#hypocrite lecteur

[julianpeterscomics]

"The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot, page 16

At long last, here is the final page of my comics adaptation of “The Burial of the Dead,” the first section of T. S. Eliot’s epochal poem “The Waste Land” (Click on image to enlarge).

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[crucialandinert]

this is a thing, i would want so desperately to be known if i died. so then i thought... why making dying a condition of being known. maybe stop that.

the beginning of the trail: reading about action systems in The Haunted Self.

*** 2/16/18. so what is the persecutor, really? It’s a network, a pattern of neurons that fire together, a “mental action” as they talk about in The Haunted Self. It recruits capacities from all over the brain and links them to its goal, which is to hurt me until I go into the mammalian defense of total submit. It thinks “having a job” is some kind of predator that I need to be kept safe from by playing dead til it loses interest and goes away. It’s too simple to comprehend modern life at all. It doesn’t know that I don’t get food by gathering tubers, forget agriculture. Sometimes when I read The Haunted Self I wonder, how is this tool supposed to work in the terrible conditions we’ve created for ourselves in contemporary civilization? Because it’s not adapted for them, at all. And we can see that the answer to that is not very well, for a lot of people, like maybe the majority? Definitely for those who don’t have a lot of resources to throw at it to make the practical considerations around them easier. A lot are just overwhelmed by the challenge, they don’t have good enough executive functioning or what have you. That doesn’t mean they’d be maladapted in our orignial environment.

This sounds a bit like me convincing myself I should die because I’ll never be able to adapt to the ever more challenging environment of present day America. Is it more challenging than being heavily infested by parasites like my more distant ancestors? I mean, if you look at their mortality rates, probably not. I actually do have more reason for hope than they did, because even for the maladaption of my brain I have more recourse to those who’ve put in millions of brain­hours into figuring out how to improve it, which they’ve been able to transmit by writing, to others who’ve spent thousands of their own hours to learn it and get good at doing it. So that increases my odds.

The question is, how do I “starve” the persecutor network of mental resources when it gets activated? I guess a better way to approach it would be to look for what triggers it, and when the threshold of no return is crossed, and what actions can derail it – exactly like with cutting. Which I’m grateful I got to experience because it gives me confidence I can change behaviors that hurt me, just like having and fixing a clear phobia of the freeway. They establish both methodologies I can follow, and objective proof that I can execute them. Both were done with no help (outside of JT for the inciting incident of the freeway, of course) and prior to being medicated. Well, the first step is realizing that you can overcome the mental action of self­persecution just as you did the behavioral action of self­injury. You can just sit with that for awhile. With the idea of observing the sequence if you happen to, but you have permission to not actively be on the hunt for it, yet.

And I just thought about assigning this to myself to talk about with [my psychiatrist] next week, but then I thought “no, I just want to be loved.” And I give myself permission for that too. That’s what you’re there for, to learn exactly that, because you don’t know.

***

I think I just had a tremendous moment of integration. I was thinking, “the persecutor is a mental action that *I* take.” Then I thought “oh, I can’t say ‘I,’ I should say ‘my brain,’ I haven’t developed a real ‘i’ yet.” But then I thought, no. “I” refers to all of it. If it’s still experienced as segmented, that’s just an illusion. The whole constellation, the whole planet, all the billions and billions of cells, infinite diversity in infinite combinations, that is all called by the word “I,” and anything else is an illusion, whether it’s experiencing yourself in parts, or seeking to define the seat of consciousness, or separating conscious and unconscious, or mind and body, or whatever. Whitman again. But “I” do not “contain” multitudes [Song of Myself]. “I” is a word by which multitudes are called. It’s an important distinction. For me, because I was severed, it’s been clear to me that “I” is a word, because I didn’t know what it meant. Other people often mistake words for being things, because they never have to think about it, but I’ve always known “ceci n’est pas un pipe” [the title of a Magritte painting of a pipe with those words, "this is not a pipe" below it, usually interpreted to refer to not mistaking representations for the objects they represent], because there was a gulf between the muteness of my emotion and the human words I was supposed to be able to match up with them. That activity made no sense. And that crack in the way reality is supposed to be constructed made words into stones for me, to be examined, hefted in the hand, seen as instruments, aware they are the tool and not the hand. I examine the clouds of connotation they trail, I interrogate their histories back to the initial caveman yawp they evolved from, the piece of the real world that prompted their first utterance.

So I understand “I.” I am allowed to use “I.” I do not lack “I.” “I” means, “everything that is happening right here, from where the molecules of the air grade into the molecules of skin inwards, whether I know it, whether I understand it, or not.” I’m kind of excited because that definition still works when the word is used inside it. That usually creates frustration and a feeling you haven’t gotten to the bottom of it but here it works. “...whether [everything that is happening right here] knows it, whether [everything that is happening right here] understands it, or not.”

***

2/17/18. [everything that happens here] is getting stronger than [malfunctioning part] every day. yes, that still makes sense. a part shouldn’t be able to commandeer and act as the whole.

*** i do notice: as [everything that happens here], i am not afraid of disappearing if others can’t see me. it feels weighty in itself, to be that. looked at from the micro­scale out, i feel vast. it might even be a little bit harder to see why i would cross the gulf to make contact with another universe of activity. but this kind of [everything that happens here] evolved to need interaction with others... [everything that happens theres]? it seems so odd. as though in this recognition i should heave through space, the massive ship Leviathan, only of its kind.

***

then i began reading about carl rogers while trying to provide a good short explanation of how to empathize with emotionally dysregulated kids for my [teaching non-educators how to facilitate learning for middle school kids] training, which led to Eugene Gendlin.

***

2/18/18 ‘One of his [Eugene Gendlin] most beloved quotations is from his book Focusing:“When I use the word “body,” I mean more than the physical machine. Not only do you physically live the circumstances around you but also those you only think of in your mind. Your physically felt body is in fact part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other people–in fact, the whole universe. This sense of being bodily alive in a vast system is the body as it is felt from inside.”’ That is how I have always experienced being alive.

***

i keep thinking about "hamakom" as a name of god [refers to kabbalistic concepts that the divine is the field that physical things are kind of condensed out of. it is pretty much only used in folk judaism in one of the formula expressions you say when greeting mourners: "may the the place comfort you among the mourners of zion and jerusalem," and on passover], in connection with [everything that happens here] as the definition of "I." it seems like numerous insights or revelations i have had in the course of my life, particularly in my teens and 20s when i was more rapturously attuned to the world, more open, because i didn’t have financial pressure, and hadn’t learned even as much as i know now about relating to others. let’s list.

1. i don’t like the human world or find it accurate or a good fit to my experience. 2. words sit uneasily atop my experience and i am aware of my "pensée concrète" [Piaget word for pre­abstracted, pre­linguistic thought mode of infants and animals] level, in a way that i don’t believe others are or are equipped to be. 3. god is the place. 4. there is a gradient between my skin and the outer world, not a barrier. i so strongly recall being struck by this coming out of a shiur [bible lesson] at  [orthodox jewish high school, i went to the girls' version], probably the year after i came home from israel [after attending seminary in jerusalem for a year]. how the sun felt, blinding, and stopping on the pavement to draw it in my israeli machberet [notebook]. 5. life lives on, it is the lives the lives the lives that die. [roman poet Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, book III] 6. the brain has executed a coup on the rest of the cells, like cancer, convincing mankind it is the magical, spiritual, important part and the rest of the body is polluted; when its job was only to lead them through the world, because they are blind. 7. i not only know, but experience and rarely forget that my body is made of cells, which are themselves beings, and repeat on the simplest level my own feelings of needing resources to live and “wishing” to avoid damage. by which i think literally would mean, have some kind of equipment that automatically tries to defend them against damage.

8. each photon conveys a touch from the object it bounced off of to the cells of my retina that it is absorbed by. it connects them. 9. looking into someone else’s eyes is like two galaxies or universes looking into each other. if you are open to that fact, it takes your breath away. we defend ourselves from it.

it looks like: i have had more difficulty with the macro scale of life than the micro, with the human than the natural. my conception of god was a comfort because it was so close to me, there wasn’t a gulf like between myself and another human, that mostly i, and always they, were afraid to cross, it was the makom, as close as the air, intermingled. it didn’t help me not fear people. it didn’t help me not crave to strive for conditions of worth. it didn’t help me not deem myself worthy of death, of letting my brain lead all those cells to their death, for not meeting those conditions of worth. it didn’t help me feel more secure in a human world that constantly confused and frightened me, where i could find no purchase and couldn’t orient. those are the things it couldn’t do.

what could it do? and what could be the synthesis, as it returns now?

well. i know a lot more about how my cells are supposed to relate to another’s. like emotional contagion, that my autonomic nervous system and another’s automatically form a feedback loop with each other, and set our emotions together. i just noticed it makes sense that the person with the more intense emotion sets it — in nature it would indicate their emotion is based on stronger data about the world and you should set to it. like, if they are terrified, get terrified too, don’t wait for proof of a bear. if they are super happy and relaxed, get that way too, don’t waste too much energy double checking.

and basically my entire project right now is to let the development of integration happen, and that includes the natural ability to relate to others — no better and no worse than others do, so, not great and full of ruptures, but with the knowledge of repair, and the main thing — not avoiding. that is unnatural. in the wild i would die, if i avoided others of my species. it would be deeply maladaptive, to be overly afraid of conspecifics. you also have to be a little afraid, but that’s why you have the ability to make a million calculations about mutuality. that is natural too. so maybe the synthesis is that other people are part of hamakom. that you didn’t see before, you saw them as separate universes, but understood that you yourself were part of hamakom. you saw them as further and more separate than they are, looking into their eyes as the shock of another void, not a gradient with you and the air.

***

12/19/18 I understand a bit more about that "extended realization" thing they mentioned in The Haunted Self I think. It means, to know, [everything that happened here], the history of the place.

[carmenpernicola]

Questo mostro delicato, la noia

Questo mostro delicato, la noia

Il en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde! Quoiqu’il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris,< il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde; C’est l’Ennui! – l’œil chargé d’un pleur involontaire, il rêve d’échafauds en fumant son houka. Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, – Hypocrite lecteur, – mon semblable, – mon frère! “E’ ancora più…

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a violent pacifist forgives herself // help me help myself your face my foot allow a little kick or two a violent pacifist forgives himself // help me help myself a blessing fist oh my father hallelujah broken peace’s blown away, my hurricane heart eye spies (with even temper safe as houses ) Home : so come on home we swept up shards of glass & egg shells : we go barefoot & we help you help yourself & we help together help each other allow a little kiss or two a blessing hand // a gentle pacifist forgives. a gentle hypocrite forgives.

[aspencer14]

...In the infamous menagerie of our vices, There is one uglier, wickeder, more shameless! Although he makes no large gestures nor loud cries He willingly would make rubbish of the earth And with a yawn swallow the world; He is Ennui!-His eye filled with an unwished-for tear, He dreams of scaffolds while puffing at his hookah. You know him, reader, this exquisite monster, -Hypocrite reader,-my likeness,-my brother!

-Ending of To The Reader by Charles Baudelaire