When I read, I like to fathom the mindset of the one who wrote the words. Even with simple detective and mystery novels, I look to become the author's consciousness. In this way, I shape-shift, opening up areas of my own mindscape that hitherto had lain dormant. I open to Chuang Tzu, to Ibn Arabi, to Panikkar and become more than the small town Georgia boy who cut his eye teeth on the King James version of the Bible, though that too led to some wildly interesting consciousness change on my part.
Currently I read the works of Carl Jung and of Nietzsche (see "Favored Reading" in the column to the right), switching back and forth, having found this method to produce the greatest variation and stretching of my awareness, much like seeing several clients with different perspectives and problems during a given day, as I did when a psychotherapist.
They are both wild men; Nietzsche fearlessly looking at every aspect of human consciousness and behavior and calling it as he sees it; Jung fearlessly looking at the substrates of consciousness, its underpinnings and speaking of what lies beyond and beneath the ego realm. Good role models, these two, in their fearless looking and reporting.
Words are alive and when taken in, explode, transferring one to vaster realms. These two buddy boys are doing it for me. Kind of like transubstantiation, the wine and the bread of their writings transforming me into their body and their blood and beyond.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment