Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Thirteen
April 16, 2006
A. Tiki/Liz asks:
Robert,
I've been reluctant to dampen the spirit of the Q&A session, but there were some bits of the book that really puzzled me. I don't know how much of this will easily frame as a question, so I'll try to express myself as well as I can and you can comment back as you see fit. Arthur tells me you don't offend easily...this isn't intended to be an attack on you or your book, but I am puzzled.
It seems to me we all interpret events according to our own established frame of reference, our apparatus for making meaning from what we see around us. I thought your descriptions of an altered reality were really vivid, to the point of being able to communicate the level of fear you felt at the time. I suppose where I struggle is in your analysis of this as some sort of divine experience rather than an acute mental health crisis. I couldn't help thinking it got that level of understanding from you because that's where your frame of reference was set before the experience, living in a spiritual community etc. I couldn't help but feel if you'd been at mythic level you'd have been pursued by demons, at blue you'd have thought God spoke to you, at orange you'd have thought you were God, and at a transpersonal level you construct it as a mystical experience. I understand in saying that I may be doing exactly what I thought you might be doing i.e. taking my own experience of how the world works and trying to make it stick over your experience. I suppose the harshly rational part of me wonders how much you had invested in making some kind of sense or meaning out of this, simply because it was so awful. Awful things are easier to tolerate if we can persuade ourselves they had something to teach us.
I have real trouble with the whole idea of carrying round remembered birth trauma, the only birth trauma I remember was giving birth and I am in little doubt which party felt the pain! Moreover the clinical environment you describe is actually fairly new in western medicine, and the metallic bright light atmosphere sounded like a theatre, implying caesarian delivery, hardly the norm. generally babies aren't prodded and poked that much. The comparison to alien abduction scenarios was the point where I almost packed the book in, and if there hadn't been others reading it who said it got better towards the end I'd have given up. The great leap that claimants of alien abduction are actually recalling forgotten birth trauma, sorry that seemed like just too big a leap.
I did feel concerned that you continued to practice as a therapist during the worst times of your experience when you were sleep deprived etc. I don't imagine that mentally or emotionally you were in any position other than to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keeping diary arrangements would be part of that, but I couldn't help wonder who actually benefited most from those sessions and whether in retrospect you feel clients were not served as well as they should have been?
Similarly, you explained your son's drawings as some sort of shared early trauma memory or connection. Almost like he was drawing your fears and images. It seems to me most kids are much smarter and more aware of what's going on than we generally give them credit for. He could fairly reasonably expect to be traumatized by the state his father was in at the time and that would come out. It seemed almost selfish to assume he was expressing your trauma and that seemed like an excuse to avoid acknowledging he was having his own trauma. Acknowledging that would have been painful as he was witnessing someone he loved going through an awful time. Surely it needs no more explanation than that?
I thought the book brave and honest, the description eloquent in detail and some of the ideas expressed instinctively felt right. But those bits I refer to really jar. That may be my problem, you are not in any way responsible for anything I took from what you wrote, but the opportunity to follow these things up is rare and I'd value any comment you may care to make.
Robert answers:
Let me begin with your view that “we all interpret events according to our own established frame of reference,” and toss in a few questions to deepen the discussion. First of all, what happens when “our own established frame of reference” itself becomes an object of awareness? Second, what happens when it bends, buckles, snaps, or disintegrates? When we cannot repair or resurrect it, what happens? Do we grasp at another frame of reference, do we enter the truly transconceptual, do we regress, do we freak out? Even more to the point, what happens when the “I,” the headquarters, so to speak, animating that frame of reference starts to give up the ghost?
A frame of reference is a kind of sense-making structuring, but what ultimately holds or contains that structuring is not itself a structure. When we view things through that, what do we see? Things may still look the same, and sound the same, but they are not the same, for their essential thing-ness has been brought into intimate communion with us (perhaps to the point where we realize that there is no such thing as a thing). Then we see without eyes, hear without ears, know without thinking, fly without wings. As fleeting as this may be, even a taste of it helps keep our perspectives in perspective.
It’s interesting to notice how invested we are in a particular frame of reference (for each of us has many), and also interesting to notice how invested we are in not having a particular frame of reference.
I don’t think that all of our experience is necessarily filtered through our frames of reference. Some of it bypasses our cognitive filters, our conditioning, our habitual lenses. (Through which perspective do we view the experiencer of our experiences?) Much of my effort in writing DSW was to evoke a sense of reality in which frames of reference were but secondary phenomena, and something more real than answers was what was being sought. This, of course, was a wildly subjective undertaking, perhaps overemploying the poet in me (not to mention my aperspectival ambitions!), but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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What happened to me during my DSW crisis was not just “a divine experience,” nor just “a severe mental health crisis,” but both, and more than both. What level did the crisis occur at? I’d say just about all levels, but where are the levels when the ladder loses all its rungs? In the great chaos into which I was flung and in which I ricocheted so madly, any arising maps became utterly shredded before I could clearly see them. There was nothing to hold onto; every frame of reference was already shattered, already gone to nothing. The boundary between spirituality and psychosis is a fuzzy one, a hallucinatory edge upon which I lay pinned for quite some time. For me there was profound illumination, and there also was insanity; between the two what was left of me did its time, while terror ran rampant through my system. Was I able to interpret what was happening at the time? No. Any interpretation that arose immediately disintegrated. Did I attempt to interpret all this years later when I wrote DSW? Yes, but I also wanted to evoke and invite in the reader a sense of the uninterpretable, the irreducibly mysterious, the hyperbole-transcending, the naked Real.
At some point it becomes necessary to investigate the very process of interpretation. Bearing witness to that process doesn’t necessarily stop it, but it does illuminate it.
Trying to find meaning in my experience did not help me at all, and in fact only made things worse. I could see that meaning itself was a kind of intellectual superimposition on Being, and gradually came to realize that Life only made sense when I stopped trying to make it make sense. More often than not, familiarity fled me, leaving with nothing but edgeless Mystery. Nakedly facing this shook the “me” out of me. In writing about my DSW odyssey, I sought to make sense out of what happened, while simultaneously leaving the raw Mystery of it alive and thriving.
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You say that “awful things are easier to tolerate if we can persuade ourselves they had something to teach us.” First of all, my DSW experiences were not just “awful,” but also
”awe-full”. Secondly, they did have something to teach me; I didn’t have to persuade myself of this, because its impact on me was so obviously growthful, healing, and awakening. I wonder through what frame of reference you view that “harshly rational part” of yourself, and what you then see. Part of my passion is to make as wise use as possible out of all that happens to me, inwardly and outwardly, directly and indirectly, under all conditions and at all times. And what is shit, but compost in drag?
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Not all birth is traumatic, but birth trauma does exist. No, it’s not necessarily the cause of a screwed-up life later on down the road, but it can be one hell of a developmental factor. Like any other trauma, it can be, to varying degrees, submerged and kept from sight, but it nonetheless shows up through all kinds of symptoms. The unfortunate fact that it is overemphasized in certain therapies does not negate its existence.
If we suffered a particularly difficult birth, with our vital signs having accelerated for a significant amount of time into zones of extreme danger — so that our biological survival was clearly at stake — we obviously didn’t think rationally about our situation (our brain not being ready to do so), but rather automatically reacted by “doing” whatever most quickly and effectively reduced the danger, like going neurologically limp or “depressing” our vital signs. Later in life, when in the presence of sufficiently heavy danger (real or imagined), we not only get afraid, but may also revert, beyond any mental countereffort, to what originally had “worked” to save our life (during our birth) — withdrawing, shutting down, turning off, getting depressed (preferring the burdened beasts of depression to the monsters of the deep).
Our ability to contain and encapsulate trauma has enormous survival benefits; if we couldn’t thus contain and encapsulate it -- in somatic locales or mental hideouts -- we likely wouldn’t have been able to continue. I have seen this firsthand in many, many clients; for example, a woman who was as a girl raped for a decade by family members, learned to put on a happy face so as to stay in the family (and not upset anyone), and kept quiet about the whole fucking thing until she was in a safe enough environment to start her healing -- she’d kept her trauma under heavy wraps for almost 20 years before she could handle and live with its surfacing.
Birth trauma can also be carried around for a long time. Mine didn’t surface in its fullness until 47 years after my birth. I’m not sure where you got your information regarding birthing practices in the Western world around the time of my birth, but I think you may have overlooked the unhealthy elements of such practices. You say that “generally babies aren’t prodded and poked that much” -- perhaps true in the last few decades, but not true back in the 1940s, 1950s and much of the 1960s. (Drugged mothers flat on their backs, unrelentingly bright lights, babies being pulled out with forceps and being spanked to “help” get them breathing was the norm, not the exception!) Leboyer and Lamaze and other pioneers of sane birthing practices hadn’t make their impact then. Remember too that some trauma may occur shortly after actual birth; back in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, newborns were routinely separated from their mothers right after birth, and generally kept apart from their mothers. Being thus separated after a drug-induced birth is far from a humane practice. Fathers were not allowed in the delivery room. The whole thing was treated not as a natural process, but as an operation requiring medical intervention. This was before the rise of midwifery.
You also say, perhaps jokingly, that “the only birth trauma I remember was giving birth” -- but if you’re not joking, then what was traumatic about giving birth? I have seen mothers go through huge agonies of opening and release, but there was nothing traumatic about it; in fact, they were more often than not ecstatically present off and on through the process, again and again surrendering to the primal forces surging through them. Huge contractions, equally huge expansion. Screaming, yes, but not the screaming of trauma. I do think, though, that it can be traumatic giving birth if you are being treated insensitively, are being unnecessarily drugged, and are locked into an overly long and extra-painful labor (I have heard this from a number of women).
You also say that you are “in little doubt which party felt the pain.” Are you saying that your newborn didn’t feel pain? After all, newborns are remarkably sensitive. This is not to say that your newborn was necessarily traumatized, but that he or she definitely felt pain, regardless of endorphin levels. The antiquated notion that newborns don’t really feel all that much has legitimized various barbaric post-birth practices, like circumcising newborn boys without any anesthetic. What a welcome!
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And now on to alien abductions: Let’s start with the strong correlation between the reports of those claiming alien abduction and those who were under the influence of DMT (an endogenous entheogen of enormous reality-bending power). The similarities between the reported experiences of the two groups are astonishing and raise a bunch of difficult questions -- such as just what is our brain (our pineal body, to be precise) doing manufacturing such a mind-blowing substance as DMT? If we assume that so-called alien abductees are under the influence of endogenous DMT (the “hallucinations” of which are, for almost all, enormously convincing), then we might ask: What kind of conditions might trigger the release of DMT in much larger-than-normal doses (so large that DMT-inhibiting substances wouldn’t be able to deactivate DMT as fast as they usually do)? Well, events that really shake us up.
And I’d put traumatic birth high on that list. Such trauma might stay submerged for a long time, until something -- including enough time to wear down the “protective walls” -- triggers the surfacing of it. And why aliens? Why not the original hospital scenario? Because this is how an “abductee” interprets the felt presence of non-human entities that DMT intoxication reportedly induces. I don’t say that those who report alien abduction are for sure only reliving their birth trauma in a DMT universe, but I think that it’s a theory that makes a lot of sense. Here I’ll quote from DSW, and then add a bit more:
“One of the most dramatic offshoots of our culture’s many years of bad birthing practices can be arguably found in the apparently bizarre (and not uncommonly reported) phenomenon of alien (UFO) abduction. Typically, those who claim to be abductees describe the following sequence: (a) feeling strange bodily vibrations or paralysis, as a light of unusual brightness, seemingly otherworldly and often circularly shaped, approaches, into which one is helplessly drawn or sucked; (b) finding oneself in an enclosure that appears to contain technical equipment, surrounded by and at the complete mercy of aliens — usually humanoid, but also sometimes reptilian or insect-like — who generally relate to one with clinical detachment; and (c) being on something like an examining or treatment table, and subjected to various physical procedures, especially probings with sophisticated instruments, by the aliens.
Many take these scenes literally (and others view them as archetypal visions arising in the collective unconscious, or as rites of passage akin to those that initiates in ancient cultures endured), but to me they strongly suggest something much closer to home: a traumatic birth.
Consider the following elements: (a) overly bright light, often somewhat circular at first (the vaginal “gate”), toward which one is literally pulled or drawn (not only through the expulsive force of contractions, but perhaps also through artificial induction or the use of forceps); (b) arrival in an “alien” environment, the delivery room (one’s umbilical link to the earthly — one’s mother — having maybe been prematurely severed); (c) being surrounded and stood over by by “non-mother,” emotionally-removed, masked and capped beings (of whom mostly only the eyes and forehead are seen — hence the myth of prominently-eyed aliens); (d) being treated like a piece of meat; and (e) being subjected to very painful or distressingly intrusive procedures (poked, stretched, probed, suctioned, circumcised, and so on).
When the biological shock and imprint of a badly handled birth (or trauma of comparable impact from our early years) resurfaces later in life — as when we are under extreme stress or are unusually vulnerable — and is not recognized as such, we tend to present it to ourselves not just in the context of its physiological and emotional dimensions, but also through whatever ideation seems to make sense out of it. However bizarre or crazy that ideation may seem, its dramatics — along with our investment in those dramatics — must not be allowed to obscure or supplant its essential themes, if we are to truly understand it.”
Abductees commonly report being taken to a ship, an alien environment in which they are not only poked and prodded while being unable to move (and, after all, just how freedom of movement does a newborn have when being medically checked over?), but are also sometimes stuck in a kind of pod (check out the abductee film “Fire in the Sky”). Is this not reminiscent of the hospital nursery, with all of its wrapped-up newborns kept in their own little cells, far from their mothers?
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The fact that I continued to practice as a therapist when I was on such shaky ground was simply a sign of how messed-up I was. Though I did do some good work -- being unusually open and receptive -- those whom I worked with were not “served as well as they should have been.” Through continuing to do such work, I was simply clinging to a remnant of my old self.
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My son Dama knew of my crisis, but was not directly exposed to it when I was really at the edge. I did all of my heavy work away from him. Still, I know he was affected. He was very close to me. To me, his drawings at that time didn’t just emerge from his feelings regarding my situation, but primarily emerged from a deep communion between us. He did feel shaken by my no longer being the powerful father figure (not just for him, but for a worldwide community), but he also was experiencing me as softer, more caring, easier to be around. I asked him about all of this recently, and he (now 22) had the same take on it as me.
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B. Arthur/adastra asks:
1. A further question on polyamory. You came down very heavily on polyamory as a less mature form of spiritual relationship. What about the argument that a poly relationship allows one to explore different aspects of their being with different people? Or the argument that a poly relationship transcends the limitation of monogamy – that someone can be deeply committed to one person (my understanding is that most people in poly relationships have a primary partner who they may be deeply committed to in the way that you describe mature monogamy) within the context of a polyamory relationship?
2. How do you feel about tankrikas or tantric adepts, for whom sexuality and spirituality are one, but in a way which is not necessarily confined to one sexual relationship. (Admittedly, I know very little about this subject.)
3. What do you think of sexual healers, who may engage in a sexual relationship with someone in order to help them heal? They would also be deviating from monogamy, but not necessarily in a less evolved way.
[I'm asking these questions not because I necessarily disagree with that you said in response to my initial question but because I want to further explore this topic, about which I feel quite a bit of curiosity. What you said about mature monogamy sounds extremely appealing to me personally.]
4. Your essay “Sloth and Torpor” in Divine Dynamite is hilarious. May we quote it here?
Robert answers:
1. “What about the argument that a poly relationship allows one to explore different aspects of their being with different people?” Friendship, especially deep friendship, does the same thing. I don’t think that polyamory transcends the limitations of monogamy, but rather that it bypasses them.
I’m not sure from where you derive your understanding “that most people in poly relationships have a primary partner who they may be deeply committed to in the way that you describe mature monogamy, “ but the very commitment that is at the heart of mature monogamy does not include (and does not need to include) other sexual partners. How committed are to your beloved and to going to the very core of being with him or her, if you have to leave him or her to go have sex with somebody else? I think that many who permit their partners to have sex with others are doing so not out of some nobility of heart, but rather because it helps keep the relationship secure or stable. Many women who “allow” their husbands to have affairs do so for reasons of security. Legitimizing this with polyamorous hype doesn’t negate the fact that it is little more than neurotic tolerance, however bright its smile might be.
Here’s an essay of mine that fleshes this out some more:
TAKING CHARGE OF OUR CHARGE
Sexual excitation — the amplification of which will be referred to from now on as charge — is not just something that happens to us, but often is also something that we, however unknowingly, generate in ourselves.
We are in charge of our charge, however strongly we might be inclined to think of ourselves otherwise. It is natural to feel sexually attracted to certain people, but is not so natural to translate and amplify that attraction — or psychogravitational pull — into charge.
The transition from attraction to charge is an unknown territory to most of us, a largely dehumanized zone overpopulated by the conviction that the seductive promises lining its hormonal highways are there of their own accord, independent of us. This leaves us in the position of innocent bystander or victim, conveniently separate from — and far from responsible for — the erotic heating-up we are experiencing.
So what is charge? It is fundamentally just biochemical thrill on the make, mixing together amplified sensation and erotic anticipation. A cocktail of sweet dynamite. Regardless of its outfitting and presentation, charge ordinarily is simply the leading edge — or wedge — of unilluminated lust.
Most of all, however, it is something that we are doing to ourselves, something erotically engrossing and excitingly compelling, something we engage in not so as to awaken from our conditioning, but rather so as to exploit its possibilities. Making out in prison makes it seem less like prison — at least until charge wanes, and we once again busy ourselves rebuilding and restaging it, looking to its engorged meatiness and hotly enveloping dramatics for enough warmth to keep the chill realization of what we are really up to at bay.
The creation of charge, and especially the repetitive creation of charge, mostly is just compensation for the apparent loss of — or, more accurately, estrangement from — what we naturally are. In short, a pleasurably consoling refuge from what troubles us. Something that quickly makes us feel better, efficiently distracting us from what we’d rather not face.
The craving to create charge, to suffuse (and even overwhelm) ourselves with its sweetly surging sensations, is mostly just a confession of being marooned from our depths. A booby prize in the making. Beneath its pinkened periphery and hormonal heights, charge is actually quite desperate, overly concerned with both its satisfaction and its continuation.
But just what gets satisfied? Not us.
Sex cannot truly satisfy and nourish us if charge persists as its foundation and central characteristic. In fact, sex can then only degenerate, until the distance or numbness or turned-off-ness that was there all along is at last undeniably present, daylight naked, soaking up attention and energy (thereby leaving lovers wondering where their original passion went).
Real sex does not depend upon charge. Its passion arises not so much from stimulation, as from an intimacy rooted in deep mutual trust, an intimacy that relies on the most potent of all aphrodisiacs: wide-awake, unconditioned love, soul-anchored love, love in the raw, love that is but the feeling of edgeless, already-sentient openness
As it is usually employed, charge is little more than erotic self-advertising, serving to proclaim our sexual readiness, availability, and potency. When we are thus possessed by charge — overvaluing it to the point where we are unresistingly seeing through its eyes — just about everything around us with any sexual valence tends to be considered as a potential object for its appetite, a possible harbinger of erotic possibility, to be classified as fuckable, unfuckable, or worth checking out.
Nevertheless, charge can be a very positive thing, as when it arises in mature monogamy’s crucible of intimacy; then charge becomes but a juicy rush and richly thrilling swell that supports and celebrates our intimacy.
When we, however, create charge with anyone other than our partner, we usually then only create (or reinforce) distance between ourselves and our partner, all but ensuring that our intimacy with him or her won’t go any deeper. Which may be what “we” actually want.
Flirting — teasing spiked with sexual innuendo — with those other than our lover more often than not keeps us “safely” in the shallows, regardless of the depths suggested by our bedroom eyes. Animating and indulging our promiscuous capacity, however subtly or discretely, generally keeps our intimacies unnecessarily unstable, for we, through our irresponsibly eroticized wandering of attention, are then betraying — or are at least dangerously close to betraying — our relationship with our partner.
Thus do we “protect” ourselves from reaching the point with our partner where we’ve gone too far to have an exit from intimacy’s demands, instead distracting and immunizing ourselves with neurotic suggestiveness and its titillating payoffs. In so doing, we only are fucking ourselves.
The point, however, isn’t to repress charge, but rather to become as conscious as possible of our relationship to it, so that we might cease needing to advertise our sexual availability, and cease being slaves to the creation and imperatives of charge, and cease relying on the presence of charge to make us feel better.
When we genuinely move beyond teasing ourselves and others with the promises and possibilities of eroticism, we are in a position to embody a deeper pleasure, a pleasure that eventually transmutes into Ecstasy. Then we can feel the Presence of the Beloved, the One with Whom we are forever already lovers, letting that feeling permeate, light up, and magnify our bond with our partner.
When we let our charge be in charge, when we overassociate sexuality with sensation, God then is reduced to the Ultimate Orgasm.
When we hobble charge with guilt, God is reduced to the Ultimate Peeping Tom.
At the same time, however, squashing charge keeps us busy playing vigilant zookeeper or leak-inspector, trying to ensure that our erotic heatedness remains properly or nicely contained. Eviscerating charge simply desiccates us, creating in us an exaggerated (or even pathological) interest in religious, philosophical, or political watering holes.
http://infinitespiral.blogspot.com/2006/03/integral-naked-interviews-robert.html
The fantasies we erect and inhabit through the engineering of charge do not necessarily need a wrecking ball, nor quarantine, nor moral righteousness, nor more fire exits, but only sufficient compassion to touch the loneliness, fear, and pain that crouch in their shadows. When we undress charge and give it enough heart, it becomes but liberated energy, revealing what we’re all dying to see and feel.
Taking charge of our charge involves a no that makes possible a deeper yes. And in that yes exists a Joy beyond imagination, a Joy that is our birthright, pulsing in — and as — our very cells, welcoming all that we are.
2. Skeptical.
3. I think of them as sexual predators hiding out in healer’s robes, more often than wrapped up in a tantric headlock -- anything to legitimize their misguided lust and/or sloppy understanding of personal boundaries. However noble or “spiritual” their intentions may be, they are riding a very slippery slope, down which more than a few gurus have slid in recent years, with halos and pants down, their claims of having fucked their disciples for spiritual reasons losing credibility the further down they slide.
When integral healing occurs (as through skilled psychotherapy in fitting conjunction with bodywork and spiritually supportive practices), sexual healing is, in almost all cases, a byproduct. Psychoemotional health breeds sexual health. A woman who has been raped needs to be helped to reclaim her dignity and power, and to integrate what’s happened, rather than to be reentered by male sexuality that doesn’t belong to her current lover or partner. And if one doesn’t have a lover or partner? Then there’s even a greater chance of inappropriate bonding if one ends up in the hands of a “sexual healer.” To truly heal another’s sexual wounding does not require that one be sexual with that person, but that one helps that other to reclaim and reembody his or her natural wholeness and integrity of being.
4. Yes!
Sloth and Torpor
It’s really hot outside. Clear sky, no wind, neuroses out getting a tan. I’m staring out my window. Words come thick and slow, reluctantly surfacing, resisting my command to line up into some sort of topic. Sometimes having nothing in particular to say says all that is needed, whatever the fuck that means. Maybe I should just head for the beach, slalom through the browning flesh, and cool off, get up to my neck in the probably still cold waters. But that means driving down to the beach, 5 minutes or so away, but maybe 15 hot-oven minutes of trying to snare a parking spot. Funny how I have energy to complain, but not to get off my ass.
Even starting a new paragraph is labor. So why don’t I just shut up and quit? Writing usually comes easily to me. It’ll be cooler tonight — I can write then. But the words keep coming, however sluggishly. Buddhist texts list among the hindrances to waking up the following duo: sloth and torpor. I’m guilty of both. They give laziness a nice ring. Have you ever watched a sloth move? My whiskers grow faster. And torpor — just the sound of it makes me want to have a nap. Who cares if it’s only one in the afternoon, and I’ve only been up for two hours?
Sloth might be a bit better than torpor. Imagine conscious sloth — after all, moving very slowly can be very spiritual, can’t it? Think of Buddhist meditators doing mindful walking, as if auditioning for The Living Dead. But conscious torpor? A contradiction in terms. The sunburnt blubber littering the local beach is about as alert as the fried jellyfish along the shore’s edge. I’m slumping at my desk. Maybe I should do a bit of yoga, or even go to the gym. The thought makes me slump more. Sloth and torpor — what a great name for a law firm, or a geriatric rock band.
I’m not going to pull myself out of my sluggish mood just so this essay can take a turn for the better, like a tedious film that finally manages to cough up a car chase. Is there anything more exhausting than enthusiasm pushing its agenda? I can see myself later on looking over these lazily wandering words and trying to extract something that is essay-worth. But I say to that unslumping wordsmith: Go fuck yourself. I don’t even yell it. It’s more like telling him to get his own beer. I’m not walking that far. I don’t even have the juice to get the remote control in my hand. The couch will probably just stick to my skin. Maybe we need more support for complaining. I don’t mean conscious complaining — that’s too spiritual, too much work. Just everyday bitching, with all of existence being our uncomplaining ear.
Another paragraph, your unroyal laziness. I had a smoothie an hour and a half ago, and it’s still hanging out in my stomach. Maybe I should just lie down. Or go drink some water. I’m always telling my kids to drink more water, and I’m sitting here feeling dry-throated, and won’t get off my chair. Look at me sag as I write. The words come slower, reluctant little turds dreaming of making a big splash. I smile, but don’t have the juice to laugh. I’ve never felt bad about sloths. If torpor was an animal, it would be a sloth on valium, the far shore of mellow.
I still have no feeling of where this is all going, so I’ll let it go where it wants to, namely nowhere in particular. I could, of course, jump from this into some kind of reflection on ontological positioning, but I am thankfully not in the mood to do so. If you’ve stayed with me this far, you might as well stay for the ending. Have you ever been at a movie, found it boring or tedious, and stayed anyway, perhaps hoping that it would eventually get better, and then found yourself there at the movie’s end, really irritated at yourself, wondering why you stayed through the whole damned thing? Welcome to the end. Don’t sit around waiting for the credits. There aren’t any.
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A. Tiki/Liz asks:
Robert,
I've been reluctant to dampen the spirit of the Q&A session, but there were some bits of the book that really puzzled me. I don't know how much of this will easily frame as a question, so I'll try to express myself as well as I can and you can comment back as you see fit. Arthur tells me you don't offend easily...this isn't intended to be an attack on you or your book, but I am puzzled.
It seems to me we all interpret events according to our own established frame of reference, our apparatus for making meaning from what we see around us. I thought your descriptions of an altered reality were really vivid, to the point of being able to communicate the level of fear you felt at the time. I suppose where I struggle is in your analysis of this as some sort of divine experience rather than an acute mental health crisis. I couldn't help thinking it got that level of understanding from you because that's where your frame of reference was set before the experience, living in a spiritual community etc. I couldn't help but feel if you'd been at mythic level you'd have been pursued by demons, at blue you'd have thought God spoke to you, at orange you'd have thought you were God, and at a transpersonal level you construct it as a mystical experience. I understand in saying that I may be doing exactly what I thought you might be doing i.e. taking my own experience of how the world works and trying to make it stick over your experience. I suppose the harshly rational part of me wonders how much you had invested in making some kind of sense or meaning out of this, simply because it was so awful. Awful things are easier to tolerate if we can persuade ourselves they had something to teach us.
I have real trouble with the whole idea of carrying round remembered birth trauma, the only birth trauma I remember was giving birth and I am in little doubt which party felt the pain! Moreover the clinical environment you describe is actually fairly new in western medicine, and the metallic bright light atmosphere sounded like a theatre, implying caesarian delivery, hardly the norm. generally babies aren't prodded and poked that much. The comparison to alien abduction scenarios was the point where I almost packed the book in, and if there hadn't been others reading it who said it got better towards the end I'd have given up. The great leap that claimants of alien abduction are actually recalling forgotten birth trauma, sorry that seemed like just too big a leap.
I did feel concerned that you continued to practice as a therapist during the worst times of your experience when you were sleep deprived etc. I don't imagine that mentally or emotionally you were in any position other than to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keeping diary arrangements would be part of that, but I couldn't help wonder who actually benefited most from those sessions and whether in retrospect you feel clients were not served as well as they should have been?
Similarly, you explained your son's drawings as some sort of shared early trauma memory or connection. Almost like he was drawing your fears and images. It seems to me most kids are much smarter and more aware of what's going on than we generally give them credit for. He could fairly reasonably expect to be traumatized by the state his father was in at the time and that would come out. It seemed almost selfish to assume he was expressing your trauma and that seemed like an excuse to avoid acknowledging he was having his own trauma. Acknowledging that would have been painful as he was witnessing someone he loved going through an awful time. Surely it needs no more explanation than that?
I thought the book brave and honest, the description eloquent in detail and some of the ideas expressed instinctively felt right. But those bits I refer to really jar. That may be my problem, you are not in any way responsible for anything I took from what you wrote, but the opportunity to follow these things up is rare and I'd value any comment you may care to make.
Robert answers:
Let me begin with your view that “we all interpret events according to our own established frame of reference,” and toss in a few questions to deepen the discussion. First of all, what happens when “our own established frame of reference” itself becomes an object of awareness? Second, what happens when it bends, buckles, snaps, or disintegrates? When we cannot repair or resurrect it, what happens? Do we grasp at another frame of reference, do we enter the truly transconceptual, do we regress, do we freak out? Even more to the point, what happens when the “I,” the headquarters, so to speak, animating that frame of reference starts to give up the ghost?
A frame of reference is a kind of sense-making structuring, but what ultimately holds or contains that structuring is not itself a structure. When we view things through that, what do we see? Things may still look the same, and sound the same, but they are not the same, for their essential thing-ness has been brought into intimate communion with us (perhaps to the point where we realize that there is no such thing as a thing). Then we see without eyes, hear without ears, know without thinking, fly without wings. As fleeting as this may be, even a taste of it helps keep our perspectives in perspective.
It’s interesting to notice how invested we are in a particular frame of reference (for each of us has many), and also interesting to notice how invested we are in not having a particular frame of reference.
I don’t think that all of our experience is necessarily filtered through our frames of reference. Some of it bypasses our cognitive filters, our conditioning, our habitual lenses. (Through which perspective do we view the experiencer of our experiences?) Much of my effort in writing DSW was to evoke a sense of reality in which frames of reference were but secondary phenomena, and something more real than answers was what was being sought. This, of course, was a wildly subjective undertaking, perhaps overemploying the poet in me (not to mention my aperspectival ambitions!), but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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What happened to me during my DSW crisis was not just “a divine experience,” nor just “a severe mental health crisis,” but both, and more than both. What level did the crisis occur at? I’d say just about all levels, but where are the levels when the ladder loses all its rungs? In the great chaos into which I was flung and in which I ricocheted so madly, any arising maps became utterly shredded before I could clearly see them. There was nothing to hold onto; every frame of reference was already shattered, already gone to nothing. The boundary between spirituality and psychosis is a fuzzy one, a hallucinatory edge upon which I lay pinned for quite some time. For me there was profound illumination, and there also was insanity; between the two what was left of me did its time, while terror ran rampant through my system. Was I able to interpret what was happening at the time? No. Any interpretation that arose immediately disintegrated. Did I attempt to interpret all this years later when I wrote DSW? Yes, but I also wanted to evoke and invite in the reader a sense of the uninterpretable, the irreducibly mysterious, the hyperbole-transcending, the naked Real.
At some point it becomes necessary to investigate the very process of interpretation. Bearing witness to that process doesn’t necessarily stop it, but it does illuminate it.
Trying to find meaning in my experience did not help me at all, and in fact only made things worse. I could see that meaning itself was a kind of intellectual superimposition on Being, and gradually came to realize that Life only made sense when I stopped trying to make it make sense. More often than not, familiarity fled me, leaving with nothing but edgeless Mystery. Nakedly facing this shook the “me” out of me. In writing about my DSW odyssey, I sought to make sense out of what happened, while simultaneously leaving the raw Mystery of it alive and thriving.
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You say that “awful things are easier to tolerate if we can persuade ourselves they had something to teach us.” First of all, my DSW experiences were not just “awful,” but also
”awe-full”. Secondly, they did have something to teach me; I didn’t have to persuade myself of this, because its impact on me was so obviously growthful, healing, and awakening. I wonder through what frame of reference you view that “harshly rational part” of yourself, and what you then see. Part of my passion is to make as wise use as possible out of all that happens to me, inwardly and outwardly, directly and indirectly, under all conditions and at all times. And what is shit, but compost in drag?
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Not all birth is traumatic, but birth trauma does exist. No, it’s not necessarily the cause of a screwed-up life later on down the road, but it can be one hell of a developmental factor. Like any other trauma, it can be, to varying degrees, submerged and kept from sight, but it nonetheless shows up through all kinds of symptoms. The unfortunate fact that it is overemphasized in certain therapies does not negate its existence.
If we suffered a particularly difficult birth, with our vital signs having accelerated for a significant amount of time into zones of extreme danger — so that our biological survival was clearly at stake — we obviously didn’t think rationally about our situation (our brain not being ready to do so), but rather automatically reacted by “doing” whatever most quickly and effectively reduced the danger, like going neurologically limp or “depressing” our vital signs. Later in life, when in the presence of sufficiently heavy danger (real or imagined), we not only get afraid, but may also revert, beyond any mental countereffort, to what originally had “worked” to save our life (during our birth) — withdrawing, shutting down, turning off, getting depressed (preferring the burdened beasts of depression to the monsters of the deep).
Our ability to contain and encapsulate trauma has enormous survival benefits; if we couldn’t thus contain and encapsulate it -- in somatic locales or mental hideouts -- we likely wouldn’t have been able to continue. I have seen this firsthand in many, many clients; for example, a woman who was as a girl raped for a decade by family members, learned to put on a happy face so as to stay in the family (and not upset anyone), and kept quiet about the whole fucking thing until she was in a safe enough environment to start her healing -- she’d kept her trauma under heavy wraps for almost 20 years before she could handle and live with its surfacing.
Birth trauma can also be carried around for a long time. Mine didn’t surface in its fullness until 47 years after my birth. I’m not sure where you got your information regarding birthing practices in the Western world around the time of my birth, but I think you may have overlooked the unhealthy elements of such practices. You say that “generally babies aren’t prodded and poked that much” -- perhaps true in the last few decades, but not true back in the 1940s, 1950s and much of the 1960s. (Drugged mothers flat on their backs, unrelentingly bright lights, babies being pulled out with forceps and being spanked to “help” get them breathing was the norm, not the exception!) Leboyer and Lamaze and other pioneers of sane birthing practices hadn’t make their impact then. Remember too that some trauma may occur shortly after actual birth; back in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, newborns were routinely separated from their mothers right after birth, and generally kept apart from their mothers. Being thus separated after a drug-induced birth is far from a humane practice. Fathers were not allowed in the delivery room. The whole thing was treated not as a natural process, but as an operation requiring medical intervention. This was before the rise of midwifery.
You also say, perhaps jokingly, that “the only birth trauma I remember was giving birth” -- but if you’re not joking, then what was traumatic about giving birth? I have seen mothers go through huge agonies of opening and release, but there was nothing traumatic about it; in fact, they were more often than not ecstatically present off and on through the process, again and again surrendering to the primal forces surging through them. Huge contractions, equally huge expansion. Screaming, yes, but not the screaming of trauma. I do think, though, that it can be traumatic giving birth if you are being treated insensitively, are being unnecessarily drugged, and are locked into an overly long and extra-painful labor (I have heard this from a number of women).
You also say that you are “in little doubt which party felt the pain.” Are you saying that your newborn didn’t feel pain? After all, newborns are remarkably sensitive. This is not to say that your newborn was necessarily traumatized, but that he or she definitely felt pain, regardless of endorphin levels. The antiquated notion that newborns don’t really feel all that much has legitimized various barbaric post-birth practices, like circumcising newborn boys without any anesthetic. What a welcome!
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And now on to alien abductions: Let’s start with the strong correlation between the reports of those claiming alien abduction and those who were under the influence of DMT (an endogenous entheogen of enormous reality-bending power). The similarities between the reported experiences of the two groups are astonishing and raise a bunch of difficult questions -- such as just what is our brain (our pineal body, to be precise) doing manufacturing such a mind-blowing substance as DMT? If we assume that so-called alien abductees are under the influence of endogenous DMT (the “hallucinations” of which are, for almost all, enormously convincing), then we might ask: What kind of conditions might trigger the release of DMT in much larger-than-normal doses (so large that DMT-inhibiting substances wouldn’t be able to deactivate DMT as fast as they usually do)? Well, events that really shake us up.
And I’d put traumatic birth high on that list. Such trauma might stay submerged for a long time, until something -- including enough time to wear down the “protective walls” -- triggers the surfacing of it. And why aliens? Why not the original hospital scenario? Because this is how an “abductee” interprets the felt presence of non-human entities that DMT intoxication reportedly induces. I don’t say that those who report alien abduction are for sure only reliving their birth trauma in a DMT universe, but I think that it’s a theory that makes a lot of sense. Here I’ll quote from DSW, and then add a bit more:
“One of the most dramatic offshoots of our culture’s many years of bad birthing practices can be arguably found in the apparently bizarre (and not uncommonly reported) phenomenon of alien (UFO) abduction. Typically, those who claim to be abductees describe the following sequence: (a) feeling strange bodily vibrations or paralysis, as a light of unusual brightness, seemingly otherworldly and often circularly shaped, approaches, into which one is helplessly drawn or sucked; (b) finding oneself in an enclosure that appears to contain technical equipment, surrounded by and at the complete mercy of aliens — usually humanoid, but also sometimes reptilian or insect-like — who generally relate to one with clinical detachment; and (c) being on something like an examining or treatment table, and subjected to various physical procedures, especially probings with sophisticated instruments, by the aliens.
Many take these scenes literally (and others view them as archetypal visions arising in the collective unconscious, or as rites of passage akin to those that initiates in ancient cultures endured), but to me they strongly suggest something much closer to home: a traumatic birth.
Consider the following elements: (a) overly bright light, often somewhat circular at first (the vaginal “gate”), toward which one is literally pulled or drawn (not only through the expulsive force of contractions, but perhaps also through artificial induction or the use of forceps); (b) arrival in an “alien” environment, the delivery room (one’s umbilical link to the earthly — one’s mother — having maybe been prematurely severed); (c) being surrounded and stood over by by “non-mother,” emotionally-removed, masked and capped beings (of whom mostly only the eyes and forehead are seen — hence the myth of prominently-eyed aliens); (d) being treated like a piece of meat; and (e) being subjected to very painful or distressingly intrusive procedures (poked, stretched, probed, suctioned, circumcised, and so on).
When the biological shock and imprint of a badly handled birth (or trauma of comparable impact from our early years) resurfaces later in life — as when we are under extreme stress or are unusually vulnerable — and is not recognized as such, we tend to present it to ourselves not just in the context of its physiological and emotional dimensions, but also through whatever ideation seems to make sense out of it. However bizarre or crazy that ideation may seem, its dramatics — along with our investment in those dramatics — must not be allowed to obscure or supplant its essential themes, if we are to truly understand it.”
Abductees commonly report being taken to a ship, an alien environment in which they are not only poked and prodded while being unable to move (and, after all, just how freedom of movement does a newborn have when being medically checked over?), but are also sometimes stuck in a kind of pod (check out the abductee film “Fire in the Sky”). Is this not reminiscent of the hospital nursery, with all of its wrapped-up newborns kept in their own little cells, far from their mothers?
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The fact that I continued to practice as a therapist when I was on such shaky ground was simply a sign of how messed-up I was. Though I did do some good work -- being unusually open and receptive -- those whom I worked with were not “served as well as they should have been.” Through continuing to do such work, I was simply clinging to a remnant of my old self.
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My son Dama knew of my crisis, but was not directly exposed to it when I was really at the edge. I did all of my heavy work away from him. Still, I know he was affected. He was very close to me. To me, his drawings at that time didn’t just emerge from his feelings regarding my situation, but primarily emerged from a deep communion between us. He did feel shaken by my no longer being the powerful father figure (not just for him, but for a worldwide community), but he also was experiencing me as softer, more caring, easier to be around. I asked him about all of this recently, and he (now 22) had the same take on it as me.
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B. Arthur/adastra asks:
1. A further question on polyamory. You came down very heavily on polyamory as a less mature form of spiritual relationship. What about the argument that a poly relationship allows one to explore different aspects of their being with different people? Or the argument that a poly relationship transcends the limitation of monogamy – that someone can be deeply committed to one person (my understanding is that most people in poly relationships have a primary partner who they may be deeply committed to in the way that you describe mature monogamy) within the context of a polyamory relationship?
2. How do you feel about tankrikas or tantric adepts, for whom sexuality and spirituality are one, but in a way which is not necessarily confined to one sexual relationship. (Admittedly, I know very little about this subject.)
3. What do you think of sexual healers, who may engage in a sexual relationship with someone in order to help them heal? They would also be deviating from monogamy, but not necessarily in a less evolved way.
[I'm asking these questions not because I necessarily disagree with that you said in response to my initial question but because I want to further explore this topic, about which I feel quite a bit of curiosity. What you said about mature monogamy sounds extremely appealing to me personally.]
4. Your essay “Sloth and Torpor” in Divine Dynamite is hilarious. May we quote it here?
Robert answers:
1. “What about the argument that a poly relationship allows one to explore different aspects of their being with different people?” Friendship, especially deep friendship, does the same thing. I don’t think that polyamory transcends the limitations of monogamy, but rather that it bypasses them.
I’m not sure from where you derive your understanding “that most people in poly relationships have a primary partner who they may be deeply committed to in the way that you describe mature monogamy, “ but the very commitment that is at the heart of mature monogamy does not include (and does not need to include) other sexual partners. How committed are to your beloved and to going to the very core of being with him or her, if you have to leave him or her to go have sex with somebody else? I think that many who permit their partners to have sex with others are doing so not out of some nobility of heart, but rather because it helps keep the relationship secure or stable. Many women who “allow” their husbands to have affairs do so for reasons of security. Legitimizing this with polyamorous hype doesn’t negate the fact that it is little more than neurotic tolerance, however bright its smile might be.
Here’s an essay of mine that fleshes this out some more:
TAKING CHARGE OF OUR CHARGE
Sexual excitation — the amplification of which will be referred to from now on as charge — is not just something that happens to us, but often is also something that we, however unknowingly, generate in ourselves.
We are in charge of our charge, however strongly we might be inclined to think of ourselves otherwise. It is natural to feel sexually attracted to certain people, but is not so natural to translate and amplify that attraction — or psychogravitational pull — into charge.
The transition from attraction to charge is an unknown territory to most of us, a largely dehumanized zone overpopulated by the conviction that the seductive promises lining its hormonal highways are there of their own accord, independent of us. This leaves us in the position of innocent bystander or victim, conveniently separate from — and far from responsible for — the erotic heating-up we are experiencing.
So what is charge? It is fundamentally just biochemical thrill on the make, mixing together amplified sensation and erotic anticipation. A cocktail of sweet dynamite. Regardless of its outfitting and presentation, charge ordinarily is simply the leading edge — or wedge — of unilluminated lust.
Most of all, however, it is something that we are doing to ourselves, something erotically engrossing and excitingly compelling, something we engage in not so as to awaken from our conditioning, but rather so as to exploit its possibilities. Making out in prison makes it seem less like prison — at least until charge wanes, and we once again busy ourselves rebuilding and restaging it, looking to its engorged meatiness and hotly enveloping dramatics for enough warmth to keep the chill realization of what we are really up to at bay.
The creation of charge, and especially the repetitive creation of charge, mostly is just compensation for the apparent loss of — or, more accurately, estrangement from — what we naturally are. In short, a pleasurably consoling refuge from what troubles us. Something that quickly makes us feel better, efficiently distracting us from what we’d rather not face.
The craving to create charge, to suffuse (and even overwhelm) ourselves with its sweetly surging sensations, is mostly just a confession of being marooned from our depths. A booby prize in the making. Beneath its pinkened periphery and hormonal heights, charge is actually quite desperate, overly concerned with both its satisfaction and its continuation.
But just what gets satisfied? Not us.
Sex cannot truly satisfy and nourish us if charge persists as its foundation and central characteristic. In fact, sex can then only degenerate, until the distance or numbness or turned-off-ness that was there all along is at last undeniably present, daylight naked, soaking up attention and energy (thereby leaving lovers wondering where their original passion went).
Real sex does not depend upon charge. Its passion arises not so much from stimulation, as from an intimacy rooted in deep mutual trust, an intimacy that relies on the most potent of all aphrodisiacs: wide-awake, unconditioned love, soul-anchored love, love in the raw, love that is but the feeling of edgeless, already-sentient openness
As it is usually employed, charge is little more than erotic self-advertising, serving to proclaim our sexual readiness, availability, and potency. When we are thus possessed by charge — overvaluing it to the point where we are unresistingly seeing through its eyes — just about everything around us with any sexual valence tends to be considered as a potential object for its appetite, a possible harbinger of erotic possibility, to be classified as fuckable, unfuckable, or worth checking out.
Nevertheless, charge can be a very positive thing, as when it arises in mature monogamy’s crucible of intimacy; then charge becomes but a juicy rush and richly thrilling swell that supports and celebrates our intimacy.
When we, however, create charge with anyone other than our partner, we usually then only create (or reinforce) distance between ourselves and our partner, all but ensuring that our intimacy with him or her won’t go any deeper. Which may be what “we” actually want.
Flirting — teasing spiked with sexual innuendo — with those other than our lover more often than not keeps us “safely” in the shallows, regardless of the depths suggested by our bedroom eyes. Animating and indulging our promiscuous capacity, however subtly or discretely, generally keeps our intimacies unnecessarily unstable, for we, through our irresponsibly eroticized wandering of attention, are then betraying — or are at least dangerously close to betraying — our relationship with our partner.
Thus do we “protect” ourselves from reaching the point with our partner where we’ve gone too far to have an exit from intimacy’s demands, instead distracting and immunizing ourselves with neurotic suggestiveness and its titillating payoffs. In so doing, we only are fucking ourselves.
The point, however, isn’t to repress charge, but rather to become as conscious as possible of our relationship to it, so that we might cease needing to advertise our sexual availability, and cease being slaves to the creation and imperatives of charge, and cease relying on the presence of charge to make us feel better.
When we genuinely move beyond teasing ourselves and others with the promises and possibilities of eroticism, we are in a position to embody a deeper pleasure, a pleasure that eventually transmutes into Ecstasy. Then we can feel the Presence of the Beloved, the One with Whom we are forever already lovers, letting that feeling permeate, light up, and magnify our bond with our partner.
When we let our charge be in charge, when we overassociate sexuality with sensation, God then is reduced to the Ultimate Orgasm.
When we hobble charge with guilt, God is reduced to the Ultimate Peeping Tom.
At the same time, however, squashing charge keeps us busy playing vigilant zookeeper or leak-inspector, trying to ensure that our erotic heatedness remains properly or nicely contained. Eviscerating charge simply desiccates us, creating in us an exaggerated (or even pathological) interest in religious, philosophical, or political watering holes.
http://infinitespiral.blogspot.com/2006/03/integral-naked-interviews-robert.html
The fantasies we erect and inhabit through the engineering of charge do not necessarily need a wrecking ball, nor quarantine, nor moral righteousness, nor more fire exits, but only sufficient compassion to touch the loneliness, fear, and pain that crouch in their shadows. When we undress charge and give it enough heart, it becomes but liberated energy, revealing what we’re all dying to see and feel.
Taking charge of our charge involves a no that makes possible a deeper yes. And in that yes exists a Joy beyond imagination, a Joy that is our birthright, pulsing in — and as — our very cells, welcoming all that we are.
2. Skeptical.
3. I think of them as sexual predators hiding out in healer’s robes, more often than wrapped up in a tantric headlock -- anything to legitimize their misguided lust and/or sloppy understanding of personal boundaries. However noble or “spiritual” their intentions may be, they are riding a very slippery slope, down which more than a few gurus have slid in recent years, with halos and pants down, their claims of having fucked their disciples for spiritual reasons losing credibility the further down they slide.
When integral healing occurs (as through skilled psychotherapy in fitting conjunction with bodywork and spiritually supportive practices), sexual healing is, in almost all cases, a byproduct. Psychoemotional health breeds sexual health. A woman who has been raped needs to be helped to reclaim her dignity and power, and to integrate what’s happened, rather than to be reentered by male sexuality that doesn’t belong to her current lover or partner. And if one doesn’t have a lover or partner? Then there’s even a greater chance of inappropriate bonding if one ends up in the hands of a “sexual healer.” To truly heal another’s sexual wounding does not require that one be sexual with that person, but that one helps that other to reclaim and reembody his or her natural wholeness and integrity of being.
4. Yes!
Sloth and Torpor
It’s really hot outside. Clear sky, no wind, neuroses out getting a tan. I’m staring out my window. Words come thick and slow, reluctantly surfacing, resisting my command to line up into some sort of topic. Sometimes having nothing in particular to say says all that is needed, whatever the fuck that means. Maybe I should just head for the beach, slalom through the browning flesh, and cool off, get up to my neck in the probably still cold waters. But that means driving down to the beach, 5 minutes or so away, but maybe 15 hot-oven minutes of trying to snare a parking spot. Funny how I have energy to complain, but not to get off my ass.
Even starting a new paragraph is labor. So why don’t I just shut up and quit? Writing usually comes easily to me. It’ll be cooler tonight — I can write then. But the words keep coming, however sluggishly. Buddhist texts list among the hindrances to waking up the following duo: sloth and torpor. I’m guilty of both. They give laziness a nice ring. Have you ever watched a sloth move? My whiskers grow faster. And torpor — just the sound of it makes me want to have a nap. Who cares if it’s only one in the afternoon, and I’ve only been up for two hours?
Sloth might be a bit better than torpor. Imagine conscious sloth — after all, moving very slowly can be very spiritual, can’t it? Think of Buddhist meditators doing mindful walking, as if auditioning for The Living Dead. But conscious torpor? A contradiction in terms. The sunburnt blubber littering the local beach is about as alert as the fried jellyfish along the shore’s edge. I’m slumping at my desk. Maybe I should do a bit of yoga, or even go to the gym. The thought makes me slump more. Sloth and torpor — what a great name for a law firm, or a geriatric rock band.
I’m not going to pull myself out of my sluggish mood just so this essay can take a turn for the better, like a tedious film that finally manages to cough up a car chase. Is there anything more exhausting than enthusiasm pushing its agenda? I can see myself later on looking over these lazily wandering words and trying to extract something that is essay-worth. But I say to that unslumping wordsmith: Go fuck yourself. I don’t even yell it. It’s more like telling him to get his own beer. I’m not walking that far. I don’t even have the juice to get the remote control in my hand. The couch will probably just stick to my skin. Maybe we need more support for complaining. I don’t mean conscious complaining — that’s too spiritual, too much work. Just everyday bitching, with all of existence being our uncomplaining ear.
Another paragraph, your unroyal laziness. I had a smoothie an hour and a half ago, and it’s still hanging out in my stomach. Maybe I should just lie down. Or go drink some water. I’m always telling my kids to drink more water, and I’m sitting here feeling dry-throated, and won’t get off my chair. Look at me sag as I write. The words come slower, reluctant little turds dreaming of making a big splash. I smile, but don’t have the juice to laugh. I’ve never felt bad about sloths. If torpor was an animal, it would be a sloth on valium, the far shore of mellow.
I still have no feeling of where this is all going, so I’ll let it go where it wants to, namely nowhere in particular. I could, of course, jump from this into some kind of reflection on ontological positioning, but I am thankfully not in the mood to do so. If you’ve stayed with me this far, you might as well stay for the ending. Have you ever been at a movie, found it boring or tedious, and stayed anyway, perhaps hoping that it would eventually get better, and then found yourself there at the movie’s end, really irritated at yourself, wondering why you stayed through the whole damned thing? Welcome to the end. Don’t sit around waiting for the credits. There aren’t any.
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posted by adastra at 11:54 AM
