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Intentionality In Action


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Intentionality means conscious, actively directed behavior. It can be directed at both doing by solving problems (yanging) and equally by active listening (yinning). Both are valuable and part of the dialogue of growth. This dialogue can occur internally, externally, and reciprocally, between ego and self, between self and others, between self and G-d and so on.

 

When dialogue is limited (unidirectional) or ceases in any relation ... growth is stunted.

 

In my own voice,

 

Myron

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Never thought of the yang-yin comparison, but not really being much studied in Eastern traditions, but I think it's an excellent one! As this thought begins to settled down through the layes of thought, I can tell already its going to work some positive adjustments for me.

 

Jenell

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Never thought of the yang-yin comparison, but not really being much studied in Eastern traditions, but I think it's an excellent one! As this thought begins to settled down through the layes of thought, I can tell already its going to work some positive adjustments for me.

 

Jenell

 

Jenell,

 

This is the basis of what Jung calls the Transcendent Function. He was well read in Eastern psychology and came to the conclusion that mental processes are not antithetical despite apparent contradictions of content. Jung was a skilled listener. He could talk with Schizophrenics in their own language and hold an intelligent conversation. Had he not developed this capacity, much of his later theory would never have developed.

 

Myron

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Myron nice..............Musicians especially in Jazz feed off the audience or active listeners.

 

Louie Armstrong ... "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen ... but Jesus."

 

His rendition is so tender and so real.

 

It elicites feeling.

 

Myron

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Guest billmc

Myron, thanks for sharing this, my friend. Music has always been spiritual for me. And I love Jazz!

 

Music - when it's written, it's creative; when it's heard, it's transformative.

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One of the many things long crowding my reading list has been Jung's works. While I've been introduced, both through some of my psychology/religious studies courses and personal reading, to some of Jung's ideas, some excepts anddiscussions of Jung, but more so, distillations of them as they are foundational to how others have interpreted and integrated them, I haven't read Jung's fullworks. And I feel I need to.

 

The observation about Jung's insight and understanding of Schizophrenics...I understand Jung himself underwent a period of profound psychologcal upheaval, that seems quite consistent with his own and others' observations about what are in many cultures recognized as "shamanic callings", the initiating "calling sickness" of those "chosen" by the Spirit to become travelers of the underworld, aka the inner world of the mind, the maze of the unconscious.

 

There have always been, in most cultures, an association of those "touched by the Spiriit", or the "Divine", with madness.

I recall reading somewhere that the difference between the difference between the psychotic and the shaman is that the psychotic has fallen into the underworld and become lost, to wander there, unable to return, while the shaman is able to enter, find things of value to bring back, and return to this world at will.

 

I think it was around the 1940's that Harry Stack Sullivan wrote works on schizophrenia and working with and treating people with that disorder that are the major landmark works on this subject, and which are still foundational to the understanding and treatment of schizophrenia. Sulliivan's own personal history as relevant to that is interesting. He was from old New England stock descended from the colonizing Puritans, among which there has been recognized a noticably high incidence of mental disorders, including schizophrenia, as well as a higher than average suicide rate. Sullivan himself struggled over many years to complete his formal education, which was interrupted at several points by periods of psychological disturbance, mental/emotional "breakdowns",and possibly even psychotic episodes. While there seems to have been no formal diagnosis of schizoprenia, his life history strongly suggests it. For his uncanny understanding of schizoprenics, there's good reason I think to consider him as among the "gifted" travelers of the underworld that discovered the way back. The "treasure" he found there and brought back with him was understandings of people afflicted by schizophrenia.

 

I feel I need to read Jung's actual works, because I've become convinced he, too, was one that had entered and traveled the underworld, and found his way back, bringing valuable treasures with him.

 

Jenell

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I managed and counseled at a half-way house for emotionally disturbed in Hawaii. We were invited to a seminar/conference for health care workers. I remember one speaker from Esalen Institute said in the old days we respected the Shaman, the visions, and the way of life. He said now we reduce the Shaman to being sick and schizophrenic. May we return to respecting the inner life I am attracted too.

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Jenell, you are correct about Jung having gone through a period of upheaval. What most people do not know is that it was partly self induced. He recorded his experiences in drawings and written records of his "inner dialoque" . The Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles recently had his drawings from this period on display. I attended the opening which included a documentary film followed by a panel discussion. Jung wrote The Transcendent Function in 1916 just as he was coming out of his journey into the unconscious, but the manuscript remained in Jung's files until 1953, for good reason. He did not want to encourage any of his students to attempt a replication of his experiment because it came very close to going out of control.

 

That said, Jung made some very interesting comments in The Transcendent Function that are relevant to recent discussions here. He states that attempts to determine whether a psychological factor is "true" or "false" is, in itself, an obstacle. He said, and I quote, "One might just as well ask whether the duck-billed platypus is a "true" or "correct" invention of the Creator's will."

 

Well, I quess this not so unusual for a man who loved to take off his tie and yodel after a good debate!

 

Myron

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I was browsing EBay book earlier today, for what I might find used and reaso...no, cheap... noticed his family has released Jung's actual personal journal written of those expereinced, drawings and diagrams intact...it is titled the "Red Book"...sounds interesting, but didnt find it cheap unfortunately.

 

I've made references on this board about my self having gone through a "crisis" period some years ago...had NO knowledge of anything that gave me context for what was happening...I felt I was fighting the battleofmy life for my very sanity and grip on reality. While on one hand, I had a powerful sense that I was NOT going insane, ontheother, my rational knowledge had to admit it sure sounded crazy. Having no idea where to go, who to turn to, I searched and researched desperately, believing this if this was happening to me, and I wasn't crazy, then somewhere, sometime, someone else had experienced it too, and knew something about it.

I still vividly remember some of the most profound moments in that, when I'd find a clue, a lead, something that 'clicked'...and among the first reassurances I found was something on a strange sort of psychological upheaval experienced by some famous people that marked the turning point in their lives, people's who's works we would probably never have heard of if they hand't gone through some transformation... The two that resonated most for me were accounts of Carl Jung's experience, and that of Leonard Tolstoy, a mediocre "hack" writer of pulp fiction before....War and Peace was so far beyond anythinghe had previously written..Tolstoy was cited as having said that "before", it had been him writing, but that "after" it was no longer he, but God who wrote through his pen.

 

I've shared more about my having had such an experience here on this board than any in other public place or forum to date. I've learned that in most settings, I don't have to touch my toe to the water very deeply or long to know I'd better just put my walking boots back on. Even in college, I quickly learned there were some distinct differenced between professors and instructors aound whom I could loosen my boot laces a bit and those it was best not. It was there I discovered the profound division between Jungian influnced psychologists and otherwise. The "other" is valuable, just indifferent ways, addressing different aspects of the human experience. Those most open were for the most part associated with the Jung institute in Houston, I wish mypersonal situation were such I could spend more time there,take advantage of lectures, seminars,workshops, and library resources.

 

Jenell

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Btw, still in the attic of my home are 4 good sized boxes, filled with legal pads filled with my notes and writings that just poured forth from some deep well-spring within my unconscious mind over the course of that 3-4 year period of my life. I don't know what to do with it all, I've not gone back to read it since the, but it seemed at the time it was all so personal, of being "taught" in language,metaphor,and symbolic connections that would only be relevant to me personally. Some pretty wild stuff ,really.

 

But an element of of "my teacher's voice", or "personalty". was that of a somewhat outrageous sense of humor...one that still cracks me up was how the "Great White Throne of judgement" appeared, was symbolically represented, in some of my vivid dreams relating to the imagery and symbolic meanings withing The Revelation....it was a toilet!

Later, In one dream, a very painful and personally shameful one in which I was shown the true nature of some particularly bad betrayals I and others in my life had suffered from certain people. we were inside my home, but the betrayers were going about their dastadly low deeds, oblivious to my presence, all the while turds were dropping from their butts, and i was so distraught over that, trying to pick up all their turds off the floor, which I'd then carry to the bathroom and drop them into the toilet. And then my son, at the time in his mid-twenties, appeared, took hold of me gently but firmly, pulling me away from it, saying to me, "Mom, come on, come away from it, leave it, don't get that stuff on you."

As I said,some really wild stuff, but also some really deep work being done.

 

Jenell

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I managed and counseled at a half-way house for emotionally disturbed in Hawaii. We were invited to a seminar/conference for health care workers. I remember one speaker from Esalen Institute said in the old days we respected the Shaman, the visions, and the way of life. He said now we reduce the Shaman to being sick and schizophrenic. May we return to respecting the inner life I am attracted too.

 

In The Transcenent Function, Jung quotes Nietzsche ... "Tis night: now do all fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a bubbling fountain."

 

Myron

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