The Mystery of Creation Resides in the Watery Depths

Mystery resides, not on the surface,
 but in the watery depths *
CC Jean Stimmell: 7/31/13

In my last post, I talked about the bewitchment of our intelligence by language: about how, in today’s modern society, we place too much importance on abstract thinking, on cognition…on words themselves:

“Disavowing the infinite richness of our primal selves, we are now trying to subsist on abstract knowledge alone, a thin gruel made up solely of words, words and more words, building blocks upon which we have built an empty edifice which we have arrogantly proclaimed to be the one and only reality – and had it blessed by our newest incarnation of our supreme god whose name is Science.”

Artists, however, have always worshiped a different god, whether they are consciously aware of it or not. According to Jung, the real source of their art originates neither merely from sensory input or abstract thought but from a far deeper and richer place. Rather than the artist being the creator of art, the opposite is true: it is art that creates the artist (the artist has no choice: irrepressible symbolic images surge up out of the collective unconscious and demand expression). As Jung has written:

“Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him.”[1]

Artists, who are tapped into this deeper and richer place, have always questioned the ultimate power of words, as this quote by Virginia Wolfe makes clear:

“Now this is profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A signal, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has apparently nothing to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it.”[2]

 XXX

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[1] Modern Man in Search of a Soul

[2] Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf Volume 3: 1923-1928. (1977), page 247

* This photograph, taken while standing on the mossy bank of Wild Goose Pond, captures the reflections from the sky and the overhanging hemlock trees, all magically distorted by gentle, incoming waves.

The Bewitchment of our intelligence by language.

Highlighted by the setting sun, three lilly pads,

 having fought to the surface through dark, 

algae-clogged water, reveal the perseverance, 

mystery, and transcendental beauty of life.

CC Jean Stimmell 

“Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be experienced”  – Rilke

I like this quote by Rilke so much that this is the second time I have written about it in my blog. The first entry by that name, back on September 27, 2011, includes an ethereal photograph of Cadillac Mountain and a magical quote by Alan McGlashan. Today, you are viewing a straight photograph of the last sunbeams of the day illuminating three lilly pads combined with my own musings about the role language has played in making life into a problem rather than a sublime mystery to be experienced.

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When you think about it, the only direct knowledge we have of this ongoing mystery we call life is our moment-by-moment sensory awareness of it.  If we are in our natural state, attuned to spirit of what it is to be human, our senses, instincts, and intuition bind us into the world, connecting us directly to our fellow humans, other sentient beings, Mother Earth, and the universe beyond.

Cognition – thinking about what we have experienced, comes later – and, in moderation – is a valuable addition, fueling our human evolution. Unfortunately, in today’s overly rational, materialistic society, we have taken cognition too far, spurning what our direct senses and intuition tell us. 

Disavowing the infinite richness of our primal selves, we are now trying to subsist on abstract knowledge alone, a thin gruel made up solely of words, words and more words, building blocks upon which we have built an empty edifice which we have arrogantly proclaimed to be the one and only reality – and had it blessed by our newest incarnation of our supreme god whose name is Science.

We forget that words are only a socially constructed map, one of many we could choose to navigate by; we forget that our word map is not the real flesh-and-blood territory^⁠[1] of our pulsating, ever-changing world. 

But hope is on the horizon!

At last, we are finally re-learning what indigenous people always knew about the nature of language: “Oral, storytelling cultures wield words in a very different way [from us]. For such folk traditions, language is not primarily a tool for getting at or figuring out the world, but more a way of binding oneself into the world.”^⁠[2]

Social constructionists and philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein have been instrumental in recapturing the spirit of this indigenous ethic in a postmodern manifesto that denies that words, in and of themselves, have any ultimate validity.

Wittgenstein, probably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century tells us that while we can look up a word in the dictionary, that doesn’t necessarily tell us how it functions in the real world.  In order to do that, he says, we must determine the particular meaning our friends, acquaintances and society place on the words they use and how that meaning shifts over time, something he calls "learning to play the language game," a game where knowledge is always provisional because it is based on an ongoing dialogue that never ends.

Harlene Anderson[3] describes this process as “a way to find meaning and understanding which are constantly interpreted, re-interpreted, clarified and revised. In other words, dialogue is a process and therefore a generator, of possibilities.”

Knowledge, seen in this new postmodern light, is no longer fixed and static but relational and open ended. It’s a whole new way of experiencing the world. In the words of Janice DeFehr, such an open-ended dialogue becomes more than just a conversation, it becomes “a discursive way, joint action and a philosophy of life.”[4]

How we define our reality is more than idle philosophical speculation. It has immense ramifications going far beyond mere political posturing, cutting to the root of the culture war that is raging around us. Wittgenstein called it the “battle against the bewitchment of our [native] intelligence by means of language.”

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[1] paraphrasing Gregory Bateson

[2]  David Abrams

[3], [4]  Of Crabs and Starfish: Ancestral Knowledge and Collaborative Practice 
Rocio Chaveste and Papusa (Maria Luisa) Molina

Joan Didion, Blogs, Vietnam, Childhood, and Carl Jung

Mouth of the Mekong River, Vietnam
CC Jean Stimmell: 1966

Joan Didion comments in her essay "On Keeping a Notebook": Only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast, dwell upon self, interrupt with memories of beach picnics and favorite Liberty lawn dresses and the rainbow trout in a creek near Colorado Springs. The rest of us are expected, rightly, to affect absorption in other people’s favorite dresses, other people’s trout.[1]

Keeping my blog is a modern equivalent of Joan’s notebook and, alas, I can't deny often dwelling on myself, recounting my recollections and dreams. Is this a clear indication my old mind has slipped its moorings like those ancient ships we passed, just before heading up the Mekong River in Vietnam in 1966, or is it possible that, instead, my old mind is purifying itself, regressing back to the unfettered bliss of the very young as Carl Jung attempted in his old age, to dwell happily in dreams, myth, and the collective unconsciousness. 

Postscript: It was after midnight when I finished this blog entry and I went straight to bed. Before shutting off the light, I reached for a book to relax my brain after a long day. Among many choices, I grabbed the Tao Te Ching [2] and randomly flipped it open.  The first stanza I read is a good example of what Jung called synchronicity:

“Know the male,

yet keep to the female:

receive the world in your arms.

If you receive the world,

the Tao will never leave you

and you will be like a little child.”

Was this Carl Jung’s motivation in old age to return to childhood?

“If you accept the world,

the Tao will be luminous inside you

and you will return to your primal self."

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[1] Essay in Joan Didion’s anthology: Slouching toward Bethlehem p. 136

[2] Tao Te Ching translated by Steven Mitchell, Harper & Row, 1988, page 28

A Dream about Rebirth...

Revolt Against Oppression by Michelle Gumpert

My Dream  7/18/13:

Russet and I wake up early, just as the sun is rising, and are amazed to look out our big picture window and see a huge herd of animals: geese, ducks, turkeys, deer, wild boar, puffins, a black gazelle with stiletto horns, among many others, milling about as they pass by, filling our yard all the way to the road and extending as far as we can see into the woodsy meadow beyond, while at the same time, the air is erupting into chaos as birds of all descriptions, careen this way and that.

Our ancient cat, her long-deceased mother, and four adorable kittens (whom exist only in the dream) scramble on top of a tall stack of cordwood by our cellar door, all in a frenzy, leaping time after time into the air, trying to catch the low flying songbirds hurtling past.

What it felt like:

I felt like I was looking out on the Serengeti Plains at the end of the dry season, at the exact moment when rains have finally come, turning brown to green, triggering the greatest annual animal migration on earth. It felt like rebirth!

What it looked like:

Michelle Gumpert calls her abstract painting at the top of the page, Revolt against Oppression. Because her painting creates vibrations inside me of the same urgency and wave length as in my dream, I think Rebirth would also be a worthy title: From both, I get a strong felt sense of positive energy, long suppressed, surging upward from the untamed wildness and creative imagination of Nature and Jung’s Collective Unconsciousness. Even the blue objects in the upper third of her abstract painting coincide with my dream, looking to me like the swooping songbirds the cats were leaping to catch.

XXX