It seems to me that some of us are more guided by a mode of living that is more geared to destiny or fate than freedom. What is the connection between the narrative sense, having a coherent history, and fate vs living moment-to-moment, making "free" decisions, but only in an ahistorical almost dream like state of freedom? This type of freedom seems analagous with me to spirit. And a quote comes to mind, probably Kierkegaard, out of nowhere, "anxiety (or freedom?) is a qualification of a dreaming spirit..." I'll have to search through my quotes on the blog to find the exact words on that, but it will be well worth it in this context and considering how fortuitously this quote popped into my head.
If the goal of life is to refine us, to test us, then you may see how unsubstantial are these free moments of decision, so light and airy, so devoid of matter and of bodies, of the corporeal, yes, indeed the ethereal moments of decision, vision blurred as if in a dream, not even the visual field having a concrete anchor. It feels foregin to have decisions made in such a "lightweight" manner - yet this is what freedom (of decision making) in an existential sense conjurs up inside me. The choices that matter. The choices that define us, where we pick one side or the other - indeed, the either/or of Kierkegaard perhaps?
Some of us may have had cookie-cutter, Normal Rockwell histories and rational lives that make sense. Others of us will be dreaming travelers, but they will be free. Those with histories will be good story tellers and the dreamers will be poets and philosophers.
I had a dream the other night that effected me, as amazing as dreams can be. In between the chaos and the bizarre setting of a grocery store near where I grew up and frequented often, as I jostled elbows at a table for some bizarre reason with lawyers, I stood up and told them "The first shall be last and the last shall be first." I haven't read my Bible in a year or more. I also sensed the sadness of aging and the passing of time. I am getting older, my parents are getting older. Those childhood experiences every day acquire more dust, become less relevant, less relatable. People move out of neighborhoods. But the memories remain and float around in warm cheery little voids in our imaginations, where the candle still burns eternally. Freedom is a qualification of dreaming spirit.
I am absolutely of the mind that the experiences we live, and I mean the good ones, the love that we experience, live on in a real and meaningful way. It is and always will be connected with us, even after we leave this world and those neighborhoods behind.
[update] 12/9/11, found the quote:
"Anxiety is a qualification of dreaming spirit, and as such it has its place in psychology. Awake, the difference between myself and my other is posited; sleeping it is suspended; dreaming, it is an intimated nothing. The actuality of the spirit constantly shows itself as a form that tempts its possibility but disappears as soon as it seeks to grasp for it, and it is a nothing that can only bring anxiety. More it cannot do as long as it merely shows itself. The concept of anxiety...is altogether different from fear and similar concepts that refer to something definite, whereas anxiety is freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility. Fore this reason, anxiety is not found in the beast, precisely because by nature the beast is not qualified as spirit." -Soren Kierkegaard under pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis The Concept of Anxiety
and another
"Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity but in itself. If sin has come into the world by necessity (which is a contradiction) there can be no anxiety. Nor can there be any anxiety if sin came into the world by an act of an abstract liberum arbitrium." -Soren Kierkegaard under pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis The Concept of Anxiety
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Monday, November 15, 2010
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Big Sur
I just finished reading Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, which I enjoyed even though I was a bit surprised at its lack of polishing.
Now I've started a book by Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. So far it looks promising, more so than Miller's Air Conditioned Nightmare, which was pretty much just blah for me. But having visited Big Sur myself recently, and having read Air Conditioned Nightmare which precedes this book, I think I might enjoy this one. Here is an excerpt I just read:
"Some will say they do not wish to dream their lives away. As if life itself were not a dream, a very real dream from which there is no awakening! We pass from one state of dream to another: from the dream of sleep to the dream of waking, from the dream of life to the dream of death. Whoever has enjoyed a good dream never complains of having wasted his time. On the contrary, he is delighted to have partaken of a reality which serves to heighten and enhance the reality of everyday."
From reading the first 28 pages, I think that Miller makes very accurate observations of Big Sur. I was surprised, when, coming back from my trip there, I read Kerouac's book by the same title and realized that it was apparently not just me who saw the overpowering and in a way frightening force of Big Sur. I think Big Sur, by Miller, will be an enjoyable read.
Now I've started a book by Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. So far it looks promising, more so than Miller's Air Conditioned Nightmare, which was pretty much just blah for me. But having visited Big Sur myself recently, and having read Air Conditioned Nightmare which precedes this book, I think I might enjoy this one. Here is an excerpt I just read:
"Some will say they do not wish to dream their lives away. As if life itself were not a dream, a very real dream from which there is no awakening! We pass from one state of dream to another: from the dream of sleep to the dream of waking, from the dream of life to the dream of death. Whoever has enjoyed a good dream never complains of having wasted his time. On the contrary, he is delighted to have partaken of a reality which serves to heighten and enhance the reality of everyday."
From reading the first 28 pages, I think that Miller makes very accurate observations of Big Sur. I was surprised, when, coming back from my trip there, I read Kerouac's book by the same title and realized that it was apparently not just me who saw the overpowering and in a way frightening force of Big Sur. I think Big Sur, by Miller, will be an enjoyable read.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Attunement
One of the more important ideas I discovered from the existential philosopher Heidegger, an idea more fully flushed out in its significance by the Psychologist Medard Boss, who used Heidegger's philosophy, is that of Attunement.
For example:
A man who is starving can only see in the world all those things which correspond to his hunger, to the extent that the things in his environment reveal themselves to him, they are likely to reveal only their edible qualities, for instance. For his existence is attuned to hunger, and this is the way his Da-sein (Being) is open to the world.
Medard Boss puts these ideas to excellent use to explain the meaning of dreams, in contrast to Freudian theory which involves completely hypothetical and unrealistic assumptions - such as creating a dream censor that decides what content to "filter out." (so is there a little man in our heads, then, deciding for us? The paradox of an "unaware awareness.")
I will leave you with a few of my own reflections along this line of thought, which has been fruitful to me: It is impossible to remain in a state (attunement) of anxiety when you make efforts to be in a state of love, or Care (another fundamental concept itself for Heidegger).
If I have found anything to be the polar opposite of anxiety, it is Care and Love.
It is along the lines of this notion of "Attunement," that I relate Wayne Dyer's Power of Intention to Heidegger's existential philosophy. From Dyer;
"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
Dyer immediately makes the leap to suggest that our attunement (he does not use the term himself) has an effect of drawing certain things closer or farther from us, and therefore advises things such as remaining in a state of constant gratitude. I see the reasoning behind his thinking, and in a sense it is well-known and common; ie "What you fear finds you." However, I have not quite yet arrived at the conclusion myself from the standpoint of Understanding, e.g. the process by which our existence can repel or attract things that are usually viewed as being quite separate from our "thoughts," such as money, being in a certain place etc.
If we can bring what we desire into our lives simply by the way we exist, more specifically by paying attention to the way we exist, the way we choose to live in and see the world, the potential is unlimited for attracting all the good things we want into our lives.
For example:
A man who is starving can only see in the world all those things which correspond to his hunger, to the extent that the things in his environment reveal themselves to him, they are likely to reveal only their edible qualities, for instance. For his existence is attuned to hunger, and this is the way his Da-sein (Being) is open to the world.
Medard Boss puts these ideas to excellent use to explain the meaning of dreams, in contrast to Freudian theory which involves completely hypothetical and unrealistic assumptions - such as creating a dream censor that decides what content to "filter out." (so is there a little man in our heads, then, deciding for us? The paradox of an "unaware awareness.")
I will leave you with a few of my own reflections along this line of thought, which has been fruitful to me: It is impossible to remain in a state (attunement) of anxiety when you make efforts to be in a state of love, or Care (another fundamental concept itself for Heidegger).
If I have found anything to be the polar opposite of anxiety, it is Care and Love.
It is along the lines of this notion of "Attunement," that I relate Wayne Dyer's Power of Intention to Heidegger's existential philosophy. From Dyer;
"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
Dyer immediately makes the leap to suggest that our attunement (he does not use the term himself) has an effect of drawing certain things closer or farther from us, and therefore advises things such as remaining in a state of constant gratitude. I see the reasoning behind his thinking, and in a sense it is well-known and common; ie "What you fear finds you." However, I have not quite yet arrived at the conclusion myself from the standpoint of Understanding, e.g. the process by which our existence can repel or attract things that are usually viewed as being quite separate from our "thoughts," such as money, being in a certain place etc.
If we can bring what we desire into our lives simply by the way we exist, more specifically by paying attention to the way we exist, the way we choose to live in and see the world, the potential is unlimited for attracting all the good things we want into our lives.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
