Forty years later, the Stress Doc is revisiting a mystical moment – both cause and effect, and how the past is being brought to life in the present and future – through essay, poetic words, and mythic-meditative images!

 

Mandala Vision:  The Seed of Passion, Wisdom, and Connection – Part II

Almost forty years ago, I had a “mystical” experience.  I don’t believe God was talking to me as much as it was, for a brief moment, realizing the deep, inner recesses of my psyche.  One day I showed up for my psychoanalytic session at Tulane University Medical School/Psychiatry Dept. with “nothing to say.”  This was very uncharacteristic.

You Take Your “Self” Wherever You Go

Let me provide some context.  I had entered analysis at an impasse in my dissertation pursuit.  I could not select a topic that brought out real passion.  In hindsight, with a dissertation topic, practical should trump passionate.  However, my doctoral studies were driven more by long-standing feelings of academic underperformance, bouts of depression, concentration-constricting anxiety, and deep-seated shame – from grade school throughout college – than by rational consideration.  US Army Basic Training, my first professional position as a Social Worker, and a few years of face-to-face psychotherapy along with group therapy enabled me to risk applying for a doctoral program, far from my New York City roots.  Being only twenty-six, my troubling emotional past was soon to rear its self-deflatingly grandiose head.  An obsession to prove my worth along with a craving for self-validation proved a volatile mix. Not surprisingly, I was on the path of psychic paralysis.  Hence the need for a new stint of therapy.

The Mystical Moment

With a student discount, working with a Psychiatry Resident, I was able to afford three times/week on the couch.  Anyway, my youthful analyst’s response to my “nothing to say” remark was prescient…and to the point:  “Don’t say anything!”

I was somewhat skeptical; for nine months, I had been engaged in continuous grieving. Nonetheless, I did his bidding.  Lying down, in a state of stillness if not unprecedented serenity, suddenly this feeling of being connected to everything washed over me.  I understand why this has been called an “oceanic” feeling or experience.

The Mystical-Mythical Moment and Beyond

Early 20^th c. psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, a pioneering explorer of the creative and mythic side of our subterranean mind, might say my nine-month, three days/week inner journey on the psychoanalytic couch enabled me to reach our neuro-biological heritage – the “collective unconscious.”   In any event, in a short period of time, several startling things manifested:

1.  As mentioned, I was enveloped by a unique sense of being without boundaries, of being connected to everything.

2.  While lying on the couch, an out of body experience, that certainly might have been a dream-like hallucination; nonetheless, I envisioned a manifestation of myself on the ceiling of the office looking down at his physical counterpart on the couch.  I believe this visualization-revelation captured the psychic split within that I had been carrying within me for three decades.  A split that, for the first time, I began to understand and to transcend.

3.  A realization that I contained all of me – the good and the bad, the kind and the selfish, the tender and the aggressive, the logical and the emotional, the masculine and the feminine, the fearful and the courageous; and this is the natural state upon discovering or uncovering one’s deeper or holistic “Self.”  Jung called this process of Self-realization, “individuation.”

4.  For the first time ever, I felt not just a sense of acceptance but an unprecedented feeling of self-love.  And,

5. Later that evening, still mystified by what had earlier transpired, without knowing what I was doing, but compelled to do it, I began to unconsciously sketch a verbal and visuospatial Mandala.  This “magic circle” (see explanation below) precisely positioned and integrated psychological concepts in a multi-level, concentric octagonal map, with an infrastructure of overlapping terms and triangles.  The original Mandala captured my understanding of that mystical/Mandala Moment and my own dawning creative process:  The Octagonal Vision:  The Creation of a Pathway, the Pathway of Creation.

Ironically, this moment of serenity was fleeting.   As noted in Part I, From Burnout to Breakout:  Following Your Inner Voice (and the Road to Oz), almost four decades ago, it was the post-mystical-like experience, unconscious creation of a Mandala (and obsession to make it my dissertation topic) that ultimately led to my dropping out of the doctoral program.  I call that creative…destructive period:  “When academic flashdancing whirled to a burnout tango!”  Yet, in mystic-mythic-like fashion, this vicious and virtuous cycle helped me find/design a new voice and uncover/discover my calling.  (This was pre-mid-life; when it came to burnout, I guess I was precocious.)

Forty Years Later

And now…I am allowing my mind to play around with a second mandala.  In fact, the new poem below is based both on what I’ve learned about “The Pathway of Creation” and on a recently designed octagonal vision.  Mandala 2.0 has been inspired by thinking anew about intimate connection.  And while the latest geometrical/verbal-visual-spatial iteration is still under construction, the poem, Mandala Vision:  The Seed of Passion, Wisdom, and Connection, is ready for display.

In case you missed it, here’s Wikipedia’s description of “Mandala.”  “A mandala (Sanskrit for “magic circle”) is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Hinduism, representing the universe. In common use, "mandala" has become a generic term for any diagram, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically; a microcosm of the universe.

The basic form of most mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point. (FYI, in Mandala 2.0, the four gates or S-N/E-W directional points are Energy-Spirit and Body-Mind.)  Mandalas often exhibit radial balance…(Like 2.0, the original mandala has eight spokes or “paths,” loosely akin to the Buddha’s “Eightfold Path of Enlightenment.”)  (The mandala) is used in a variety of religions and philosophies, particularly Buddhism…In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of practitioners and adepts, as a spiritual guidance tool, for establishing a sacred space, and as an aid to meditation and trance induction.”

Without further ado…

Mandala Vision:  The Seed of Passion, Wisdom, and Connection

The embedded seed of “loss and love”

A naked-sacred “self-soul” space

Of earth-Energy below to Spirit-sky above

From water-Body to the east

And west cool-fire-Mind of grace.

Four cardinal points:  Energy-Spirit and Body-Mind

East and West across, crossed by North and South

From existential mountain peak to roaring river mouth

The shadow-hero route outlined…

A Mandala Map for humankind.

Into the Arena

A night of heat, a primal beat

In your head or on the street

How do you deal with opposition?

Sway to the rhythm – ebb and flow

Or tug of war of “Yes” and “No?”

Forget my righteous indignation?

You really want me to “let go?”

It’s black or white…or filled with tension

On the edge…so much dissension!

Embrace confusion, even regression?

Go ahead…try confession, then

After all is said and done

Let your head and heart meander…

Wow, being lost is kinda fun

It takes real courage to surrender

To The Many in the One!

The Passion Path of Mastery and Meaning

Time to escape your Ivory Tower

Endless mind games to and fro.

To unearth your path to flower

Do explore…be learner slow.

Soak up knowledge from a mentor

Take a backseat in the show

Until leaping from your bower

Now a rebel, start to grow

Spread your seeds of “Passion Power” **

Defying all “those in the KNOW!”

Nature’s Flow:  Chaos and Calm

The evolution mantra…

Rise up one more time than fall. ^^

Unite the pro with the contra

Tear down that fearful WALL!

Bring that “Touched with Fire” ++ passion

Your brooding/blazing wild call:

Destruction in Creation…Creation in Devotion

Devotion in Creation…Creation in Destruction!

Be receptive to the chaos, be focused in the calm:

Know to ride the storm, when time for the alarm!

Now that you are in the flow, pray tell:

Where do you most wish to go?

Wandering the Mystic Desert of Grief

Our map:  a complex code – a weave of art and text

For Jung’s Self-revelation quest

One must embark with mystic spark

The inner journey…never easy

A crawl to light from night soul dark.

Will you persist; withstand the test

Of soulful call:  Who’s Next, Who’s Next?

Wait, another daunting question:

Are you ready…the grief journey?

For a life crashed on the rocks

You are at the crisis junction:

To discover your real voice…

Or, to bleat with sheepish flocks!

Surviving the Deep Dive by Dawn’s Early Light

To reach for freedom or be forever hiding

Now’s the time to hit the bottom:

Deep sea diving…primal grieving

Reveals the white light-rainbow spectrum

The powerless to princely power paradox.

Dawning light…early life regression

Helps decipher many locks

Both real and of self-invention.

Wait, look…a new horizon

Not unlike a Phoenix rising

Within you such unique design?

Paint with ash “Mandala Vision”

Way past time for your own sign!

Releasing, Expanding, and Sharing Your (Un)Holy Self

And while seeming rather tired

Just two daring questions left:

With a brain now so hot-wired

Are you ready for some stealth?

Sneak down from Mt. Olympus

Take your trickster off the shelf

Reread Henry Miller’s Nexus ~~

Forsake the halo for real health.

Strut those boots from Texas…

Give voice to a bigger Self:

Be authentic, show respect

Pay attention, then reflect…

With passion and compassion

How can two truly connect?

Now time to walk your vocal

Let mind and body flex:

So elegantly simple – “Think Global/Perform Local”:

World Peace through Awesome Sex!  ##

~~~~~~~

** "Five 'P's of Passion Power": my Mind (Cognitive-Affective) x Mood (Gravitas-Comedia) Model of Creative Presence/Leader Communication: being Purposeful-Provocative-Passionate-Playful-Philosophical; email stressdoc@aol.com for more info

^^ "Rise up one more time than fall": Based on polio pioneer, Dr. Jonas Salk's observation on "evolution": Evolution is about getting up one more time than we fall down; being courageous one more time than being fearful; and being trusting just one more time than being anxious

++ "Touched with Fire": The title of Johns Hopkins Univ. Psychiatrist Kaye Redfield Jamison's book, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament; Dr. Jamison makes the case that having to grapple with mood swings – especially elation and darkness – challenges the writer or artist to grapple with and synthesize more complex inner and outer worlds

~~ Henry Miller's Nexus: The Rosy Crucifixion, a trilogy consisting of Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus, is a fictionalized account documenting the six-year period of Henry Miller's life in Brooklyn as he falls for his second wife June and struggles to become a writer, leading up to his initial departure for Paris in 1928 (Wikipedia).

## "World Peace through Awesome Sex": the brainchild/vision of a colleague and friend, Maggie Rast; she is in the final stages of introducing her concept WP/AS – based on "Authenticity, Respect & Contribution" – to the world; email me for more info

© Mark Gorkin  2017

Shrink Rap ™ Productions

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Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ™, a nationally acclaimed speaker, writer, and "Psychohumorist" ™, is a founding partner and Stress Resilience and Trauma Debriefing Consultant for the Nepali Diaspora Behavioral Health & Wellness Initiative.  Current Leadership Coach/Training Consultant for the international Embry-Riddle Aeronautics University at the Daytona, FL headquarters.  A former Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant for the US Postal Service, he has led numerous Pre-Deployment Stress Resilience-Humor-Team Building Retreats for the US Army.  Presently Mark does Critical Incident Debriefing for organizational/corporate clients of Business Health Services.  The Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress, The Four Faces of Anger, and Preserving Human Touch in a High Tech World.  Mark’s award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" – www.stressdoc.com – was called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR).  For more info, email:  stressdoc@aol.com.