Free-spirit

"It is easy for you to say, you were raised to be a free-spirit," said a friend I've made this past year. He had asked my thoughts on the imminent 'big step' he and his girlfriend of 18 months were about to embark upon: moving in together. The last girlfriend he lived with drove him nuts in short order and he was reluctant to put himself into the same position again. I told him I could understand that all too well, but at the same time, that I considered the practice of using past experience to predict relationship outcomes to be a form of self-fulfilling prophecy. I told him to take the reasonable precautions and then relax and be open to the possibilities in this relationship, which has nothing to do with the old one, unless he makes it so. His comment about it being easy for me to say made me smile. The road to this place has been far from easy, as my closest friends will attest.


For all that I grew up around a bunch of carefree hedonists, there was little stability, consistency, or parenting. In one form or another I raised myself, four sisters, and three parents. My parents were young, self-absorbed, and oblivious to the danger they put their daughters in. I learned first-hand what could happen, and spent my teen years vigilantly trying to protect my siblings from predators. I developed stress-responses and habits, expectations and fears, that stood me in good stead for survival, but handicapped me when I attempted to join the mainstream, to attempt to seem 'normal', to develop and sustain romantic relationships. When I was 18 I returned from a few months in Europe and developed an inexplicable aversion to strangers and unfamiliar places that grew until I was afraid to leave my home. The world of possibilities was terribly large, and my experience of it quite dark in ways. I wanted to try to make sure that whatever I did, whoever I met, created only positive outcomes. I was young and foolish, and terribly controlling. Eventually, I overcame the fear of people, but the fear of the unknown, unknowable, and uncertain became the core of my existence. I did not feel afraid--I was afraid. I did my best to cope, and I grew in and changed in spurts and often lost as much ground as I gained. But I kept working at it, trying to learn what I needed to do to reach for the next rung on the ladder. Striving to become more fully alive and aware, more fully me. All the while keeping in mind that as difficult and slow a process as it seems, even plants can climb ladders.


Just three years ago I was in a miserable relationship that should have ended years earlier but did not, for reasons I cannot recall. We rarely had sex, argued often, had different wants, needs, desires. But we loved each other, and it seemed we thought that was enough. I suppose we preferred being miserable together to being miserable alone. Admittedly, it was a difficult time for me--four people I loved died in as many years and I think I could not face any more loss. When that relationship ended I went into therapy, determined to learn new coping mechanisms and break old patterns, determined to address the issues and complaints my partners had given voice to over the years. And in the therapy- process I chose meditation instead of medication, and did the hard internal work, and read and explored and conversed and contemplated and slowly came to the realization that nearly everything I need I already have within me, and that fear of loss, of death and uncertainty and the 'other', is natural. But rather than deny those fears, rather than sublimate or ridicule them, I realized that it was best to recognize fear for what it was, and allow myself to feel it--let it fill me and flow out of me and let another emotion fill me--love, hope, joy. One day I realized that while I will never be rid of fear, I do not have to be ruled by it.


And I have to remind myself of this daily. I no longer tell myself not to be afraid, or to stop being silly. I remind myself that it is ok to feel afraid. I tell myself that it is ok to feel afraid, but it is not ok to use fear as an excuse not to live every day as fully as I can, to use it as an excuse to avoid embracing the fullness of life. It is not easy. I am flattered that, for all I feel that I am struggling and flailing around, I am somehow managing to meet the challenges of life with enough grace that others think it comes easily to me. But at the same time, I admit that it is coming easier to me--more and more I find myself practicing acceptance and facing each moment with equanimity and spontaneity. They are coming more easily. And perhaps one day I really will be a free-spirit. Who knows? For now I'll savor feeling free-spirited every moment that I can.

Nietzsche on Love and Avarice

The things people call love.— Avarice and love: what different feelings these two terms evoke!—nevertheless it could be the same instinct that has two names, once deprecated by those who have, in whom the instinct has calmed down to some extent, and who are afraid for their "possessions"; the other time seen from the point of view of those who are not satisfied but still thirsty and who therefore glorify the instinct as "good." Our love of our neighbor—is it not a desire for new possessions? And likewise our love of knowledge, truth, and altogether any desire for what is new? Gradually we become tired of the old, of what we safely possess, and we stretch out our hands again; even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession. Our pleasure in ourselves tries to maintain itself by again and again changing something new into ourselves,—that is what possession means. To become tired of some possession means: tiring of ourselves. (One can also suffer of an excess—the lust to throw away or to distribute can also assume the honorary name of "love.") When we see somebody suffer, we like to exploit this opportunity to take possession of him; those who become his benefactors and pity him, for example, do this and call the lust for a new possession that he awakens in them "love"; and the pleasure they feel is comparable to that aroused by the prospect of a new conquest. Sexual love betrays itself most clearly as a desire for possession: the lover wants unconditional and sole possession of the person for whom he longs, he wants equally unconditional power over the soul and over the body of the beloved; he alone wants to be loved and desires to live and rule in the other soul as supreme and supremely desirable. If one considers that this means nothing less than excluding the whole world from a precious good, from happiness and enjoyment; if one considers that the lover aims at the impoverishment and deprivation of all competitors and would like to become the dragon guarding his golden hoard as the most inconsiderate and selfish of all "conquerors" and exploiters; if one considers, finally, that to the lover himself the whole rest of the world appears indifferent, pale, and worthless, and he is prepared to make any sacrifice, to disturb any order, to subordinate all other interests—then one comes to feel genuine amazement that this wild avarice and injustice of sexual love has been glorified and deified so much in all ages—indeed, that this love has furnished the concept of love as the opposite of egoism while it actually may be the most ingenuous expression of egoism. At this point linguistic usage has evidently been formed by those who did not possess but desired,—probably, there have always been too many of these. Those to whom much possession and satiety were granted in this area have occasionally made some casual remark about "the raging demon," as that most gracious and beloved of all Athenians, Sophocles, did: but Eros has always laughed at such blasphemers,—they were invariably his greatest favorites. Here and there on earth we may encounter a kind of continuation of love in which this possessive craving of two people for each other gives way to a new desire and lust for possession, a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them: but who knows such love? Who has experienced it? Its right name is friendship.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Book 1, § 14), 1886.

Transcendant function

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I was sorting through this weekend's photos and stumbled across this one. Something about it really appeals to me...

Which is water, which is sky? What is real and what is reflection? The beauty of such illusions is that they simultaneously provide us the opportunity to suspend disbelief (holding two conflicting perceptions in mind), and to recognize the illusory nature of our perceptions.

Last week I remarked how bothered I was by my awareness that I have become a walking contradiction. I later had a conversation with a friend who remarked on my ability to hold two seemingly paradoxical or conflicting concepts in my mind and see them both as being valid. Then, in my reading on Jung, I stumbled upon his mention of something called the "transcendent function:"

Transcendent function. When there is full parity of the opposites, attested by the ego's absolute participation in both, this necessarily leads to a suspension of the will, for the will can no longer operate when every motive has an equally strong countermotive. <...> a damming up of vital energy results, and this would lead to an insupportable condition did not the tension of opposites produce a new, uniting function that transcends them. (Jung)

A couple of weeks ago I was babbling about fluidity, flexibility and adaptability as characteristics that are key to experiencing something as transformational rather than tragic. According to the Jungians, it seems that, in order for us to function under the tension that the awareness of opposites engenders, we create a transitional, symbolic, expansive, transcendent, play space in our psyche. It is in this internal landscape that we hold experiences and perceptions prior to applying meaning to them. The larger this space, the greater the potential to experience the moment as something new, rather than applying old, preconceived meanings to it. We suspend the will, the drive to label and judge, and allow the meanings of experiences to unfold with time, without exerting control. This allows tensions to co-exist in conflict and collaboration until balance or harmony is achieved. It is in this transcendent space that we come to understand that control is an illusion, that our internal realities are subjective, that 'meanings' are ascribed according to our attitudes.

Contradiction. Paradox. Tension of opposites. Transcendent Function. Perhaps this, too is a key to experiencing life as transformational instead of tragic: creating a space in ourselves large enough to hold ideas and experiences in suspension until the meanings arise of themselves, instead of making snap judgements.

It goes without saying that some of us create larger spaces than others. For some, the boundaries of that space are clearly defined, for others, they are limitless. I wonder, is the 'size' of this space related to fluidity, flexibility and adaptability? Do they develop in concert? Which came first? The water, or the sky? I digress. Or it is "regress"?

Ah, the power of illusion to make me think.
(PS: The photo was taken looking down into a pond...and up into the sky. Life from the perspective of the koi.)

penjing

The Chinese aristocracy was the first to create 'artistic' potted plants, called penjing. The Japanese then perfected the penjing concept, creating the bonsai artform. There is debate among some as to which is truly the art, penjing, or bonsai. Penjing has no rules. Supposedly, the person training the plant trains it to resonate with something within themselves. The Japanese approach is very disciplined, following specific rules. Most people do not notice the difference between penjing and bonsai, but I do. Bonsai are very sculpural, very contained, very balanced in their symmetry/asymmetry. Penjing are almost exhuberant in comparison. They are 'imperfect'--they look more, well, natural. There are times I am more drawn to bonsai, others times, to penjing. Below is one of the penjing from my visit to the Chinese Garden this weekend. The background is an outdoor 'room' with wooden panels inscribed with chinese characters.

I am fortunate

In the midst of one of the most agonizing conversations of my life, I had a moment of clarity, a moment of enlightenment. This moment may or may not have lasting effects, but it has filled me with a sense of wonder that has persisted for 24 hours. I should be devestated. I should be overwhelmed with feelings of loss and fear of the responsibility I have accepted. And while I do feel those things, the sense of wonder is far more encompassing.

Today, I went again to the Chinese Garden. I had tea outside, in the sun. I watched leaf-shadows dancing in the breeze, and raised my face to the sun, feeling its kiss upon my eyelids. The light was amazing, the colours of my world were perfectly balanced. In the midst of people, I strolled the garden, contemplative, meditative, at peace.

I came upon a side path strewn with petals and leaves, the vegetation lining it contrasting so invitingly against the stark white walls. I did not know where that path leads. I still do not know what is beyond that corner. But I have stepped fearlessly onto the flagstone, with wonder in my heart.

Sunday is sensually satisfying day.

I spent Sunday afternoon at the Chinese garden. I took so many photos. It is such a lovely place, an island of scented serenity in the midst of skyscrapers. It was overcast, but I did not mind, it gave the garden a dreamy quality, especially when it started to rain softly. Afterwards, we went for dim sum, then I drove to the Pix Patisserie for a chocolate orgasm. Yum. All in all a very sybaritic and sensually satisfying day.