With respect to our quickly dying gods (and thank goodness
they are no longer SEEN in fixed, material objects), it's worth
emphasizing the complications of our relations w/ those Signs of Bigger
Meanings- they are not only first-order real but also second-order fiction
& vice versa. Since the conversation between us and our gods [i.e., the
work we do to know who or what we are about, to see the rightness or
true-ness of our being-in-the-world, to separate what is real from
what is not] is mediated by the disillusioned us [the one who knows at some
level the nature of the work], there can be more play in our
interactions with Them. On the one hand, there is or there seems
to be less risk - we know better. Harumph! [The learning =
not so disillusioned after all!] More optimistically, there is
certainly more chance for re-fusing the old, for re-framing the Sign,
and, apparently, remarshalling our defenses. Do those defenses
dwindle? is there enlightenment, no-mind, further on? As-Suchness?
Judy
>we don't still need, as in ancient
>times, to _incarnate_ our archetypes, to make them first-order real for us,
>and not only second-order fictions of imagination, our irrealis, etc., so
>that we can thus _interact_ with them and through them as representatives
>or Signs with the larger scale meanings, the mythic burdens we make them to
>bear?
<snip>
>When we bid our gods ride mortal men and women, is it any wonder they die
>young?
>So, yes, we can 'develop defenses' against the confusion of or the
>substitution of what we call the imaginary for/with what we call the real
>-- and we should, because as said before, it is the RELATION between them
>that gives us the power of the sign -- but we cannot do so outside a
>particularistic frame that gives its own cultural and historical spin to
>what that Relation is, and so to what will help in the work of separation.
>We can also ask, Do we do the work of separation for its own sake? or to
>enable us, having split asunder, to newly reconnect, to creatively
>re-confuse, so that the next time we separate and purify, the Frame itself
>will have been moved on, the Relation be reconceived, the defenses
>transformed in their point and method ... and if we are lucky, their
>forebears still Remembered, to give us some wisdom from HISTORY.
Judith Diamondstone
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