[Mark Harragin]

Happy New Year!

I’m so grateful for the intro to BBT. I love her! As I drift into my latter years (I’m 66) I find myself reverting to Christianity of the Church of England variety to which I was exposed at school from 8. Not the Christian Science to which my mother and grandmother were espoused. A new year question: how might I open my mind so my heart falls out?

This digresses from McG’s DBH…or does it?

Can you explain to an Englishman the Milwaukee joke in her talk?

[Mark Delepine]

I love her too. There are so many memorable quotes in that book but that heart falling out is a good one.

I’m afraid I have no insight into a Milwaukee sense of humor. Being raised as a navy brat I grew up in a number of places but Maryland is the closest I ever got to that place.

I discovered BBT when Merv B began sharing quotes in a thread I started at BioLogos titled Pithy Quotes From Our Current Reading. Merv is one of the moderators for their forums. Well read, curious, brilliant and with a heart of gold, he is one of several there who along with IM made me realize the sacred was available to nons like me.

Just to make you feel better about 66, I’ll become a septuagenarian in a couple months. Having my wife join the octo’s a month ago takes away any sting there may otherwise have been.

[Mark Delepine]

I was a huge fan of James Hillman. Healing fiction as well as the conceptual power of “it is as if ..” to avoid getting bogged down in the purely theoretical and objectivity obsessed modernity. That is what I fall back on as a handle on the supernatural aspects of Christian belief. Maybe it is like the cosmic counterpart of how one thinks of their own inner complexity. Anyone involved in a creative endeavor knows the importance of flow. Waiting for the muse or opening to God, does it really matter? Some activities require subtlety, not carefully moderated control. Maybe it takes a creative approach to access the sacred just as it does to access our talents?

But I did hear McG mention Hillman on a video I think, perhaps in an interview. I think they both channel a muse and are very agile about crediting sources, but I’d give the edge to McG for the breadth of his sources and the depth to which he has pursued the many threads he draws together.

By the way I had to abandon the thread I opened at BioLogos on David Hart’s Experience of God book. I became uncomfortable sharing so many passages and I’m currently joining three friends there in reading Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling in a private thread. I’m absolutely repulsed by that biblical story but find SK’s approach pretty interesting. I’d never read anything by him before this. It is only the opportunity to discuss it as we go with this crew that draws me in. Otherwise I still have loads of fresh ground to cover in TMWT and would rather have a good novel going on the side if anything. I’m not a fast reader never like to rush it.

PPS I’m curious what you thought of that Wendell Berry description of “soul” if you have seen it. I certainly do hope more McG readers will join in here. I find it very challenging to share anything from his books with anyone not already interested. It requires so much filling in and sometimes the tiresome task of differentiating his hemisphere theory from the dated pop culture trope.

[Mark Harragin]

Hillman: etymologise a word to recover some of its original “angelology”. e.g. as mentioned, “belief” comes from love. “Belief in God” (LH) becomes “love God” (RH), as covered by McG in TMWT Chap 28.

Jung: Analogise – mythology, alchemy, synchronicity, dreams, active imagination, astrology, numerology – trust the Unconscious. Like an octopus temporarily covering itself with a mantle of sea-bed detritus, reflecting and glinting in all sorts of ephemeral ways. Soul momentarily glimpsed.

And then in a moment I drop all this learned stuff and risk naked, vulnerable exposure (like the octopus). This forum, the sense of the sacred, demands my un-knowing and un-making, I seek to put into practice what I’m learning from TMWT. To re-orient to RH I drop all my intellectual baggage (LH) and trust to… love.

[Mark Delepine]

I would prefer we go on practicing silence. I had contacted Channel McGilchrist about the trouble I’ve had with your abusive manner and they had promised to look into it. But then after you suggested we avoid one another (assuming that is what you had in mind) by “practicing silence” I told them we might have worked it out, but here you are back again addressing me again. I still do not welcome any conversation with you and repeat that I feel insulted by much of what you’ve said to me whether or not you consider it to have been so. Can you return to the terms of our truce or do I need to seek outside help?

Perhaps Mark H will be so kind to help by not addressing you in this sub forum.

[Don Salmon]

I do hope you’ll tolerate one final note for me, as I promise never to write another comment on this forum. This way you won’t need to recontact Mary Attwood or anybody else about this.

I’m afraid we’ve misunderstood each other one more (and obviously one last) time. I had assumed it would be enough if I didn’t respond to you directly (ie keeping silent in relationship to you). I hadn’t *planned* to write either, but when Mark H mentioned my name, I had – evidently incorrectly – assumed if I don’t respond to you directly (ie keeping silent) it would be enough.

Obviously it wasn’t, therefore I won’t write *anything* in this particular topic area again. I’m so sorry, as I ascertained immediately you were an intelligent, thoughtful and (quite unusual these days) culturally literate person it would be fun to engage in a dialog with. I cited Hart in what I thought would be a friendly suggestion to consider an aspect of philosophy perhaps you hadn’t considered, and didn’t mean it to be anything critical. I apologize for failing to write clearly enough to get this across.

I also thought perhaps my reference to Iain’s medical experience was taken incorrectly as a direct reference to you, when I meant it to be an amusing story about left hemisphere overemphasis and perhaps lead to a shared smile between us. I apologize for what in retrospect I should have recognized could have been misunderstood.

And my reference to Alan Wallace’s contemplative experiment was not intended to be preachy or involve “telling” *anyone* what to do, and I’m sorry – and again apologize – that I didn’t contextualize it well enough to make this clear.

So this is my last comment in this particular topic area.

If we meet in another group, and you have a comment about something I wish to reply to, I’ll try to wait and respond to someone else so you don’t feel that I’ve acted inappropriately, contrary to my promise to be silent to you. I still hope that perhaps one day we may have a conversation on different terms and in a different spirit, and if I may, I will apologize once again, broadly, for these misunderstandings and my failure to communicate clearly.

[Mark Delepine]

Don wrote: “I’m afraid we’ve misunderstood each other one more (and obviously one last) time. I had assumed it would be enough if I didn’t respond to you directly (ie keeping silent in relationship to you). I hadn’t *planned* to write either, but when Mark H mentioned my name, I had – evidently incorrectly – assumed if I don’t respond to you directly (ie keeping silent) it would be enough.”

You assumed correctly so initially when you responded to Mark H I ignored it entirely. But before I wrote back to the support staff I took another look and found you had addressed me at the end of your final paragraph to the other Mark, though that seems to have been edited out now. It is at the very end of what you’d originally written:

“Don Salmon

Member January 1, 2023 at 2:59 pm

Hey Mark,
Clinical psychologist (composer/pianist in the old days here too)

Can you say a bit more about the practical use you find in Hillman’s writings and in Jung’s depth psychology as well?

There’s an interesting term that Frederick Meyers coined back in the late 1890s – “subliminal” – this encompasses and, I think, goes beyond much of what Jung and his followers (Like Marie von Franz) have described. Meyers refers to a vast wealth of experience which goes beyond anything we know of in the physical sciences.

Ed Kelly, a research psychologist at the University of Virginia, has a group of over a dozen physicists, philosophers, therapists, biologists and more who have come out with several books exploring the realms that contemplatives around the world have described. Ed was also involved in parapsychological research for years. His first book, Irreducible Mind, gathers together an amazing wealth of evidence for telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis and much more.

In terms of practice (for therapy or any other area) I wonder if you know about the latest trend in non-dualist therapy. It’s quite close to that practice I suggested from Alan Wallace. You could almost think of it as a “scientific” exploration of these subliminal worlds Meyers and Jung described, yet going even beyond that.

At the most practical level, I’ve found if introduced well, it has profound and VERY quick positive effects on patients. If you’re interested in practices, you might look at Loch Kelly’s work. For Mark D, you’d be amazed at how thoroughly Loch presents his work in a purely agnostic fashion. Doesn’t matter, he says, what people believe, the recognition of non dual awareness through practice, can have powerful healing effects for just about any challenge.”

Don, I wish you no ill will and if you will refrain from posting or addressing me as you have in this forum I will be content. If we cross paths on another forum let’s hope for a better start.

Sincerely,

Mark D

[Don Salmon]

Hey Mark,

Clinical psychologist (composer/pianist in the old days here too)

Can you say a bit more about the practical use you find in Hillman’s writings and in Jung’s depth psychology as well?

There’s an interesting term that Frederick Meyers coined back in the late 1890s – “subliminal” – this encompasses and, I think, goes beyond much of what Jung and his followers (Like Marie von Franz) have described. Meyers refers to a vast wealth of experience which goes beyond anything we know of in the physical sciences.

Ed Kelly, a research psychologist at the University of Virginia, has a group of over a dozen physicists, philosophers, therapists, biologists and more who have come out with several books exploring the realms that contemplatives around the world have described. Ed was also involved in parapsychological research for years. His first book, Irreducible Mind, gathers together an amazing wealth of evidence for telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis and much more.

In terms of practice (for therapy or any other area) I wonder if you know about the latest trend in non-dualist therapy. It’s quite close to that practice I suggested from Alan Wallace. You could almost think of it as a “scientific” exploration of these subliminal worlds Meyers and Jung described, yet going even beyond that.

At the most practical level, I’ve found if introduced well, it has profound and VERY quick positive effects on patients. If you’re interested in practices, you might look at Loch Kelly’s work. For Mark D, you’d be amazed at how thoroughly Loch presents his work in a purely agnostic fashion. Doesn’t matter, he says, what people believe, the recognition of non dual awareness through practice, can have powerful healing effects for just about any challenge.