Notes with myself

The energy in oneself, energy with potential and intent, remains restless. It is waiting to find the right kind of outlet. This is sometimes a ruse - forever looking. Yet, there are moments where the energy flows and lends itself to me much more willingly. These directions are to be sought. 

Meanwhile, I can see that I have developed such a habit of spending this restlessness is all the wrong directions. When energy is spent  well - you emerge, tired but refreshed. Sometimes the task right in front needs to be done, whether one likes it or not. Sometimes, rebel and move to something else. How to know what to do so, what to act towards? 

I see how much I waste myself. 

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I find that any task, any exploration done in the Work, is not meaningful unless I use it to address my weaknesses, wrong patterns. Doing a task just to cultivate attention alone - well sometimes that is also good. Of course I realize that these two are not entirely different. Whenever attention is brought back, I encounter my contradictions. So this is it - not the mundane doing of tasks, but to be alive to the specific fears, jealousies, insecurities, weakness etc. I encounter. 

Yet, there is something more. Because man can become caught in her own suffering, her own limitations ans the struggle with them. It is like seeking water, while standing by the lakeside sometimes. Slowly, it is also a matter of making that gestalt shift - the moment I capture my attention, I am here, then the past, the wrongs, the sufferings end here. In the now, and i can act and be fully, for whatever is needed. Even this positive action, is a positive struggle. I suppose the struggle is only for the lower self, and for the higher self it is a joy. There are two sides to struggle... worth remembering. Perhaps the trick is to not miss that light peeking behind the struggle. Even struggle is at the realm of the ego, and there is another level too. 

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The many faces of 'Therapy'

 

Sometimes a theory and its critique are both valid. This is what is magical about life and knowledge about life - because it is multi-dimensional. For example, there can be meaningful spiritual and mythic as well as scientific theories about the origin of the universe, and both are true, only at different registers. 

I recently thought about how Freud's theories, those of Carl Jung who distances himself from Freud in many ways, as well as the somewhat controversial 'Logotherapy' are all useful approaches to make sense of human suffering, delusion or trauma, even though they are philosophically/ontologically? so apart. 

Freud tends to see the subconscious as a place of primitive, uncontrolled, dark desires, though also the place for creativity and sexual desire. His whole ouevre is about the struggles of modern man to deal with his neurosis - as a civilized being (typically male) he must suppress several of these primitive influences, though as a result they keep poking at him in dreams, unfulfilled desires and neuroses. Apart from this somewhat questionable macro-theory though, his discovery of the subconscious remains potent. How so many things we experience slide into the subconscious, and sometimes get trapped there in need of release. 

A simple fictional example I read in a period romance novel recently. A man who hurt his knee in a war in the early 1900s, still suffered from pain and stiffness in it, though the doctors had told him he had recovered, and would soon walk normally. Then one day, when he must rescue his lover, he is able to carry the man in his lap for a long distance, without his knee becoming a bother. He is shocked. His fiend tells him, that this is because after his injury, he felt both physical pain and mental pain, as he lost his position in the army and felt useless, unable to help. When the opportunity suddenly arose again, the memory of the pain also dissolved! though this is a fictional case, it is a typical example of the potency of psychotherapy as revealed initially by Freud. 

Carl Jung then, has a different take. He perceived the subconscious not as a dark place hiding bad urges, but as the creative well of the entire human civilization. His approach is linked with his religious-spiritual views. Colonial academics had two kinds of views of primitive times- either as dark pasts that need to be overcome, or a romantic, effervescent wellspring from when mankind was closer to the Gods, nature and the spirits, closer to his truer nature. Accordingly, Jung sees dreams and mythologies as teachers and guides, reminding us of who we are, bringing us back into balance, and telling us of our divine tasks and personalities. 

Logotherapy emerged in the controversial context of the Holocaust (developed by a Holocaust survivor), and seems sometimes like a positive motivational approach, rather than serious psychotherapy? Logotherapy also does not see the subconscious as the enemy. In fact rather than putting much store in the subconscious, it suggests that our problems may be more direct, existential struggles. For instance, I read a case in the popular book 'Ikigai' - Here, a political bureaucrat who is extremely unhappy with his job, underwent therapy for 5 years. He was told that he has a problem with authority, and so he must resolve his issues with his father, in order that things may improve at work. After five years of struggle he tried Logotherapy. It was instead suggested that he may not be in the career of his liking, and after making a change, he became steadily happier. Logotherapy, offers the useful corrective to over analytical academics and therapy which would like to always find a complex answer to a direct, lived problem. 

Jiddu Krishnamurti suggests that both the conscious and the subconscious minds, are really of one essence, and will remain in a mess unless an attention that is without judgment, a choiceless awareness is not fostered. Over my own life I have found that a combination of psychoanalytic, existential and spiritual angles have helped resolve matters. And in the remaining cases, all you need is a some good friends, some dancing, good food, a walk under the moonlight, maybe a drink! 

Romancing other ages and other places

I just finished reading the ‘A Charm of Magpies’ series by K. J. Charles. These are a m/m romance series by a British author, who also by the way is a woman. It is of course not uncommon for women to be writers of male romantic fiction.

Now mostly such romance is to be read for casual pleasure, much like a Mills and Boons, not to be taken too seriously, and with a certain awareness of its unrealistic romantic storymaking. Putting that aside though, I found something amazingly fascinating going on in this series.

 

This story is set in an imaginary Victorian England in which magic operates, and involves a love story between a ‘practitioner’ from a humble class background and a man who is an Earl from an influential family, but has returned to England after a rough 20 years spent as a trader and smuggler in China. A ‘practitioner’ here, implies someone who can do magic, that is control the ether - the energy fields that pervade everything, much like a shaman can manipulate ch’i. The practitioner can manipulate energy through his fingers, move things, touch people and influence their thoughts, hurt someone or heal them, sense negative energies, trap and free spirits, perform some spells, spirits possessions occur, magical duels too. They are sort of like Merlin the warlock, except warlocks here are practitioners gone rogue and evil. Two people deeply connected in magic and affection, may even sense each other’s feelings. The practitioner who is our male lead, Stephen, has the role of a justiciar -  those who ensure that magical norms and ethics are being followed by others like them.

 Anyway, what is of interest here is that Stephen’s, love interest is Lord Crane, who lived freely and openly as a man’s man (i.e. as gay) all those 20 years in Shanghai, a land where no one cares two hoots about all this. He now hates having to be stuck in the niceties of high society Victorian England and further having to hide his sexual preference in a time when people are sent to prison for it. The East is presented with some typical orientalizing gaze, it is crude, rough, lawless, but also freeing, not priggish and open to gay life, lively and never boring. Lord Crane misses that life, but also wants to stay in England as the man he loves - Stephen - is here. Won’t go into the details as that is not the point of this piece.

In England too, the community of practitioners are not that strict about men being with men, as they are of pagan faiths, though they may use such secret knowledge to blackmail people on and off. The Earl Crane’s forefather was a practitioner himself, and magical blood runs through Crane’s veins. While he himself does not do magic, he knows much about it from the openly practiced shamanic cultures of Shanghai, where again magic is openly practiced. Shamans are respected and feared, and are meant to practice simple lives and even celibacy. Stephen, his lover is fascinated to know about this unknown Eastern world where both magic and loving a man can be practiced openly. He wonder what such a life would be like! One of the novels also shows the temperance movement in London in those days, another conservative movement which sees drinking alcohol as evil. 

It is a fascinating twist to today’s age. I have read about gay couples in India who wish to move to the West where they can live more freely. It is also well-known how some people move to the West to move away from narrow-minded cultures (though many in India move more for ambition, jobs and status). To turn this around, to a Victorian age when Britain was far more conservative than some Eastern lands (where homosexuality was at least not a sin, though maybe not as free as depicted in this fiction) makes for a great twist. 

In the last of the books [SPOILERS] the two men have finally taken the leap to travel the world, to see the East. They go to Constantinople, to Shanghai, but finally land in Nagasaki. In this city which is cosmopolitan in those times, they feel a desire to settle. They can be openly together, they begin to learn the language. They enjoy how the peach tree blossom in season and people stop busy activity to admire them and picnic ad even drink under them. Public luxuries unknown in foggy and what priggish England of the age. They decide to live and work there for some years. Most importantly, Stephen the practitioner, begins to work with the magical community here. Here I made the most exciting discovery. While the practitioners in Shanghai were known as Shaman, those in Japan are the mahoutskai! This term immediately harked me back to that sweet Japanese m/m romance called Cherry Maho (those who see this sort of stuff will know). And suddenly I began to see K J Charles' work coming from this vast influence of Japanese, Korean and Chinese paranormal and m/m romance content. Of course that is not the sole influence. Cherry Maho is a quirky story about how men who stay virgin till 30, suddenly gain a magic power that lets them read the thoughts of anyone they touch. This power then (obviously!) helps the lead character find the man he can love.

Cherry Maho is not important I suppose, because mahuotskai might be a generic word for shaman type people and may exist in many other stories. It just happened that for me it was linked with Cherry Maho. There are some nice connections though - the association of magic with m/m romance is not new. Perhaps it is romantic and unreal - in the harshness of the real world. It is a bit like the Angels in America stuff, though that one has a more tragic past. Yet the links of magic with love, especially in male romance stories, whether it is China's danmei stories like Mo Dao Zhu Shi or Cherry Magic or a whole range of paranormal romance (even lesbian and straight) is a fascinating cultural phenomenon. In short the term mahoutskai suddenly brought these universes in contact for me. 

Somewhere in the story, having begun to settle in Nagasaki, Stephen realizes that he may not want to return to England having discovered the freedoms of this land. And recognizing the wanderlust of his lover. He reflects that, ‘it was a great deal easier to hold one’s country sacred if you didn’t have anywhere to compare it to’.

 This thought made me suddenly think so many things. I felt that KJ Charles may have (I’m speculating) felt the same kind of thrill and joy I have experienced in the past few years seeing some Asian dramas (the ones that are not too melodramatic), seeing/m romance, or with paranormal stories, or just simple children’s fantasy or stories with ghosts and mythological creatures from Japan. And she masterfully tries to weave some essences from this into her Victorian fantasy. It may not be true that the Eastern nations were actually that open to alternative lifestyles. But it is the concept of it. Perhaps it is the world that male romance stories and fantasy dramas from the East have conjured in our minds. And how they have suddenly opened out a different mythology, a different kind of television entertainment, so different the American and British content we grew up with in the past decades.

For me over my life, it has been amazing how everything from an Enid Blyton to now Asian dramas or British detective shows from the 80s and 90s, or Iranian films or an American show like Dr. Quinn Medicine woman (donno why I thought of that), have all widened my horizons, have been a forms of travel, have shown me parallels to my own country’s world. Sadly, it is rarely high cinema that moves me, but rather popular television and fiction. People in a different land having challenges similar to yours, and also not at all caring for some things that are big issues in your world, suddenly puts things into perspective. It is the most entertaining way to free oneself from dogma.

 It seems to me that in the past decade Asian content has opened new imaginations in the minds of people, the way perhaps Star Wars or Friends or Abba or the Beatles must have for the rest of the world in another age. I wonder perhaps does this bode of the rise of Asian countries as new superpowers. After all entertainment, runs closely with cultural dominance right? Yet it is so much more than that too. Miyazaki’s own Studio Ghibli films for instance were hugely influenced by European content and music. They carry the deep feeling for Japan and also for universal values, for happy and trauma free childhoods, for healing pain and loss, living through war etc. Don’t we all draw from the cultural depths of others as much as our own? And then it comes back full circle, to teach yet another generation in another land. 

Just the other day I encountered a fascinating YouTube talk. A pair of fathers in America- one of whom is a filmmaker and another a therapist -  were discussing Miyazaki’s film ‘My neighbor  Totoro’. It is a heartfelt film, which could be called a children’s movie, but really could touch anyone who watched it. The two men, were sitting on lazyboy chairs, having not ‘beer and sports TV’ but a detailed discussion on how the film is an fine example on the art of good parenting, how a father raises his two girls, responds to their fantasies an fears and constant excitement without being judgmental and balances his own anxieties. The two middle-aged American men are fascinated with this artistic and heartfelt Japanese film and analyze it thoughtfully. It was yet again a fine example, of how good content is culturally unique and yet belongs to the whole world, transforming anyone who finds it.

 Wow, did not know K J Charles’s m/m romance could take me in this journey of reflection! 

Time, History and Fact - reflections on race

Those who argue that race is a construction, a fiction made up by regressive and prejudiced people are perhaps making a mistake similar to those these criticize. Racial profiling is something we all do often. Within India we recognize people as south-Indian or North-Indian also as racial profiling. When we go to a foreign country and feel lonely we seek to talk to those from our land and we seek them in public spaces through racial features. When we see a sportsperson or an actor we like, we look and try to guess where they must be from. Thus racial profiling exists, not only in negative contexts but in all kinds of positive ones. Of course such profiling stems from stereotyping and patterns we are used to and our guesses are right perhaps only 7 out of 10 times. Those who live in western countries where people from all parts of the world have been coming to settle, and have now lived there for 2-4 generations, have become more sensitive to the fact that it is hard to pinpoint people's 'origins'. There are many with mixed race backgrounds.

In a country like India, such mixing occurred at earlier points in history. In a country like America we see it occurring in these past decades with immigration. So, in India we see diversity but never really think of it as racial difference, because culturally we became enmeshed over the centuries. In America the differences remain sharp and will change over a few more generations.

Liberals are of course right to pin-point that all societies are and have always been mixing. It is true. Waves of migrations and intermixings have been occurring throughout history because of good and bad forces – war, love, travel, exploration, climatic distress, commerce and power-alliances. That reality does not undo the fact that race is encountered experientially. Even though Indians are a heady mix of various races and populations, differences of features and traits are still very visible. Recent studies of genetics show that some communities here, owing to marriage rules of  caste or tribe have actually maintained genetic purity for more than 2000 years, even while many other groups, including those who think they are very caste-pure are much more mixed than they imagine. Genes are also not the only factor, as diet and environment are equally relevant in shaping communities.

So both racial patterns and racial mixing are our heritage. If we look far enough at most races their apparently fixed identity itself emerges as a result of some previous mixings. There is a tendency to see social histories as different and opposite from race and genes, which are considered more fixed and scientific. But after all isn’t a gene or race itself simply the congealed form of social history? If a people live together with common memories, customs, diet and climate and they continue to marry within themselves, racial and genetic types will accentuate. If they scatter then these will dilute. And both these things have occurred throughout human history. Some racial factors are deeper and long lasting, many others are more malleable. Some can shift in even one lifetime and other can take 10 generations. These patterns of history and nature are visible on our bodies and faces. They can even help predict disease patterns in population groups. And yet most of the time they are nothing more than the accumulation of repeated historical acts and habits. The gene patterns that affect a population today may not have the same effect 5-10 generations later, if their people migrate and mix with others.

The forces of both preservation and change constantly operate in the world and subconsciously affect the way humans think and feel. The longings of love, travel and exploration have been as strong as the longings to maintain order, community and continuity. Perhaps together they make a world that is both balanced and also exciting and ever new. Liberals want to prove that the differences between humanity are the fiction of conservatives, so they keep trying to prove that race does not exist (to be fair what they are often trying to do is puncture narrow-minded studies on race). Conservatives always feel that liberals consider no traditions holy and and insist on the continuity of group identity. Their anxieties sometimes come from egoistic needs to maintain social dominance and at other times express more understandable fears in the face of loss and change. The subconscious minds of communities fear that too much mixing will obliterate their uniqueness and their group identity. So they can even go as far as to perform honor killings to prevent such change. Perhaps this is why there are Romeo-Juliet and Heer-Ranjha-like tragic stories in all feudal societies, where the intense pull of love and its inevitable failure both exist.

This much is now clear that there are vast mixings throughout our history and yet also there are racial continuities. Meanwhile, we can ask ourselves do we need to prove that race does not exist, in order to be kind and just people? Does this mean that if science proved beyond doubt that race exists, we  would somehow get a license to oppress or exterminate some people? Also if we can see that race itself, is not something eternal, but a product of long-term history, then it is something that is always being made and unmade, ever so slowly. Meanwhile, justice and open-mindedness can very well flower alongside.

Wisdom that pervades life

In this country, and perhaps in other places in the world too, there is a deep hunger in the common women and men for true spiritual knowledge. When we interact with people at this level, we find that many common people, have uncommon intelligence. Those who would fail at school and have been considered dim-witted in terms of many knowledges, will display an ability to grasp the most subtle of cosmic truths.

In most cases people’s words are misleading. They can make you believe that there is such shallow understanding. It is the nature of the mind perhaps to repeat words, intelligent sounding words that have been learnt over the years. Good words and speeches, idioms and axioms, quotations from religious texts of popular mythologies, accepted academic wisdoms. But this is the mere surface. While our lower and ordinary natures are wont to conform and seek security in familiar concepts, there is another side to us which is hungry for and instantly recognizes the living and everlasting truth, when it is communicated to them. This is why perhaps at least in the Asians worlds it is the ordinary people that have continued to cherish and nourish holy people, whether these holy people are garbed in ascetic clothing or simply live among us as ordinary folk.

It is sad really that those who consider themselves wise and rational and wish to rid the common people of their superstitions, are really unable to perceive this ocean of intelligence that lies in the hearts of a people. It teaches them to doubt their intuitive relation with truth and see everything in terms of loss and gain, power and defeat, rights and stances. Even the most evolved of concepts is but a blip before the experience of the ever-flowing river of truth. Concepts about social equality, justice and freedom are great historical achievements, but without a relationship with the ever present ocean of continuity and totality, they will foster only a continuous restlessness, a disconnect from others but also more primarily a disconnect with one’s most important and deeper needs. They will paint everything in the light of struggle and protest.

The re-turn to religion and faith is a great achievement in the world today, and if perceived in the right  and open-minded light it is not antagonistic to equality and freedom, it is in fact their natural evolution.