[--------------------------------------------------------------------------] ooooo ooooo .oooooo. oooooooooooo HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #538 `888' `888' d8P' `Y8b `888' `8 888 888 888 888 888 "For Kelly 3-6" 888ooooo888 888 888 888oooo8 888 888 888 888 888 " by Isaac 888 888 `88b d88' 888 o 3/27/99 o888o o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8 [--------------------------------------------------------------------------] (#3) I am not sure but if there was any misunderstanding or a very wrong picture being painted in any of the letters I have written you. If there was it was probably me not making that clear or setting the correct tone of the letter. So, after reading over the letters, I thought I should add a couple of objective comments, especially if you are a 'rationalistic' person (I want to stress that I really do not know you and any time I allude to opinions of you or acting like I do know you they are pure conjecture). Read them not like I am talking to you but like I am talking to myself or like you are listening to my thoughts. (I say the word "you" many times and I do not always mean the objective "you" the reader. I may be talking to myself. Look out for symbolism. Also keep in mind that if I refer to the ego like in the last letter it is just like I am referring to 'me' in the third person. I am not referring to 'my ego' as 'my self-validity' or 'self-esteem' (as in the term 'inflated ego'). Now that I look at this letter, though, I never really even use the word ego, but in the last letter, I think I said something like 'feeling my ego grow'. Perhaps, a better word to use there instead of 'ego' is 'persona'. Also, I think few notes on basic psychology would not hurt. The psyche is the whole of the mind in the subjective sense and is made of many components, personalities or functional things that are often felt or seen in dreams or in psychological texts are personified objects which are called 'archetypes'. The unconscious is the 'non-ego' part of the psyche and the ego is the one usually conscious or 'active' in the conscious state of being or awareness. Perhaps Jung can explain the unconscious better: "Even though dreams refer to a definite attitude of consciousness and a definite psychic situation, their roots lie deep in the unfathomable dark recesses of the conscious mind. For want of a more descriptive term we call this unknown background the unconscious. We do not know its nature in and for itself, but we observe certain effects from whose qualities we venture certain conclusions in regard to the nature of the unconscious psyche." -- C.G.Jung,"On the Nature of Dreams" This letter is now flying off course into a stiff, lifeless, almost scientific, objective text. I almost thought about numbering my paragraphs and getting serious into concisely explanation of more paradigms and concepts in psychoanalytical theory. Which I doubt you really care about and it was not my first objective, which was to paint a real picture of my mind set and my psychic situation. I felt the best way to do that is with symbolism and emotion as in the second letter. Also, I do welcome feedback. I welcome anything that lets me have a more real picture of your persona. To me you are basically just projections. (That I can consciously guess are false). I am guessing that if you actually give me feedback it will be in the form of inquiry. Just understand that the questions I will have a hard time answering are 'why I would write this?' and 'why I would you write this for me?'. I feel the answer lies in the letters themselves. This is something I was worried you did not understand. But, I guess I can understand now how you would think it was a test or something. Believe me when I say that I am always honest to you. I am not trying to test you or play some stupid game. You probably already know this but I thought I should still include it to act like a formal disclaimer. Also understand that some of the reasons I write to you instead of try to talk to you is because my speech is a lot like my hand writing in that it is very messy and unpracticed. Sometimes I will say things in a sarcastic or mocking tone when I mean them to be sincere or a compliment, and for this reason, misunderstanding and miscommunication often occurs, especially when it has to do with affecting ones ego-validity or matters of the emotional realm, which is why I hate to talk to people who have tendencies to be in one of those mind sets (it is usually one or the other). Though there is something to be said for the emotional realm. For the driver or root of all action can be said to be the emotion, as we see in men or women who are skilled in a men's ways. A man can also be skilled in the 'ways of woman'. For in that emotional realm he can find that there lies, perhaps not 'greater understanding' as one would think of it, but a FEELING of greater understanding and definitely a greater ability to relate to people and have an understanding of them and there motifs. Perhaps it is my inability to play on those functions of people's minds that obstructs my speech and action from conveying the idea I meant to convey successfully. (#4) Perhaps, my objective is to know you. I am not trying to pursue you in any kind of erotic way. My objective is NOT to start some kind of romantic relationship. I may find what I am looking for wholly through my own actions and you will show me something completely indirectly and passively. A child turns over a heavy rock to see what is underneath it. The child may imagine to find a treasure but instead find a world of bugs. Though perhaps, that world of bugs is the treasure the child was looking. In this way the child finds the treasure but he also learns what treasure is. Why does the child choose one rock of another? Is it because he thinks that rock is the 'prettiest', or the lightest, or the smoothest? Is it true that only children turn over rocks? Perhaps they are children in the sense of those who still require growth or to learn something subjectively 'basic' about their world. Perhaps, I too need to grow up, and learn something basic about my world, and the only method of doing that seems to be an extroverted one. You are the rock I wish to turn over. What methods do I have to discover the object called 'Kelly'? More importantly what methods will work? Kelly is no rock, though. She is not a static, unchanging object. She is an autonomous object that one can communicate with and the majority of her behavior can be predicted to be 'reasonable' or 'human-like'. What is it I want from her? To know her psychic contents and her ego thoughts. Which, for the most part, is not something that she can hand to be, or tell me. Thus it would be futile and stupid to approach her ego and ask for her mind. Not only is it improbably that she will want to give it to me but from the position of the ego it is an impossibility. To turn a rock over it must be touched. I now understand why I ask her "if she 'minds' such and such" for I do not want to be seen as an aggressor, touching her in a psychic place she does not want to be touched. Her ego probably feels to be the dominate psychic force, though, and to admit she would mind getting letters or being stared at is like admitting she is not the 'master of her fate' or the one sitting in the captains chair of her own mind. Or perhaps her mind sets up the illusion she is when in fact she is only steering the wheel while being directed by the primal forces that command her to live, grow, and process basic objectives that people usually do in their lives before they die. But the human ego is a strange thing. As it becomes more and more conscious it desires to assert its 'worth' or its 'validity' more and more. At an early stage it is still very unconscious of the why's, who's and whence's of the internal self for it still has no desire to know them and will go to great lengths to not see them to keep the illusion it is the all powerful psychic force when it comes to controlling itself. This is perhaps why dreams seem so confusing as to why they happen to many people, and many may spend their whole lives never paying them any attention, or asserting that they do not have dreams or do, but never really remember them. This is one aspect of an inflated ego or a narcissist. This type of ego will 'run away from itself' to its society, its family, or a lover to 'validate its existence'. These types of egos are very stupid and will feel that all good things come from outside itself. In my opinion they live a very empty life. Also, to me, this represent America as a personified object. A society like this is very auto-erotic and values strange things like pride, glory, and glamour or looking 'attractive' (in the auto-erotic sense). This is why so many boys want to be football players and why many girls feel the worst thing imaginable is to be ugly or 'unsuccessful' (usually one or the other) and why it seems so taboo not to mow your lawn, which some could argue is a very irrational thing to do. Perhaps this is why I had become so fond of my own death for awhile. For my ego, on its attempt to climb back up to the 'lost-world' of society, was really slipping back into a the dull world I grow out of, where there are so many definitions of self-worth that I seem to be invalid to the majority of them. I slip back into a new mode of behavior I had as a child when in order to 'stay on top' of that social mind set I had to transcend it and the best method I had at the time was to amuse people. For when I can make a person go into fits of laugher or pee in their pants it is like I am in control of them and I transcend them and there social standards and I no longer need to work so hard to fit into them. One is no longer manipulated by things that one can manipulate. Now I have regained my balance on that small rock of real consciousness, and I can keep my head above the ocean of those ego-threatening unconscious forces and images that seem to enslave the people around me. Trying to show them this is like trying to teach colors to a congenially blind child. This is also how I feel when writing theses letters, which are perhaps a liberating-opus, showing me the true source of my disdain for people, the sick feelings I have been getting deep in my chest, and my behavior to past couple of months, which include: writing these letters, calling everyone "stupid", and singing the "Ms. Suzy had a steamboat" song (though that one is a very personal issue). (#5) "The Psychology of Games" Dream segment: I am in a strange concrete structure, which I sense is a couple of stories below the surface. I walk into a classroom. The teacher is about forty years of age, a little fat, and a little short. Somehow we get into an argument about whether I should be here or about my validity in general. The argument ends when she says something like "You just play games and could/do not make your own" and I respond "I do not play games and I could/do make my own". She gets upset, stops talking to me, and walks away into a hall. I follow her asking "hello?". She ignores me so I give up and leave. There are many questions to be answered here to bring the dream into the realm of 'rational' thought. First, I identify the major objects: The class room, the students, the teacher, myself. Then, the events: I enter the class room, the teacher argues with me, I argue back, the teacher stops and walks out of the class room, I follow her in vane, the dream segment ends. And last, which I feel may be most important in this dream is the concepts in the discussion of these mind forms: "You just play games", "I could make my own". What is "game"? I feel this is the most important question that should be answered. The word game is akin to the French word gaman, amusement. Webster's base definition is an activity engaged in for diversion or amusement. Words that relate to it are play, fun, sport, tactic, lose, win, act, do, move, compete. A game can be said to be anything that is 'played'. In my opinion it is really a term used to describe something that is done consciously but the true motif for which is directly unconscious. For example we will describe "life" as a "game", the "game of life", or we will describe a situation were one is "playing" with another's ego or emotions when we say we are "playing games with people" or "playing games with there minds". Children play very social games which many interpret as a practicing task for preparing for their future tasks as adults in a very social world. In a stage above childhood, adolescents play 'competitive sports' in which the ego and its validity or worth seems to be where the direct motif comes from. The ego which at this stage is very social oriented seems more to be trying to assert or enforce its dominance over the psyche with manipulation of the truly outside autonomous objects 'opinions' or realities. Though, an outside object of this type does not have to be a real person it can also be computer simulation or for that matter an ego will work at any pointless objective to assert itself, such as putting a ball in a hole or solving a pointless puzzle. Timothy Leary, Ph.D, seems to have developed a very interesting concept of "game" in his manual "The Psychedelic Experience" based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I have picked out two passages where he alludes to his meaning of game. Passage 1: Different explorers draw different maps. Other manuals are to be written based on different models - scientific, aesthetic, therapeutic. The Tibetan model, on which this manual is based, is designed to teach the person to direct and control awareness in such a way as to reach that level of understanding variously called liberation, illumination, or enlightenment. If the manual is read several times before a session is attempted, and if a trusted person is there to remind and refresh the memory of the voyager during the experience, the consciousness will be freed from the games which comprise "personality" and from positive-negative hallucinations which often accompany states of expanded awareness. The Tibetan Book of the Dead was called in its own language the Bardo Thodol, which means "Liberation by Hearing on the After-Death Plane." The book stresses over and over that the free consciousness has only to hear and remember the teachings in order to be liberated. Passage 2: Following the Tibetan model then, we distinguish three phases of the psychedelic experience. The first period (Chikhai Bardo) is that of complete transcendence - beyond words, beyond space-time, beyond self. There are no visions, no sense of self, no thoughts. There are only pure awareness and ecstatic freedom from all game (and biological) involvements. ["Games" are behavioral sequences defined by roles, rules, rituals, goals, strategies, values, language, characteristic space-time locations and characteristic patterns of movement. Any behavior not having these nine features is non-game: this includes physiological reflexes, spontaneous play, and transcendent awareness.] The second lengthy period involves self, or external game reality (Chonyid Bardo) - in sharp exquisite clarity or in the form of hallucinations (karmic apparitions). The final period (Sidpa Bardo) involves the return to routine game reality and the self. For most persons the second (aesthetic or hallucinatory) stage is the longest. For the initiated the first stage of illumination lasts longer. For the unprepared, the heavy game players, those who anxiously cling to their egos, and for those who take the drug in a non-supportive setting, the struggle to regain reality begins early and usually lasts to the end of their session. The word "game" comes up many times in the manual and he will use it in very interesting ways as when he says "the ego-games" or "a tranquil state of non-game awareness". But, in passage two we do seem to get a very clear picture of what he means: "Games" are behavioral sequences defined by roles, rules, rituals, goals, strategies, values, language, characteristic space-time locations and characteristic patterns of movement. A hypothesis is now formed. When the female teacher says that I play games see is referring to me 'playing but the rules I should have learned as a child that one needs money to live, basic manners and socially compatible mentalities and so on. So asserts that I could or do not make my own game and I protest saying the exact opposite that "I do not play games and that I could/do make my own games". Using what we have just learned from Dr. Leary, one makes his own game but setting his own "roles, rules, rituals, goals, strategies, values, language, characteristic space-time locations and characteristic patterns of movement". Now, is the dream telling me something and if so what? In my experience of dreams it seems to me that dreams are many times more of a type of mirror showing the ego the/a situation of the psyche as whole which includes both ego and non-ego contents. The intellect is also described or symbolized as a "mirror", as an instrument for showing the ego an objective view of itself. I already 'feel' like I know what the dream was 'mirroring' in myself and, it would be hard to describe completely because the contents of the dream and all the trailing allusions or associations are personal material. I feel like stopping here. (#6) I have always wished that people had the ability to just push aside their egos and share their thoughts, and, perhaps more importantly, be ably to listen to peoples thoughts. A 'normal' person might ask "but don't we already do that?". This type of person does not understand the psychology of the ego. A conversation of people who are not interesting in their childish illusionary validity would be very 'matter of fact' and the subject matter would be less about themselves or how it affects them, etc. Perhaps, all of the concepts, notions and points of view I am alluding to here is very hard to understand or relate to. Perhaps another reason I write theses letters is because I don't want to be a hypocrite and keep all of my thoughts and feels to myself. This is also a personal experiment. Perhaps I am not testing you but I am testing a new method of communication, a kind of one-sided casual conversion. Which I can already sense is doomed to fail, but I might as well still give you these letters for the sake of doing something social in my life. I am beginning to realize that I was really only writing these letters for myself, and it would be almost pointless to give them to Kelly or someone, and it might even be ego-damaging or it would be like handing my ego to someone, and if they wanted to they could just smash it or hurt it really bad. So, even though that fear exists I still feel like giving these letters to Kelly, because it will be ok if she can not relate to them or understand them, in which case I just wasted a little time and a little paper, and it was still good to write down my thoughts for myself. I have given at least five reasons scattered throughout these letters and I still don't feel like I know why I am giving you these, and I am guessing you don't know either, so whatever. If you ask me I am just going to laugh or something and have no answer for you. I guess I am just an irrational, foolish person. [--------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! HOE #538 - WRITTEN BY: ISAAC - 3/27/99 ]