To the social world of fear

I would like to contemplate for a second on the subject of social fear. That is, the world, the social, and the fear.

The social and the fear go very well together. We can easily understand from psychoanalysis, how they complete one and other. For there is the ego, the mirror image, that which at first estranges us from pure and unbound awareness, the simple witnessing without the constraints of the I. The ego is what tears us away from an innocent point of view and leads us in the direction of demands. We start demanding that the contents of our awareness must be such or such. We start restraining and shaping the inner experience in ways that give us a feeling of consistency as to our presumed ’personality’. One can wonder as to the validity of this consistency. One can wonder as to the value of the self-image. Is it not a primal form of estrangement, this enslavement to the mirror image ? Is it not something we invest too much in ? Would we not better go with the flow, be anew and unpredictable every second again, without prejudice, just a joyful chaos, a pleasant surprise, like the thunder and the lightning that burst out in laughter above all the pouring of the rain ? Could we not be more in-the-moment ? Should we always worry about the continuity of our self-image, should we be so hung up on keeping up appearances ? Who are we, really ? That is difficult to say. It is a question that has had many answers throughout the ages, and yet it is still without definitive reply.

We are surely not merely an image, we are flesh and bones, we are blood and power, we are life’s passion, poured into a carnal vessel.

The image, the ego, is the means through which consistency and prescription uphold their bondage of the soul. It is the demanding aspect of the person, it is that which lets him not be free. ’You’ have to be this way and that way, ’you’ have to always comply with the demands. And these demands, that we put upon ourselves, and under which we sometimes feel we will collapse, these demands are, like the ego-image, also in a way coming to us from a place of estrangement, of a place that’s strange to us. It is not in the nature of the native mind, to be so full of demands, but to be a spontaneous joy that shys not the bursts of laughter and the spirals of enlightenment. It is not strange, to our true inner spirit, to be a surprise like the thunder, to be full of humor like the lightning, to be a comfort like the rain. We can be spontaneous, we can surprise one and other, we can be so much more that all of the predictability, staleness and demands. You can drop this, I am sure you know this from experience. You can drop the burden of life, you can drop the veil, the blinders from your eyes. And be fresh, be new, like a choice, like a choice for living life every moment authentically, vitally, full of inspiration. You can be so much more.

So the demands, that are put upon this ego-image, they come from the Other, they come from the outside world. We learn this real soon, as children still, what ’we’ can and cannot be, what we should and should not do. What to feel, what not to feel. What to show, and what to hide in shame. In truth, in therapy, there is no need for shame. Shame is all that is forbidden in analysis, shame is all that should not be, shame is the foe the analyst will help us overcome. For we are there to be free, unbound, without restriction or preoccupation. This is a beautiful word, pre-occupation. That part of our sensitivity which has been occupied, before. So that is, the energy that has been bound, taken into captivity, by the instance of the ego, to be witheld, to be dampened, to be controlled, to be toyed with. We are not to be toyed with, we are to be respected in our fullness and our integrity. But the ego is there to interfere, the ego will seek to capture and manipulate, that which is merely the expression of our nature.

And society demands this from us, society demands the ego. Thus the social enforces fear. The social cannot live without exertion of the terror. It inflicts shame and repression on our souls, it bestows the humble position upon its members, of being in a way falsely and distorted. We always have to be playing roles. We cannot fall out of them. We could, in truth, as I said, we could be fresh and merely a surprise. But that is threatening to the demands of society, that all should be dead, pale, stale, lifeless predictability. Society is a calculation, it is fear and status quo. It is the keeping of an image, on the level of the collective identification. Countries can never be forever. They dream of greatness and of expansion into eternity, but they will fade, as will their borders, as will their images, with the evolution of the people held within.

So will the world. The world will not remain a static image for ever on. The world will change, as people change. The world is like a country to, it has an image, it has an inclination towards narcissism, to proclaim a self, a this-is-I, a need for an image to control itself. And as we know, that image is the global institution of the capital. The world is money, and that is all the story there is to tell.

But we can fight that image, we can surprise the constancy of this merely image. The world does not have to be just money, or the making or the distribution of it. The world can be full of life again, it can be about a monkey, a spider, a snake, a falcon, it can be about a lake, a tree, or the sun that shines upon them all. The image can turn to life again, the shame can at times be left behind. And that’s a start, that’s where we take back the life from under all the hiding, that’s where we lift the baby out of the mud. The world should not be about the mud, it should not be about the image. Nations should not be about a flag. The world should be about the life, as nations about people, as the ego about the soul.

For that is where all principles of therapy are coming from, to seek the dolphin that is moving underneath the ice, to seek the flowing, underneath the freeze, and to bring relaxation, into the rigid harness of our personalities. If this is therapy, should we then freeze forever more on the level of the nation, should we say the world is this, and that is how we’ll keep it ? If nature had thought that way, perhaps there would still be dinosaurs, or worse still, we would never have evolved from the primal soup of water and bacteria.

The world has come from evolution, nations have been born and died, and man, as well, is forever a living, beating whole, made up from air and water, blood and fire. We are alive, nations are alive, the world is so alive. And life means change, for the better. Life means hope, life means progress, and with it, the death of old habits, the leaving behind of ancient mistakes. Thus there is hope, there is forever hope for change, for surprise, for the new and for the fresh.

For which there is however little hope, is for the ego. For man will never be a picture, nations will never be just flags, and the world will never be the killer of economy. This is all too human, animals do not have such desire for personality. Animals have instinct, they are guided from within, they are free and authentic, they are rooted in the field. God is with the animal, they are one with nature. But we seek somehow to stand over nature, we seek to hold our beating down, we seek to tame our hearts, tame our lungs, control the oxygen in our veins. We seek the mastery. And this has led mankind to some level of comfort, but it can never be more than a game. It should never be for man to lose himself. Man should always return to the earth, man should always remain true to his living roots. And that is somehow, somewhere, where we have lost it in these days. Everything is out of touch, everyone is out of touch, with the principle of reality, with the balance of the soul.

We cannot go on making the world about economy, we cannot go on making a nation about a flag, we cannot continue to be merely the dead things of the images.

The world these days, demands from us that we keep ourselves so down, that we control ourselves so much. But how can we really ? How can we keep up this denying of our soul ? How can we keep up, the silent conspiration to deny the realness of reality ? We cannot remain images forever, we cannot be mere consistency. We cannot remain a child that has to be restrained. We must become adults that are free, we must come to terms with the ground we stand on, we must regain touch with the world we live in. That is what so many souls are crying out these days, from the Indignados to the Occupiers of Wall Street, that the game has got to stop. The comfort is our true comfort no more. It has become the enemy, the game is now for real. All cannot remain forever dead, all can not be mere machine until infinity, we can no longer comply with these demands. We must break out of our stories, burn our flags, break the monster of economy. We must step out of our sleep and dreams, and start again to see reality. The game cannot go on.

For if the world, the social, the Other, keep telling us how to be, it will be fatal to the lots of us. We cannot trust the government. The government is ruled by sociopaths, filled with psychopaths, the government is only caring for the money. And money is but the image of the world. Money is not the lake, the sunrise, the bathing in the wind. Money is not the beauty and fulfillment of our planet. Money is a game, a temporary agreement, an attempt at consensus as to what life is about. But life is never just about the dead, life is never just a thing, as a person never is an image. Life is a heart that beats when it’s cold, life is blood that rushes blood unto our organs, life is people that evolve, life is maybe ice that is melting way too fast. Life is life, life is change, life is not a thing, the world is never a machine. Life can surprise us, life can be fresh, life can be felt, real and authentic.

So I would call upon the world, to break free from the image, as I, as a therapist, would call upon a person to drop the instance of the shame, to fully be, and without compromise. We cannot live by the Law no more, we can no longer live by religion, or whatever the Name-of-the-Father is. We cannot live in this estrangement, we cannot breathe no more, under the manipulations of the ego. So we must be that way, as in therapy, and for the better, without compromise. We must be truthful to the truth, we must be wholly about peace, we must be coming from surprise, we must be a breaking point, we must but open our eyes and see, and wake up the other next to us. For reality is calling for our help, the animals are crying for our help, natives are appealing to our understanding. Why close our eyes, why come from a place of sad regret and say, we cannot change, it somehow all must be this way. What superstition ! What should be this way ? The world, man, the nation ? Should life comply with an image and a story to uphold ? Should the world be given the frostbite of a character, should a nation be an armor, a fearful hiding, of the pride that lives within ?

For man has been about fixations way too long, man has been about restrictions way too long, man has been cramped for way too long, it is time to free ourselves, to flow again, it is time to feel alive and be so fresh. And so should be a nation, so should be the world, fully alive and changing, never fixed, never just the story of an image, never just a cramp of fear around our heart. Can we free the world, can we heal the tribes and nature, can we burn our flags, and can we break the savage beast of dead economy. Nothing is as good to man, as the dropping of his image-self, nothing is as freeing, as the realness of unpredictability, nothing is as freeing, as being a surprise. And nothing could be more natural.

I believe not in putting a story, full of laws and habits and predictability, upon our brothers. I do not believe in programming the world. I believe in letting it live, in letting it surprise us, I believe, uncompromisingly, in letting the soul come out. That is my maieutic teaching, that is the heart of psychotherapy. Come out from underneath that ice, flow once again where there was armor, bring to life what has been dead.

Has man not been dead for many ages ? Can nations claim eternity ? And will our money last forever ?