Sacred instead of scared

“The depression is recognizing the destruction of the sacred."

Daniel Schmachtenberger

Source: this video

I am struggling with my abstracts for the International Dabrowski Congress. Years ago - this phrasing is becoming an echo in these entries - I might have struggled with an inner critic stating that my work was not valuable enough to be part of the program. A struggle with self-esteem remnant of recurring disintegrative experiences and a deep seeded need for unconditional love. Now, I sense an existential desperateness at the root of my struggle with words, forms, and motivations.

“Ah yes, I see…..well…This is good,” Dabrowski might have said.

A well-effective reality function surely should spur the greatest imagination to get us out of these doomed dominant cultural narratives and conditionings leading to destruction of nature and wellbeing. But we tenderize first by familiarizing ourselves wholly with the bottomless desperateness.

A scared part of my mind cries: what good can this contribution do? My more mature, sacred instead of scared part knows; be gentle, reach far by allowing constraints to inform your creativity. This is critical work, precisely in the face of everything that is going on, going down.

Inhaling and exhaling, I find my way to the piano, pausing between words and tuning into sounds which will not express my emotional and creative views for many years to come, but nonetheless already isolate a horizon out of a resonating heart.

Evenly obtaining a sense of direction out of Dabrowski’s writings, I am again trying to find my words and cluster them into a coherent yet freeing abstract, communicating what feels both deeply personal and crushingly transpersonal. This sense of direction is more processual than ideal, and that feels vital.

“The period of real, essential moral maturation is often one of spiritual void: of isolation, loneliness, and misunderstanding. It is the time of the "soul's night," during which the then existing sense of life and forms of connection with life lose their value and force of attraction. The period will close, however, with the working out of an ideal, the arising of a new disposing and directing center, and the appearance of forces of disapproval, shutting out every possibility of a return to the initial level. This is the process of development of personality. The third agent, having now gained the right to be heard, will admit no retreat from the road ascending to a personal and group ideal (Dabrowski, 1964).”

The writing process makes me want to talk to a tree, let it turn my thinking upside down to let my sentences embody a collective wisdom like the roots naturally do, like we humans could do. I think of the performative talk "Rooted giftedness" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs-Kjj3_hEQ) and allow my mind to free float ideas, perspectives, transgenerational, emotionals streams, fitting creativity, and communally nourished courage. A mixture of ripening sadness and focused excitement will guide the way forward. Fluidly and - depending on the perspective - messy more than linearly.

Valuing inner work as part of the sacred, seeing our deeply personl relationship with life, this is critical.