I had a ‘sponsored realization’ as I call them, during one of those tiny ‘conversational’ events lately, one of the incredibly rapid interactions that I tend to realize just after they’ve finished. I don’t remember the details, only the end result in concept.
I wonder if this also applies to all of reality as we know it, but I find the idea so disturbing I will assume not.
It does sort of relate to the subjective reality idea, but far too literally I think!
It related to what is really going on when I communicate with a Larger, an Aeon, the Four, whatever. It’s not… it’s not what I think it is, or how I have thought of it. It is wholly subjective. Wait, let me articulate it better.
Let us say that me and Nero are having a conversation, doesn’t matter about what. Then maybe we did a breathing exercise together. That essentially is just an ‘energetic event’ in objective terms.
In other words, to him, we did not have that conversation. But that energy, that attention, that relationship, that interaction, that energy, it is part of something that is part of both of us, that we share, although we each experience it our own way.
Now in his life, it might result in him having a conversation with me, at some other time, but a completely different one. It might merely blend into his dreams or his life in some other way.
The relationship is real, the energy is real, and the “facet of his identity” which ‘interacts with mine’ is real. But the “interface” — which you might call, “how I perceive him” — is a combination of both of us: It is drawn from the larger pool of energy which is him; that is filtered and arranged by the energy which is me.
You might say that if he were a big collection of little colored pieces, I’m the one that builds a kaleidascope pattern out of a FEW of those pieces. So that pattern is “completely him” — in terms of his energy composing it — but also arbitrarily, subjectively “me,” since I’m the one who chose what pattern to create.
He is the paint. I am the painter. His “projected personality” — from his form to his dynamic — is the painting on canvas that “I created Of him.”
This is done based on my energy and based on our energy’s “relationship.” And so, as such, it IS an archetype — even though he is an energy I perceive as an entity.
So I could perceive him a zillion different ways. And they would all equally be him.
And in fact if he seems to change (as Jared changed as we worked together), it is not really that he is changing, the larger-him. It’s that the components of ‘him’ that I chose to create “my version of him” or the ‘interface’ I perceive between us, changes.
So the interaction is legitimate. It’s just not… not literal. What I get out of it is the same in “energy” as what he does, but the details are completely subjectively unique to both parties.
I find this very upsetting. I’m trying to figure out why.
It has been many years now I have held Seth’s explanations as my primary philosophy framework. I know that personal reality is subjective. I mean for godssakes, the whole point of archetype meditations in some respects, is changing the energy inside you, and seeing how it changes outside you including in people you deal with!
If I were not the one ‘creating the interface and experience’ in my reality, then how could MY internal changes, change other people, or circumstance where others are also involved? It’s obvious that this should not be any kind of news to me. It shouldn’t even be surprising, let alone upsetting.
I think I only had it intellectually before. I don’t think I had a full understanding of it before. And I can sense that I don’t even now. That this is one of those many things I will think I understand at a new level, and then that will cycle around repeatedly, so I better understand it over time, more and more. I have more now than I did before.
I think part of me feels abandoned. Like the personalities that I have come to love, and the experiences we’ve shared, don’t mean as much anymore. Even though I know that’s ridiculous. I know that it is as ‘real’ as it gets, and yes, that the personality I interact with really is ‘him’. I know this is nothing more than slightly better realization of the actual dynamic I allegedly already believed in anyway.
But it makes me feel so much more… well, alone. Somehow.
***
When I started doing shamanic/jungian work, I complained, “This is only my imagination!” It took a lot of effort, time, and real-world results, and powerful experiences, to start to wrap my brain around the fact that yes, it was, but it was a whole lot more, too.
I theorized there was a third realm, where truly autonomous separate energies, and my subject perception, involving my imagination, interacted. It turned out other smarter people had already thought of that (having run into it themselves), and it even had a name, “Imaginal.” Although I dislike that name since I think it just makes it sound imaginary. That was not the point of the word. The word literally meant when subjective perception of us, and energy of ‘other,’ meet and interact–that third world in between.
Even after so many years, even the last couple there have been conversations between me and some Aeons about the ‘imaginary’ element. Imagination is the medium of communication. It is the tool. So YES it is imagination, NO it is not limited to self-creation. I have mostly… I think… learned to not invalidate my experience simply because that is the ‘medium for communication and interaction’.
I think this realization about the identity of those I perceive, and about our communications, makes me feel like I did when I first began archetype meditation work. I think it makes me feel like, “Oh, well that isn’t really ‘them’, it’s just my own creation. So it doesn’t really count.”
Like what it really means is that nothing is about anything else. Everything is about me. Every picture of someone else in my inner world is just a reflection of me. Of how I relate to that energy. Every interaction, the same thing. I have used their colors to paint my experience.
And I had accepted this for archetypes! I mean ’cause archs can be weird! Not human, not alive, totally obscure. But although I did understand there was some ‘degree’ of that with the Aeons, I didn’t understand how literal it was — with them, with the largers, with everything.
I know I’m being a childish whiner but I don’t WANT that to be the way it is. I love my Aeons! I love their personalities! I love everything about them. The more I know them the more I love them. I love interacting with them as friends, as lovers, I love even the conflict and the humor. They’re awesome. And I know that all this energy is legitimately them, and they are legitimately ‘sharing the energy’ of our relationship.
But somehow, the idea that their identity detail is dependent on me not them, the idea that they aren’t having the same conversations and experiences I am having, just makes me feel like… like we’re not connected, we’re just doing our own things in the delusion that someone else is on the other end.
I know, I hear someone inside me saying we are more connected, not less, in this model, but that is not enough for me right now. I feel stupid, like I’ve been a fool, like my genuine affection for them is just delusion, that person I know doesn’t even exist.
P
Recent Comments