Cleansing the Doors

by Richard Reeve on March 25, 2009

in AziMuth

White Crane
Image by extrabox via Flickr

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite.” –William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Throughout history poets admit to the possibility of the actuality of the muse.  I’m rendering here it straight up: an archetypal figure that dictates the poem to the poet.  If such an experience is possible, then added to the ability to render images with words on the page we should add the ability to keep a channel open to the archetypal figures as essential to the poet’s craft.

While we are not all poets, I do believe we are all meant to relate to these figures.  And for that to happen we must lay aside theories and ideas and invite encounter.  All understanding of the hero archetype is bunk in the face of a figure that embodies that reality.  Theory is what we have on this side of the doors that Blake speaks of, while on the other side these figures manifest, transform, invite and transmit.

A dream from my journal just over two years ago.

I’m seated on the ground looking out of a sliding glass window across a wide savanna.  Large antelope are grazing.  Suddenly a warrior limps into view. He is wounded badly in his thigh.  I open the door for him and he stumbles in and collapses behind me.  I close the door quickly behind him.   Though he never speaks, I know that there is a battle off to the South.  I turn to offer him assistance but suddenly a magnificent woman, her face pure white like paper,  and dressed in glittering robes is at the window, pressing against it in horror at the sight of his wound.  I let her in and she quickly kneels down and begins to heal the wound.  I watch as her touch stops the bleeding.

Then the three of us are in a small boat and being carried by the current of a lazy river, white cranes are wading along the banks.

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  • I think I'm going to have to think about this some more.

    I think I see it in those Nietzschean terms of getting the right balance of health and sickness..

    There's a part of me that wonders... how much of the conservatism of a culture is an expression of the interests of power.. for the obvious reason that preserving the status quo helps to preserve there power... and then I wonder how the structure of power impacts all that.

    On some levels at least, when I think of the collective I think personal.. I think of it as just what's in me.. in an idea I have of my whole self.. which I suppose means there's a need to make a distinction, when talking about the collective, between what is conscious and what is unconscious.. and if we where to talk about a "whole collective self," what would that look like...

    In a whole self I'm not sure that I really see the conservatism.. if we are preserving a status quo, we are getting in the way of the becoming, which is not really in the interest of the whole self.

    But.. it certainly would seem to be in human nature.. though I wonder if it might not have more to do with the container of human nature, on some level.. that we are fearful of the unknown and leaving our safety zones.. leaving where we are strong.

    I know personally I'm trying to take these jumps into the unknown with my creative work.. and its lead me to feelings of overwhelming self doubt.. to such an extent that I doubt what I once thought was good. And it doesn't help that nearly all the plans I've laid out for myself are like this..

    I have a pretty good threshold for self doubt.. which I guess is just experience with the process.. but.. it does have the effect of making me withdraw... cause its hard to share what you're doing in such circumstances..

    In any event.. a lot of the challenge seems to be with ego.. I have a strange belief that genus has something to do with humility.. and so much of my identity is wrapped up in my creative work that I kinda need to be humble if I have any serious aspirations.. It's like when self doubt is at its worst ebb you kinda have to detach from the wheels of fortune and embrace something like faith in order to keep going.. and you kinda do need to be on you're knees.. because at that point you don't feel like you can afford to miss a single thing a muse might say to you.

    In a strange way I guess its like being willing to suffer. Hmm.. maybe that's what it all boils down to?

    I always used to equate it with Freud's pleasure principle and like.. the development of the super ego.. that if you don't believe you're wish can find fulfillment.. and particularly as a child.. the tension of the unfulfilled wish is too great.. down into the unconscious it goes.. and so how many wishes never even dawn on us? And those wishes, those dreams.. they are like the words of a muse.
  • Hey Matt,
    It was reading Jung's Answer to Job where I was able to gain insight into the conservatism within the Self.

    As for the un-birthed dreams and wishes, you are so right. I took up the challenge last Spring to formulate my three deepest desires, only to learn that my fear that they were not possible was preventing them from manifesting. This very morning I head to the post office and send off my application to study at the Jung Institute...
  • Really?, or in what sense do you mean you sense the collective / political system has always been conservative?

    I guess I think sorta Nietzsche dyonious apollo.. a forever oscillating pendulum.. or something sorta like that..

    Although clearly the mystics relationship to the church... or the whatever.. not that I know the history terribly well but it would seem the mystic is always challenging in that sorta way.

    But that's not really the same notion of conservatism as we'd get in a modern right left debate.. I mean it seems sorta like there's a psychology of conservatism that on the apollo side / would be the church's side but.. liberalism is certainly capable of being just as dogmatic.. I mean I think both sides are like.. well lets say scared of the numinous.. or prone to be.. perhaps in different areas..

    But you know.. you think back to say Tristan and Isolt.. and its like anticipating Nietzsche in the sense of it's valuing the experience of the individual over inherited value systems.. which.. seems sorta anti Christian until you go pre Constantine.. or get to Luther..

    But I don't know that I really feel like this is in its essence a power structure issue... this is a how do you relate to the numinous issue.. for which we don't even have much in the way of safe outlets today... I think an awful lot of people don't have the foggiest notion as to why one would get on one's knees to pray.. other then maybe as an expression of desperation... I mean certainly not out of an expression of awe..

    That's sorta funny, isn't it? How we cling to so much out of a fear of what amounts to a real experience.. and that fear is the awe.. and yet we don't make that connection.. I guess its all just a sorta spiritual illiteracy?
  • Hey Matt,
    Interesting comment as usual. The sense of conservatism here is not exactly equal to the political idea, but more of the cultural phenomenon that stays tied to the ways things have always bee. The mystics you point out are always individuals gifted with the ability to reach beyond the current collective frame, and bring it to a new level. I love your analysis of prayer.
  • Is the muse the figure--tao,door way etc.--that shows us the way to "break on over to the other side." Huxley and the Doors use this quote to describe the psychadelic experience.

    Blake writes at the end of the 18th century, the age of reason. Blake portrayed all the mystical archtypes as "Angels" good and bad. Muse seems wrong to me here; rather a figure like Charon who poles the boat across the Stxy--the ultimate other side. Not an inspirer but a guide.

    Blakes point is that reality is infinite and we are limites by our sense who shape and oder it for us.

    <abbr>sid parham´s last blog post..The Doctor’s Dilemma</abbr>
  • Hey Sid,
    My amplification placed these figures as king and queen, and he the wound of the fisher king...
  • Wow, what a refreshing post.. sometimes I feel like 90% of the posts I read are all saying "cling to your ideas, it's the only thing that can save you from an encounter with reality," or perhaps the idea is to cling to they're ideas?

    I'm in the middle of a strange psychic experience... feeling like I'm being called to disintegrate, which is a little scary.. the last time I felt this it was the preamble to a numinous experience.

    The disintegration is.. well its like "who are you" and you have your little stories that make up you're identity.. a useful fiction.. all these things holding us in place.. and when that falls apart.. the figures start speaking. Of course the trouble is.. the various dangers of the unconscious.

    You know I wonder.. I know in art school they didn't teach you about relationship to the muse. I visited the school last night actually, for a sorta social media meet up group.. with a very good presenter.. anyway.. where they normally put up signs for gallery shows.. there was graffiti saying "dream bigger" and I thought.. "Hell yeah."

    But I think relating to the muses is like.. one of those mysterious things that.. it seems like us moderns don't quite know how to do.. and so often it feels like we've become entirely "too civilized" in a certain sense.. like you're post sometime ago about over protective parents.. this incredible need for safety.. laws for waring seat belts and.. and all the rest of it... like some systematic.. lets child safe our society for adults.. repress dyonious at every corner.. and turn our notions of everything into as solid stone as possible...

    As I experience my feeling of being called to disintegrate.. I'm reminded of that crazy.. was it a revelation? "Stop everything, let God do it all," and then the most mind blowing mystical thing imaginable happens.. it seems that God actually does do it all.. as if to say the only thing standing between us and the life we dream of is us..
  • Hey Matt,
    Great of you to weigh in with your insights. "Dream Bigger...wider...deeper..."

    I sense that the collective has always been conservative, including way before modern political systems. But none the less, we are called to peek outside the box.
  • Too funny Jeb,
    But glad your finding your frame challenged. The paper I'd issue, along with a couple of bucks will get you a coffee, and perhaps it would be useful in wiping the crumbs from your chin....

    If there's a takeaway to what's presented above, it's that the archetypal is not simply an extension of me. I do not identify with the figures. When the woman appeared, I was arrested on the spot by her presence and it all just unfolded around me. But it wasn't me...
  • Hey Richard,
    Will you be offering some sort of degree at some point? You've made me think harder than I ever did in college (my Poli Sci major, quite frankly, did not prepare me for you).

    I'm anxious to update the resume...BA in Politics and Society, MA in Jungian Theory ala @ccseed (the Honors track).

    I'd also like a sequel to that dream. You've reeled me in...

    Cheers!

    <abbr>Jeb Dickerson´s last blog post..How did this happen?</abbr>
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