Saturday 13 January 2024

The Play’s The Thing

Doctor Who - The Giggle - Spice Up your Life (1080p)


Perfect-10 
Something entered This World 
in 1925. I don't know how
And I warn you, this thing 
can get from 1925 
to now like stepping 
through A DOOR. 
But if we're lucky, the programme I'm giving you can detect 
the decay of an energy signature from 98 years ago
It might be on Earth, might be 
in orbit, might be in Space
But if we can find The Entrance, 
maybe we can turn it into An Exit. 

Kate :
What are we fighting? 


Perfect-10 
An elemental force beyond 
the rules of The Universe. 


SHIRLEY
What's that supposed to mean? 


Perfect-10
You think Life is a balance 
between Order and Chaos
But The Universe is not binary. 
Far from it
There is Order and Chaos... 
and there is Play.


RB: In your understanding, How is The Shadow incorporated? What rituals, what ceremonies, what behaviours successfully incorporate The Shadow, say, using the example of Lust? What’s a way back in for the lust that has been disembodied or repressed? What’s the safe way back in? Is there one?

JP: Well, I think part of it is to admit to your desires within your own relationship. You might say, “well, I’m tired of my wife.” It’s like, “well, yeah. Maybe — maybe you’re tired of the games that you’re intelligent enough to play with your wife. But she’s as pluripotent as you are.” You have to admit to your desires, let’s say, and maybe you have to make them consciously manifest within your own relationship.

RB: Hmm.

JP: People do that by dressing up, or by playing sexually, I would say.

RB: Yeah, Play.

JP: Play is a transformative element.

RB: Yes.

JP: It might be that you’re uncomfortable with the idea of your wife as sexual plaything, because you think that a woman that’s married should be proper and prim, and should only behave sexually in a certain way, in which case—well, that becomes stale and dull, and you’re more likely to be tempted by something on the outside.

RB: To me, that’s a very obvious example of how habitualized thinking is prohibitive, even without reaching the extremes of self-destructive, addictive tendencies. 

If I have a habit of regarding My Mife as Object A — even if that’s not objectification as we typically take it, but limiting beliefs about My Wife — the tools that break down addictive thought patterns could be used to create new terrains, new liberty, new play

So once you’ve done up to Step 7 —  you’re right, it’s a sacrifice of the old self, and a handing over to some kind of sublime, divine Self. 

Step 8, you make a list of people you have harmed and become willing to make amends to them. 

So you look back and go, “Oh, God—I shouldn’t have stolen that; I shouldn’t have done that; I treated that person badly; that was wrong; I lied.” So it’s moral; it becomes quite a moral process.

JP: That’s a real repentance and atonement. Atonement is “at-one-ment.” 

If you’re carrying transgressions that you regard as transgressions now, in your life, you don’t want to carry those forward. 

You want to step forward in life without that moral burden, because you’ll have contempt for yourself, otherwise, and you won’t take care for yourself.



RB: Also, in a sense, what you’re talking about is allowing lust back in— incorporating lust. This is a broader method for incorporating annexed aspects of the Self. 

Like, “How can I fully Love myself, if I know I treated that person abominably?” 

Well, if I go back, and say “That was wrong; I did you wrong; I owe you an amends,” you invite that part of your life in.

JP: That’s right.

RB: You amend your path through life, as well as teaching yourself that is not the way we proceed anymore. That’s Step 8.

JP: That’s real action in the world. 
It’s not a hypothetical, at the point. 

It’s kind of like telling people what you’ve written down about your faults, because it makes it real when you’re acting it out with someone else. It’s not only a mental thing, at that point.

They now transition from the ‘wings’ of Yesod to the latter attribute itself. Yesod is the synergy of the analysis of the first 6 Steps and the detailed considerations of the next ones. It then “connects all of this” to the “world of action” in Malkhut.

RB: Step 8 is, “write up the list of people.” Step 9 is, “now go do it.” It makes the distinction, I think, to create a space for you where you’re not continually thinking, “I’m not fucking doing that; I’m not going to apologize; I was abused by them; fuck that—they did as much wrong as I did.”

JP: Right, which is not the point.

RB: It’s not the point.

JP: They might have done more wrong than you did, but you’re still stuck with the fact that you still did something wrong, and that’s not good.

RB: That’s right, and if you refuse to surmount the obstacle of some arbitrary measure of who is more wrong, then you continue to cast yourself in victimhood.

JP: That’s exactly right.

RB: You have no personal autonomy.

JP: It doesn’t matter if you’re only 5 percent at fault, and it also doesn’t matter if the other person apologizes to you. They should; it would be better for them; it might make things lay out. That’s not the point.

RB: This, perhaps, is where what I think is significant—now that your life has become not a negotiation between you and other beings as materially present themselves, but between yourself and a higher purpose that has been declared earlier, you are now operating on a spiritual plane. 

You are no longer about, “if I do that, I get that.” 

It precisely doesn’t matter if the other person goes, “I don’t care if you apologise or not. Fuck off.

JP: In religious language, that would be expressed as The Discovery of Your Father in Heaven, instead of your earthly father. 

Your Father in Heaven would be the higher spiritual authority to which you owe allegiance

You can think about that either in religious terms or in nonreligious terms—what you’ve done is you’ve, in some sense, abstracted the idea of a higher authority and a higher purpose, and you’ve decided to devote yourself to that. That’s a religious act.

RB: That’s precisely antithetical to postmodernism : “There is an essence; there is a code; there is a way; there is a Truth.

JP: That’s right. That’s what is precisely antithetical. 

The postmodern claim is that there are multiple ways of looking at the world. That’s True, but the antithesis of that is, “Yes, but just because there are multiple ways of looking at the world doesn’t mean that there are multiple proper ways of looking at the world.”

RB: Yes.

JP: In fact, there’s a very narrow range of proper ways of looking at the world.

RB: My concern with atheism has always been its sort of easy affiliation with nihilism: “oh, why don’t we just wander over there and start fucking people, then?” That’s where my mind immediately goes. If there is not an order, why not smash everything to smithereens? You’re saying, ideological, that is what’s happening. Ideologically, we are deconstructing God; we’re deconstructing morality; we’re deconstructing gender.

JP: That was the danger that both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky pointed to, clearly. You dispense with the transcendent principle, and you open up the landscape for impulsive nihilism.

RB: They responded to post-enlightenment rationalism. Is that what Dostoevsky and Nietzsche were responding to?

JP: They were responding to, essentially, the idea of the death of God. Both of them, and explicitly.

RB: Is that an enlightenment idea? Where is the death of God happening prior to Nietzsche?

JP: At the hands of a kind of arrogant and narrow rationalism and materialism.

RB: Exponentially, that has led us where we’re going now, which is a kind of digging the earth from beneath our feet, putting ourselves into the abyss.

JP: That’s right. That’s the hypothesis, precisely.

MALKHUT
Step 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Step 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Steps 10-12 reflect the left, right and center aspects in a similar manner to Step 1. We continue to inventory (an aspect of the left), pray and meditate (the center column of harmony) and take active steps to share with others (the proactive aspect of the right)

This final grouping of Steps 10-12 are synonymous with the 7th of the 7 Habits – “Sharpen the Saw.” We have to continually refine and move forwards. Stagnation is not an option as our environment will change and we need to constantly be on guard against any forces (internal or external) that can cause us to stumble. This is the motto of “One Day At A Time.” found in AA literature.

RB: The last three Steps. Step 10 is, like, “continue to make inventory. Let this process continue.” For me, in psychoanalytic terms, it’s like when there’s a moment—I know any spike in my energy: if I go, “oh, I felt something. That was interesting. I felt jealous, there. I felt small, in that moment.”

JP: Exactly.

RB: These are the moments I know. “How was I participating in that? What belief of mine was being challenged? Is that a helpful belief?” “Belief” being a thought that I like having.

JP: Right. That’s a kind of consciousness: “well, I’m going to fall apart. I’m going to make mistakes. I don’t want to make mistakes. I’m going to keep an eye out for when I do make mistakes, and I’m going to make them conscious. And then I’m going to try to work on them.”

RB: Yes—”bringing them into consciousness.” My number one fear on a personal level, and possibly on a social level—I don’t quite know how to extrapolate or conflate those two notions—is unconsciousness. I get very afraid when I’m dealing with unconscious individuals—when people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. You might see this in violent rage, or in less dramatic or theatrical behaviour.

JP: Yeah. There’s a great idea that lurks at the bottom of the Christian mythological tradition: a little bit of consciousness destroyed the original paradise. We became conscious enough to be aware of our own mortality. The cure for that is way more consciousness, not a return to unconsciousness.

RB: Yes. There’s no going back. I sometimes think the plethora of zombie movies is, you know, “they don’t know they’re already dead!”

JP: That danger of the zombie is the danger of the desire for unconsciousness, as a solution to life’s problems.

RB: I think, again, this something we are being invited to participate in, through consumerism: to live your life continually on the frequency of unconscious energy, such as desire and fear. We’re not being invited to participate on the level of conscious interaction, presence in the moment.

JP: Well, you could make that case if you made the case that consumerism promotes the gratification of immediate desires, above all else.

RB: I think it does. That’s what I’m pushing for. With this original sin, a little bit of consciousness is a dangerous thing. We become aware of our vulnerability and mortality, our nakedness, our corporeal nature. But the solution to this is…

JP: To become more conscious.

The solution both Peterson and Brand arrive at is to become “more conscious” and escaping the gratification of immediate desire. This is also the main overarching theme of The Matrix movies as we discuss in another article. 

(Our portion of the transcript ends at 44:21. The entire transcript is available here: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/transcripts/russell-brand-2/ 

In the kabbalistic tradition, the seven lower sefirot are associate with seven Biblical figures. Beginning with Chesed they are; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David.  The two representing attributes from the left/restrictive side, Isaac and Aaron, have the least written about them in the narrative yet play critical roles based on aspects of ‘restriction.’
All the sefirot relate to different names and terms used for God. Tiferet is associated with the ‘most holy’ 4-letter name (spelled Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey) and with the powerful expression, “The Holy One, blessed be He.”

The back story to where the first Matrix movie begins is found in supplementary Matrix materials including The Animatrix film.

“We can only break through the vise grip that mechanistic science has on our consciousness by recognizing the role of God in everything. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, taught that no leaf falls without God’s willing it. Each of us experiences amazing events—from coincidences to clear miracles—in our lives. We must see the Divine acting in all these and have the courage to tell those stories. When we do, we will see that the billiard-ball causation of the old mechanistic science is not the only force in the universe. God is in our midst, with the force of cohesion rather than mere causation, bringing people and events together for an ultimate good. “God sent me before you.” (As Joseph told his brothers – Genesis 45:5)

― Tamar Frankiel, The Gift of Kabbalah: Discovering the Secrets of Heaven, Renewing Your Life on Earth



SIX :
You knew the only way to beat me 
was to gain my respect?

TWO :
Correct.

SIX :
Then I would confide?

TWO :
I hoped you'd trust me.

SIX :
This is a recognised method?

TWO :
Yes. The Patient must 
trust His Doctor.

SIX :
Sometimes they change places.

TWO :
Essential in extreme cases.

SIX :
Also a risk...

TWO :
A grave risk.

SIX :
….if The Doctor has problems.

TWO :
I have!
That's why it's known 
as Degree Absolute.
It's You or Me.

SIX :
Why don't you resign?

TWO :
(Laughs) You're very good!
You're very good at it!

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