ICHTHYS
‘…so go down to the lake and throw in a line.
Open the mouth of the first fish you catch, and you will find a large silver coin.’
Matthew 17:27
Words are like a human body, meaning that they are the outer skin of one’s potential. The constitution of words wait heavily pregnant with symbol and associations if processed. Writing is the bait and subsequent interpretation is the fish biting so it can be drawn up to be eaten. It is the symbolic partaking of the body of Christ or Holy Communion or in psychic terms, an assimilation of a part of our true nature which inspires a coalescence with the sacred.
Metaphorically, a liminal writer who travails on the shore endeavors to unite the sea with the sand, that is, to scrutinize the debris which washes up in order to understand old attitudes so patterns of behavior which are no longer serving one’s needs dissolve. In other words, the shore is a resolution zone which soothes ambivalences by shifting perceptions so nascent consciousness merges with already imbibed material.
The unconscious sphere is a scaffolding of language which can be expressed and explicated if one learns that the spiritual world is not guided by Aristotelian logic but rather a multifaceted one because it is structured as a rotating, shifting and expanding plexus of associations.2 Through a controlled abaissement du niveau mental, it is possible to start lifting and sifting through layers of meaning.3 With mastery, this is substantially identical to falling asleep to spotlight one’s unconscious life-course through the dream. It should be remembered that the drawstring of this sea-like inner Self is not knotted and choked so repressed contents are free to bubble up to surface. Initially, it will appear like gold found in a trunk so heavily obscured in mud, it is almost unrecognizable.
A writer becomes more adept at breaking through the sensory and goal-focused world as they learn to trust their own intuition and value-system. Incrementally and in manageable doses, a writer will learn to climb down into a more murky and unconfined Self by dismissing the temptation to squeeze into a mold or a conventional-type container so they are more boundless, fluid and honest because to contact the sacred is to simultaneously acknowledge one’s parts which are dreaded and denied. This process should feel synonymous to trusting someone with one’s seedy and underground components without worrying about repercussions so that the dichotomy of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ can be integrated.
Allowing oneself to flow more uninhibitedly, gestates writing in its most raw, purportedly tangential and experimental form so swimming around in it begins to unhook doors to the nebulous staircases of the mind. One’s androgynous being buds into life after the feminine ‘liquid’ qualities and the more masculine attributes of ‘action and execution’ merge. Working behind the scenes of language stimulates rhizomes of meaning relationships since communicated words are impacted and motivated by one’s past experiences and ancestry and have been bent and reshaped so that at times their ingrained idiosyncratic meanings deviate from the traditional dictionary meaning.4
The mind has to be supple and malleable enough to filigree around mainstream definitions to jig-saw the more aberrant but relevant interpretations. In this way, more weight is given to the person’s reality rather than their desired ego image which in turn dances towards wholeness through a recurrent process of reconciliation and consciousness.
References:
1. Skodo A. (Ed). Other Logics: Alternatives to Formal Logic in the History of Thought and Contemporary Philosophy. Brill, 2014
2. Blanco B. M. The Unconscious as Infinite Sets: An Essay on Bi-logic. Karnac Books, 1998
3. Mattoon M. (Ed). Personal and Archetypal Dynamics in the Analytical Relationship: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress for Analytical Psychology August 28-September 2, 1989. Daimon Verlag, 1991
4. Lidz T, Fleck S, Cornelison A. R. Schizophrenia and the Family, International Universities Press, 1965
Annie Blake (BTeach, GDipEd) enjoys experimenting with Blanco’s Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Logic to explore unconscious material and consciousness. Her work is best understood when interpreting them like dreams. She is a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne, Australia. You can visit her on annieblakethegatherer.blogspot.com.au and Facebook.
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