How Magical we Are – How Lost We Are

We are capable of creating devils and angels, monsters. How do we do all that? I am seeing the spiritual as something like the seashell effect. You put it up to your ear and you actually hear sounds in it – but the sounds are actually those you are creating in your inner ear amplified by the shell. This is like a magical Penny Arcade machine that creates wonders of music, images, devils, the presence of God and angels – but all of which is actually in response to our own imagination, fears, beauty or ugliness – all of which are made wonderfully real by the machine of our dreams. Yet when we realise it is oneself doing it all unconsciously, we might say – “Oh, what a waste of time. It’s all a sham!”

Of course it isn’t a sham. It is all our own ability, but people can’t see how magical it is. Of course, they may be constantly creating such horrible demons or deadly scenes of fear, guilt or alienation – thus being a victim to their own imagination. This reminds me of my eldest son. Sleeping in the same bedroom as his brother and sister, he started telling them ghost stories to frighten them. They promptly fell asleep, but he was so frightened he had to call us to help him.

The self-responsibility shocks or frightens us. We create the magical dream machine out of anger, or belief. Yet it is very real. The tragedy is that we have to live with what we have created – creatures of our own unconscious fantasy. The things we have conjured are fears, hopes, beliefs, unconscious images of the world and ourselves. Also they are created out of the ‘mechanisms’ in our life. So many things we do are mechanical.

I then see myself going into the market place to attempt a clearer view of what that part of a dream means. I see myself walking into the market and returning – then again, and again – like one might walk in and out of a toilet many times in a day. As I do so though, out of the corner of my eye, on the right I see a little mechanism that is connected to me by strings. It is this that is moving me. So I reach up and cut the strings – I am free!

Then I have a view of looking at ants. They are scurrying around, bound to each other and a group activity by chemical bonds and their queen. When the queen dies or is killed, the magic bonds disappear. They are free. But as I watch, the freedom looks strangely uninteresting. What is the point of wandering aimlessly without any links with the group that is meaningful, and enable us to have a corporate life, a shared work and creativity? Perhaps humans are like that. What are the signals that bind us? Is it war, nationalism?

I see more of this sense of mechanism. We are invaded by information suggesting that even our consciousness is not our own. Alter a little part of our brain and even our personality disappears. We are a biochemical event. It is dehumanising to have this information put to us again and again. Feeling depressed? Take this pill. Your biochemical functions are not working well. The pill will put you right. Nothing personal of course – you’re not really a person. You are a biochemical event.

The male sex drive is such a mechanism. Looking for a younger woman or a real man is partly mechanical. Do we have to mechanically go along with it? Yet it moves so many people. There is the big director trying to be so important, and in comes the secretary and he can’t help looking at her legs and breasts, up her skirts if the chance allows. The thrill in the belly, the hunger deep down to touch that soft warm young body, or claim a mans desires.

But if we stand back a little from our posturing. our acting out of roles, our enormous lostness in our emotional turmoils, our intellectual certainties, what do we find? Not “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” which is a rant about the fear of death. Yes we find a dark nothingness, but if we venture into it without fear we find everything, hugeness.

A man exploring his own darkness said, “This came about because I turned to each of the people and realised that I was a different person with each of them – so who was I? I realised I wasn’t anything in particular, yet was anything. So in the end I could be with the group and feel empty inside yet feel I was being something with each person. In other words, I am wonderful opportunity to be anything and everything, not just some stereotype of manhood – or womanhood, but a real alive and multifaceted being”.

See Avoid Being Victims; Inner World; Void; Archetype of the Void