All hail the American night

Today I would like to talk about the underground and Freudian medicine.

Altered states, and the origin of our fascination with them.

I have tried to paint to the reader the vision of our awareness as a form of light. We let our light shine, upon something or just for the sheer ecstasy of it. The light brings us joy, it brings us exaltation and inspiration.

After thinking a lot about Freud and Lacan and the whole theory of psychoanalysis, I have grown to like the idea of seeing this light as a better term for what Lacan calls the real and Freud calls the drive. In laying out next to each other the schemes of Eastern Buddhism and Western psychoanalysis, I have come to the conclusion that our original spirit, the drive of the real, must be consciousness, pure awareness as the Buddha has proclaimed it to be.

So this original state of being, what psychoanalysis calls the developmental stage of the real, must be a state of pure consciousness, a state of pure awareness. A state of being in the light, being one with the light, of just being the light itself.

So baby’s, as I see it, are nothing more than the purest light of creation.

But soon already, the shadow makes its entry. I have called this the shadow, though this might seem a little unorthodox to traditional Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysts. I think Jung used this term, and Jung was not always on good speaking grounds with his contemporary Sigmund Freud, so neither are their followers.

However, Freud and Lacan lead us to see how in the early stage of psychodynamic development, an instance comes into play, which is the mirror image of the body. This is called the ideal ego.

Lacan shows us, through his scheme of the double mirror, how the mirror image, or ideal ego, makes it possible for the human being to organize and master the original being of the drive.

To master, is to tame in a way. The mirror stage is all about the taming of the soul. It is where the real comes to reside under the power and authority of the self and becomes controlled by and/or through it.

From then on, this ego, or more specifically, ideal ego, will be able to hinder and forbid the arising of awareness, the growth of consciousness. The question if some experience becomes conscious, if we are clearly awake and aware of our feelings and insights, depends on the activity of the ego.

Now it has been said, that through the ego, the child becomes master over itself. I do not know, after all this thinking however, if it is the child still who becomes master of itself, or if it is the ego inside the spirit of the child that just becomes some kind of master itself, standing over and hampering, plaguing the inner life of the infant human being.

I do not think the ego is such a big help, and in fact, psychoanalysis is kind of in doubt on this point as well.

For it says that the ego is the instance of resistance, the enemy of the cure. That which opposes the healing resolution of consciousness, the barrier that needs to be overcome in order for psychopathology to be resolved.

However, in asking the question how humankind should live, it says the ego is sacred, and its role and authority should not be questioned. Its position must remain firm, for we are not animals, we do know self-restraint. And that makes us superior.

In fact, our superiority is what makes us sick.

The ego is what I call the shadow, as it casts itself over our light, and keeps our beings separated from the world we live in, the planet that is one with our soul and nothing but love and light itself.

So to be a baby, a being of the light, living in the world of the light, is no longer possible after the ego or shadow has introduced itself. It now depends, whether awareness will flower through, or if it will be cut short like the grass on your lawn. Kept small, enslaved to its authority.

Now I would like, for this contemplation, to point out explicitly that the original state of awareness, freedom, is compromised and sabotaged by the shadow. Freud spoke of inhibition when he spoke of fear and the symptom, and it is precisely this, it is nothing but fear, fear as such, that is the actor of the restraint. Fear is the nature of the shadow.

So fear tempers with the rising of awareness. Should we feel that, should we think like that? Should we be like that? It seems we can never just be allowed to think our thoughts, feel our feelings and just be ourselves.

We need permission from the shadow.

Now the ego, Freud said, inhibits things from becoming conscious. Experiences of the spirit from being experienced. Life from being lived. This is the suffering of man, that he cannot live his life as it is his to live, because of the barrier of the ego. Because of what he thinks he is, a mirror image somewhere in his head. And shining his light upon this mirror-self, he forgets he is the light itself.

So the light is inhibited by the shadow, the state of consciousness is mediated, tempered, played with, by the devil.

This is important to realize, as we are thinking about for instance shamanism. Shamanism is a form of religion, a form of belief.

The estrangement, identification, with the mirror-image is also a kind of belief. It is the belief that we and the image of our bodies are one and the same thing.

But whereas shamanism seeks to expand and to enliven conscious experience, our worship of the shadow-devil only leads us to feel less and less.

Whereas shamanism, trance and the use of psychedelic substances are meant for the healing of the soul, our use of the ideal ego leads us only into sickness, pathology and the typical problem of seeing no way out.

So I believe the way out is to go way in.

By strengthening our souls, our light and original awareness, through psychoactive medicine perhaps or other ways of trance, we can try to regain consciousness, expand our awareness and see through the ego, transcending fears and fear itself.

We can make our light shine stronger, and it would be logical, and I believe it has happened to certain people, that the light fills every corner of our beings, and the shadow disappears in thin air.

It is when we no longer live under the circle of the imaginary, under the illusion of the mirror, the rule of fear and the crippling and shrinking authority of the inner demon, that we are called enlightened.

In fact, we were born enlightened, but I guess we grew afraid and sought some form of power.

The power of self-restraint.

The power of inhibition.

The power of fear and shame.

But these are not true powers, they are not eternal truths.

They are symptoms of the fear.

In the beginning was the light, the divine, and we were one with all the light of creation, but somewhere in our psychosexual development, we traded our light for our darkness, we took a bite from the image of the divine and thus we came to know shame and hiding, keeping our spirits from meeting with the light of day.

If there is one truth, it is innocence, and our deepest desire to return to it. Our struggle with the struggling shadow, struggling to remain on top of us, struggling to keep us from straightening our spines and breathing freely and relieved.

It is not a simple fight. Some fight it with Freudian medicine, psychedelics, some fight it through drumming, dancing, chanting, fasting, running or whatever form of trance works for them.

But it is important, when we regard shamanism, to see how we are in a state of mind that is the worst of all religions. Narcissism is really satanism, it is adoring the image of yourself, adoring the shadow, worshipping fear and the devil himself.

Shamans worship the cradle of creation, the light of the universe. How can we be superior to that? We can try to stand over it and we may struggle with it, but our desire for innocence and the light may lead us yet back home.

Where we are the ones who choose our state of mind, and not the demon.

Where we are the ones playing with our light.

Where our awareness is altered not without our conscious will, but through the exertion of our own and native spiritual powers.

When we have learnt from the shaman to return to the true goddess of nature, the love of the heart, we will have grown wise and mature, and we will no longer be infants being seduced and sucked into another dimension. The dimension of the mirror, the imaginary state of mind.

Illusion, Buddha said.

We will see, aware and free, with the open eyes of spirit and smell with the gifts and blessings of awareness. No longer will we live under the suffocating rape of fear, but we will be free beings of the world, proud, wide and open.

So to alter our awareness through some form of belief, is what the mirror-stage is all about. And maybe It is not such a criminal thing to do, to try and alter it back to the way it was, through an opposite form of reverence.

Not the worshipping of the devil keeping our hearts and souls dead and quiet, but the worshipping of our mother, nature, who lets us run free forever in the great garden for us to play and heal in.

I believe if there is an American night, it is the night where we are struggling to free our minds, to open our spirits, and to no longer be these small souls that are kept dead in the reign of illusions. If there is an American night, it may be an American fight. A fight of the shaman for the freedom from the demons.

And as long as the devil keeps the grass short, we may be sure, as Freud has taught us, that that which is kept from rising and living in our aware state of being, is not dead. It is unconscious, but it remains alive, and you can be sure it will return.

It will return in time, it may return at any time, born again from the underground, from the heavens within where all the souls of us zombies are waiting eagerly to return.

And to fear the return of the unconscious from that heavenly underground may be typically what our egos do, but it is not the fear we should choose. It is the love, the acceptance and the celebration when all that was dead within comes finally back alive. Alive and well in its eternal light and life.

It was the way of psychoanalysis to seek and celebrate and use this resurrection of the unconscious soul-parts to lead the patients back to wholeness.

Perhaps one day, it will doubt as well the sanctity of the ego-demon, the beneficence of self-restraint.

Perhaps one day, psychoanalysis will guide us back to the native, to nature, to the inner light, even stronger and more convinced, that we as a species and a race deserve better than to be satanic zombies.

Perhaps one day, psychoanalysis will lead us to the shaman, to the trance, to the substance and the trip to wholeness, to nature and to our souls.

Fighting the devil on his own grounds, seeking to go high where he goes low, altering our state of consciousness back from the darkness into the eternal realms of the light.

And forgetting that there ever was a demon, when we finally lose our minds.

No mind, no self.

One love.

One destiny.