March 16, 2011

Step 14: Modern Mythology and Equilibrium

"The life of man is governed by the rhythm of sun and moon. Sun and moon, therefore, became the first symbols under which the human mind tried to understand the universe." 
-Lama Anagarika Govinda
"Peace is a dawn on a day without end. Peace is the end, like death of the war."
-King Crimson
King Crimson's Larks' Tongues in Aspic
Mythology played a central role in ancient culture. It provided a massive sense of social context, collective ideology, and a special realm of shared imagination for any and all to enter. but in many cases, it also allowed the populous to organize the many aspects of reality into personified deities. The gods' marriages and misdoings helped to explain past, present, and future events (also called premonitions, usually in dreams or produced through the help of an oracle). According to J. E. Cirlot's "A Dictionary of Symbols," "Loeffler says that in oriental and Nordic mythology, each symbol, myth or legend contain 'four superimposed moral lessons: (I) an historical lesson, serving as a kind of “material backing” for the symbolic teaching involved; (ii) a psychological lesson, depicting the struggle between spirit and matter on the human plane (iii) a lesson bearing upon life on our planet; and (iv) a lesson upon the constitution of matter and cosmic order.” These aspects to mythology are instructions for living in harmony with one's self and others. In the post "Experience" the Yin Yang symbol was used to show the harmony of division. However, there is actually a third part of this symbol, and it is the space in-between the black and white. This is the space we must inhabit to move forward, and mythology is one way to do it. In the post on "Disillusionment" I talked about movies, books and comics as "blueprints," which is just another phrase for modern mythology. There is unlimited amounts of modern mythology waiting to be organized.

Self Vs. Shadow
When Paramount studios finally agreed to let Albert Hitchcock film Psycho in 1960, they were dismayed when Hitchcock would not budge on making the film in black and white, when Technicolor was readily available and previously used by the great director. The result is a genius horror film which manages to vividly capture (without color) the dual nature of an insane serial killer, Ed Gein. This decision showed the immense artistic capacity of the director and a new era in filmmaking which would eventually be described as "Art film." Black and white allows the director to experiment with brightness levels for lighting the scene, and more importantly, create shadows. 
The two color scheme fits the story of Psycho so perfectly because it represents Duality, or the union of opposites in each character. Lila Crane (Vera Miles) plays an innocent secretary, until an unexpected impulse leads her to steal a case full of money causes the devious and cunning part of her personality to emerge. In Psychology, Carl Jung describes this malignant nature of a person, which he calls the Shadow self, and it is anarchetype of an individual's subconscious. According to Steven Caddy, "Of all the archetypes, the shadow is the most powerful and potentially the most dangerous. It represents everything about ourselves that we fear and despise."
Pulling up to the Bates Motel, Lila meets the estranged Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), who soon asks her to join him in his parlor. In this scene, jagged, pointed paintings are behind Bates, while round and centered paintings are behind Lila. These are clues which describe their personalities: Lila, while sometimes controlled by her shadow, is still a good-meaning character, who even decides that it would be a good idea to return the money. Furthermore, curved lines in symbols, architecture, and geometry represent the feminine force that comprises existence. Meanwhile, the jagged paintings relate to Norman Bates' inner turmoil, with the straight lines representing the masculine forces of reality. These are subtle clues that Hitchcock intends to communicate to the audience subconsciously, and when re-watching the film, to view consciously and bring into wholeness.
Darren Aronofsky, another renowned director, portrays in his most recent film Black Swan the horrifying shadow of the ballet dancer Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) in Black Swan, whose life is in discord with each cycle of hallucinations, clarity, and further hallucinations. 
One way to live in harmony with the shadow self is listening to music. I find that classical music, and its modern form (neo-classical, or rock and metal), do an excellent job to bring listeners in balance with their full selves. The rock band Tool, who write the lyrics to their songs after the music has been written, says in the song "Forty-Six & 2": "My shadow / Change is coming through my shadow / My shadow’s shedding skin ... Hoping I can clear the way / By stepping through my shadow, Coming out the other side / Step into the shadow."
Steven Caddy, author of "Tool: A Book of Interpretations," writes: "The song proposes that by exploring and knowing ourselves truly, our potentials both good and bad, we can be stronger, capable of clearer thought and higher consciousness."
Enjoying a glass of wine can also get in touch with the shadow self. According to Dale Pendell, author of Pharmakopeia (who was drinking Wine throughout the chapter), "Wine gives breath to the periphery and to the repressed — to the shadows and the ghostly lurkers at the threshold of consciousness. Wine touches the humanlydeep, the personally poignant, and can loosen sorrows stuck long in the craw."

Self Vs. Animus
In addition to the shadow self, the band Tool assists with other types of personality components, especially with their album  Ænima. Steven Caddy writes: "
As an album, Ænima deals constantly with themes of change, rebirth, destruction and reconstruction, realisation and new beginnings. The title of the album finds its roots in the psychology of Carl Jung. 
The anima refers to personality traits regarded as feminine that are often repressed into the unconscious of males, while the animus refers to traits regarded as masculine that are often repressed into the unconsciousness of females. Although suppressed from conscious awareness, the anima/animus influences our behaviour in powerful ways. In most individuals, it is projected onto people of the opposite sex and accounts for the experience of falling in love with someone we hardly know. As the unconscious pole of the self, the counter-ego represented by the anima/animus can also be a guide to one’s own unconscious realm. It is often experienced as the guiding female (if you’re male) or male (if you’re female) presence in dreams. 
The anima may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive, or as a witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotionality and the force of life itself. The anima or animus is the archetype through which you communicate with the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into touch with it."
Tool's Aenima
Creating, Expression and Art is a good way to get in touch with the anima and animus. Visionary Artist Martina Hoffman describes her love of art: 
To create is synonymous to breathing for most artists. If i don't create, I slowly loose my center and energy. Creating has always been the essential and most important part of my life, and I perceive the creative process as a way of nourishing my soul. Another great perk is the facility of getting in touch with our innermost fears and shadows through our creations. In essence making honest art means facing ourselves at the deepest levels and using this process as a healing tool for deep transformation."
Heart Vs. Mind
From Toronto Canada, Rush delivers a powerhouse of musical genius, often using complex rhythms that became adapted by many future bands. Their album "Hemispheres" depicts a man on one side of the brain wearing a suit while the other is naked and in dance position. "The analytic side of the brain is considered the analytical hemisphere, while the creative side is usually considered the feminine or right hemisphere of the brain."
Drunvalo Malchizedek is an ancient society expert who explains in a 1994 conference: 
"Right brain controls the left side of our body, is the feminine component, though it's truly neither male nor female. Thought it can't explain it, it just knows the truth. The problem is on the left side of the brian – the male component. Because of the nature of how the male brain is oriented – a mirror image of the female – it has its logical component forward (more dominant), while the female has its logical component toward the back (less dominant). The left brain does not experience oneness when it looks out into the Reality; all it sees is division and separation.

When the left brain sees absolute unity, it begins to relax and the band of fibers joining the two brain hemispheres (the corpus callosum) opens in a new way, allowing an integration between the two sides. The link between the left and right brain widens, a flow starts, information is passed back and forth, and the opposing sides of the brain begin to syncrhonize with each other. If you're hooked up for biofeedback, you can actually see this happening."
Rush's Hemispheres
R
ush revives ancient Greek mythology to teach the lesson of Balance with their epic song "Cygnus X-1". Apollo is the "Bringer of Wisdom" while "Dionysus" (God of Wine) is the "Bringer of Love". Part four of the lyrics is called "The battle of heart and mind" Lee Geddy sings: "The universe divided as the heart and mind collided with people left unguided.... Some fought themselves, some fought each other, most just followed one another ... their spirits were divided into blinded hemispheres."
Cygnus is Rush's addition to mythology: The Bringer of Balance. The song ends: 
"Armed with a sense of liberty, with the heart and mind united, in a single perfect sphere."
William Domhoff, a sociologist, describes the need for science to connect with the emotional sides of our world. He writes that once balance is achieved, "Between science and art there is no longer a gulf, and one may pass from one to the other without any break in continuity. Science, says a writer, can well light up the world, but leaves a darkness in the human heart. The heart must create its own illumination."
Order Vs. Chaos
In Christopher Nolan's epic movie "Dark Knight," the personification of chaos is The Joker (Heath Ledger), who says: " Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!  The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased, unprejudiced... fair." The character of "Two-Face" is the personification of duality. He shouts: "You thought we could be decent men, in an indecent time! You were wrong. The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased, unprejudiced... fair. His son's got the same chance she had, 50/50." Batman represents Order, who seeks to put an end to the disruption of the Joker, only to realize that the Joker is not responsible for his crimes- it's the darker sides of everyone personalities which cause the trouble!  The movie depicts a war between these forces and "what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object." The joker clarifies his intentions of showing people their darker sides when he says: "Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just... do things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon's got plans. You know, they're schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I'm not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are."
The movie "Pi", based on a graphic novel, is about a man named Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) seeking order in the chaos of the stock market. Like Psycho, Aronofsky chose to film the movie in black and white. Max says: "When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun, so once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood." The audience undergoes this process in the credits as a white sun polar graph swells into blinding white light:
Max says: "One, Mathematics is the language of nature. Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. Three: If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge... So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism. My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well: Right in front of me- hiding behind the numbers. Always has been."
His mentor, a man named "Saul," explains that he was once hell-bent to find a theorem that would explain the chaos. He tells Max that he must relax with the story of Archimedes searching for how to accurately measure the mass of an object. Archimedes' wife tells him to take a bath, and upon entering the tub, he discovers displacement of the water can calculate mass. Later in the film, Max is on the beach when he notices the spiral in a sea shell. This is the "eureka" moment where he tries to understand the nature of reality. However, the headaches developed from looking into the sun, being a mathematician of his caliber, and looking for an impossible answer causes Max paranoid schizophrenic episodes. When Max described staring into the sun giving him Realization, and the audience experiencing this with the white polar graph as shown above, it becomes evident that white represents Order.  Before his most fatal episode, the above polar graph of the credits appears on screen again - except entirely black, meaning that Max is descending into the heart of chaos. This is exactly what Saul warned him about! 
Earlier, Saul explained that the Japanese played the game Go to represent the microcosm of the universe. When Max goes to see Saul near the end of the film, he finds out that Saul had a heart attack. What Saul left behind is staggeringly important, along with Aronfsky's shot of the swirling (spiral) smoke cloud above.

Universal Harmony

Drunvalo Malchizedek says that the spiral is the source of all other sequences. The black spiral arm represents the female energy of the universe, while the white arm represents the male energy. He says “We're living in a spiral- the galaxy, which has spiraling arms. You're using spirals to listen to the sounds around you because the little apparatus in your ears is in a spiral form. There are spirals all over nature." Near the end of his life, Artist M. C. Escher said: "The consistency of the phenomena around us, order, regularity, cyclical repetitions and renewals, have started to speak to me more and more strongly all the time. The awareness of their presence brings me repose and gives me supports. In my pictures I try to bear witness that we are living in a beautiful, ordered world, and not in a chaos without standards, as it sometimes seems." 
Mythology is timeless. It gives communal instructions for obtaining inner harmony and upholding the harmony of the universe. Joseph Campbell writes in the Hero with A Thousand Faces: "The pairs of opposites (being and not being, life and death, beauty and ugliness, good and evil, and all the other polarities that bind the faculties to hope and fear, and link the organs of action to deeds of defense and acquisition) are the clashing rocks (Symplegades) that crush the traveler, but between which the hero always passes." For a modern hero, look no further than legendary Hunter S. Thompson:
"Like most others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going." 
The Rum Diaries