Killing the fire

My own theory is that the obsessive pursuit of sex

is an attempt to obliterate the ego, i.e. ‘normal consciousness’,

the monkey-mind that tortures us with restlessness,

fear, anger and self-centeredness.

We’re trying to get to the level above that.

The entity we’re seeking union with is ourselves.

We’re trying to connect with our true being, our soul, our Self.

(Steven Pressfield)

I do realize that what I am about to write has little scientific value.

It is little more than an exercise in free association.

As such, it is probably too insane and too far-fetched. It is overheated and chaotic, and it is complete nonsense to anyone else but me.

It may annoy you, or it may entertain you.

If anything, I am just trying to make sense of myself, if that is an excuse.

Many years ago, as I have described in my book ‘the magic of psychoanalysis’, I often felt like I was made of the same vibes and dances as the late mister Jim Morrison. When I was dancing, people would sometimes call me that, although I was not trying to imitate anyone.

Even in daily life, when I was joking and acting stupid and innocent, I was given that name.

My life was a bit like the self-destructive rollercoaster that his was. It was filled with poetry, whisky, music, drugs and sex, and it was going nowhere and going there fast. I was a very extreme person, and very much in the habit of doing my own thing.

Being Steven Vlaeyen however, and not Jim Morrison, who is surely dead, I know, I was a clinical psychologist with an anarchist heart. I was writing a book in those days, all about how to fuck the system and how the system deserved and needed to be fucked. For the sake of the human soul, dying underneath.

I was using psychoanalysis to try and support my feeling and intuition, but because the education I got at the university was very bad and partial, very mixed up and unclear, I could not write anything decent.

I then attempted to start an enterprise in audiovisual media, partnering with friends who were painters and musicians, trying to bring politicians into the underground squatter and hippie scene, which I loved with all my heart. Again, I was trying to elevate the bottom level of society to a higher standard if you will, to bring greater recognition to the ones easily overlooked and forgotten. I was trying to remind people of that which they did not want to see and know. Get some attention for the little man. The smallest of the smallest, the poorest of the poor. That was going to be my mission and my way. My theme.

However, just like the book, the enterprise failed, and I was left in disease, physical and psychological, because of poverty and lack of opportunities.

What followed was an era of institutionalizations and lock-ups, getting my act together and sobering up, trying to find a normal ‘decent’ job and conform to the norms and expectations of society.

This somehow blew over after I was given the status of being a mentally disable person, due to my schizophrenia. Luckily for me, the pressure from the authorities diminished and left me with room to breathe again and find my bearings. Refocus.

After reading a lot, I started writing once again, and by now I have written some two and a half new books, which are more or less published and approved of. About psychoanalysis, yep, still, and of course, about anarchy and the need for oxygen among the common people, being oppressed and exploited for the luxuries of a few.

I am very happy with my work, though my readers are still few.

And as for Jim Morrison, well I think he would smile at my philosophies.

Just this morning, I was thinking about the female Oedipus, and the penis envy. And I was thinking about the witches having intercourse with the devil and flying around on their brooms. I was thinking about the stories I was told in high school about women tearing up a live male goat and devouring him raw, before going out dancing and raping all the men they came across during the rites of Pan.

And I hate to say it, but I think Jim Morrison would have laughed his ass off at my thoughts, and I secretly hope you will too. Don’t forget, however, I am deeply serious.

So here we go.

In psychoanalysis, as I have come to see it, we can come to rectify the habit of using the devil’s discourse. To the ego, sexuality is traumatic, because it is transcending its existence, and leaving it behind, just as the unity with the mother was traumatic when it made the fear of death go away.

For the ego is the fear of death, that wants to stay alive.

However, we do not need this fear, and in some cases, we can and do transcend it. We can overcome it through the use of meditation, sexuality, dance or psychedelics, to name a few. All of our lives could testify to a disdain and disregard for this fear of losing it. It could be called self-destructive and insane, but you can also call such a way of life courageous and uncompromising. It may be foolish, or it may be wise. Who will say?

If anything, this fear of death is very strong, this darkness within us that persists until we lay it down leaving our physical identities on the wings of our last breath. I believe it is only in heaven we find once again the truth of eternal life and are free from the pressures of this illusion.

But I also believe it is possible, as the Buddha has taught us, to find heaven on Earth. To regain our breath and innocence within our incarnation still, if it be not this one, then perhaps another.

All we need is courage, and the wisdom of the heart.

So I believe that sexuality is a way to transcend the ego, and just like psychedelics it can become addictive. Perhaps we could see this as if the ego were to start to make a game out of seeking its own death. Perhaps its ultimate game.

For myself, I have chosen to abandon sexuality and psychedelics, and just resort to a life of peace, truth and meditation. And it works for now at least.

So what about the devil, and psychoanalysis?

Well the devil is a liar, and it is this twisted discourse of turning things around that I find most disturbing about the world.

Sex is wrong, psychedelics are illegal, and we call that which the ego is keeping down something ‘dark’, as if it were not our light itself that is being held down by the obvious or not so obvious liar and imposter our obscuring ego itself is.

So when the unconscious is dark, sexuality is bad and transcending the ego is prohibited, we should start to think.

What is all this propaganda?

Is it in the interest of some people perhaps to keep the darkness alive, to keep us confused and unclear, to keep us afraid of dying, to keep us living in illusions? Is it perhaps in the interest of some people to keep us struggling for breath and dying from the inner pressure, living in lies?

And if there are people who wish to uphold the fear and the darkness, can they not be called the enemies of psychoanalysis, the enemies of liberation and the revelation of the light?

The enemies of life?

For psychoanalysis, I believe, sides with light, love and the soul. It wants people to breathe, it wants people to live by truth and see things as they are. It does not create masks or seek a way out. It seeks a way in, a way to our core, where we are rooted in our essence and power. It will not compromise, and it does not encourage flight.

To psychoanalysis, it is the light which we leave behind because of the darkness, even at a very young age, and this darkness, as we’ve said before, upholds itself and presents itself as fear and panic.

But there is something sacred which was before. It was oneness, it was unity. It was love, and it was the care for our body.

So when we love each other, in tender care and passionate power, we come to return to our innocent state of being, our original soul and being, that is winged and conscious.

It is this, that is so telling of what Lacan has called the phantasm. For in the phantasm we find the object of our desire, a mythical object which we have lost and seek to reunite with.

It is the nirvana that was before the ego made us drop from the garden to live in guilt and penitence.

And we desire for this throughout our whole lives. A desire we can come to recognize when we see what traces are left in our spirit of the time before we chose to pay off our debts by conforming to the law and authority of the Other.

In a time that was perhaps greatly strained by guilt, there must have been something to feel guilty about. So Freud said that it is easy to see that desiring the unification with the mother was something that was compromised. It was incestuous and dangerous, because the boy was getting in the way of the father.

But to the girl, there appeared to be no incestuous problem causing her to feel guilty and to fear the father. So why do girls conform to the law and authority of the Other?

It is said that women remain therefore more free in their language, in their conforming, because they have never really been fully obliged to identify with the father.

This leaves us with the notion of the penis envy. Boys desire the mother, girls desire to have a penis.

Perhaps, I am thinking, human beings are really very sexual.

If the feelings of desiring the mother are sexual for boys, then the feeling of wanting a penis could be just as sexual for girls.

So sexuality makes both sexes turn toward the Phallus, the ways of the father.

Let us just forget about boys for a moment, and talk about girls.

I have met some girls who clearly needed, and I am saying needed a penis. A sexual desire. They need it, and perhaps there have even been times when the need for a penis was so outspoken, that people and cultures created images of the penis, and called it sacred.

Perhaps to girls, the penis is a way back to unity, to returning to an innocent state without guilt and the fear of death. Perhaps to girls, the penis is a way back to the unity with the mother.

For sure, it is interesting, this tale I was told in high school during the courses in Greek language and culture, about women tearing up a live male goat, symbol of the god Pan, and raping all the men they could find.

For Pan was the god of sexuality, he was the master of seduction, and he was as well a great spirit of nature. The fields, the forests, the pastures.

Pan, to me, represents the female phantasm and an answer to Freud’s question as to ‘what does the woman want’. The woman wants a way back to the mother, a way back to unity, nirvana, just as do men.

Sexuality, to both men and women, is a way to laugh at death and fuck it away. Sexuality is a celebration of eternal life, and as such, it is deeply connected I believe, with the spirit of nature.

This mother-figure, this spirit of nature, has also been celebrated in statues and images in times before. The all-giving, all-providing spirit of the womb, the cradle of the planet we are rocked in, providing us with all, with food, clothes, shelter, medicine.

So to women, the phallus could be seen as a way back to the Mother, and to boys, well, this should be welcome as they are also looking for an experience of eternity, the spirit of nature.

So let all brothers and sisters celebrate nature and the love of the mother, let all people under the sun sing out their desire for love and the heart and soul of creation.

Unless of course, some people would be interested in prohibiting such a return to innocence.

Unless of course, this is called dark, bad and forbidden.

By who’s agenda?

By the ego-reality that resists being forgotten and left behind?

I don’t know people, but when I look at the system of guilt and paying off our debts, the state of shame and hiding, the many ways in which pressures are installed, and I ask what is it all for, is it just for the relaxation of a tiny elite of a happy few, then I do wonder if this was the way nature intended.

Does nature have a habit of letting most creatures suffer all their lives just so one or two creatures could be happy? Does nature hate her own creatures so much? Hate herself?

And if so, how come we still so love nature, love love and love each other?

If it is true, as some would have us believe, that we should stay within the law and authority of the social order, perhaps this is because nature is bad. Just like psychedelics and sexuality. Just like dance and meditation. Just like anything that lets us escape from the ego and find our sense and clarity again. Just like anything that lifts the darkness and confusion. Just like anything that lets us breathe.

So bad bad nature. Bad.

You are a no-good momma.

I don’t know if it is nature that is so bad, or rather the system that is keeping us from loving it.

I know people were burned because they had sex with Pan, which became the inspiration for the Christian image of the devil, who let their spirits fly around freely on his broomstick.

I know that Jim Morrison was going to be locked away by the patriarchy because he made people too conscious of his penis, being some kind of godlike symbol of sexuality himself.

Anything that would dispel the darkness and lift the veils of lies, deceit and illusions is threatening to the social order. Anything that smells like freedom has to be put under pressure. Anything that breathes it seems, must be suffocated.

And what does psychoanalysis say? Does it not say that sexuality is our soul? Does it not say we crave for unity and the spirit of eternity? Why would it defend the social order? Why would it defend patriarchy? Would we not rather dance an insane dance than suffocate in our sanity?

I don’t know, sometimes the fear does not want to die, sometimes the darkness does not like to let in the light.

But someone, and it wasn’t me, said there should be great golden copulations, and I think that someone just gave us a hint of the soul and a taste of eternity.

Rest in peace Jim, and please, don’t return.

For your sake.

I think the system cannot live with you.

Though women can.

Perhaps women should be making up the system, and give us some shit about love, nature and sacred femininity. Perhaps such a world would call you king man, while it is burning in your fire.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, I do not think we’ll meet again.

But I am sure you would burn a system that is killing off your mother.

And hell, they hated you just because you loved eternity.

For all I know, they were killing you just because you were alive.

Dance that dance Jim, that took us all to heaven.

Dance that dance, that once took you to earth.

Dance your dance, little shaman, and let us see what we are worth.