Welcome drfaust, you make a solid impression for sure, the smooth wordings that invite to read on, the record of experience, the name, the avatar, ...


I too had the pleasure of a glimpse of the Tuscan magic, while in company of one of the last genuine Tarantata percussionists alive. It was bloody hot there when I took that picture below, your quote reminded me of it. The air was full of reverence to the black Madonna and heritage to the old Greek diaspora that found haven and brought intelligent prosper in Italy with Dionysus stepping lickerish on the pedal.

So greetings drfaust, from a same generation fellow.

Thanks so much, friend.

I found a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org...nni_Pico_della_Mirandola

"...I created thee as a being neither celestial nor earthly... so that thou shouldst be thy own free moulder and overcomer..."

I take that to be his meditation on human plasticity and capacity for growth. I read that first at University in a class on the Renaissance and it struck me then as it does now. That malleability is a miracle and a terrible responsibility both. I've walked that line my whole life. The perilous path. The razor's edge.

I love that picture you took! Gorgeous. thanks. And I'm digging on the tarantata right now, so thanks for that.

Thanks for that beautiful quote.


A bit OT but I guess you'll love this:

the true spirit of the Tarantella dance is life as such. Literally it is about being bitten by the tarantula spider, and then the healing of being poisoned. In wider sense it represents becoming "bitten" by the hardships of life, becoming ill (like sickness of body or unconscious-mind or mental wrappings), and healing of the "poison" (becoming sane and conscious again).

The dance is a deep pagan form of exorcism of all that is connectable to illness of body and soul. The main percussionist is no less than a shaman creating a healing ceremony. Sometimes there are bystander percussionists/dancers creating a protecting circle around the "patient" who lies on the floor going frantic under the spell of the drumming and his/her own healing process.

That is the general outline and conduct, but in ancient Italy it often boils down to the healing of women who have being raped, things that usually happen in very tiny communities in remote villages. The Tarantata "shaman" travels and does ceremonies in the villages, which start as a dance festival but effectually end in personal healing sessions. We talk about the Tarantata to play the hand drum for like 10 hours non stop in a heavy tempo. No need to say that this is a trance and in that trance the healing is performed. The (often raped) woman going frantic in the center tries to shed off the trauma and re-find her true sexuality doing so. During the Tarantata festivity this is openly allowed to happen. Sometimes the healing is done full private, just 1 drummer and 1 patient, after closed doors, even in the village church.

This is a show setup and little fast forward but only to illustrate how it goes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFQ9lNfWEsg
Note that the music is uplifting, tempo and rhythm, an anchor of positivity well needed during the healing of the patient. Like icaro's do, but old Italian style, make a party of your healing session
The assistants standing around the patient trow red ribbons toward the center, representing support, love, compassion,...
They also step 1 foot forward, representing a step on the spider, a step on the cause of the illness. The conduct is full of meaning, the white sheet is a sacred pure area.

I've been in the center too, in Tuscany, with her in the video as Tarantata. You can heal there or just going in a trance spasms to fully explore how that works out for you, to let go fully. This is hardcore Dyonisos, no brakes.
That's why I know the background and sharing here because I think these details are not on the net.

There's also a challenging side on the way of Tarantata, like: "Hey little spider, bite me". Like saying to life: bring it on!
The use of the hand drum for music and magic goes back to old Greece.

True Tarantata healers are in extinction now, she would like to find successors but it's a shamanistic path for life, the drumming ain't simple to perform for so long. There are very good Tarantata drummers but that doesn't mean they're fit for becoming a Tarantata healer.

Some more bits to stop with:

* Taratella = name of the dance, wheras Tarantata = name of the people doing the dance;
* There's a sexual accent to the happening that vibes trough the day and possibly comes to exhibitionistic climax on the white sheet if wanted/necessary, again a referring to healing of sexual deep repression or trauma.
* The festivities change the regular lifestyle deeply, all dogmatic catholic values are out for that period and replaced by "everything is possible", this is a "venting off" possibility for the people, an overall healing effect is obviously to shed off dogma chains, but day after everything goes back to regular.
* No wonder the Tarantella became popular and the traveling percussionist shamans the hero's of their time. There was nothing else outside that, a combination between a carnival, a feast and personal liberation/healing.
* It really began as a healing of literal tarantula spider bites, a sort of heavy work out session, going frantic in spasms for a while seemed to mitigate the poison. Then it showed to work for other issues too like trauma or the need to express deep emotions, etc

* * *

Sorry for the flooding and side kick of OT but it just fitted due Tuscany and drfaust showing interest for the subject.
I am also glad to share this knowledge, not as just another thing interesting, but hope that the reader can value some aspects literally. A liberation of mental/physical poison by letting yourself go in a festival kind of positive atmosphere. Tarantella stands for conducted frantic as a medicine with the hand drum as trance medium.

I hope you liked it.

A Tuscan star this man, very much elite. What an amazing record and he only got 31 years old.
Thank you for the hint

Nothing is OT on my intro thread, especially after I asked you what is on your mind. Thanks so much for writing about this. This a kind of flashback because I read about the Tarantella as an undergrad when we read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Doll%27s_House by Ibsen.

In that context, the dance is also about instinct and becoming who you really are outside of the false self and social role? The play certainly uses it that way. In agrarian societies it was social role could confine. In industrial and consumer it is the false self that often traps.

https://en.wikipedia.org...True_self_and_false_self

"the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person." That quote from the Doll's House wikipedia page is pretty good, but maybe I'd amend it and take the word striving out and replace that with "allow" and I'd also take out "kind".

"Become who you are" is a paradox. It is an ancient injunction that goes back to Pindar and that Nietszche used in Zarathustra. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pindar

The paradox is that "becoming who you are" is not incompatible with self-creation and play, with becoming and changing and being plastic and having no fixed essence. If what we truly are is open and plastic and becoming itself?

I don't strive to become. I am becoming. Who am I? I have no idea, but I do keep appearing and surprising myself.

Thank you for surprising me and for bringing this subject of the Tarantella into my stream!

Nice thoughts and way of putting them.

Yes, "what we are" is a hard thing to nail down hence an elusive target to aim for. "Becoming" as you say, is like heading along, a movement, not so much an end point station, and more in line with the movement of changing cosmos.

Deduction is my game of late by spotlighting what I'm not, It's a darn full time job to see and gradually leave the lies I was living for whatever purpose or reason. In that way the Tarantella is a physical manifestation of shedding-off whatever "poison" you want out.

The change found by abstracting some of the gravity of "what I don't want to be any longer" is surprisingly indeed, and more than ever difficult to define, perhaps that was part of the puppet game: anxious of not being definable.

To feed by attention becomes more explicit and even the hunt on "what I'm not" will probably die as yet another farce. This stage is not fully consolidated but that again is likely not true

In this sea of we are all that, there still is a form connected to "me" and an evolution of it. We want to dissolve, and not, it seems.

I am little afraid to say this, but in the non dissolved version, the reason to be, it feels pervert greedy. Perhaps I'm too shocked about it and therefore give it such label but I hope to come to terms with it less emotional. Sometimes I want silence but the game doesn't let me, because I am. I won't kill myself to find peace, no problem. I'll settle for swimming with less possible drag and the plants for one learn me so. An effort to gain.
Sorry I let me go for a second, just felt to.

Did I say welcome to the forum yet?

Hello again,

I went better trough that links you gave about A Doll's House and true-false self.
When Nora closes the door she certainly act on deduction of "What I'm not", based on definite discovering of a false self. Alike Siddhartha Gautama leaving the palace, though Siddharta was in power position and Nora was subjected, they both came to close the door leaving partner and offspring.

Leads me to think about:
how much does one's confinement play role in developing? Eckhart Tolle says even in jail there's more than enough potential to become "enlightened" or just develop. It's a thing worth considering.
My subvention:
One could ask the benefit of definition fiddling. In this case I think it does make things more easy, another barrier, another imaginary converse solved. Simplicity is so fetching, why coming to a stretch to invent a false self?
Yet I believe Eckhart would not encourage anyone to force against calls toward achievable better surrounding. Eckhart himself closed once a door, slightly comparable like Nora and Siddhartha did.

True and false self, for me personally mingle to large extend. Ambiguous. Prone to perception. Feel dragged left and right at same time and then leaving the dragging for what it is. Uncertainty, stalemate, and accepting that as is, for now.

Thank you for the inspiration.

Hey dr.faust thank you for such a great response! I noticed you seem to give everyone, like, your full self in your responses to them along with a kindness that is felt even though we are not talking in person. I'm sorry it took me a while to respond, I felt intimidated because I feel like a much less knowledgeable person and am not as well articulated either. I did not know how to respond but have wanted to.

"Beresford was most interesting to me because of his kindness and his compassion for all the people who had been swept up by the drug wars. He was also a direct and spontaneous connection to the time when only a handful of people had ever even ingested LSD. I felt or intuited that reality when I met him. A reality without any paranoia, but one with compassion and a desire to make contact with ourselves. "Mind-manifesting," as Osmand said. "

Yes! I'll admit, The only reason I know who Doctor Beresford is is due to my strong feelings about the drug war. I have definitely been one of it's victims and had to spend a year locked up in a Utah when I was 15 for simply not giving the name of a supplier. They didn't arrest me as I was not in possession, but had enough on me to expel me from all schools in the city I lived in and sent to Utah for "reform." They send "bad" kids to Utah for "reform"(otherwise known as incarceration with a brainwashing aspect) because Utah provides no rights for minors. My own family signed my rights as a human being away.

I also really liked the story because I think it truly is such a connection to such a fascinating history and personage. and I loved your description of "A reality without any paranoia, but one with compassion and a desire to make contact with ourselves." That just really struck a chord with me . I have recently begun studying Zen and meditated on that quote.

Haha oh and don't worry about being too direct! (I didn't think you were anyways) I really appreciate directness from people actually, and have a very hard time making sense of people who are more indirect. Haha oh and I did not mean to come off nostalgic for windowpane. I have had my time with acid and I actually don't use LSD anymore. haha well, I don't like to say that but I'm taking an extended break. I started using it when I was 14 and have done it easily 100 or more times since then. I started to become wary of it after seeing some friends suffer very negative (and very long lasting if not permanent) psychological problems that were clearly related to the use or misuse/abuse of LSD. This was very sad and scary to me so now I just like to stick to the things that I can grow myself, which in my experience, have been a much better option and is something that I love to do (all paranoia aside). I love LSD and have had some truly truly astounding experiences with it that I can't imagine ever forgetting. But I do think that using it heavily during your developmental years is not a good idea. Right now I am very focused on bettering myself in any way possible and haven't felt much urge to use psychedelics the past week or two, as I can tell that I am not in the right space for it right now. I have just begun studying Zen with the help of a book a friend gave me. It is called "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones". Do you know this book? If you do what do you think of it? What books would you recommend for someone who is just beginning to learn about Zen? So far I have been really into it which is rare for me. I live in a conservative state (believe me I really wish I lived in California or Oregon but am stuck in the midwest for now and probably a long while) and live mostly very alone and in isolation which I really don't like but since I've begun reading about Zen and practicing meditation, I've been more at peace with my situation which I find fascinating. Also thank you for the Dale Pendell recommendation! I have not heard of him but will continue on that link you sent me. I am very interested in shamanism for a multitude of reasons(I have gotten about a quarter of the way down the page but already it looks right up my alley!)

"The organs and our relationship to them is something that is present for me. Oliver Saks, another aging explorer, has recently written on his speculations on the autonomic nervous system and its shadow subaltern role in our lives. I've been meditating on the enteric nervous system as well.

Compassion for the "otherness" of the organs in our own body and our complex relationship with what is unconscious and natural in us is quite a frontier."


I really really liked this! Haha at first I didn't know exactly what you were saying so I lightly researched what the autonomic and enteric nervous systems were before responding. Almost everytime when I use DMT I get a lot of irritating sensation like inside my colon/intestines (haha sorry if this is TMI or whatever. I don't really believe in TMI but don't like to make other people uncomfortable or something like that.) It bothers me and makes me feel like I have to poop even though I don't have to. I don't understand this and I never noticed things like this when I was younger and using these same substances. Have you experienced things like this?I still have a lot to learn and find it very hard to put my thoughts into written language (or even spoken language) and I hope to hear more from you dr.faust! I hope you are doing well take care!

Jees, thanks for this. It's tricky on one hand and not on another!

One thing we do in Zen is sometimes constrain ourselves to be free as in Zazen and then we go wild and chaotic to be controlled or allow ourselves to be controlled by natural order. Sounds weird and is a paradox but it works in practice. There is a game we do where you try to put dots on a page in as random a way as possible. Thing is, it keeps going into order!

So we allow that ordering to happen. So, if the sense of I is simply that constant returning of the appearance of order, of the unmistakable me, then no problem!

There are other ways of talking about this paradox. A dionysian way may be to talk about affect and instinct which seems to come out of nowhere and even can have an alien quality to it. Like where did that greedy part of me come from?! It can dissolve our sense of self. It can dissolve our representations and even the entire Apollonian stage can flicker. We are emotion in that place. and passion. and there is no way to come at it less emotionally. not when dionysus takes us by the hairs!

Can we tolerate the agony of it? The rage of it? The passion? "I myself am War" said a mad dionysian.

And then the Apollo side is the curtain of dreams, the stage of representation that is never perturbed and has no problem with any of it.

What I wrote may be confusing, so I'm going to try and ground it a little.

I accept my animal nature and my instincts more and more and I can give them more room the more that I allow myself my full range. I don't worry too much about my I. I allow it.

You know the Zen saying? "Give your cow a big field to graze in" Now, for that we need a big field. So part of the work is growing the field, growing the acceptance, allowing for the chatter of our mind or our body or our emotions. Giving it room.

And the funny thing is: when I allow myself my full range I swim into deep enough waters to find peace without looking for it. Now that "allowing myself to be as I am" is no easy thing, or it is easy but it takes time and lots of trust and a "history of allowing" to come into its own.

We call it nonmeditation because we do not concentrate the mind or stop the mind or even use the mind. We allow the mind to do its thing. We don't trouble with it. And then it is free to roam. And it calms itself or finds its groove without any effort at all.

I simply call that making contact with myself as i am and as i am becoming.

Wonderful. Yes. It's to taste. and yes all the selves are me and parts of me and everything can be grist for the mill. The funny thing about Nora is that she is just beginning her journey and maybe what she says is still in "the doll house" and maybe her authentic self needs a little time to try itself on, to fail, to struggle. We don't know what happens to her.

Ram Dass used to hang with married couples and they would ask, "should I get a divorce?" and he'd be like "I'm not a worldly person. From my perspective, you can grow if you stay and grow if you leave. I have no answer for you."

From what angle are we looking at it? This takes me to the best part of Pico and the best part of Nietzsche and so many other interesting spirits: perspectivism. Can we look at situations and realities from different and paradoxical perspectives at the same time?! That was the best of Ram Dass's game as well. multiple perspectives. even contradictory perspectives can be held by a spirit capable of doing so. That is something we can grow in any situation. a capacity.

Going back to Winnicott, the cat who developed the true self/false self way of looking at things:
he worked with people, trying to help them escape "the doll house". He found many layers to the self. The deep self in his explorations he found to have an "incommunicado" aspect.

I have found that as well. The deep self is silent and so close and so simple that it is hardly noticed by most busy people and is not noticed by busy states or occupied states of mind. We call it ordinary in Zen. It is so basic and so easy to miss.

One way I think we can begin to hang with the basic self is to relax into it. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Allow whatever wacky manifestation is manifesting to appear just as it is. No need to modify.
Just this whatever it is.

After a while, even stimulus does not pull us out of contact with the basic self, neither external nor internal. It takes a while, but it begins to happen that even the worst states, the most stimulated states, or holy hell breaking loose in reality is just more grist for the mill?

Thank you for these 2 posts drfaust.

* * *


This allows me to ease on my stance toward mind/emotional wear and tear. I leaned toward conviction that in spiritual growth one is to evolve out of such "naive waste of life energy", one that only serves suffering and completely blocks the road to inner peaceful realm. A heavy label indeed and a source for potential performance failure stress.

As I understand, here you open another perspective:
* that the road to inner peace cannot be blocked actually;
* to let it all simply run and give it room to do that, not minding much while it does that, and then a natural order will reveal. No personal performance stress this time because one let nature takes it course and care of things. This idea is appealing, thank you very much for the inspiration!

It feels like you've telling: stop worrying about falling of the edge of the horizon, it's not flat, it's round
Digesting it further now, the fact that you are a good word cook makes it tasting well.

Thanks Jees. I appreciate your willingness to write about the struggle, and I think it is a struggle to tolerate and live the paradoxes of real life.

Honesty with myself, to the degree that I can tolerate it, is first and foremost for me. And then, being willing to "not know", allowing myself to be inadequate to a situation long enough to actually grow and develop some capacity in that situation or reality is also very important.

And the emotions or affects are perfect opportunities for just that kind of "not knowing." Something arises within me: an instinct, a desire, an emotional reaction; or a thought or an image or even a vision or an intuition. And it is new and unfamiliar in some specific way. And it may be too much for me. I am always a beginner in this new situation that is arising. I'm raw here. What a perfect opportunity to be with life as it is, beyond my expectations. What a great opportunity for curiosity.

How do I relate to the too-muchness of the arising of affect? I can avoid it, and I have many strategies of avoidance, and those are okay. Or I can seek to make contact with it, and I can risk myself and my "composure" to a willingess to make contact with those places where I "don't know".

Speaking generally, we all have strategies of avoidance and ways of making contact with ourselves to one degree or another. The question for me is, what kinds of sustainable ways of making contact can I develop?

The ground or the foundation for me starts with an attitude of acceptance and honesty towards myself as I am now in all my aspects. "Allowing" is a part of that. A trust in the wisdom and the basic goodness of my affects and instincts arises from some history of making contact with "not knowing". And that making contact has an element of surrender to it, it has an element of risk, an element of surrendering my memory, of surrendering my need for that "unknown" to be anything other than what it is.

And the weird thing is, I don't know "what it is". I need the attitude of curiosity most of all, the attitude of openness to the "unknown" in my life.

second this

An Oregon guy myself and I know too it's unique lighting, though have never seen Tuscany.

W/ much humility, responsibility, and respect --Welcome!

Thanks so much for posting some of your story.

Yes, John Beresford had the right set and a setting without "paranoia" in 1961 and under the right circumstances and taken in a wise way, these medicines can lead to a "making contact with ourselves".

He tells some of his story here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO4ALp9EFCg

He also, compassionately, confronted the moral dilemna of our societies following relationship to these poisons under the sign of "paranoia".



Pharmakon means both poison and medicine in Greek and a wise doctor knows both sides of a poison and its appropriate place and use. It's wise to treat such things with care.




I like Dale because he distills the vast literature into pithy wisdom. Dale also balances a more traditional Zen path with what he calls the poison path. He will give you plenty to chew on.



Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org...i/Enteric_nervous_system

"More than 90% of the body's serotonin lies in the gut, as well as about 50% of the body's dopamine, which is currently being studied to further our understanding of its utility in the brain." Tryptamines will directly stimulate your gut! I'd worry if you did not get a strong reaction in that "second brain". One of the lasting healing effects of these medicines when used wisely may indeed lie in the gut and the gut/brain interaction.

Not only is this not TMI but it is very important.

Thank you for the recipe, it is in the cauldron for further simmering

So close you can't see it

So deep you can't fathom it

So simple you can't believe it

So good you can't accept it....

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a classic. It is an excellent book for someone who is just beginning to learn about Zen. Especially the Gateless Gate section.

Thanks so much for this Intezam.

http://www.naturalawareness.net/mahamudra.html

A river of power intrinsically pure of fixation in any of the three spheres
Springs from a snow-mountain of pure Intent and Action
My karma and those of all sentient beings without limit.
And this river flows into the ocean of the four expressions of full awakening.


midway on the snow mountain is a sky island where my sweet salvia grows
her essence is like the camphor that burns pure and leaves no trace.

that camphor is a metaphor for and a living expression of our own intrinsic awareness.

Enjoy!