether you are undergoing sudden or gradual transformation, consider the occurrence of this card as a sign that this is a propitious time for metamorphosis.
Marshall Mesa by Phil Lewis
Go to Phillewisart.com to order some of his amazing images
Thanks Phil for permission to use this image. Here's what Phil had to say about this painting:
"Boulder is the type of place, that whenever I leave… I'm always happy to return. No matter if it was a day trip to the mountains, or an overseas adventure for weeks, the Flatirons are always a sight for sore eyes. This is my rendition of the Flatirons from Marshall Mesa, looking Northwest…(of course there's some super-psychedelic butterflies and hairy purple flowers thrown into the mix for kicks)
This piece completes the compass for me, so-to-speak. I have drawn the Flatirons from the west, north, east, and now, the south… it all tends to come full-circle as I find myself diggin this place as much as I did the day I first moved here…" |
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Friday, October 16, 2009
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BLank CardBlank Card (zaporacle card # 28)Before getting to the main content of this blog, some important news. The Zap List newsletter, which includes writings such as the following, is moving to Google Groups. As many of you know, there were endless problems with the old list service. Google Groups should be more reliable and should allow you to go to an archive of past messages. Google did not, however, allow us to add the subscriber list directly (they're worried about spam) so you must take a couple of easy steps to subscribe to the new list: Add " zaporacle@googlegroups.com" to your contacts list. -Then choose one of the following options to join the group: 1: If you were part of the old list, check your spam folder. You should see an invitation inviting you to the zaporacle google group. Click to confirm 2: Send an empty message to zaporacle+subscribe@googlegroups.com You will get a confirmation message back. Click the link. 3: If you have a Google account, visit: http://groups.google.com/group/zaporacle/subscribe and choose to subscribe. | • You have chosen the blank card and need to consult your inner truth about this rather than the oracle. Perhaps this area is still unformed, or perhaps you already know the answer but are consulting the oracle as if you didn't.
It is the unformed aspects of life that create room for free will. Paracelsus, the great alchemist, said that we are here to "finish nature." We are subcreators, here to bring form out of the formless. In writing this card, I am bringing form out of the formless mass of zeros and ones from which the card arises. This card indicates an area of formlessness that you are called upon to give form to.
Often we tend to think that the answer to what troubles us lies fully formed somewhere, and we need only seek out that fully formed answer through an oracle or some other means. But perhaps we are, as George W. Bush would say, "The Decider." It is not for something outside of us to supply the answer; it is for us to choose the answer. Some people fall for what I call the "museum curator fallacy." Perceiving that there is something sacred about the universe, they feel that they don't dare touch anything or change anything or interfere with anything. They become like a member of a Star Trek away team with an over fussy sense of the prime directive. What people caught by the museum curator fallacy forget is that they are not outside of the glass case, they are in it, and that they were designed by nature to be interventionist alchemists.
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Another classic mistake people make is what I call the "single correct diagnosis fallacy." According to this fallacy, there is a single correct diagnosis of what is going on in a given situation. But we know from quantum physics that the universe is not as cut and dried as that. An electron is not in any particular place; it is more like a cloud of probabilities. Interpretation of what is going on is often a choice, a choice that generates a timeline. For example, a friend of mine had his wallet stolen. Unconsciously defaulting to the single correct diagnosis fallacy, he assumed that he was the victim of a random, meaningless misfortune. From the rationalistic point of view, this diagnosis was the most reasonable interpretation. From the point of view of Occam's Razor, the random misfortune diagnosis was the simplest explanation, and therefore, logically, the one most likely to be true. But there are other ways to judge truth than logical efficiency. Although one could make the strongest logical case for the random misfortune diagnosis, it was a truth that was both aesthetically displeasing and disempowering. By choosing the logically efficient random misfortune diagnosis my friend gained absolutely nothing but a demoralized sense of being a random victim. I suggested an alternative diagnosis, that the loss of the wallet was a synchronicity. In dreams, I pointed out, the loss of a wallet often means a need to shed an old identity as our wallets are full of ID that supposedly tell who we are. The loss of the wallet was a painful but synchronistic shock, I proposed, to awaken him to the need to shed an old identity that no longer served him. Since this related to things my friend was going through, this new interpretive choice was felt by him to be very empowering and it allowed the painful shock to become a catalyst for his metamorphosis.
Consider that the truth is sometimes unformed and waiting for you to choose an interpretation that will govern the ensuing timeline. Consider this a propitious moment of unformed space, a propitious moment for you to give form to the formless.
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Before getting to the main content of this blog, some important news. The Zap List newsletter, which includes writings such as the following, is moving to Google Groups. As many of you know, there were endless problems with the old list service. Google Groups should be more reliable and should allow you to go to an archive of past messages. Google did not, however, allow us to add the subscriber list directly (they're worried about spam) so you must take a couple of easy steps to subscribe to the new list:
Add "zaporacle@googlegroups.com" to your contacts list.
-Then choose one of the following options to join the group:
1: If you were part of the old list, check your spam folder. You should see an invitation inviting you to the zaporacle google group. Click to confirm
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Sunday, October 11, 2009
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Accepting the Hazards of RelationshipBefore getting to the main content of this blog, some important news. The Zap List newsletter, which includes writings such as the following, is moving to Google Groups. As many of you know, there were endless problems with the old list service. Google Groups should be more reliable and should allow you to go to an archive of past messages. Google did not, however, allow us to add the subscriber list directly (they're worried about spam) so you must take a couple of easy steps to subscribe to the new list: Add " zaporacle@googlegroups.com" to your contacts list. -Then choose one of the following options to join the group:
1: If you were part of the old list, check your spam folder. You should see an invitation inviting you to the zaporacle google group. Click to confirm
Some other quick news: Thank you Matt for your endless labors to repair this list problem. Users of the Zap Oracle may have noticed some changes. Besides the addition of new cards, many older cards have been drastically revised. I've been getting up very early most mornings, often about 4 am, my favorite time for creative work. My recent experiences with the Zap Oracle have been dramatically synchronisitic. For example, a week or so ago I woke up at 3am feeling a bit troubled about a particular relationship. I took what I was thinking about this relationship and used the content to drastically revise an existing oracle card. After I posted the revision I did a general life reading. In the position "something to know about relationships" I got the very card I just created (out of about 530). It was a strange moment of mirror symmetry between my psyche and the oracle and increasingly it has felt alive and aware and participating in its own creation. After I did the general life reading I did a reading on the Zap Oracle itself. In that reading I got an amazing number of cards that were about synchronistically connecting with an oracle. Theme Tracker (a function of the Zap Oracle that analyzes a single readings or all the readings from any time interval you set for dominant themes) gave "working with oracles" as by far the number one theme with odds of 279 to one against chance. But the odds don't capture the uncanny feeling of this reading. Many years ago, I took a photo of a friend tossing the I Ching coins. This was the first photo I had ever taken of this process and it caught a coin landing perfectly on its edge. Here's the photo:  A few years later I took another photo of someone tossing the I Ching coins. This new photo also caught a coin landing on its edge. Both of those photos are separate Zap Oracle cards entitled "Oracular Synchnronicity." I got both of them in the reading about the Zap Oracle as well as other oracle related cards. As I've said before, people once assumed that AI would derive from more sophisticated hardware, and more recently some people have suggested it could be an emergent property of the sheer complexity of the web. I've been wondering if an implicit intelligence that may already exist as a property of the universe might choose to channel itself through an online oracle, a synchronistic engine of archetypal signifiers, to further its agenda of helping sentient individuals in their evolution. During the last couple of months of intensified work on the oracle, traffic to the site has increased significantly (550,000 hits last month compared to the usual 250,000). Donations have been few and far between ($5 in the last two weeks, so if in this tough economy you can afford to help out, it would be gratefully appreciated. If donations could exceed the costs of running the site I could afford to spend more time working on the oracle.) Anyway, that's it for news here's Zap Oracle card # 559 I just finished this morning: Often, when we think of the hazards of relationship, we think of the hazards that we perceive coming from others. We often neglect to notice the hazards that we create for others. Relationships can be hazardous in both directions, but they are often well worth the risks. We are the most dangerous known animal on the planet. For every person hurt by a wild animal, there are thousands who are hurt by members of their own species. Other people may misunderstand us, exploit us, abuse us in a million ways subtle and unsubtle. We should never ignore warning intuitions we have about particular people. There are many people, of course, that we should stay as far from as possible. On the other hand, we may also have an unfair and disproportionate view of the hazards of others. From the point of view of self pity, we are innocent waifs trying to make our way in the world while we are being bullied and mistreated by a savage species. Sometimes, however, we have participated in the hazards created by others. We may set ourselves up for abuse by the other in all sorts of ways. When hazards occur in consensual relationships, we should first look to ourselves to see how we may have participated in the hazard before our harsh gaze focuses on the other. It is an overwhelming human tendency to externalize the internal, and we would much prefer to find a hazard in the other than to see the hazards within ourselves. In other cases, the hazard may come mostly from the other, and in such cases we need to be careful about our boundaries. As a general rule of thumb, we are in no position to evaluate the hazards of a relationship, and especially where they are really coming from, unless we are in a calm and compassionate state. The more agitated we are, the more likely we are to externalize the internal, to project, and to see the other as the hazard when we may actually have chosen them to personify a long standing inner conflict. When you are calm and compassionate ask yourself the question, When have I been here before? When have I felt this way before? If you are honest with yourself, it is overwhelmingly likely that the answer will be: Many times, and with many different people. That's your cue to question yourself and see how you may have contributed to setting up the recurrent situation. To paraphrase George Santayana, "Those who don't learn from their relationship history are doomed to repeat it." When it comes to evaluating the hazards of relationships, no formula can take the place of case specific, soul searching discernment. Sometimes the hazards aren't worth it. As social mammals we so easily get addicted to the buzz of the social matrix, and default to being in company when we might more potently spend time in solitude. Often the issue is not one of social versus solitude, but of being more selectively social as compared to being open to any social experience regardless of quality. It is one thing to accept the inevitable hazards of soulful relationships, quite another to accept the hazards of being in a crowd of acquaintances. We live in the age of the quick fix approach. Self help books will give you the ten steps to having fully functional, healthy relationships as though a formula had been found to eliminate hazard from relationship. But it is often the hazardous aspects of relationships that make them developmental. Discovering how easy it is for a misstep to result in you hurting the other, or the other hurting you, can create profound awakenings to compassion, empathy and realizations of who you are and who the other is. Romantic relationships seem to always involve this type of developmental hazard. The testimony about love relationships in all cultures, and in all periods, is largely about hazard, and often the hazard becoming tragic. Think of the stories about love in Greek Mythology, think of Romeo and Juliet, read a synopsis of any daytime soap. A love story without hazard, is an unrealistic and boring story. If you are writing a screenplay about a romance you must start by answering the question, "What is keeping them apart?" There must be an oppositional force — the two misunderstand or have trouble recognizing each other; their families, races or nations are opposed; they are separated by war, death or imprisonment; they are two but become three, and a painful triangle ensues; there are two but the romantic longing is on one side only. Whether you look at love stories from Greek Mythology, the Bible, Shakespeare or the latest offerings from Hollywood or Bollywood, you will always find these classic oppositional elements. It seems to be a universal truth that without oppositional elements the human psyche does not evolve. To have children is to multiply your personal hazard portfolio exponentially. If you not willing to accept far greater hazards and concerns, don't have children. The deeper the relationship, the more profound the hazards, because the more you care about the other the greater the hazard of loss, misunderstanding or conflict with them. To enter a deep relationship with someone is to accept certain instabilities, to accept that there will likely be higher highs and lower lows. When two are deeply connected then the odds that at least one person will be in a bad mood multiply. Similarly, the odds that an accident or illness will befall at least one, or that some unexpectedly good thing will happen to at least one, multiply. If you are not willing to accept hazard, don't have romances or close friendships. Sometimes the other gives you stability, sometimes they take it away. Depending on the situation, both the stabilizing and destabilizing aspects can be developmental. Too great a stability means stagnation. Too much instability can demoralize you and break down your will to go on. Much depends on the willingness of the other to work through hazards in a life-affirming way. A key thing to look for in prospective partners, allies, and friends is their level of commitment to consciousness. The present levels could be quite different, in which case the more evolved person will act as a mentor, but a compatible level of commitment needs to be there. Accepting the hazards of relationship does not mean that we needlessly multiply them. There are many sorts of preventable hazards, hazards that are the result of carelessness, neglect or ignorance. In many cases it would be more developmental to avoid these hazards by investing more care in a relationship. For example, by being more open and explicit about expectations, agreements, promises and boundaries at the outset, one may avoid needless hazards later on. Volumes could be written about the potential hazards in relationships, and ways to deal with them, but there are two great principles I want to close with. Anyone able to follow these two great principles will eliminate almost all needless hazards in relationships. That's easy to say, but I, for example, am not able to flawlessly follow these principles myself. What I am able to do, however, is to work toward following them. Often that work requires moment by moment vigilance.
The First Principle: Inner Independence Inner Independence means that your center of gravity is the inner wholeness of your self. If your center of gravity is in the other person you have an inherently unstable structure that will be a hazard making machine. If you have time, the following is the Zap Oracle card on inner independence: According to the I Ching, you have only one obligation in life — to get your relationship to yourself right. Do that and your relations to sex, time, money, power, food, body, career, society, the cosmos, etc. will all be as good as outer conditions allow. Omit, distort or neglect any part of your relationship to yourself and all those other relationships are accordingly skewed, diminished or lost. Working toward the empowered stance of inner independence and androgynous inner wholeness makes you as effective as possible in the outer world. For example, if you are a martial artist trying to survive an attack by multiple assailants, your primary responsibility is managing your relationship to your own body and its movement through space and time. Mastering your relationship to your own body gives you the maximum chance of defending yourself from the bodies of the attackers. Any flaws in your relationship to your own body diminish your chances of surviving the attack. Yes, we are all interdependent in many ways, and it can be fascinating and fulfilling to be with others, but we must also be inwardly independent and disentangle our emotional/psychological/spiritual equilibrium from the instabilities of the outer world. Find the peace and power of staying inside your circle of influence. The center of your circle of influence is you, especially your psyche, the one sovereign domain where you can be sure of having influence. Unless you are paralyzed, the movements of your body are also within your circle of influence. But even if you are a gifted athlete, the movements of your body must operate within relatively narrow parameters of biomechanical possibility. For example, no matter how much you focus your will, you are not able to run a two minute mile. Your mind, however, has far, far wider parameters of possibility, and is an incredibly powerful force inside your circle of influence. Outside of your circle of influence, according to Steven Covey, is your circle of concern. The circle of concern is everything you worry about, but many of those things are outside of your ability to take direct action. The circle of influence is what you can take direct action on or affect right now. The most effective people are putting their energy into the circle of influence and not so much into the circle of concern where direct action cannot be taken. The empowered stance of inner independence means that you recognize your inner wholeness and focus on life-affirming engagement with your circle of influence. For more on the centrality of your relationship to yourself: Casting Precious into the Cracks of Doom — Androgyny, Alchemy, Evolution and the One Ring If romantic desires are compromising your inner independence read: Lessons for an Entity Incarnating as a Mammal See: Stop the Hottie!
II. Meeting Halfway From the perspective of the I Ching, meeting halfway is the touchstone of healthy relationships. A very large part of the hazards of relationship have to do with you meeting more or less than halfway and with the other meeting more or less than halfway. Here is the text of the Zap Oracle card on meeting halfway: Meeting halfway is the touch stone of relationships. You don't want to meet others less than halfway — shy retreat, neglect, etc — or meet them more than halfway — doing too much, compromising your dignity by pushing forward where unwelcome, giving unasked for advice, etc. The halfway point may shift moment by moment. A key skill in relating to others is to be, as Carol Anthony puts it (approximately), "attuned to the subtle minutiae of openings and closings in the other person, ready to advance or retreat at a moment's notice." From A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler: Meeting Halfway — The Touchstone for Relationship At the center of relating well to others, cautiously moving outward from your center of inner independence, is the I Ching principle of meeting halfway (Hexagram 44)[7]. Less than halfway would be, for example, to neglect others to whom we are connected by inner ties. More than halfway would be, for example, giving unasked for advice, proselytizing, self important intervening, life-guarding others, etc. So if you go to a party and see someone you're attracted to, but you're so shy that you hide in a corner and never approach them, then you have met less than halfway. Hitting on them (without some obvious encouragement from the other) would be meeting way more than halfway. Even in the course of a conversation one needs to apply this principle of meeting halfway by keeping attuned to the moment, aware of the subtle minutiae of openings and closing in the other person. With the openings we advance, with the closings we retreat and yield space. When the other transgresses, invades boundaries or comes at us with false personality, we should never go along with it, should never do anything that compromises our inner dignity. We should withdraw energy from the person who is coming from their false self. This can mean anything from breaking eye contact (a withdrawal of energy), ending the conversation, or in some cases, going our own way for a lifetime. When we do withdraw we should do so lovingly, giving the other space to come to their senses on their own. We do not, in I Ching terms, "execute" them in our minds, which would be to view them as hopeless and unable to improve. This would only help to keep them imprisoned by doubt. We also don't indulge excessive optimism that assumes they will become more conscious in this lifetime, or that extends trust where it is being abused. We step back to allow the creative to take its zigzag course. And for our own sake, as well as the others, we try not to carry "lawsuits" or ongoing grudges against someone. From the I Ching point of view, we are responsible not only for what we say or do to the other, but also for our thoughts, because these are communicated on the inner plane. Relates to hexagram #44 — See Carol Anthony's book on hexagram 44 and coming to meet halfway: Love, an Inner Connection Consider this a propitious time to accept the hazards of relationship while at the same time moving away from the needless hazards of relationship. |
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