Having had another engaging lunch with @ryansenator, Shadow Beyond, I’m struck as I turn to again to move off from the city, how powerful the reality of the psyche is in my life. While I find no difficulty admitting the ego’s focal point and location in spatial extension, it’s another facet of awareness for the ego to surrender to it’s embededness in psychic extension, or as we were discussing over our curry, the psychic field.
That the Unconscious often finds expression in the image of the sea is well known. That we are always at least touching it’s “waters” is much less conscious in our collective frame.
In the I Ching, hexagram 56 is Lu / The Wanderer. The image provided with this hexagram reads:
“Fire on the mountain:
The image of the wanderer.
Thus the superior man
Is clear-minded and cautious
In imposing penalties,
And protracts no lawsuits.
As a changing line…
“Nine at the top means:
The bird’s nest burns up.
The wanderer laughs at first,
Then must needs lament and weep.
Through misfortune he loses his cow.
Misfortune.”
And thus the initial Hexagram changes into that which follows: Hexagram 62. Hsiao Kuo/ Preponderance of the Small.
“Thunder on the Mountain:
The image of Preponderance of the Small.
Thus in his conduct the superior man gives preponderance to reverence.
In bereavement he gives preponderance to grief.
In his expenditures he gives preponderance to thrift.”
As Jung points out in his foreword to the Wilhelm/Baynes edition of the I Ching (the edition the above quotes are rendered from):
“Whatever happens in a given moment possesses inevitably the quality peculiar to that moment. This is not an abstract argument but a very practical one.” pg. xxiii.
Consulting the I Ching is a bit like the practice of cutting the Bible, whereby one opens the book confident that the page one chances upon has a message one needs to hear.
Let it suffice to say… the above imagery aligns with my current dream imagery in specifics details which would startle one that did not consider such results to be plausible.
And then @hennartonline shared this with me on twitter as I was drafting this post: “A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.”~Carl Jung
This little nugget returns much like a flourish…like the cherry atop an ice cream sundae…I had cast the same message upon the waters a few months back.
It fits this moment exquisitely.
Often people ask me how the collective unconscious manifests in these social media platforms. The question digs into the relationship of Psyche and Techne. This post in a small way serves as a forward to an answer…
“Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.” Robert Hunter
It’s a funny inversion in the passive voice. What do you mean I’ve been erected? Don’t you know that the ego commands and does stuff, it makes order, measures out, proclaims and shouts…and worries! Did I mention the worry?
Certainly that’s true, but how did you come into your cherished opinions?
Remember, as I’ve recently overheard, “opinions are like noses. Everyone has one, but some are snottier than others.”
The ego itself, not necessarily what anyone of us does with it, can be viewed as a complex heaved into consciousness. It’s been erected into it’s current configuration not only by the cultural encoding, but by unconscious compulsion.
As Samuels writes, “Jung saw the ego arising out of and functioning in the service of something greater than itself.” Andrew Samuels, Jung and the Post-Jungians, pg. 58.
That is not a widespread perspective. The effects of the rationalist split, which divorced man from nature and set him in opposition to what he essentially is, has spread throughout our culture and still dominates the collective frame.
For my part, recognizing that the ego as but a bud on the tree of life has begun to knit awareness back into reality.
“Considered on its own merits, as a legitimate human activity, technology is neither good nor bad, neither harmful or harmless. Whether it be used for good or ill depends entirely on man’s own attitude, which in turn depends upon technology. The technologist has something of the same problem as the factory worker. Since he has to do mainly with mechanical factors, there is a danger of his other mental faculties atrophying. Just as an unbalanced diet is injurious to the body, any psychic imbalances have injurious effects in the long run and need compensating.” Carl Jung, The Effect of Technology on the Human Psyche, CW XVIII, par. 1406.
Finding the right attitude for relating to the serious potential and limitations that make up this space has not been easy for me. When I consider the mistakes I’ve made in this space, the missteps, the experiments that should not have been made in the first place, most have come from assumptions that falsely equate certain expectations within this space to those off line. It’s a certain confusion that equates more emotional investment in the exchanges that take place than is merited. I’m saddened by some of the connections that are no longer, but often as if a concrete relationship has ended. And that brings up some really interesting material for the student of human nature. What does it mean that such emotion can be experienced one side of the computer screen? How might the emotional attachment of hundreds of millions of users become a vehicle of mass manipulation?
These are some of the thoughts I have while riding my own emotional wave this side of the computer screen while attempting to sort my way through the labyrinth of the new tech. I decided to share about this experience as I don’t see it talked about much. Then again, maybe it’s just me.
Chris Brogan's Workflow at #NMS08
Studio mate with four balloons
Getting Imaginal 
Second Cutting