You write so astoundingly well but I must say I’ve not read much of jung. So I can’t comprehend some of it. But I understand the mythopoetic style. I’m actually trying to kill my ego or at least dilute it with self realisation. I meditate on kriya yoga and that’s helped enormously. Anyway I procrastinate keep writing!
I'd like to hear more about that. Anything you'd be willing to share about what those practices are doing for you and any shifts you're noticing? Or resources you appreciate? Thanks for sharing that.
Sure! Thank you . I’m meditating daily for longer periods I’m only using basic techniques at the moment but I’ve noticed after the aum mantra the vibration in my body feels so energised. I get clearer conscience and thoughts aren’t ever so intrusive. I feel sometimes in meditation like there’s a lightbulb at the back of my head. I’ll probably start some more advanced techniques soon in my course.
It sure is I feel much calmer, although I’m having trouble with my heart at the moment. Been referred to a cardiologist. This is now making me tentative in my practice. I’ve ordered kairos too all on my kindle :)
I'm sorry to hear about your heart trouble. I hope it improves. I'm not a doctor, and this isn't medical advice, but I suspect I have heart damage as a result of chemotherapy, and I've just started sauna therapy for it. Have you looked into it at all? Here's a great podcast detailing the benefits of sauna use, which is linked with a significant reduction in the likelihood of experiencing cardiovascular distress, neurodegenerative diseases, and all-cause mortality.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick on the health benefits of sauna use:
I’m sorry you have been through that. It’s very troubling psychologically too. I keep thinking about it, as I write this my heart feels strange and quicker heartbeat. I’ve used a sauna once thanks for the heads up I will look into it. I’ll look at that link too. I did wonder if my meditation practice had increased my heart rate? I’m on medication for schizophrenia too
Wow. K as Ariadne (or Persephone) is quite fantastic. This is a terrific article. All the explanatory stuff was as interesting to as the actual analysis of K&H. This adds a lot more to what i had already imagined going in with generational perspectives and personal history experiences. Ok….part ii next
My thesis: Kairos is a gorgeous rumination on living in a psychologically and politically ruinous place and still finding beauty in it -- questioning not only what was gained by the fall of the GDR, but what was lost, and what it's like to be a person who comes from a place that exists only as a projected apparition.
I had a conversation with another book club member (you know who you are, if you're reading this), and we agreed that part of what was meaningful for us as well is that we both identified as utopian, idealistic dreamers, and we felt the pain of what happens when that dream transmogrifies into a nightmare. It was emotional to witness it unfolding on the page.
Kairos is dense with cultural references. There are readers who don't like the additions of these references, but they were so, so moving to me. I'm having strong feelings of wanting to defend them, for whatever it's worth. It's an axiom and truism that wars produce dark ages and destroy knowledge. In all the wars and political upheavals of the 20th century, the hidden worlds of culture, art, and knowledge that people carried around with them were in part destroyed -- and in part supplanted by new sensibilities. As a Jewish person with roots in Eastern and Central Europe who has no direct ties to Germany but substantial ties to variants of German language and its minor cultures, I was astounded to learn of the braided cultural legacies and to go down enriching rabbit holes -- on Heinrich Heine, on Bertolt Brecht, etc. Recovering the lost worlds reconnects us to our particular and shared pasts and helps us find transcendence beyond the banal and immediate materialities of quotidian existence. It's also a bulwark against historical amnesia, which is particularly pernicious. The words aren't mapping, but this book was quite emotional for me.
I am interested in many things about the book, especially how we preserve the memory of a place that no longer exists, when it meant a great deal to us, and how we create a story with fidelity to the emotional truth of what that time and place felt like (story-truth for Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried). I understand that not everyone enjoys reading this kind of story, but it's the kind of story that Erpenbeck felt compelled to tell.
I'm still thinking about the classical allusions in Kairos and why they're there / what they're doing there. I've been thinking and writing about them a lot, but I still don't have any satisfactory answers, and I think it's a good book club question.
Here's something I wrote about the labyrinth as a comment/ addendum to one of my posts: I've been thinking more about the labyrinth as a paradoxical symbol. On the one hand, the ancient Greeks descended into the underworld (descent is "katabasis") for otherworldly /supernatural wisdom, so it's a place of enlightenment and transformation. For Jung, I think it was the mind and its path to individuation. The only way out was through, and traversing its dark recesses and corridors to get to the center signified the confrontation with the shadow /unconscious, facilitating self-realization. On the other hand, the labyrinth as underground prison can be likened to the cave in Plato's allegory, where the individual is locked in ignorance and doesn't know what he doesn't know until he escapes. Maybe both represent life under totalitarian communism.
I've been turning over the trope of the labyrinth, which has taken me to The Physics of Sorrow by Gospodinov and the show Westworld (both have labyrinths). Westworld is a fascinating iteration of Plato's allegory of the cave. It's exploring simulation theory in all sorts of provocative ways -- from the idea that reality is socially constructed and that there are edges to our consciousness by virtue of the boundaries of perception transmitted through certain epistemologies and ideologies, to questions pertaining to technology and AI. One of the other themes it explores that finds a parallel in Plato's dialogues is the trope of hearing voices, which Plato identifies as the voices of the gods, which confer divine madness. He relates that the gods speak to people through four gifts of divine madness. Apollo gives the madness of prophecy, Dionysus gives the madness of mystical ecstasy, the Muses give the madness of poetry, and Aphrodite gives erotic madness. And Westworld demonstrates an interesting social experiment that tests character; some take it for license to indulge their base instincts and desires of wanton sex and violence, while others try to fulfill higher needs of the soul.
If anyone has ideas about the classical allusions in Kairos, feel free to share.
In Georgi Gospodinov's The Physics of Sorrow, he writes, "That which has not been told, just like that which has not happened -- because they're of the same order -- possess all possibilities, countless variations on how they could happen or be told. Alas, the story is linear and you have to get rid of the detours every time, wall up the side corridors. The classical narrative is an annulling of the possibilities that rain down on you from all sides. Before you fix its boundaries, the world is full of parallel versions and corridors. All possible outcomes potter about only in hesitation and indecisiveness. And quantum physics, filled with indeterminacy and uncertainty, has proved this. I try to leave space for other versions to happen, cavities in the story, more corridors, voices and rooms, unclosed-off stories, as well as secrets that we will not pry into... And there, where the story's sin was not avoided, hopefully uncertainty was with us" (240).
Maybe the labyrinth signifies not only a space fraught with danger but also a place of unlimited potentiality, a maze of endless possibilities and possible futures. Maybe the death in the labyrinth signifies the closing off of possibilities for a different future, for an elsewhere and otherwise from the capitalist state, an escape from Fukuyama's End of History. It starts out like a quantum spray and ends up being linear. We get sucked into the end of history, regardless of the route there. It becomes an inevitability.
You write so astoundingly well but I must say I’ve not read much of jung. So I can’t comprehend some of it. But I understand the mythopoetic style. I’m actually trying to kill my ego or at least dilute it with self realisation. I meditate on kriya yoga and that’s helped enormously. Anyway I procrastinate keep writing!
I only came to Jung through Joseph Campbell, I think. Third Eye Drops discusses Jung in an expansive way. Easy listening.
I’ve just ordered about five jung books I didn’t know where to begin! But I got the important ones I hope
I'd like to hear more about that. Anything you'd be willing to share about what those practices are doing for you and any shifts you're noticing? Or resources you appreciate? Thanks for sharing that.
Sure! Thank you . I’m meditating daily for longer periods I’m only using basic techniques at the moment but I’ve noticed after the aum mantra the vibration in my body feels so energised. I get clearer conscience and thoughts aren’t ever so intrusive. I feel sometimes in meditation like there’s a lightbulb at the back of my head. I’ll probably start some more advanced techniques soon in my course.
That sounds wonderful. It sounds like a very meaningful practice.
It sure is I feel much calmer, although I’m having trouble with my heart at the moment. Been referred to a cardiologist. This is now making me tentative in my practice. I’ve ordered kairos too all on my kindle :)
I'm sorry to hear about your heart trouble. I hope it improves. I'm not a doctor, and this isn't medical advice, but I suspect I have heart damage as a result of chemotherapy, and I've just started sauna therapy for it. Have you looked into it at all? Here's a great podcast detailing the benefits of sauna use, which is linked with a significant reduction in the likelihood of experiencing cardiovascular distress, neurodegenerative diseases, and all-cause mortality.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick on the health benefits of sauna use:
https://youtu.be/RWkv9ad7zvc
I’m sorry you have been through that. It’s very troubling psychologically too. I keep thinking about it, as I write this my heart feels strange and quicker heartbeat. I’ve used a sauna once thanks for the heads up I will look into it. I’ll look at that link too. I did wonder if my meditation practice had increased my heart rate? I’m on medication for schizophrenia too
Wow. K as Ariadne (or Persephone) is quite fantastic. This is a terrific article. All the explanatory stuff was as interesting to as the actual analysis of K&H. This adds a lot more to what i had already imagined going in with generational perspectives and personal history experiences. Ok….part ii next
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it.
My thesis: Kairos is a gorgeous rumination on living in a psychologically and politically ruinous place and still finding beauty in it -- questioning not only what was gained by the fall of the GDR, but what was lost, and what it's like to be a person who comes from a place that exists only as a projected apparition.
I had a conversation with another book club member (you know who you are, if you're reading this), and we agreed that part of what was meaningful for us as well is that we both identified as utopian, idealistic dreamers, and we felt the pain of what happens when that dream transmogrifies into a nightmare. It was emotional to witness it unfolding on the page.
Kairos is dense with cultural references. There are readers who don't like the additions of these references, but they were so, so moving to me. I'm having strong feelings of wanting to defend them, for whatever it's worth. It's an axiom and truism that wars produce dark ages and destroy knowledge. In all the wars and political upheavals of the 20th century, the hidden worlds of culture, art, and knowledge that people carried around with them were in part destroyed -- and in part supplanted by new sensibilities. As a Jewish person with roots in Eastern and Central Europe who has no direct ties to Germany but substantial ties to variants of German language and its minor cultures, I was astounded to learn of the braided cultural legacies and to go down enriching rabbit holes -- on Heinrich Heine, on Bertolt Brecht, etc. Recovering the lost worlds reconnects us to our particular and shared pasts and helps us find transcendence beyond the banal and immediate materialities of quotidian existence. It's also a bulwark against historical amnesia, which is particularly pernicious. The words aren't mapping, but this book was quite emotional for me.
I am interested in many things about the book, especially how we preserve the memory of a place that no longer exists, when it meant a great deal to us, and how we create a story with fidelity to the emotional truth of what that time and place felt like (story-truth for Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried). I understand that not everyone enjoys reading this kind of story, but it's the kind of story that Erpenbeck felt compelled to tell.
I'm still thinking about the classical allusions in Kairos and why they're there / what they're doing there. I've been thinking and writing about them a lot, but I still don't have any satisfactory answers, and I think it's a good book club question.
Here's something I wrote about the labyrinth as a comment/ addendum to one of my posts: I've been thinking more about the labyrinth as a paradoxical symbol. On the one hand, the ancient Greeks descended into the underworld (descent is "katabasis") for otherworldly /supernatural wisdom, so it's a place of enlightenment and transformation. For Jung, I think it was the mind and its path to individuation. The only way out was through, and traversing its dark recesses and corridors to get to the center signified the confrontation with the shadow /unconscious, facilitating self-realization. On the other hand, the labyrinth as underground prison can be likened to the cave in Plato's allegory, where the individual is locked in ignorance and doesn't know what he doesn't know until he escapes. Maybe both represent life under totalitarian communism.
I've been turning over the trope of the labyrinth, which has taken me to The Physics of Sorrow by Gospodinov and the show Westworld (both have labyrinths). Westworld is a fascinating iteration of Plato's allegory of the cave. It's exploring simulation theory in all sorts of provocative ways -- from the idea that reality is socially constructed and that there are edges to our consciousness by virtue of the boundaries of perception transmitted through certain epistemologies and ideologies, to questions pertaining to technology and AI. One of the other themes it explores that finds a parallel in Plato's dialogues is the trope of hearing voices, which Plato identifies as the voices of the gods, which confer divine madness. He relates that the gods speak to people through four gifts of divine madness. Apollo gives the madness of prophecy, Dionysus gives the madness of mystical ecstasy, the Muses give the madness of poetry, and Aphrodite gives erotic madness. And Westworld demonstrates an interesting social experiment that tests character; some take it for license to indulge their base instincts and desires of wanton sex and violence, while others try to fulfill higher needs of the soul.
If anyone has ideas about the classical allusions in Kairos, feel free to share.
In Georgi Gospodinov's The Physics of Sorrow, he writes, "That which has not been told, just like that which has not happened -- because they're of the same order -- possess all possibilities, countless variations on how they could happen or be told. Alas, the story is linear and you have to get rid of the detours every time, wall up the side corridors. The classical narrative is an annulling of the possibilities that rain down on you from all sides. Before you fix its boundaries, the world is full of parallel versions and corridors. All possible outcomes potter about only in hesitation and indecisiveness. And quantum physics, filled with indeterminacy and uncertainty, has proved this. I try to leave space for other versions to happen, cavities in the story, more corridors, voices and rooms, unclosed-off stories, as well as secrets that we will not pry into... And there, where the story's sin was not avoided, hopefully uncertainty was with us" (240).
Maybe the labyrinth signifies not only a space fraught with danger but also a place of unlimited potentiality, a maze of endless possibilities and possible futures. Maybe the death in the labyrinth signifies the closing off of possibilities for a different future, for an elsewhere and otherwise from the capitalist state, an escape from Fukuyama's End of History. It starts out like a quantum spray and ends up being linear. We get sucked into the end of history, regardless of the route there. It becomes an inevitability.