Hows the Transmission?

by Richard Reeve on September 1, 2009

in AziMuth


Last spring the transmission on our car failed while climbing on of the hills nearby. A major repair was needed to get it back on the road.

When a violent storm hits, often the power lines get taken out by a falling tree limb. Emergency work crews respond at all hours of day and night to restore the electric juice we rely so heavily upon.

Writing this, I’m standing next to the rails of the commuter line waiting for a train, and I’m struck how the railroad combines and reveals both metaphors of transmission as they are experienced psychologically. Like power lines, the rails connect various nodes of the transportation system. And the trains engine unleashes the power to move between the nodes.

Consciousness relies on energy, or libido as it is called. In Aristotle we read “First matter is the name of that indeterminate power of change.” (Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche, pg.10) A certain channeling of the energy at our disposal creates movement toward and/or away from. But even when our lines are laid, a certain switch must be thrown, or key turned,…the fire fired…if movement is to take place.

A common feeling for many people these days is “I’m going nowhere.” A malaise fouls the gears and things feel stuck.

In my experience the root of this conflict arises between the will of the ego and the demands of the unconscious Self. When ego thinks that the path goes one way and a certain destination needs to be reached by a certain time, a deviation from that goal creates tension at first, then resistance, and eventually the experience of being stuck.

Whenever I find that feeling creeping in I ask a question. Where does the energy want to go?

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  • Because of this fact I find myself adverse to self discipline.. or I haven't quite worked out a proper relationship to discipline. Some people look at me and think I'm super disciplined.. but really its more like I'm doing what I want.. or what kinda gets me off.. and simply prioritizing certain things...

    Though I did recently have this feeling.. almost as if it were a visitation.. where the spirit.. it seemed as if.. well as if depending on the conscious attitude I take today.. that could shape a future enantiodromia... and this spirit was like "look.. I know you've been on this introverted path since you were about 3 years old, but have you considered pleasure?" And though from a certain conscious attitude point of view this sounds like throwing my life away.. everything I've been working towards.. the true feeling it greeted me with was like a fresh breeze accompanied by "wow, that would be awesome!" And so now I have half a mind to go find a mate, shack up, and all that goovy stuff. And so this sorta seemed like a proactive measure my unconscious was taking in relationship to a future malaise.

    It must have been a little more then a month ago.. I was feeling a real malaise kind of feeling. I was trying real hard to get my music production to a certain level.. and struggling with various projects.. and just wasn't feeling it. And then one day I said "perhaps I should start working on the videos?" I had been procrastinating the video / motion graphics stuff cause.. well because of a fear of sucking basically. This and its a real mammoth project.. and requires investing a lot of money into gear.. and I didn't want to cash out that CD till it had matured and..

    Though I was totally clueless about the new tools I was trying to work with.. and didn't really have the experience.. almost instantly the magic hit.. It hard in that way that can kinda blow your mind a little... I worked hard from then up till about now.. and about now I've seemingly fallen off the wagon a little bit. See.. now I'm looking at visual effects and realizing.. I could have to be dumping about 10 or 11 grand or more to get where I want to go.. not to mention a video camera that could easily run around 7 grand.. and I'm feeling like "oh crap, I gotta look real seriously at my priorities here."

    My unconscious.. being the troublesome thing that it is.. doesn't really care that this is a lot of money, and that the implications of spending that money are serious.. and it doesn't care that I've barely learned much of the gear I already own.. all it seems to want to say is "yo, dumbo, go that way!"

    My conscious attitude is one of.. feeling for sure that I'm making a horrible mess of my life... and now that my father's well being is now my responsibility to.. there's like this giant guilt over it.. but then a funny thing happened today.. I took my Dad to the doctors.. and the blood work came back.. and accept for his memory.. The doc say's he's healthier then he is. As he said this it was as if a voice from my unconscious was speaking up "you see dumbo we know what we are doing."

    This last point is a sorta very deep point in my biography.. this very difficult struggle to believe in myself... From time to time there are these Flash's as if to say I'm on the right path in this crazy bad ass sorta way.. and that the only reason it feels like I'm all wrong.. is because of just how bad ass it is. ...Which of course is something I can only occasionally bring myself to believe.. and then in only in the most bashful of ways.

    But I guess this sorta brings me to the core of what I wanted to say.. which might be something like the unconscious is the bad ass, and the conscious mind is the sissy... but more importantly that a root problem is that the modern collective conscious mind.. is sissy-ish.. That in how we look at our selves when we come to this revelation about the malaise being about a the old unconscious conscious conflict.. that we kind of shouldn't think to ill of our egos.. that we should appreciate what our ego's are up against... I mean they are in that Matrix / Labrynth in that certain way.. and not just on a personal level.

    I mean I don't even know how many times I've looked at the world around me and thought "is it even possible to try and live as a whole person in this place?"

    I don't know if in saying this I'm really just expressing my own darkness.. maybe I've failed to unite my own personal suffering with that which is grave and constant in human suffering.. or at least grave and constant in our own age.. but that's kind of my thought for the day... even if not quite fully developed..
  • It's an interesting insight the collective ego has become sissified.
    It's a strange balance that's needed for the transcendent function to

    take root. In the book of Job, we get the image of standing ones

    ground in the midst of the raging revelations, yet knowing one's place

    in relationship to that power. The danger of course in the attempt

    not to cower, is the inflation that comes from identification with the

    archetypal energies. While it's easier to live one's life within the

    collective established norms, my sense is that a groundswell of

    discontent is underway whereby the claims of the Self which have been

    knocking at our door for decades really need to be addressed.
  • Jeb
    My ego seems intent on arriving within that coveted circle of people who have made it big financially. And it's damned impatient. Some internal mechanism of mine has got the idea that this is the only stick that matters when the task of measuring myself, and my success, arises. Oddly, when I dig deep and consider it, I have a very deep negative association with money as a result of my childhood (a father who had it, divorced from my mother, disinclined to share it).

    The energy is rather unenergetic just now...a malaise most certainly fouls my gears. But when I glimpse it, clearly it wants to take me to a place where freedom - freedom of movement, of time, of worry - above all else, reigns. My stuckness (a term I used to describe my feelings to my wife just last night) results from the apparent misalignment of said desires and a clear vision of how to travel that path. I suspect I possess the map, but something keeps moving it, hiding it, just when I'm about to grasp it and bring it into the light.

    On a seemingly unrelated note (but for some reason I feel a connection and, as I think you once said, a dream's interpretation has much more to do with the dreamer's take on it than any objective assessment of the individual parts/images thereof), I just woke from a long nap during which I dreamt I was traveling by car back along the route that recently delivered me from Colorado to California. At a certain juncture, where UT and AZ meet, I stopped at a visitor center and, while talking to the attendant, noticed a wolf howling outside the window. The gentleman remarked that it was much closer than wolves usually get to the building, and just then the wolf ran toward the door. It was a bit dark inside, and it wasn't clear where the wolf had gone until it was almost upon me. I was able to block it with a chair, and it wasn't obviously intent on attacking...seemed intimidation was the goal (it did bare it's teeth at me). After a moment it fled, and I with it, in search of my kids who were out exploring. There were many other animals running free around that I'd not previously noticed - Antelope, Grizzly Bears, Bison, others - and I woke up while still looking for my boys.

    One of the greatest things about writing and exposing our words to the world around us through this medium is the incredible range of reactions our words elicit. I love the way different people read and interpret things I've written - it allows for so much great interaction, so many unexpected thoughts and ideas to flow through the comments, and beyond.

    I'm guessing this is a comment you weren't expecting. :)
  • It's fascinating that the initial lost map concern is share as the
    general state of a affairs is followed by a powerful dream of the

    American wilds. Such a dream is a clear transmission toward a

    different direction than the one where self worth is thought to lie.

    Was jusy reading in a small tract by Esther Harding: \"The name

    wilderness means wild-land, the uncultivated, usually unproductive

    surround to the relatively small area tamed by the group.\"



    I've found that a call to those places, within and out, usually lead

    to the treasure my best plans are unable to materialize.



    I especially like how the wolf marked his territory...
  • On the collective side of the matter, it's striking how older networks like power and rail rely heavily on "trunks," thus constraining or demanding certain energy flows, and rendering others "uneconomical."

    Print publishing and television do the same. Costs of distribution infrastructure, plus the cultural weight of "authority," impose analogous constraints upon the informational flows they handle.

    Of course, these types of networks all levied heavy tariffs on the citizenry.

    Now we're living amid many Great Decouplings. The dense web we traverse allows finer shifts in direction, one option being more direct movement toward our intent. Why hasn't that ameliorated our propensity toward "stuckness?"

    Funny how the Beats and 60s counterculture, nonpareil exemplars of alienation, arose during the apex of the former model. Our present-day melancholy seems far more inchoate.
  • Interesting points Mark. I'm not sure we have truly yet
    inhereted/inhabited these potentials yet. Much of my inquiry along

    the lines of search continues to reveal that we do not yet

    collectively understand how to \"retrieve\"...hence all the pressure on

    SEO from the supply side.
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