dialogue i

"Depth analysts pay close attention to dreams...The psyche uses depression to get our attention, to show that something is profoundly wrong. once we understand its therapeutic value and follow its Ariadne string through our private labyrinth, then depression can even seem a friend of sorts. After all, if we had not hurt so, the psyche would have already been dead. The hurt, the suffering, is a sign that something vital is still there, awaiting our invitation to come back into the world.
In every swampland state, then, is a task. it takes great courage to value depression, to respect it, not to try and medicate it away or distract ourselves from its misery. Down there is potential meaning, split off from consciousness but alive, dynamic. Although a depression robs conscious life of energy, that energy is not gone. it is in the underworld, and like Orpheus who goes down there to confront, perhaps to charm, the lower powers, so we too are obliged to go down into the depression and find our soul's greatest treasure"

James Hollis 'Swamplands of the Soul'

"The ultimate purpose of psychotherapy is not so much the archeological exploration of infantile sentiments as it is learning gradually and with much effort to accept our own limits and to carry the weight of suffering on our own shoulders for the rest of our lives. Psychological work, instead of providing liberation from the cause of serious discomfort, increases it, teaching the patient to become adult and, for the first time in his life, actively face the feeling of being alone with his pain and abandoned by the world."

Aldo Carotenuto 'The Difficult Art'

Michael Politz

What happens after having moved through that feeling of abandonment ?

Yesterday at 7:55pm · Delete

Horacio Toulouse la Maga

there leaves just you to love

Yesterday at 8:02pm · Delete

Ducks Fly Moon

perhaps none of us will ever truly know....i certainly don't proclaim to have achieved such a sublime state...i suspect we may only ever be able to glimpse it for a moment before it disappears again...but its a poetic endeavour through and through

Yesterday at 8:47pm · Delete

Michael Politz

my experience has been that when you fully experience any emotion you realize you are not your emotions or thoughts.

Pain is in the perception of an event, not the event

Yesterday at 9:42pm · Delete

Lindsay Cummings

i agree that overcoming depression needs to address the pain, not avoid it. but doing so without judgment. we also need to change the knee-jerk perception that all pain is inherently bad and therefore we need to fight it off or get away from it as quickly as possible. this flight or flight reaction doesn't help most people with serious depression; it just makes things worse. as we try to examine why we feel so bad, we fail most of the time to find a good answer and the downward cycle begins of self-blame, harsh doubt, and the inability to see a way out. it can be so hard to see the benefits that depression can have when you are in the midst of it. i think that being really caring towards ourselves and non-judgmental is a good way to start.

Yesterday at 10:22pm · Delete

Horacio Toulouse la Maga

In my experience there are many degrees of depression. It is important to take responsibility for having it share your space. To make it welcome and comfortable so a communication may exist where by understanding will feel invited. Depression may believe it'self to have a reason to be though without fully knowing of it's true purpose. I think it visits us to gain a better understanding of itself. How we choose to respond is part of this mutual endevour to understand.

Yesterday at 10:32pm · Delete

Horacio Toulouse la Maga

We are always able to exercise the ability of giving nothing which is non resistive, thus whatever we have allowed to come into being disperses.

Yesterday at 11:47pm · Delete

Michael Politz

can u give an example

23 hours ago · Delete

Horacio Toulouse la Maga

For example think of something negative, perhaps a memory. When you have it hold it there whilst consciously giving it nothing. Be aware that giving nothing is not running away from confronting. By giving nothing you are taking responsibility for it rather than becoming the effect. It's useful to practice such a principle regularly in life. Have faith x

23 hours ago · Delete

Horacio Toulouse la Maga

Now you are giving something the right to be

23 hours ago · Delete

Michael Politz

so you mean to observe the feeling around the issue

23 hours ago · Delete

Horacio Toulouse la Maga

Kind of. Really it's observing something in it's own space from your own space without giving anything like considerations, disagreement, many things we give to a space which in turn affects our own. By giving nothing what you receive is nothing which is harmless!

23 hours ago · Delete

Michael Politz

its observing without moving through the problem, in the end (which will never happen in this instance) you still have the issue

22 hours ago · Delete

Horacio Toulouse la Maga

By applying the principle you will realize there is no problem or issue but the ones you willingly hold on to.

22 hours ago · Delete

Michael Politz

yes & no; you will know that your holding on to the issue is silly but because you don't want to experience the emotion the issue will come back.

until you fully experience the issue, you will recreate it

21 hours ago · Delete

Horacio Toulouse la Maga

That is why it is important to welcome whatever it is so you can then let it be to let it go.

21 hours ago · Delete

Michael Politz

i think we're talking about the same thing

21 hours ago · Delete

Horacio Toulouse la Maga

Well that's ok! Nice speaking with you x

21 hours ago · Delete

Michael Politz

likewise!

21 hours ago · Delete

New work

There is something 'unborn' here

Breathing through the membrane

of my false presentation.

An unlived entity

devouring the fluid in which

it floats heavily

within this womb of nothingness

a sacred void becomes pregnant

with an absent creativity

miscarried by the encounter with

the beautiful & the sublime.

What profound divinity

is this emerging paradox?

For Marques

Thus I come my Beloved

& in all abasement

Beseech you – put to your hand

The imposition – a curb

To those flatterers

Who are the enemies of our love.

For our Blessedness is driven

& tossed by the waves

So that the depths of the sea

Press on us with infinite perils.

The living fountain

Springing up into

Eternal life

& love by its nature-

Dutiful and obedient to its object.

Discord

The mild narcosis 


That is the qualia


Of satisfaction through


Enjoyment of art


A source of pleasure


& consolation


In life.


Frees us


Temporarily


From the hardships


Too sublime


To make us forget


Freud's misery!


This path to happiness


In the spirit of desperate rebellion


Triumphs not over reality


Madmen will find no souls


To help realize their delusions


Paranoid wishful thinking


Corrects the unendurable aspects.


The art of living


Seeks independence from Fate


Libidinally displaced mentality


Psychological hedonism


(Love is at the centre)


Passionate striving


The quest for happiness


Beauty


Attractiveness


Substitutive satisfactions


Neurosis


Frustration


Chronic intoxication


Rebellion


Psychosis


Love


Religion


Infantilism

Mystery

Oh sweet Mystery; allow me never to discover You.


Let the wonder of You speak only through true poetry.



Reveal Yourself solely through the paints of our lives


As creators of ‘this-worldliness’-- the worshippers of Life!



Work exclusively in the qualia that inspires 'being'


And wait not for the opportunistic ones,



But become the subject of prolongued immersion


For those with pure vision and formidable hopes.



Commence my innocence in Angelic form


That my Angel may promote eternal beginning-ness

Nietzsche

These words are not my own
--

i must admit



They belong to an archaic land


of scarcely discernible vagueness



Fantastically beautiful!


Faithfully preserved in obscurity



Of feeble-minds, absurb and

Positively crazy!



‘Transform every moment into poetry


with pain, tears, anxiety, astonishment, delight!’



Dream of higher certainties!


Elegant deductions need go no further.



What nomenclature of the unconscious --


Partly achieved, partly abandoned



What wish to sleep


Can find the Jewel



-of flamed treasure


Beneath the hearth


-of the cults of Antiquity?


Those citadels of femininity



What vulgar or poetic joke


Enfeebles me?



Inwardly restrained knowing without effect?


Am I but the epitome of compendia?



Or -- immoderation of critical effusion?


Nay! -- I am the Socratic malady (approaching insanity)



How many minds -- systematically perverted

Through toil in the factories of 'common utility'



in the reflexivity of mental distanciation


Inborn grayheadedness, if you will.



Would not Narcolepsy


Better suit such 'teachers of purpose'?

Paradox

It is with opacity


That we gleam upon ourselves



Knowing something


Yet at the same time -- not knowing





This paradox


That is at once irrational AND formulaic

Becomes the veil occluding


Our search for truth

Lacan

Is my desire my own?

Or is it another’s insignia?

Do I find it in the gap?

Opened by an imago?

Desire goes beyond demand

Demand prunes it of need

Desire is excavated shy of

The unconditional demand

Of presence

And absence

Demand evokes the want-to-be

In the three figures of nothing

Demand for love

Negates the Other’s being

The unspeakableness

Of what is not known in request

Aporia incarnate

Demand borrows its heavy soul

From the offshoots

Of the wounded tendency

Its subtle body from death

Desire asserts itself as absolute

To this object

That cannot be grasped

To the mirror

A specular image lends its clothes

Caught in the net of shadow

Its shadow-swelling volume—stolen

The tired lure of the shadow

As substance

Elixir

As if sweet intoxicating nectar cascaded soulwards

Gently transforming my turbulent roots.

Nourishing the emptiness with void.

I would steal the thunder from the Gods

To feel bliss like that again