POST 1...Welcome to Two Minds Meet...Lets Roll!

Welcome to Two Minds Meet. I am Richard Dance, The Crawdaddy, and look forward to getting to know more about you...if you leave comments! I have four other blogs which are essentially the three books I wrote between 1998 and 2004 along with my graduate school papers:


The Education of Adam Speaker: A Philosophical Adventure
http://theeducationofadamspeaker.blogspot.com/

The Hero's Journey In Film: A Mythic Reading of Selected Hollywood Feature Films
http://herojourneyfilm.blogspot.com/


Mindful Salon Essays: A Collection of Papers on East-West Philosophy, Wisdom Traditions, and Depth Psychology
http://mindfulessays.blogspot.com/


Richard Dance Academic Papers: Six thesis papers I wrote in graduate school on comparative Perennial Philosophy of the classical East & West.  This was a ton of research and while not for everyone, I wanted to get this material up on a blog cloud before laziness or death sets in.  These papers became the basis for ten years of counseling, teaching, writing and other self-knowledge work I did in which about 1500 people participated. http://rdacademic.blogspot.com/

While the above blogs represent the more formal educational tools I used back when I was teaching full time, Two Minds Meet gets more into my personal experiences and how they have helped me find my own ways to Re-Imagine the World. The posts are based on my personal education, street knowledge, and real experiences in:


Classical East-West Philosophy (The Perennial Philosophy of The Old Silk Road), that I have taught now for many years and try to live by.

Roots Music, in particular Southern Soul, Funk, Blues, and Groove Rock of the late 60's and early 70's, that I played worldwide for many years (guitarist and vocalist). I will be talking about things like rhythm, meter, tone, improvisational styles, seminal bands and musicians, etc.

Self-Discovery based on my own dabblings in Depth Psychology, Mythology, Meditation, Hypnosis, Entheogens, Sweat Lodges, Risk-Taking, on-and-on.

Urban Pioneering, that is, re-developing old residential and commercial buildings in city centers to spark new culture and creativity in fringe neighborhoods. My setting for this work has mostly been in Phoenix, AZ.

BEFORE

AFTER

My various pursuits have spanned forty years and twenty countries on six continents. I have had both enlightening and dangerous encounters with a very large population of savory and unsavory characters, everything from Alabama shrimpers and New Orleans funk musicians to mega-wealthy Arabs and Sedona tantra wizards.  As a result I have developed some unusual worldviews that will hopefully be useful to you as you pursue your own noble quests both in the world at large and the crooked labyrinths of your own deep mind.

What I have to say will elicit both supportive and critical commentary. That's OK, provocative is good. I only ask that when you respond, please speak in the first person, from your own experiences and thoughtful reflections. Please do not rely soley on conventional or textbook points of view, though I certainly don't mind if you quote a source to support your opinion. I will be doing the same. But please be original. Many thanks in advance!


Feel free to ask questions. For many years I have been a counselor and consultant to clients ranging from African freedom fighters and Buddhist monks to egomaniacal rock stars and global transformation leaders, on a no less bizarre variety of topics. That said, I am still just a guy from the Gulf Coast of Florida with a relatively normal upbringing in a middle class family.


Let's Roll!

POST 2...Why Two Minds Meet?

Why do I call it Two Minds Meet? There are a few reasons:




1) Every time we dialogue here, two minds are meeting. The root of dialogue, dia + logos, means "two speaking." It was Socrates' favorite method, no? In early Western civilization, the Greeks also used Logos with a capital L to mean the Order or "Mind" that holds the universe together.

In the East, the philosopher-prince Gotama Siddartha, aka The Buddha, preferred dialogue over lecturing to convey his deep ideas. So when he proclaims all things are empty, impermanent, and without any substance, he's not laying down absolute doctrine. He is merely opening up the beginning of what will usually be a fascinating conversation with whoever happens to be hanging around the banyan tree with him that day.

At Two Minds Meet, you never know where the conversation might go. It's like jazz and blues: Each post will have a hook (dominant theme), as well as form and meter (structure, groove, and tempo). But it can also get highly improvisational. The main thing is to keep it swinging, and to really listen to the other players before you respond. That makes for good music!

So, Two Minds Meet gives us a framework, whether we are discussing the Fragments of Heraclitus, fine funky music, how to properly gut an old commercial building, or the intricate meditations of Shingon Buddhism.


Why Else Two Minds Meet?


2) In the fields of psychoanalysis and depth psychology, there are basically two levels of mind: The conscious mind comprised of the ego and persona that rules the waking world. It dictates all the preferred or acceptable behaviors, needs and desires of individuals in this society or that.


Underneath that lives the unconscious mind with its shadow and anima/animus figures, that rules the dream world. It is where secretive or publicly disallowed ideas and desires swim around; the things we think, say, and do only in private. But it is also the creative zone where all of our artistic and inventive potential is buried, yet percolating. It is loaded with gold.  We also have from the field of psychology other notions of Two Minds: active and receptive mindstates, masculine and feminine, left brain/right brain, and so on.

At Two Minds Meet I am particularly interested in exploring not only these various pairs but their interaction...And there’s a third reason why I chose Two Minds Meet:


3) In the Perennial Philosophy of the Old Silk Road, there is the common idea that in addition to one’s apparent Individual Mind with its conscious and unconscious contents, there exists a boundless, mysterious level of mind or consciousness with which one either relates or identifies. Religious metaphors for this mystery are God and Nirvana.  Psychological terms include the transpersonal psyche, the non-ordinary state, and super-consciousness.  For simplification, we could call it the Unborn Mind. At Two Minds Meet, I am interested in exploring the place where Individual Mind and Unborn Mind meet.

Regardless of which two minds we might be discussing, the various scenarios in which they happen to meet is no clean line or straight edge, but instead a continually shifting boundary, a fuzzy interface. It is a permeable membrane where energy, ideas, and information pass back and forth. Imagine a funky jazz-rock jam, a swirling, swinging, meandering process of listening and responding.  Or imagine a shoreline where the crested waves of the deep ocean have broken and are now delivering their frothy sea foam up onto the firm smooth sand.

This is where Two Minds Meet. Can’t wait to see what topic comes up first...I'll get back to you in the next post...

POST 3...Soul Shaker: Gateways to Self Discovery

I've been a teacher and academic advisor at the graduate and undergraduate level for more than a few years.  I have also done a lot of one-on-one client counseling.  My areas of interest include classical east-west philosophy, mythology, comparative spritual traditions, and depth psychology.  I always try to relate everything I teach to the process of self-discovery and personal growth.

One of the purposes of this blog, Two Minds Meet, is to discuss ideas I have studied and taught for many years, and that I have applied in my own life.  One model I developed that has worked well is called Soul Shaker: Gateways to Self-Discovery.  As legendary bluesman Albert King would say, "It'll blow some good people's minds" (in a good way). 

Soul Shaker doesn't presume to teach you how to become "enlightened".  It does organize and describe some powerful messages and pathways that certain great world teachers of the Classical period have described.  Its function is to help you figure how you are going to enact your own process of discovery, hence, "Gateways" in the title.

The great world teachers I refer to arose on the world stage from Europe to China and many points in between, all within a few hundred years of each other, centered around 500 BCE.  This part of history is called the Axial Period, a fascinating time when quantum leaps took place in the evolution of human consciousness.  Examples of great world teachers include Plato, The Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, and Plato.  A few were so influential that religions formed around them.  Others remained obscure but were no less potent sources of power and insight.

I studied their ideas in depth when I was in graduate school.  This body of knowledge is sometimes called perennial philosophy.  I found surprisingly common themes on human self-awareness in their core messages. I was personally transformed by their ideas, but not in any religious way.  My mind truly transformed however, into a broader, calmer state of awareness.  Over time I developed a more sophisticated, all-embracing worldview.  It has helped me to live a more effortless daily life, flowing through chaos.

I decided to provide an overview of Soul Shaker in this blog because the rate at which the world is regressing into ignorance, fear, and divisiveness has really intensified in the last few years.  The world only gets better when individuals become wiser.  

The good news is, it is all completely solvable if we all chip in, by each working on ourselves.  For some reason, I have a real knack for distilling down the deep ideas of the Axial Period for people, so they can enact them in their lives.

Some of what the old philosophers had to say may offend your sensibilities if you follow a specific religion.  That's why I call it Soul Shaker --It's supposed to get you out of your comfortable box, to start living out of your own center of awareness...instead of according to any one doctrine.

That's the root of the world's problems today, clinging to this doctrine or that.  What we need is emphasis on similarities.  This in turn allows a richer celebration of differences.  If perennial philosophical insight ever reaches critical mass, "differences" become immaterial because they will have now been transcended for the most part.  I am a pragmatic and realize that's a lofty statement. Let's play with the idea more as we move through the blog posts.

Many find that what I teach has brought a new clarity to their faith if they have one.  Others outgrow their particular belief system and let it go.  I can't tell you what you will specifically get out of Soul Shaker.  We are all wired differently with different capacities, proceeding in different ways.

To be continued in the next post...

POST 4...Soul Shaker continued: The Four Gateways

In Post 3 I related how my own educational process of self-exploration has ultimately now resulted in the creation of Soul Shaker, my self-discovery model.  Here it is outlined for you:

The effectiveness of self-discovery methods will vary from person to person.  Through assisting many students and clients over several years, I discovered that most people need exposure to a combination of self-discovery pathways to determine what might work for them. I found that I could generally categorize them into four areas that I call Reconcile, Read, Risk, and Recreate.  Together these four Gateways of Soul Shaker serve as a powerful guide to your own journey of self-discovery.

Reconcile - Some people are more introverted and attain insights through the inward-turned process of meditation. "Reconcile" means learning how to sit and observe your own duality--physical, emotional, and mental--even spiritual--from a calm center of detached observation.  This proves to be an empowering process, that is, eventually creating the serene, mindful state of non-attachment with the power of your own mind. 

Non-attachment is a slippery concept, often misunderstood as "uncaring" or "indifference".  It is not that at all.  Furthermore, learning to meditate can get overly complicated when actually it's as easy as learning to ride a bike.  In the Reconcile segment of my model, you learn several guided meditations based on my training with different Buddhist monks and other teachers.  These are techniques I have taught for many years to many folks with a variety of backgrounds.  I still do meditation training, http://www.mindfulmedicine.com/

Read - Some people are the "studious" type, preferring to read and discuss the wisdom of the perennial philosophers and other important contemporary teachers as a means of self-discovery.  They gain inspiration by exploring the Upanishads of East India, the Fragments of Heraclitus in ancient Greece, or the sparkling poetic prose of Chuang Tzu of Taoist China. I dug deep into this Axial Period wisdom in graduate school.  The book I wrote, The Education of Adam Speaker, serves as an effective Gateway into the insights of the great world teachers. (visit my blog http://theeducationofadamspeaker.blogspot.com/ ) Read is the next logical step after having developed new dimensions of calm and openness through Reconcile. Your mind is more flexible and permeable, better able to intuit mystical ideas. 

Risk - Once you have completed Reconcile and Read, you will find yourself eager to start putting what you have learned into action.  Some folks are just naturally inclined to use risk-taking adventures to achieve deep personal insight--everything from business ventures and physical risk-taking to intimate love relationships and vision quests.  My own life adventures into such diverse areas as international business, musical performing/writing/recording, the ruthless game of real estate development, and teaching tantric sexual yoga, have given me some street cred in the risk-taking department.

I have found that the archetypes of the hero's journey and quest mythology are excellent ways to frame the action-oriented, risk-taking process.  I also discovered that well-written, well-acted movies (yes movies!) are a great way to learn the stages of the heroic quest.  Another of my blogs, The Hero's Journey in Film (http://herojourneyfilm.blogspot.com/ ), teaches in great detail the stages of the heroic quest by interpreting a dozen Hollywood feature films.  As you learn the stages and become familar with them in a variety of contexts, you start to recognize them when they appear in real-life circumstances--and believe me, they will appear! 

Mastering the stages of any hero's journey will help you more adeptly navigate any life quest you find yourself on, and will also help you to say "yes!" to risks and challenges more often.  The Risk Gateway almost never fails to break students through to new levels of realization in the quest for self-knowledge.  When I was teaching regularly a few years ago, my Quest Mythology in Film classes and the associated Risk assignments were always the most popular.

Recreate - Once you have expanded your awareness and experiences through Reconcile, Read, and Risk, your are now ready to do those things you always wanted to do but were too much under the control of societal or familial dictates to risk doing.  I'm talking about heading down the road of creative exploration and achievement in Recreate. 

This Gateway obviously works well for the naturally creative types who make their grand discoveries through artistic work and expression.  But we all have a right brain hemisphere the same size as the left brain.  This is a clear signal from nature that we should be moving through the world via the right hemisphere, the intuitive, inventive aspect of consciousness, at least half the time.  (Actually, we should always be using both halves simultaneously).  The problem is, we are continually bombarded with left-brain challenges in the everyday world of survival.  As a result our right brain suffers, our creative zest for life withers.  We become imbalanced.

Creative expression unlocks the vast reaches of unconscious, that Realm of The Archetypes with which Plato was enthralled, and which the Swiss psychoanalyst and dream studier Carl Jung elaborated on in great variety and detail two thousand years later.  Artistic work introduces you to aspects of your deeper mind that you would otherwise have never met.

My years in musical performing and composition; my experience in re-designing and re-developing vintage buildings; and creating self-discovery programs like Soul Shaker, have collectively given me valuable tools with which to help others who are ready for the way of the creative inventor, the expressive artist.

These are the four Gateways of Soul Shaker, a comprehensive self-discovery model and guide to self-discovery that I have used to help many people.  Contact me if you would like to explore this further.  I still do some one-on-one training and counseling (http://www.mindfulmedicine.com/).

Bye for now!

POST 5...Why Some Music Sounds Better

I would like to shift gears from self-discovery and self-knowledge to another great love of mine, music.  This short post is about improvisational playing.  In music, timing (phrasing) is everything.  As a 30-year journeyman in the field, here is what I have learned:

Swing!:  Regardless of genre, all music must swing.  Whether your main influence is Mozart or Monk or Metallica, if you want folks to listen to your tune over and over, people better be able to pat their foot to it.  A good example of a hard rocker who understands this is Malcolm Young, the rhythm guitartist in AC DC.  Listen to him closely.  He swings like a mo-fo and holds that whole band together.  I use him as an example because hard rock is not something with which we normally associate "swinging".  But swing is possible in everything.

Less is more:  BB King always said his guitar playing was simple like Southern cooking, involving only a few ingredients.  So he had to become a good chef.  Amen.  The notes you don't play are usually more important than the ones you do.  Think like a singer.  Pause and breathe in your conversation.  There is a lot of information in one note.  Only rip a fast or complicated passage every once in awhile.

The "less is more" concept is summed up nicely by Muddy Waters, who once told a friend of mine, "It's hard to play simple."

The Art of Surprise: You create this with syncopation and the right amount of empty space. As the first jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden said way back in early 1900's New Orleans, "There's nothing like waiting to hit on the Big 4."  He was talking about what we call today "4 and".  It's just one example of surprise syncopation, a big part of funk, soul, and rhythm & blues...but present in all good music. Mozart used it all the time.

Sense of Humor: Humor is an understated thing that really can't be taught. A good example is Johnny Guitar Watson...another is Johnny Carson...get it?  Use humor as contrast, for example sliding a bit of amusement into a tear-jerker ballad.  This sounds counter-intuitive and that's the point--a touch of irony or humor in an anthemic ballad makes for a much more memorable song than the cliche of sad music paired with sad lyrics.  Contrast is king.

Meat on The Strings:  This refers to my main instrument guitar, but I'm sure there are parallels with other instruments. When called for, I use my fingers instead of a pick.  On electric guitar, this creates a tone that exudes something hard to put your finger on (pun, ha!), much more "human" than the sound made by striking the string with a pick (not that I don't like the sound of a pick as well). Because my style of playing is bluesy, I've also trained myself not to get too good at using meat on the strings. This creates a stumble and slur in my phrasing and timing, which works well in my interpretations of various American Roots music.

In review:  Swing, Wait, Surprise, Humorize, Meat.

Here is a link to one of my tunes that provides examples of what I'm talking about, all embedded in the guitar solo on my version of a Johhny Guitar Watson classic:  A Real Mother For Ya 

Happy jamming to you!

POST 6...Copy The Masters

Hey, we're still on the subject of music here in Post No. 6...

I learned electric guitar by copying licks off the vinyl recordings of Duane Allman, Billy Gibbons, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Johnny Winter.  It was the early 70's and these great players were my first serious teachers.  I thought they were masters.

When interviewed, these 70's rockers always paid tribute to the guys they copied, namely the great electric blues players.  My ears perked up, and when I finally got my first Albert King record, I was blown away.  Here was a man the same age as my father tearing up an Gibson Flying V and oozing emotion through his vocals.

Passing backward through the rock guitar portal into the realm of the blues deities at age sixteen, I felt like I had discovered the secret to the universe.  I threw all my rock albums in the shed and began emersing myself in "The Three Kings" (Albert, Freddie, BB), Johnny Guitar Watson, Albert Collins, Muddy Waters, and Elmore James.  They are my main guitar influences to this day.


The fiery genius, perfect timing, and attack of the electric blues stringers shone like diamonds through the sometimes questionable-quality recordings.  Each of their playing styles was quite different, yet there was one common trait: they were all deceptively simple.  Though I could mechanically copy or emulate what they were doing, it took me about a decade to get that blues is a feeling, and to understand the subtleties of expressing that.  As I quoted Muddy Waters in Post 5, "It's hard to play simple".

A lot of people think the blues all sounds the same.  But it doesn't.  A good example of its range in contemporary players shows up in the Vaughan Brothers. Stevie Ray was a high-energy prodigy and exploded the blues into the testosterone zone.  He was an in-your-face, no-nonsense player with access to an unending cascade of notes...some say he was a channel.  He's a huge gift to the world, no doubt.

But listen closely to his older brother Jimmie: not nearly the blunt force of Stevie Ray, but an understated, intelligent choice of notes, a sweet stumble-and-slur, great timing and phrasing, and it's way down in the gut-bucket.  At the same time, there is a light playfulness and sense of humor meandering through his sparse, monster licks.

This is the nature of the blues: both stark and subtle differences among all the players on whose shoulders we stand.  They gave us a fantasmagoric array of colors to work with, creating the blues art form that is cooked permanently into jazz, country, rock, funk, and even hip hop.  If you really learn how to play the blues, it will make you a natural player of all these later derivatives.

Whatever your instrument or form of expression in life, there are three things you have to do to develop greatness:


1) Copy the masters
2) Copy the masters
3) Copy the masters

In time, a style all your own will emerge out of that amalgamated genius.  You will then be able to play something that's never been played before.

Here's a link to a tune in which I am copying one of the masters, Albert King...and yet it's still The Crawdaddy:

http://thecrawdaddy.bandcamp.com/track/answer-to-the-laundromat-blues

Put it right dehr!

POST 7...From Religion to Awareness: Global Tipping Point?

The practitioners of any religion should continually monitor the type of energy that their chosen faith propagates. The prime function of a religion-and thus its true power- lies in its ability to activate the depths of the psyche to such a degree that the pure energy it creates can drive and sustain an entire lifetime of inspirational living right here on earth, not in some post-horizon heaven.

Now, if a particular religion's psyche-activating power deteriorates into a mere emotional or sentimental love-rush, this simply indicates an addiction to one's preferred deity and afterlife (the proverbial opiate for the masses).  In this case the proponents of that religion should let such circumstances transform their concretized religion into a new system of activating symbols, even if this radically changes the original doctrine, language, and message.  If you don't understand what I'm proposing in these first two paragraphs, please leave comments and questions...I am happy to discuss and elaborate.

We must remember that the typical religion has rarely lasted beyond a few thousand years before morphing into something new. If that sounds like a long time, remember that our archaeological evidence now extends the human capacity for symbolic imagination (religion) back at least 100,000 years, perhaps longer.

Furthermore, with the compacted time density we experience today through technology, we should not be surprised if we see a religion or other system of mythical symbols arise, spread, and then fade into obscurity in a matter of a few hundred years.

Whenever we see a return to fundamentalism or a quick rise in the ranks of any long-established religion, be it the Isis or Attis cults of the ancient Mediterranean, or the evangelical Christianity and militant Islam of the early 21st century, we should be wise enough to recognize such phenomena as the beginning of the end of those traditions. At the end of its life, a mature star burgeons into a spectacular supernova before obliterating and dispersing its immense energy.

On a similar line, cultural historian William Irwin Thompson speaks of the change-phase a whole culture with its system of archetypes must go through as it evolves to the next level. Whatever that next tier of consciousness or cultural-spiritual paradigm might be, it always emerges out of the noise and disruption of the present system.  And that's where we live now, in a world containing an inordinate amount of noise and disruption in the various religions.

If we are to survive as a species (which may not be so important in the longer view), we will ultimately have to transcend religion, but not in any scientific or other secular sense. Rather, the next necessary step in the evolution of the human race will need to be a full embrace of the universal principle of impermanence--the impermanence of all phenomena, be they stars, human beings, gods, or religions. Indian and Chinese philosophy and metaphysics brought this idea to the fore of human consciousness 2500 years ago but only near the middle of the twentieth century did anyone in the West interpret these ideas so we could understand them.

Affirming impermanence requires a shift in one’s prime identity away from theistic or secular (Christian or Capitalist) canons and toward the ground of being, from which they and all other doctrines--and all existence--arise. This strange landscape is something approaching the pristine being state of a human baby.

This landscape is unknowable to the logical or emotional adult mind which has been filled to the brim with concepts and over-trained in the art of distinguishing and emphasizing differences, including gods and devils.  But lying underneath this discerning adult mind fascinated with the world's stupendous diversity-and there's nothing wrong with that-is the unborn mind, a sort of eternal tabula rasa, a blank slate completely identical with the mysterious source of all that is.  This original mind, which millions on the planet actually know quite well, can never be objectified as "other", but only directly experienced as "is".

Some say it takes ten years in an ashram or a temple to reach such self discovery (traditional guru submission). Others say it arises immediately and spontaneously with no assistance from shaman, priest, or savior (instant Zen realization).  For me it is ultimately a form of common sense so utterly simple that it's completely overlooked.  How or whenever it presents itself to you, you recognize that at the bottom, are are It. This isomorphic realization is neither egomaniacal nor pious, but a plain awareness that evokes a simple nod of the head.

When this happens, the lens through which you view the world refracts its visual input into a flowing stream of fleeting appearances. Accordingly, religions, sciences, civilizational histories, dearest loved ones, and the drugstore errands you ran yesterday, all become a kaleidoscope that you lie back and happily watch come and go in your mythic imagination.

When you come to know that the separate person desiring this and repelling that is only apparent; that the discrete ego helped by this and harmed by that is only ostensible; when you understand that individual things and events are but the surface of a deeper reality, then you are freed. You now realize that you are ultimately the rootless, boundless mind, something akin to a blank movie screen that remains untouched as it reflects all the beauty and brutality in the world.  The movie screen is never affected by the movie it displays.  Likewise, the rootless, boundless mind, which you finally are, is never harmed by anything, never born, never dying.

Coming to such realizations, you now understand, as Heraclitus did, that harmony consists of opposing tension, and that which differs with itself is in agreement. Now life flows like a stream and one flows with it, just as it is. There is no more need to meditate, to pray, to do yoga, to be healed, to protect oneself, to choose moral over immoral, to expunge negative thoughts and generate only positive ones. There is no need to make the world a better place. Though such activities certainly have value for their own sake, in the big picture they become children’s games, and thus should be carried out as a form of play.  
 

[Those are bundles of printed currency the kids are

innocently stacking as building blocks in the above picture].

Reaching this level of awareness, that is, taking the world sincerely but not seriously, all that remains is to simply be your new realized self, going about your daily life.  Doing so, you automatically pay it forward, because nothing moves the world more than the mere presence of an enlightened individual.

The big mistake humans make is to create a movement or religion around such an enlightened person.  Doing so, my friends, is nothing more than positive projection, the polar twin of negative projection.  Just as we project the reprehensible qualities we cannot accept about ourselves onto others in judgment and hate, we also project our latent enlightened nature and all-knowing wisdom onto a god or his messenger.  Both forms of projection are immature functions of the mind.  The good news is, you are completely and immediately capable of reaching a level of maturity so as to let such infantile projections go.

If the preceding is written off as elitist or delusional, then that is simply falling into the first trap on the road to real self-knowledge. Every great world teacher of Perennial Philosophy said this in his or her own colorful symbol language. Your mind is as expansize as the cosmos itself.  How could it be otherwise?  Mind and what it experiences (the cosmos) require each other in order for either to exist.  They are each other's match.  You are Mind and thus perfectly capable of understanding starkly beautiful and vastly expansive ideas.  You just need to relax and let this innate ability float to the surface.  Doing so is quite enjoyable and one of life's pleasures you surely deserve.

 
You may open to the possibility of this ordinary truth about the nature of all existence, but still cling to some ameliorative attitude towards the world.  Then you may see these two attitudes as a schizophrenic anxiety within your head.  But then you remember that the very inner conflict you feel is also a part of the ordinary truth of the world, something to be embraced and not rejected.  Now you’re OK. You are the Master of the Two Worlds as Joseph Campbell put it in The Hero With A Thousand Faces.

Can you dig it?  Digg it.

POST 8...Mind Games: Plato's Divided Line

Plato taught that there are four activities of the mind. The least sophisticated activity he called imagining, not the creative sort, but random mind-darting, when your brain jumps around haphazardly. This happens by default and goes on unconsciously all day: “I need to get up…I forgot to call Susan yesterday…Do I need more toothpaste?…When am going to quit this damn job?…I sure love my new chair.” Research shows that human beings have about 60,000 thoughts per day, and 90% of them were the same ones we had yesterday.  This is something equivalent to an oscillating feedback loop, continually repeating itself. Mind-darting wastes energy, is rarely useful, and creates worry and fear. Plato likened it to the world of shadows--impermanent and constantly shifting.  As an example, imagine the shadow that a house can cast onto the ground...

The second least sophisticated mind activity is forming beliefs and opinions. These may be necessary steps along life’s road of learning, but to enter into deeper self-knowledge, beliefs and opinions should eventually be released. It must be realized that a point of view only has meaning and value relative to another point of view. Hot defines cold, immoral defines moral, etc. One has no meaning and cannot exist without the other. Plato likened beliefs and opinions to the world of tangible objects, and continuing with our example of a house, you could think of its physical structure.  In one sense it is solid and real, but like the shadow world, it is quite impermanent—houses change and wear out over time. Likewise, we’ve all had beliefs and opinions that have changed over time.

 

The next activity we can do with the mind, which for Plato is superior to believing and forming opinions, is thinking, that is, following a stream of thoughts through to some conclusion that forms the basis for conscious action. Sticking with our house example, the architect sits down and listens to a young couple who are building their first home describe the house they desire—how many bedrooms, square footage, style, etc. Through listening, reason and logic, the architect formulates the homeowners' descriptions into a set of blueprints for the physical house. for Plato thinking is likened to a set of blueprints.

Finally, the highest activity of the mind Plato called contemplation, but not in the ordinary sense. Plato says we (incorrectly) perceive that our thinking is what works and struggles to create an idea. To the contrary, thinking only shapes the already-existing idea, and we must let go of thinking and reason to reach pure creativity and originality. He is referring to a meditative, perhaps almost mystical activity, using the intuitive essence of our minds to contemplate what he calls the "Realm of the Forms", as described in the Phaedo:

“He attains to the purest knowledge of the Forms who goes to each with the mind alone, not introducing or intruding in the act of thought with reason, but with the very light of the mind in her own clearness searches into the very truth of each [Form].”


For Plato, this dimension is only accessible through the intuition—it cannot be tapped in any other way. Using our house example, lying within the blueprint of a house (and ultimately, within the mind of the architect) is its perfect Form, the essential Idea for the house, which has always existed. Whether he was aware of it or not, at some point in the design process the architect’s intuition touched the Realm of the Forms with the highest (or deepest) part of his mind.

Of course, there are a variety of techniques to develop the intuition and access these creative zones, Plato's Realm of the Forms, which some liken to Carl Jung's "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious".  I will elaborate on some techniqes in future blogs.  Regardless of what methods you may use, it is always helpful to remember Plato’s basic framework for addressing the problem...that to be truly original, you must release random mind-darting, beliefs and opinions, and even reasoned thinking, to arrive at pure, intuitive contemplation. 

Incidentally, as the Post title indicates, this lesson is known as "Plato's Divided Line" in the textbooks typically used in college philosophy courses.  Happy contemplating!