Post 30: Creativity.

"Don't imagine, indulgent reader, that I'm talking at you or down to you; or trying to put something over on you. No, no; imagine me, lamb-like and bewildered, muttering softly to myself, between soft groans, trying to make head or tail of myself in my present situation."

--D.H. Lawrence Certain Americans and an Englishman

Striving. I often imagine for myself that there is no perfect way to listen, nor is there a perfect way to handle any particular situation. This is much like the white space in some artwork from Japan, or the spaces in my apartment that I leave cluttered with reminders of an impermanent world. Two things about striving are that one cannot truly begin to strive until the admission that one can no longer struggle; and that striving is a kind of learning that becomes a part of the whole being. There is no perfect way to listen, or to behave, because if there were there would not be a need to improve on these aspects of life. 

My most recent journey brought me through politics, and I experienced firstly the political tensions that exist in Jefferson County, CO; as well as nationally. The pressures that exist are extremely polarized, but often this is an indicator that something will be created that enhances the stability of the community and meets the needs of all parties and stakeholders in a way that can slow or stop the extremism.

A lot of people have written in the context of dynamics, or polarities which develop energy for action. I chose an author who had written in a time that was not as critically aware of the difference between masculine and feminine tones, but in Phoenix II I found D.H. Lawrence to be capable of writing of his own femininity, albeit in a prose that met with the style of the writers of the time. So what follows is an example of the awareness of a trine of forces, between dialectics that create polarity, and their eventual offspring and resolution. 

"But life depends on duality and polarity. The duality, the polarity now asserts itself within the individual psyche. Here, in the individual, the fourfold creative activity takes place. Man is divided, according to old-fashioned phraseology, into upper and lower man: that is, the spiritual and sensual being. And this division is physical and actual. The upper body, breast and throat and face, this is the spiritual body; the lower is the sensual.    By spiritual being we mean that state of being where the self excels into the universe, and knows all things by passing into all things. It is that blissful consciousness which glows upon the flowers and trees and sky, so that I am sky and flowers, I, who am myself. It is that movement toward a state of infinitude wherein I experience my living one-ness with all things.    By sensual being, on the other hand, we mean that state in which the self is the magnificent centre wherein all life pivots, and lapses, as all space passes into the core of the sun. It is a magnificent central positivity, wherein the being sleeps upon the strength of its own reality, as a wheel sleeps in speed on it's positive hub. It is a state portrayed in the great dark statues of the seated lords of Egypt. The self is incontestable and unsurpassable.     Through the gates of the eyes and nose and mouth and ears, through the delicate ports of the fingers, through the great window of the yearning breast, we pass into our oneness with the universe, our great extension of being, towards infinitude. But in the lower part of the body there is darkness and pivotal pride. There in the abdomen the contiguous universe is drunk into the blood, assimilated, as a wheel's great speed is assimilated into the hub. There the great whirlpool of the dark blood revolves and assimilates all unto itself. Here is the world of living dark waters, where the fire is quenched into watery creation. Here, in the navel, flowers the water-born lotus, the soul of the water begotten by one germ of fire. And the lotus is the symbol of our perfected sensual first-being, which rises in blossom from the unfathomable waters."

--D.H. Lawrence The Two Principles

I heard someone say that it is always loudest before the dawn. I suppose that is true because all of our respective groups are reaching a level of polarity that is very visible and vocal, and so there must be some creative force derived from the energy that is present in our politics. This is written as a reflection on the transposition from tensions which arise in each individual, to tensions which arise among groups of individuals, as communities in the absence of groupthink we have collective personalities and needs. The pressures which exist between our groups therefore must also have the same creative potential as the pressures which exist within our individual perceptions, and so I see a way for the elections and for our internal conflicts within Jefferson County to develop something new and something bold and supportive, in a way that can empower the community while more aptly fitting our community into the larger national and global communities that we inhabit.  There will be an end to hate and discrimination, and we will find a way to develop true equity in our lives, but this is a creative process and not one of retribution. It's important to recognize the extreme political tensions for what they are, a force of creativity that is motivated toward balance and fairness. The entrenched status quo is likely to take time to erode, much like water takes time to shape the earth. Hatred is not best met by hatred, but instead by the watery forces of transmutation and creation. The eventual state of this process is entropy, and from that state we may again begin seeking individuality and fortitude as exclusion from the others of the world. This process of solution and dissolution is human creativity in social space, I've written of this in Post 9.  The need that I see in society is for an increase in cultural femininity and nurturing, as well as a de-escalation and personal acceptance of distress and uncertainty. Military cultures are deeply masculine, fearful and uncertainty-avoidant cultures. It's time for the war to end, and for most of us to learn how to increase femininity and to teach nurturing, an entropy from which a new energetic and economic development will spring in the years to come.