Narrative & Psychology

In most psychology i imagine (not being a psychologist) that the object is to get a clear narrative for the patient. One that puts together all the confusing mental and physical elements in a way that enables them to be mentally collected and tidied away.

I consider my as-of-today-ex-girlfriend. In counseloring sessions recently she comes to reveal that she has low self-esteem began because her aunt valued her brother more than her. She was driven to become very jealous and competitive toward him, and after forming a respect for him then other people. She tackles the symptoms these days of that low self-esteem but has forgotten about it. She's told me this before.

The thing is tho my sister had the same thing with me. My grandmother never gave my sister a second look but doated on me. My sister has grown up to be more confident and successful than me and I just got complacent in the praise and never did anything.

The point is not then that the narrative does anything. Same narrative for different people achieves different results. Its that looking at the whole story we have a narrative of the person herself. It is a very useful tool to describe a personality, not directly, but through the way events have been dealt with by that personality.

So we know that my ex has a born tendency to feel undervalued. Having narrativised what she is however, and seen what narrative she would like to be, she can follow the new narrative and in so doing change those aspects of her intangible personality.

Well that's my defence case for Freud.

Pride

It occurred to me this morning that maybe "pride" is my biggest problem. I am certainly too proud to ever get what I want, and have always rejected that wanting, rather than be its slave.

This is useful because there are 2 types of desire then. There are the food like desires which are not very specific - we just need some food, maybe today, maybe tomorrow and we aren't too fussed what it is. These desires I don't fight because I know I can deny them forever if necessary and can chose when to satisfy them. I only ate a few sandwiches in the last 2 days, bit of hunger easy to cure, no problem.

The other type of desire is much more specific, especially desire for a person. This desire cannot be satisfied anytime and with anything, it is very specific. The thought of going into action in such a slavish and demanding way fills me with loathing - I am too proud to be a slave, even to my own deepest desires. Going into action to try and get my muse was the most un-natural and unhappy experience in a way, I would have so happily let her go. My first night after seeing her I was awake till morning tossing and turning in agony because I knew what lay ahead and I didn't really want it. "Theory of Forgetting" was the short essay I wrote to myself in the twilight of sunrise under the yellow sodium light streaming through my window in that London street - that I could only have this relationship when I had the strength to get rid of it. Finally that day is approaching - almost exactly 9 years too late!

I forget the film but a character comes out with a great line, "does a man chose what he wants?". We think we have freedom to chose, but actually we are driven by our desires which are the products of unseen hands of karma and causation. And we must obey those desires else we suffer. Imagine the freedom if we could chose whether to attend to a desire or not! But then of course that is the central issue of the blog - where would the meaning in life be if we really could chose NULL. Isn't that the central point of Buddhism to?

I am too proud to attend to my desires. I am too proud to bend my back and work slavishly for worldly wealth, or power, or even sexual satisfaction. As a child my family marvelled in the total lack of concern I had for things, never cried, never concerned that my mother was or was not there, just sat where I was put - little did they realise that my lack of tears as a child would become tears as an adult because I would painfully resist all these pressures to do things.

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My lab partner just called and gave some input - he is wonderful actually, a great laugh and genuinely a help when it is needed. He wanted to know how I knew that he had stated spiritual practice again. It seems I just knew for no reason. He pointed out that, that was some kind of telepathy. I'm suddenly reminded of a past girlfriend who was empathic and what a nightmare that was for her because she couldn't tell whether feelings were hers or other peoples.
She'd get in such a mess trying to make sense of all these confusing emotions.

So then another narrative is that I'm an empath? The reason that I'm struggling with these relationships is that they are not my feelings. A girl likes me, I feel the feeling and then it feels almost like a job that I must respond. (That is how it feels). My inner response is there, lust, desire, love but I am loathed to do anything about it. Truely as I write and consider that all my loves may have been just "trips" or empathy I am filled with complete peace - this thing is no longer there to trouble me. My muse said of me that I reminded her of her hollywood pinup Mel Gibson (well she was only 17) she must have been excited by "seeing him", was I just getting her excitement?

There is one thought which disturbs the peace. I imagine my muse, 17, 18, 19 as she was when I knew her exploring her sexuality with some other man. I even met some of them. On the one hand so what. But there seems to be an inescapable question here, what did they experience that I have not experienced of this girl? Was it worth it? and wouldn't it have been worth me experiencing it. Now I'm disturbed again because I feel that "requirement" to act - as if I "should" have done something, that I let myself down, let her down, that I am somehow a reject for not having done something, a failure - as though there is some test here. But I am too proud to obey these external drives - what i want is peace and that means doing nothing.

"Why don't you sleep with her" I was once asked by a suitor. "Because there is more" I answered and tried to explain the beauty that was already there in my mind - I don't think either of us was convinced - he had slept with her then. What did they talk about? what did he know of her that I didn't? Why did he ask me? it makes me feel like I "should" have slept with her, but I am too proud to be raised into action by desires, only by will (which was at war with my desires then). It was torture, I have a broken hand from punching a letter box (ironic seeing as the whole relationship was done through these things).

They say the Pen-is mighter than the sword
But see the Penis far mightier than the word

I used to think to myself, is it true? When she was pursuing physical love it made me feel that I should have been doing that for her instead, but that was not peace, that was not the extraordinary beauty that was already in my mind.

So the question this morning - is this pride a good thing? or do I just give into desires. I satisfied myself with porn last night to test that, pure desire - it was quite depressing to lose all that energy, but it is true not fighting the desires makes for a more peaceful life.

The only problem though is what happens when strong desires arise again that need attending to...

just to add so this narrative does not explain however why I have been born with this desire to meet that girl, or one similar? (still don't know the difference). I do feel though that, that desire has been satisfied now.

Must love be two sided?

As already hinted I have had a lifelong fascination with the possibility of Platonic relationship. The idea that people can desire each other for who they are, rather than what they are and so express that desire in non-physical terms.

I discover today that my now departed muse may never have desired me physically. I'm sure there was something originally, but it was lost in the spiritual explorations.

However this raises the possibility that the spiritual relationship may have been more one sided two!

I remember an old girlfriend who got caught up on this problem twice. Firstly when she was on acid she kept asking me whether I was "on her trip" or on somebody elses trip. That experience on the wind swept remote sand dunes of Terschelling island, Netherlands, was very eye opening seeing the mind workings of 6 friends completely fall apart - I remained straight to check all went well. It made total sense because my mind began to fall apart with them - it is just that I remembered it all very well afterwards. "trip" was a word they started using meaningfully only after the acid came up. Each person was zoning out in their own unfolding stream of creative consciousness. What was bizarre was that trips kept crossing over when people talked so that halucinations would spread around the group, even I - the sober one - could see what they were talking about even though for me it was just an interpretation of visual data, rather than a convincing hallucination. People were calling people into their trips, and sometimes more fringe people would take a while to see what was being described. My girlfriend (as best as her spaced out consciousness could be) was very taken by this feature of her trip, unsure how it was hers and whether I was on her trip or not.


Exactly the same thing happened when we split up and I had to be honest with her I had never really loved her. That was destroying for her because she then had the experience that her love was a "trip" that I had not been on.

Well its karma isn't it because maybe this profound experience that has driven my last 9 years, and which I have waited my whole life for was actually just a "trip". I called to my muse to enter my trip but she didn't come, and so she became simply an object of fantasy and hallucination through which I could explore my own "trip" and mind.

Deep down I think I am actually happinest about this narrative because it means that there was no responsibility to her, there was no real connection, loss or gain, infact it may have been simply a powerful dream. Hmmm except I did know that something terrible was going to happen, and had happened... so there was some physical evidence for a connection. I am still to find out from her sister if there was any real connection. I knew we were very "good friends", I as a man am still to find out quite what that meant ;-)

Maybe I'm beginning to realise that for women at least it is the body which drives the mind, not the other way around. Irony there when it is men who are stereotyped by women as the physically obsessed sex... but of course that is simply women projecting their desires onto men ;-)

Someone who worked here had an even closer connection. He suddenly saw a girl he used to sleep with staring at him from the other side of the street. They had not met in years but he was sure it looked like her. He was with his wife so couldn't do anything, but she just stared and stared till he was gone. The next day he got a call that she had been killed the previous day in a bike accident.

So is love always a "trip" and does one initiate it and pull the other in, or is there destiny which brings people together from outside, or is it just luck that people have mutual desire which brings them together inside, or is it simply bloody hard work if that is what you want. I can say the last is not true alone because I have tried to make a relationship from scratch but without a starting spark nothing happens.

Amazing that after so much consideration the court is still out here. I'm clear on one thing - the narrative you use depends upon your mood! I'm just getting "out of love" with everyone I ever met, and so the "trip" theory seems quite good today. But I have only yesterday liked the destiny theory.

Self confidence

I realise that the solution to a giving relationship requires self confidence. To think that there is worth in giving oneself to someone means that we must value ourself. When we have strong desires for someone we tend to value them very much, obviously more than we value ourself - for whom we have no desire. This might be confusing at first because we cannot understand why someone would value having us, and so I imagine most relationships default to taking, where each partner simply takes what they want.

Maybe then as trust is developed in the relationship and people realise that they are valued by the partner both self-confidence increases and thoughts of giving replace thoughts of taking.

For me who is already concerned for giving the process then is greater self-confidence and understanding the mutual possibility of giving, and then embark on a loving relationship.

Destiny, Freedom & Narrative

Speeking informally to a councelor recently I asked him what his view on destiny was. His answer was very satisfying.

We have a life goal, a reason why we are here. We have complete freedom, but if we make choices which contradict that life goal the going gets very tough.

This fits very well with karma. We chose a rebirth to satisfy our deep desires. Fighting those desires as I have been apt to do makes life very hard and difficult. It is also futile because these desires originate deeper than "my" superficial self.

That there is no complete freedom is frustrating at first glance, but then it makes total sense. If we did have complete freedom then what reason is there to do anything? The causation of our existence is the reason we do what we do, it is what gives life its meaning. It is that meaning I have been lacking.

It occured are all destinies good. Hitler clearly had a massive destiny and he followed it, but he shouldn't have and should have struggled against it. So it seems that we do need to check where we are going and be prepared for the hard work of struggling against bad destinies.

The difficulties in life arise because we are going against karmas - some good , some bad - and we need to work on the difference. The councellor flavoured his view with the sense that karmas are what bring meaning to life, rather than just being mechanical causations from past actions. Further our lifes goal might even be encouraged and enforced by "spiritual entities" (left undefined). In many way what he said answered the key loss that I am writing this blog to discover - just what are we supposed to do with our "life".

From another perspective what this gives me is a narrative on life - a story with which to tie the events of the world together, a "raft" on which to sail the flow of existence as Buddha called his narratives in the Diamond Sutra.

Indeed this whole blog is one massive search for narratives, for stories with which to satisfy myself about the events of the world. Most recently the utterly shocking, meaningless and painful loss of my closest friend and only true love. It helps so much to narrativise it, to give me a raft with which to fight back against the great horrible demon Death. I need to add of course (but feel very bad for this piercing honesty) that even the idea that she was these wonderful things is another narrative to help me mediate the attractions and powerful life altering experience of knowing her.

I understand that in its purer phases Buddha's many teachings, his many raft to help beings struggling with the unfolding of life events - the ocean of suffering - become useless, that there comes a time when we no loger require stories to get through life.

I began reading a book the Kathasaritsagara soon after meeting this girl. She was Indian, the whole world was Indian for me after loving Indian food all my life (I'm English ;-) and having been stunned by Hindu and Buddhism teachings. That book name means "ocean of stories". I began to become a story teller for her in many letters, the story teller was Riswey. The ocean of stories made little sense at first. I read about Vidyadharas and thought that is what she must be - a narrative to help explain why she was so special. There was a beautiful passage which altered my thinking just as the text itself says - he gazed upon her and his mind was disturbed as the moons reflection on water. It reminds me in passing of something she once wrote of her back garden - the blades of grass struggling upward to be part of the expanse of green. One of the most perceptive and eye opening things I ever read. The stories are so fast paced, people lives sometimes coming and going in just a few sentences. The destinies and driving force behind the lives of the many people in the book is to meet and share their stories and so lives are intertwined ever more complexly as the endless stories unfold. I have begun to appreciate the vast scope of this book - the way our lives are short and briefly intertwined for no greater purpose that to make and share a story. That our endless journey of writing stories to remember the past, the lost, and to make sense of the present and the future is what makes life and time.

Maybe as "outcast" has been trying to say in the comments the time might come to stop narrativising and just let things be. On the other hand, if life and death is about stories then there can be no harm in telling some more. Maybe in future stories I might have something different to say.

And I want to add a problem I have had before. If life and death is a story, what is the difference between a true story and a fictional story?

As Robert Pirsig says in "Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle maintenance" - do the planets go around the sun because of the Laws of Physics, or are the Laws of Physics the way they are because the planets go around the sun. Well Maths is an extremely unusual story with many inner qualities quite unlike written stories - but in so far as they are telling a story that story has been molded to the planets - not the other way around. A true story is molded or plays a great part in the interaction of humans with the world. A fictional story plays a smaller role, but clearly a role. We can learn from myths and legends and much of what we believe helps us interact very successfully with the psychological level without it needing to be "true". The obvious question arises what is the "world" then, but that is another story ;-) (See Wittgenstein's later work for more on that.)

Sex & Death

A friend once pointed out the Jim Morrison lyrics - he touched her leg, and Death smiled. Don't you see he explained that because of mortality we are forced into reproduction to replace ourselves when we die. It was a brilliant observation and was the basis for a lot of thought that came later.

The space between the graves in a grave yard which enables them to be for different persons, is exactly the same force of distinction and separation which we call Death. Which can be expanded thus...

Kondanna's insight at Sarnath when Buddha first gave his 4 Noble Truths teaching, I understand to be, that every existent thing must also be temporary. In other words if something exists we know that it came from somewhere (it was created) and we know it goes somewhere (it will be destroyed). [the place where things come from and go to is often called the Void].

Things exist as separate entitied because they are "different" from one another - [this is Structuralist thought]. Differentiation is a feature of the mind. We teach kids to identify things, and to distinguish things they once thought were the same. All animals are called "dogs" at first until the child learns a new word and its distinction.

In meditation the process of differentiation is gradually stilled so that things are no longer separated. It does not mean they stick together in "one" either - there is just an absence of division. This "absence of division" or equanimity is the highest quality of our mind. Without division there is no longer Death! Things are neither seen as being created, nor destroyed and they are neither seen as being existing things either. This is also called the awareness of emptiness.

Death exists because we see people as separate entities. Thus individual entities are born, live and die. Ironically it is the distinction of individuals which also creates the basis for desire - where desire is need for something outside ourselves. And more ironically in sexual desire it is sexual difference which fuels the attraction. [In homosexuality where there is no sexual difference I cannot see how it can be "sexual" desire unless it is created in full awareness of the "other" sex but which rather than be attracted is rejected - Freudian?]. And as if biology was aware of the logic, sexual desire ironically leads to reproduction and the biological solution to impermanence and Death.

It is that biological solution to Death which worries me because sex and child birth occurs because of Death, it does overcome and defeat Death. It is very ironic that my current situation leaves me sexual frustrated and desperately missing a potential lover because I dared to try to overcome Death, but Death has instead raised its head and taken her away and shown me how powerless and futile I am.

It is tempting to transform my physical desires for her mortal being into spirtual desires for some immortal entity - as if she had joined the Earth mother, or become the bright silvery moon of which she was so fond, rising peacefully in her midnight blue ocean of sky - her favourite colour - but I am fearful that such fantasies are not real, are unhelpful and maybe even detrimental to her rebirth. I sort of relish the idea of being reborn to relive all this, but also am so guilty for having desires for someone who has been liberated from this life and should be free to attain whatever form she desires. It is so hard to accept what has happened, and to allow it to decay into the Void. Am still so struck by the awful ironies, that my feelings for her are a desire which is both caused by Death and which causes Death, but it is that Death which has taken away what those desires it created so wanted.

Desire really is suffering.

Sex & Spirit

I might have finally got this one clear.

I have always been afraid of losing my sense of respect or my love for someone in the sex act. The reason is that there is this temptation to be greedy and to take from the experience. In doing this they become an object of desire which is both appealing and morally intolerable. To avoid this risk I have always erred on platonic relationships with those I love to protect the spiritual component of relationships.

But it doesn't work because as I have discovered sexual desire does not just roll over and go away. There are levels of the experience which go light years beyond simple "wanting", getting rid of sexual desire is not as easy as getting rid of smoking. After 9 years I find I still have the complete kaleidoscope of unsatisfied desires toward my muse, things which I have been in a state of denial about all that time. Her passing on has awoken everything and thrown me straight back to the beginning.

I have made a resolution now not to be in denial about sexuality. It is something I must face and tackle fully. The mutual interaction between body and mind is something I have no choice but to mediate.

The key to the progress goes back to a small antique book shop in New Oxford Street. I remember finding this book of Chinese poetry and opening it finding a love poem. I read a section to the Chinese dance teacher I was accompanying that day. I forget the words but the meaning was this : the boy out of his love for the girl had the grace and virtue to offer her his body.

Sckeptics of love might scorn this apparently generous act as really just a selfish one. I think to some extent I did to. But last week having opened and examined the issue of sexuality again its real truth became apparent.

It is so obvious.

The fear I have had about objectifying a girl in the laser sights of sexual desire is quite rightly founded. I quick scan of pornography illustrates this predatory, objectifying mode perfectly. We are not encouraged to have loving feelings towards the girls in porn anyway - its name means the photographing of whores! But the solution is not platonic relationship as I have painfully been trying to achieve. It is what a hundred people have tried to explain to me before.

We can deny ourselves "sexual taking" from a partner as if it were a platonic relationship. This is the act of physical sacrifice associated with spiritual love. (I suppose the opposite for the true hedonist would be spiritual sacrifice in the name of physical attraction).

But we don't need to abstain from physical contact. Instead we can give our own physical existence to our partner in a sexual union.

Thus sexual energy is liberated (it being blocked is my personal crisis at the moment) but instead of being vacuously and very unsatisfyingly dissipated into space it is given to another. That giving of sexual energy I suspect now is the feeling of romantic love.

It all comes back to me now - the things I was working on. Sexual energy has many forms. Lying arm in arm with a partner and recycling ones breath with them can lead to the raising of spiritual energy to the heart. I think this is called the heart chakra etc. Physical sexuality and orgasm I have been told is linked to the base of the pelvis, so that kind of sexual activity lowers the sexual energy. I've only experienced the two - there are 6 I believe. Maybe I have a block in the throat, communication, chakra because when it comes to writing it never really works at the moment - altho the relationship with my muse was conducted almost entirely through writing and much sexual energy was given through that. She however still required the physical and that is where the pain set in - jealousy, misunderstanding, suspicion, feelings of inadequacy and eventually overwhelming sexual frustration but thankfully never anger or criticism. Hopefully all hidden from her when she was alive. I realise this week that giving her my physical body, had she accepted it, would have - if done right - enhanced the spiritual relationship. But since I didn't understand this then, just as well i didn't try.

So the conclusion for the future is not to outright reject expressing love through the physical, but rather see through the short term physical desires to the higher perspective of giving sexual energy at the level desired by the partner as both a gift to her and a sacrifice of oneself.

An obvious note: if the partner takes the sexual energy selfishly this is disappointing. Near the point of female orgasm I have always been disappointed at the distance between myself and the partner - maybe I have had the wrong partners - but it seems to be an internal experience for them. But if I think about it so is my orgasm a selfish internal experience...hmmm to be investigated