Anxiety and Collapse

"Anxiety is nothing but fear inspired by an imagined future collapse. It is the failure of trust."-Thomas Moore

A few questions come to mind after running across this quote this morning. What kind of future collapse do you imagine? Where should we put our trust to alleviate the general feeling of anxiety in this day in age?

Melancholy, Madness, and Morning Coffee

For years now I've made it a habit to get out of bed before everyone else does in my house. I sit alone with a book, pencil, notebook and coffee. This morning I found myself sitting at the kitchen table with a black cup of coffee reading this passage out of A Blue Fire.

"We find the senex in our solitary taking account, sorting through, figuring out; alone behind the wheel on the way to work; head under the shower, under the dryer; alone at the kitchen table looking down into black coffee, in bed staring into night--the senex mind tying together the unraveled fringes of the day, making order.

"Here is our melancholy trying to make knowledge, trying to see through. But the truth is that the melancholy is the knowledge: the poison is the antidote. This would be the senex's most destructive insight: our senex order rests on senex madness. Our order is itself madness."[James Hillman, pg. 215, A Blue fire]

I sit here frozen and distant with my cup of coffee...

What To Do, What To Do

A smart insight into depression.

"Dame Melancholy may also appear as the embodiment and vision of depression, where she brings wisdom, as she did to Boethius, who was betrayed and thrown into prison when not yet forty. There his suicidal melancholy conjured the feminine figure of Wisdom, who dictated to him his Consolation of Philosophy. Depression and the awakening of one's genius are inseparable, say the texts. Yet for most of us there is much depression and little genius, little consolation of philosophy, only the melancholic stare--what to do, what to do." -- [James Hillman, Pg.212, A Blue Fire]

My experience with depressions have been plagued with ideas like: You're born with a chemical imbalance. This is just the way your great-grandfather was. What sin have you committed? You've got to get out of this and get yourself together.

Perhaps the consolation of philosophy wipes those away.

Deer Hunting Starts In a Few Days

Wisconsin's traditional nine-day gun deer hunt starts Saturday. In years past I've always experienced strong emotions during the season. One of the emotions has been a deeper sense of grief than usual. Of course, that is usually followed by a nervous tension that I'll find myself standing in a depression and my whole life will fall apart. It's complicated, and I'm sure there are many reasons why the grief's presence is more present than usual. But this excerpt out of Robert Bly's Iron John has always stuck with me when I start to ask what is going on here? Or to put it like the archetypal psychologist James Hillman has: What is Psyche doing now?

"So many roles that men have depended on for hundreds of years have dissolved or vanished. Certain activities, such as hunting or pirating, no one want him to do anymore. The Industrial Revolution has separated man from from nature and from his family. The only jobs he can get are liable to harm the earth and the atmosphere; in general he doesn't know whether to be ashamed of being a man or not.

"And yet the structure at the bottom of the male psyche is still as firm as it was twent thousand years ago. A contemporary man simply has very little help in getting down to it."[Pg.230]

I'm learning there are different levels of hunting.

Bringing It To Light

Reading through The Maiden King again this morning and found these words of wisdom about depression:

"...the only way out of a covert depression is an overt derpression."[Pg.67,The Maiden King]

He also mentions in this section that most men in the west suffer from a covert depression.