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| Image by Dawn Whitney-Hall |
Hegel wrote that the owl of Minerva takes wing at dusk. Any wisdom we might have (philosophy, self-knowledge) postdates the raw events of life. We experience - and only then the possibility of reflection and understanding.
And so in our last decades we draw a balance sheet. Our work in the world is mostly done: others will move the world forward: build families or utopias or theories of reality.
What is left to us is character itself: the perfection of self before we vanish like fleeting dew before the gathering light of a new day without us.
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The psychotherapy community talks about the balanced type development of maturity; the Taoists talk about harmony and following the Way.
I agree with both.
As 'stuff' which is conscious, we should do everything in our power to get this business of 'being' right. Not let ourselves down; not be marked down by those who interact with us.
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What does failure look like?
A memory at which I cringe. Twenty years ago a discussion with a senior UK television executive. The consultancy I worked for was intending to do a project of some kind with him. I was under-briefed on the TV industry, an omission of which I was starkly aware.
With a much better prepared, but more junior colleague I met with him at a café in Paddington station. We talked and I have to say I monopolised the conversation, bombarding him with urgent questions as my ignorance and insecurity strove to get a handle on his world and the issues confronting him. He visibly shrank back under this remorseless hammering. My embarrassed friend interrupted me: "Why are you asking our client? I know all about this…"
I ignored him.
I never had any contact with that executive again. The project did not go ahead.
Another client described me once, frankly: "You make me feel like a butterfly, trapped by a pin, while you dissect me."
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What do the advocates of mature type development and of the Tao tell us?
My MBTI is INTP (P shading to J). In the Jungian telling, I normally present an open, ideas-oriented face to the world (secondary, extraverted N) while my introverted analytic self tries to synthesise the logic of it (dominant introverted T)
But when I'm stressed and off-balance my subconscious anxieties take the driving seat. To quote a personality website:
"The dominant function of the INTP is their Ti, when they are in their shadow they become more focused on Te. When the INTP attempts to dominantly use this function it can cause them to be more direct, and even a bit aggressive in their attempts to get things done."
So that was me when I felt out of my depth. If only I had had the maturity and self-insight to recognise what was going wrong - and to stay balanced and calm!
But when one is 'trapped' in the constraints of career, there is little space for the cultivation of the self. Growing up remains a postponed project of one's later years. Better late than never.
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Just as traditional Chinese medicine is a phenomenological approximation to scientific biology, so I used to imagine the Tao (The Way) as a pre-scientific cosmology. But of course it isn't.
The precepts of Taoism - the flow of water, the fluent motions of animals such as cats - prioritise categories of harmony which are at root psychological archetypes.
One is reminded of athletes talking of being in the zone, and going with the flow.
It is the battering of threats, physical and social, which judder us out of the flow, which force a conflict between id and superego which throws the ego into anguished incompetence. Hell is other people with destabilising agendas, threatening situations.
Yet there are no 'situations in themselves'; there are only our attitudes to situations: the framing, the paradigm in which we comprehend and emotionally react to them. And our reactions are our own - ours to frame. We have choices if we are self-aware enough. We are not condemned to be a slave to the shadow.
I take Taoism to be a framework for self-preparation for just that. To consciously self-monitor and find a harmonious, balanced, mature response to events. All of them. Not to be possessed by one's Inferior function. I believe they call it Mindfulness.
How?
Ritualised forms or katas such as those of T'ai Chi or Qigong direct the mind-body complex towards self-confidence and calm. That which is attained during practice may spill over into general life. Sometimes all you need is a catalyst.
So I think I see a goal (I am aware that the real goal is to have no goal).
Grow up finally. Be wiser. Finish the work.
May 2022.