Is this group still active

[Don Salmon]

Hi folks - is this group still active?

[cocrea...@shaw.ca]

 

Hi Don;

 

Good to hear from you. I still get information from the Franklin Merrell-Wolff Fellowship, but I haven’t had anything from the discussion group in a long time. Would you like to start a discussion?

 

My wife, Ann, and I regularly read from “”Experience and Philosophy” and are currently reading from the Commentaries on the Aphorisms. In No.24 he refers to the law in psychology known as “enantiodromia”. Literally, the word means “running counter to”, referring to the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time. This characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally powerful counter position is built up, which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control. After watching the Republican Party Convention, this aphorism helped me to have hopes that ‘Trumpism’ will eventually be automatically replaced by its opposite.

 

Do you have any comments?

 

Robert Radford

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[Don Salmon]

HI Robert: 

Good to hear from you.  I already have a number of thoughts, but since I don't have that book, would it be too much work to type out a bit from the commentary?  Maybe just 4 or 5 sentences?

Just to let you know - I'm inclined (for now) to avoid direct political references (this group got off to a very rocky start in 2012 with a political discussion).  But I can see the principle of enantiodromia (a Jungian term, by the way) working in my life, in relationships, in many ways. 

I've recently been doing psych evaluations for children and teens, often with severe behavior problems.  I can see parents "stuck" in rigid ways of parenting which often have the opposite effect of the one intended - provoking more difficult behavior and creating rifts between the parent and child.

Looking at myself, I can see how getting "stuck" on a particular way of doing things, an unbalanced way of doing things, can lead to an equally powerful opposite reaction.

I would say, in my life, for most of my adult life (heck, back into my teens as well), I've always had a tendency to push myself.  And over the years, this has swung between months of pushing myself and periods of equal and opposite reaction, unwilling to do any work or only doing it with enormous resistance.

Over the years, it's been slowly more integrated. As I gain glimpses (glimpses, mind you!) of all-encompassing Consciousness, the tendency to go to one extreme has been modified tremendously but it's still there somewhat.

I don't know if this fits with what you were asking about, and if you really really want to, I'd be willing to dip my toes into the political arena- (my tendency to extremes manifests there too; i might start out with great equanimity and at some point swing to an extreme - and that seems to kill online conversations, so, perhaps better not to??:>))

But thanks much for joining in.

Very best,

Don

www.remember-to-breathe.org

[Chuck Post]

Hi you two!

I am off to a play rehearsal, but very quickly, yes, the FMW org. is very alive.  Next Board meeting is this October.  Also an active and growing website, including a recent audio visual product from John Flinn.

But if you mean the discussion group, it has certainly been quiet.

When I return I will look at your msgs, with alarcrity.   

Chuck Post

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fm-w/9D3DCFFA4CB64283A2156495D9A7B600%40RobertPC.

[cocrea...@shaw.ca]

Hi Don;

 

Some excerpts from Commentaries on the Aphorisms, “Experience and Philosophy”, State University of New York Press, Albany, © 1994 Doroethy Leonard and Robert Briggs

 

“24: All objects exist as tensions within Consciousness-without-an-object that tend ever to flow into their own complements or others.

• The principle involved here is illustrated by the law in psychology known as enantiodromia. This is the law that any psychical state tends to be transformed into its opposite.
• Thus, growth is balanced by decay, birth by death, light by darkness, evolution by the reverse process of involution, and so on.
• If the original construction is in terms of the generally conceded objective material, and grounded in the most careful observation, but is not taken in conjunction with the counter-phase, the resultant effect is a false conception and, if believed in, produces a state of real delusion.
• Thus, no particular merit attaches to that peculiarly valued phase of consciousness – the extroverted phase of the so-called practical and scientific man – as a starting point for the attainment of the Real.”

My current endeavours in relationships are to treat all living entities with appreciation and respect. I find that these endeavours bring me wonderful feelings of peace, happiness and fulfillment.

 

I suggest that we avoid discussions about politics, religion and sex; these restrictions were applicable in conversations at naval officers’ formal dinners.

[Chuck Post]

Bob and Don;

I'm glad to have that word to plunge into:  enantiodromia.   ...any psychical state tends to be transformed into its opposite.    

This is just tripping over words perhaps, but I have always thought, and observed in myself and others, the tendency to react to an overstatement of some kind, by positing the other side.  "Hillary is a crook", for example, elicits a reaction from the opposite.

Something that comes from others, as a reaction, to something said or done.    Thus Hegel, the dialectic of history, the eternal thesis/antithesis.

I appreciate your pointing this material out from E and P, Bob.  After certain activities here, I may get into it.

Chuck Post

[Don Salmon]

Hi, about to go off to a 3 day retreat - just wanted to say, so you know I haven't forgotten you, those 3 restrictions are excellent. 

Thanks for the passages - good for deep, equanimous reflection.

www.remember-to-breathe.org

[Don Salmon]

ah, just looked it over and a quick response:

It's highly symbolic, to me, that the nervous system is arranged in a binary way - sympathetic and parasympathetic, the "fight" or "flight polarity of the brain stem, attach and avoidance of the limbic (emotional) brain, right and left (intuitive and analytic) hemispheres of the brain, 

but the middle region of the prefrontal cortex, along with a part of the parietal lobes, is active in nondual awareness (a laboratory at NYU is actually studying this with people who are able to access nondual awareness at will) is singular, and has a unique ability to integrate the polar dualities of the rest of the nervous system.

To me, this is a physical realm manifestation of an inner phenomenon - when one is perfectly calm and equal, it is possible to rise above the "karma' of the dwandwas, the dualities. 

Beyond liking and disliking, pain and pleasure, heat and cold (verse 15, chapter 2 of the Gita).

www.remember-to-breathe.org

[Don Salmon]

ok a quick one, on a more personal note.

Jan (my wife) and I have different "rhythms" for driving. I tend toward fast driving, she prefers slow (longer distance from cars ahead, etc).

And we "enantiodroma'd" around this difference the first few years we drove together.

Eventually we started seeing finer distinctions, samata (equanimity) set in, and there's a wonderful dance of a range of speeds, tending to each other's sensitivities. 

I don't know if this makes any sense in a dry email format, but it's been a wonderful learning experience. We evolved the same dance around finances and housework.

It's interesting, when people have dramatic differences in opinion, it seems to me the single thing that most defines a person's level of maturity is the ability to go beyond the kind of black and white thinking which is really the root of that kind of extreme swings of consciousness, and be vulnerable enough to let go of the extreme fear that is really at the root of the need for black and white thinking. 

From what I remember from child development, I think it's somewhere between ages 4 and 7 that children are expected to develop the ability to see beyond black and white extremes (concrete operations).  So it's a really good clue, when we're stuck in this kind of oscillation that Jung talks about, to check to see what part of our consciousness is stuck in this childhood mode.

www.remember-to-breathe.org

[Chuck Post]

Wow, that's a practicum if I ever read one !   How Mars and Venus can orbit one another without mutal destruction.  I love it when abstractions can come down to .....uh.. earth?

chuck

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fm-w/CAOzTBUMcGvVrNxDQvBdAY%2Bd7FCF8g4Hd2O1rE7pB63A-DgmaFg%40mail.gmail.com.

[cocrea...@shaw.ca]

 

Thank you for the reference to The Bhagavad-Gita 2:15.  FMW’s Aphorism 29 is similar to the translation and commentary of this verse by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: “Once a man has become established in the understanding of the permanent Reality of life, his mind rises above the influence of pleasure and pain.” ....  “At the present time it is generally found that people try to make a mood of equanimity in pleasure and pain, in loss and gain – they try to create a mood of equable behaviour and unaffectedness while engaged in the diverse activities of the world. ...... Many seekers become trapped in such an attitude.” (“Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita; A New Translation and Commentary Chapters 1 – 6” Penguin Books 1972)

 

Robert Radford