Colette Obrien

Rejection is defined as; to throw away, to refuse to take. To reject something is to attempt to exclude it from the whole.

A popular idea in modern culture is that “we’re all one”.  Assuming this to be the case, it follows that to “exclude something from the whole isn’t possible.  We can wish it wasn’t so; we can try to throw it away, but where is away? Everything that is, is.  If it isn’t possible what actually occurs when we reject?

Rejecting physical objects isn’t too problematic. I throw away garbage from my house to the recycle bin, and it’s taken away to the dump.( A great word for the place where rejected objects end up.) The objects are still part of the whole but are no longer in my house.

When I reject a person the trouble with rejection begins to show itself.  If I’m someone who’s aware of responsibility to other’s feelings, I will experience guilt with the rejection of another and that creates pressure on my mind.

The trouble is even more obvious with mental objects; ideas, beliefs, concepts.  When I reject an idea where does it go? The great dump in the sky? No, it goes to the personal unconscious. I may no longer be conscious of the idea I rejected, but because it’s still part of my psyche, it still has influence.  As with guilt, pressure occurs. We might even say that the consequence of rejection is guilt.

Every person, place, thing, idea, concept the mind has rejected causes a judgement to form which is the pressure to constantly reject that object; to keep it in its place in the unconscious.  When an object has been pushed out of the house– out of our conscious awareness–it is still part of the whole, since everything that is, is.  But like the physical dump, we can smell it. Everything rotting in that dump is perceived by the environment, and like the state of the earth today, on the verge of disastor, our individual psyche’s become unhealthy dump sights.

Acceptance has the opposite effect; the conscious mind has no pressure from an overfilled unconscious–the dump. It is open and free to observe without judgement as judgment derives from the rejected objects.

Acceptance is not a passive state but one of inclusion that, when necessary, discerns if an object is garbage and needs to go to the dump or if it can be tolerated and remain in the house. More later on acceptance.

Following up on yesterday’s post about intimacy is the old; if a tree falls in the forest conundrum.   If no one hears it, did it fall? If no one sees me do I exist?

At around 2 years old children must work through the developmental issue–the conundrum– of whether they’re special or not; whether they exist as a unique entity.  Every other sentence, is “look at me . . .” As parents, it’s exhausting however, if the child isn’t adequately reflected he turns inward to see himself- and like Narcissus in Greek Mythology, he’s forced to hold up his own mirror to realize his existence. He now lives in his own eyes but lacks an ability to see others.

If the child is seen by his parents the conundrum is resolved in an ability to know he’s the only one, but he’s not the only one who’s the only one.

Held in solitary confinement or being stranded alone on a desert island, will drive anyone mad. The ego cannot hold  it’s grip on reality without support from the environment. Like the child unreflected, the solitary human will turn to the unconscious for validation which is the definition of madness; the boundary between the ego consciousness and the vastness of the collective unconscious is broken and the ego is drowned in archetypal images.

Psychological existence is dependent on visibility. If, like the tree that falls in the forest, he falls and no one hears him, he doesn’t exist–to himself.  And since no one else is there to see him fall, to anyone else either.

Whether physical existence is dependent on visibility is a question for tomorrow.

http://www.inpurplish.com/?p=1610

 <a href=”http://www.blogsearchengine.com”>Blog Search Engine</a>

The cultivation of peace is at the center of psychological and spiritual practices that strive for growth.  Defined by Webster as; serenity; calm; quiet; tranquility; harmony, we tend to assume that means a cessation of thought.

But if you’ve ever tried to still your mind you will have discovered you could not.  This failure causes most of us to believe something is  wrong with us. Whether it was in the middle of the night when you couldn’t sleep or in a meditation or yoga class or at  school or work when you were “supposed” to be quiet, you will have discovered the mind is NEVER still. It’s not just you; you’re not broken, but life can best be described as a state of perpetual motion. Physics has proven that all matter is in motion, and though we’re unable to see a rock moving, we now know that it is.

So if peace isn’t an absence of thought, what is it? The answer to discovering a peaceful state is in the last word of the dictionary definition; harmony which is an absence of conflict. Since I cannot stop my mind from thinking, and would not wish to for it would mean I was no longer alive, my thinking must become harmonious.

A mindful practice is one in which one watches their thoughts. Have you ever just watched and not been drawn in? If drawn in you will discover tension as at the heart of most of our thinking whether it’s problem solving, worrying, regretting, etc. In other words; most thinking is conflictual by nature. Does that mean harmonious thinking is not possible?

Not at all, just unusual. When we’re able to watch our thoughts without being drawn in to the conflict, harmony is the result.  Accept everything, reject nothing, and the mind is at peace.

 Oddly out of the ordinary is whimsy’s definition.  Just the feel of the word on my lips makes me smile, a verbal form of Prozac for the spirit.  Like the archetypal trickster in Jung’s psychology and the Tarot deck, whimsy tricks us into a shift of perspective.  To see the ordinary a little out of kilter allows us to play with the object outside of the box of our usual view/belief about it.  Whimsy stands things on their head, or tail, or puts ballet tutus on those we’re intimidated by. Harry Potter learned to handle his fear of dementors by making fun of them.

Playful spirits are a form of whimsy; making the imagination and all of the “unseen” world into a place we can venture into without so much fear.  That’s not to say we can rid ourselves of nightmares but we can balance the tendency of the mind to fear the dark by seeing light within the darkness.

Most of us in the western world today have important concerns but they’re not life threatening; meaningful work, the mortgage, money for our children’s college, our daughter’s weird boyfriend, etc.   We don’t live in Sub-Saharan Africa or any number of other places where whimsy would be inappropriate.  We normal neurotics, as Woody Allen spoofs regularly, are candidates for lots more whimsy.  Most of our fears aren’t helped along by worrying, but will benefit greatly by lightening.

On the table in the dentist’s office waiting room I visited too regularly as a child, was, “Laughter the Best Medicine.”  It really did help make those fearsome visits a little more tolerable. Proof of that is that I remember the jokes, not the drill.

Whimsy is also considered childish. And what is meant by childish? Playful, imaginative, fun-loving, fearless, courageous, adventurous, curious, uninhibited . . .

If by being whimsical adults we tap into that list, I say “Go For It.”

Oblivion derives from the latin, to forget, and is defined by Webster as the condition or fact of being forgotten.   To obliterate is to erase, leave no trace, destroy. Today it is often used to describe a place or a state of being. 

The idea that there is a place called oblivion is so radical to any thinking being it’s shocking to discover how prevalent it is in common conversation.  I would like to see this place. Is it like the image above? Has anyone ever been there?  Like heaven and hell the assumption is that these are actual physical places. Oblivion then would be a place of forgetfullness where memory is erased, but is memory any more real than a place called oblivion? Memory is an idea; an experience of the mind describing something or someone that is or was at one time Real. But memory itself is an abstraction not unlike the abstraction of nothingness, of not-being.

Current physics refuses the concept that something can be and then not be.  What is-is. What isn’t-isn’t.  Though it changes shape, all matter always was and will always be.  Life on planet earth was at one time star-stuff.  The original matter that was the star was something else before. Does that mean that the star is now in oblivion? If everything that ever was still exists in some form what difference does it make if it is remembered by the human mind?

The important thing is that it still exists;  the atom that became a star that became my cat, that will become part of a tree.  All one flow of energy in a constant stream of creative bliss; the music of the spheres.  And my little human life? What will it become and where will what I call ‘me’ go?  Certainly not to oblivion, and probably not to heaven or hell either.

A question for next time; does thought have matter?

A dream, like a dragonfly, alluringly invites us to follow. This morning early, not yet light, I woke in a state of awe; the dream, like a brilliant violet dragonfly flitted across my mind’s eye. Seductively, it came close and darted away, again and again. How I longed to name it, define it, tell it’s story, believing if I could it would be mine. But what would that accomplish, I wondered? Holding it in my hand, would it be more meaningful? Why wasn’t it enough to experience it’s color and movement, its scent of mystery, like something glimpsed through mist that comes in and out of focus?

If I did manage to catch hold of it, I would surely admire it for awhile, and eventually, believing I’d come to an understanding of its nature, I would put it down and look for something else to capture my imagination. Had I caught the dragonfly or had it caught me?

Like a dream analyzed, knowledge sought and gained leaves a brief impression on the mind, and then the fickle creature moves on.  The mind holds to the belief that the current love interest will be the final one; the one that ends the seeking. However, the mating of concept with reality is an unquenchable thirst, a hunger never sated. It is the nature of mind to seek knowledge and of knowledge to seduce with creative fluorishes of color and movement and of possibilities only dreamed of.  Like dreams in sleep that elude capture or if caught, aren’t what we’d wished for. 

Mind’s nature is to posset questions and seek their answers certain there will come one special one; one unlike all the others that will give us peace, believing if it isn’t found in life surely when the answer to that biggest question is before us, and we know what happens after death, surely then?

Wind –whistle. . .  wet–whine . . .  weather–wonder . . .   water–whimsy . . . withywindle–Bombadil.

A waterfall proceeds from a flood of wind whistle wet whine weather wonder water whimsy withywindle Bombadil. An alternative to media news– how many inches will fall and what catastrophe will result from said inches– is achieved.

In a whimsy of water wonder, the mountain is streaming, dreaming of fishes, dreaming of life underground underfoot underhill, wetting its whistle in long draughts of crystaline purity.  Falling from above to below, from the sky to the ground, from the heights to the depths it fills every tiny crack, fissure, hole, void; healing all divisions, it brings together what, through draught, was torn asunder. 

Whistle a merry tune as the wind whines and wends its worried way through forest growth to clean and clear the old and dead, falling as the water to meet and make a mush to feed worms and weavils, mushrooms and columbine.  If the house I built, or the den made by a coyote, or the ant’s carefully constructed hill slips and slides moved by water’s fall, so???