No, there are many things that come as a surprise that are not funny at all.
I can readily agree with that, while it still doesn't rule out that something surprising can also be very funny at the same time.
You used a very good example, I find.
The moment you are able to turn pain into joke, it is not a surprise? In the sense that you are able to do that at all? Isn't it the case that you don't always succeed, and since you can't know where and when you might succeed, you are surprised IF it works?
The laughter comes for me from the fellowship
For me, likewise, though this does not preclude the solitary. I can laugh when I am alone with myself, amused at myself for having just thought or done something that was absurd or of any other nature. I don't see communion as the only bridge to laughter, although it is a very beautiful experience.
I laugh mostly because something that is taboo (coerced to be hidden) is acknowledged by another.
Yes, very much so :) I acknowledge pain through my laughter and especially because such laughter is often forbidden as taboo (for example, I laughed about the moment my mother accepted her death, the way which she chose to communicate it, opened the space) it nevertheless often expresses exactly that, that people have received a cosmic joke at certain moments.
You describe by this:
For that brief moment in time, two souls passing by on their journeys alone connected outside the cult-ural demands.
what happened between my mother, sister and me when we gave company to our dying mom.
I was surprised that I had been able to do it at all and had previously assumed that accompanying the dying would be a sad, difficult and debilitating business in every respect. Now I found that it was, but at the same time an exhilarating, light and strength-giving one.
No, it's a release to keep the harshness of life from breaking my fragility. Never a surprise though.
I don't either. I used that context in relation to your question involving another telling a joke to us.
The scripts we have within us are often rigid, and if they refuse to bend or recede can easily break one. Many of our scripts have much attachment to them, values that are one of the largest weights upon us as time moves forward and we lose these treasured connections. The intensities with which we store these grateful feelings can often be both a blessing at the time and a curse once it has moved on from us.
Thank you for sharing this most intimate look into such an experience for you. I have not processed the loss of my dad in such a way and it is with satisfaction I see that you have been able to process it in such a way.
If you feel something heavy and burdensome and you manage to turn that heavy into something light, is it something that you have already seen coming? If it were, that you had already seen it coming, then it would be impossible in the first place to feel the heaviness as heavy, because you already anticipated that it could be just as light for you.
... You would have to allow me to question your premise that you do not surprise yourself. I don't think I've actually been given that permission. Would it offend you if I said I am a fool to keep trying?
Very welcome. I see life in many cases as a paradox. It helps me to navigate more easily, to let things pass. Though I am certain that there will be plenty situations where I will be put to the test over and over again.
This appears to be a barrier in our view I think.
Not seeing something coming doesn't make it a surprise when it arrives. Nor does ones reaction to it need be a surprise if one understands themself.
There is controlled folly and uncontrolled folly.
There are situations (this is my speaking solely for myself here) where it simply doesn't make sense to choose feeling light over feeling heavy. Say something along the lines of witnessing a cruelty to oneself or another.
And choosing to feel heavy over it is no surprise to myself. And if someone (or myself even when the heaviness becomes thick) makes an absurd magnification of it in lightness for that brief time there can be a lightness that in no way invalidates the heaviness of the situation.
I wouldn't be offended yet would be curious as to the motivations. As I mentioned earlier in this discussion I'm of the opinion that no one really ever surprises themselves and merely pretends to so that the facade (mask) their conscious mind creates doesn't get ripped off. I believe most folks are frightened of what is behind that tool so pretend they can't see it when it opposes the narrative they have created around the scripts handed to them.
In your case it feels to me that you would have a stronger connection with that ocean of thought which is where your genius bubbles up from that is so often displayed within your conscious explorations.
Routine:
Think - Think - Think - Chit Chat - Think - Think - Chit Chat Think - Think - Think etc.
Disturbance:
Think - Think - Think - DISTURBANCE!!! - Surprise! - Oh! Shock! What the?!?! Where the...?!? After-think - After-think - After-think --> Uhm .., Ah..., Ohhhh!! HaHa!! LOL!
-->Understanding the self.
The initial divide was about my lack of surprising myself.
In your attempts to seek a crack in that assertion you continue to give examples of an outside stimuli being the cause of the surprise. I will concede that outside stimuli can indeed cause many surprises. What I'm talking about is my own reaction and thoughts on these surprises do not surprise me. I know myself, about the only thing I really do know in all of the ignorance I swim in.
I do sometimes ponder what lies beyond my surface. But I long ago concluded that in this current form I inhabit knowing that might not be possible, like trying to fit the ocean into a cup. I long ago accepted my perpetual state of ignorance and pettiness and etc etc. This has gone far in allowing me the luxury of knowing I'm not my thoughts, I'm not my actions. And more importantly, how the thoughts that give form to these different forms I can adopt will rise up. I'm not caught by surprise by my own limitations, faults and best of all, the moments I briefly shine.
It's probably because I experience the boundary between external and internal stimuli as fluid and it sometimes drives me crazy that I can't see a razor-sharp line here. But that's a whole other topic :)
HaHa, fitting the ocean into a cup gives a good example!
Here, you may find that interesting, it touches what I wanted to express to you:
I'll have to watch this another time when I have more to use. Thank you for sharing.
One syntax I learned a long time ago for what you describe is our perception is based on a sliding focus that was referred to as the assemblage point. Reason is a high calibration of it being rigidly placed on one spot. Which obviously has its advantages. However, there are many positions and possibilities of experience and perception that can be had from even the minutest shift in that focal point.
Other cultures would often refer to those who could make these shifts and stop them with precision medicine men and such.
It was noted in the syntax I discuss here that journeys in dreaming take place when this shifting happens, and that women are more natural dreamers than men. Which accounts for why women seem often unreasonable to men and not so reasonable. Because there is much more fluidity in the shifting, but often not so much the ability to stop and focus it at will on specific spots.
This is in no way a judgement on what is better (although my preference is for an ability to focus down on a position for clarity and cohesion). It has occurred to me long ago after being exposed to these principles that the locked in position we know as reason serves in its own way as a prison as well as a tool.
It is the rare person I suspect that can master both stalking (the precision of the stopping of that assemblage point) and the dreamer who takes wild journeys through their perception yet shift so much they often have trouble being able to create a neat categorization. There couldn't be one for those shifting in such ways. All categorizations are made based on falsely created reference points pretending the area of focus is the entire structure and not just a little space within a vast spectrum.
I wish to qualify this with one thing. I find it amazing that you are able to see this within yourself, and is probably the strongest attribute you have that has drawn me to you. You have an amazing ability as a stalker/hunter despite as a woman naturally being a dreamer. Yet your natural dreamer attributes still shine through.
It is fascinating watching you explore with abandon as you do, yet with a precision that normally doesn't accompany such exploration. I suspect in another time and place you would have been taught to be a medicine woman here in the native american cultures. It's a rare person who is adept at both stalking and dreaming.
I would say that there are clear differences between men and women and I fully accept these unspoken.
But as soon as you start talking about these differences, it quickly becomes a matter of "I'm better than you", as stereotypical attributions of characteristics, which I mostly find superfluous, because they are often more due to one's own inferiority or superiority complex than to the "real characteristics" of a person. But since the "real qualities" of a person ultimately remain untraceable "in general" because they are situational in nature, one can get caught up in endless debates here. Women can be as rigid as men and men can be as indecisive as women. It depends on the realm of profession and knowledge, the very domain where one is highly experienced at.
That's why I don't think much of the current trend of choosing one's gender as if one were going to shop for clothes in a boutique. In my view, this is an expression of confusion or misunderstanding of a lifestyle sold as freedom.
I value your level of self-knowledge as much as you value mine.
https://blurt.blog/skillful/@erh.germany/rhkovc
I think in the conversation I have had with someone else, I find myself better in explaining what I was trying to tell you. You may even find the whole comment threat worth reading.
You mention in that comment you forget and the remembrance surprises you. The shifting between trance states does not surprise me, nor does shifting back into one where I remember. I long ago understood this was a large part of my makeup and in fact once one understand this one is able to more easily shift into different trances (positions) and remember upon demand.
This one is really mind blowing (but not a surprise once one experiences and understands). One is even able (at times) to shift into areas that one should have no memory/skill of. Jung touched upon this somewhat with his label of collective consciousness.
Presumably it is a language barrier. It may well be because English is not my mother tongue and also because we both use terms that are a habit for one but not for the other. I let go of it because it no longer seems important to me.
Just this much:
Trance, for instance, I associate with "being out of it", not really in the present moment of an experience with myself in the immediate environment, but rather with an other/inside world.
Waking up from a trance or a kind of hypnosis didn't have the effortless, lightning-quick character, but felt rather slow, like emerging from a very deep water.
I once had ninety minutes in a kind of deprivation tank, which was an exceedingly beautiful and interesting affair. The hour and a half seemed like minutes to me, I had lost all sense of time and also of my own body.
What you say about Jung reminds me of some of the dreams I had.
Here, a very short blog post I wrote back in time recalling one dream:
https://hive.blog/psychology/@erh.germany/once-i-turned-into-a-gorilla
The truth is we are in various states of trance at all times. Some are more intense on being consciously present (the guard) and most are in various stages of that guard being lulled increasing our various susceptibility to suggestion. Most associate it as some extreme case without realizing we are always rolling through various levels of trance and those who would own us purposely set of conditions to force us up and down these intensities like a yo-yo.
I like your dream, thanks for sharing. You were able to move past your impotence into a place of power releasing the pent up energy that was making you feel off.
One observation you make about time (and yes time speed is felt different depending on what state of trance we are in as you note).
I've had dreams when I was younger where I would live many years to a lifetime in one dream. It made me humble and understand my ignorance by the questions it raised for me. Putting more validity into the saying am I a man dreaming I'm a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I'm a man.
If lifetimes can be live elsewhere while mere hours go by here as one experiences it, what the hell is time really?
A measurement of decay/movement that is not as rigid a prison tot he conscious mind as it appears, yet in the focus of our intent on being here we imprison ourselves within it. But flying outside of it we somehow change the intensity laws and access it differently.
I'm rambling now, your dream sharing activated these older observations and questions I've held in my library collection of imprints upon myself.
Reminds me on the effectiveness of advertisements, messages served on both, a conscious and subconscious level and when people were tested if what they think is their own opinion, it was revealed afterwards to them, that they were fed certain symbols, colors and signs with. Strong influence it is, indeed.
I thought of it as something Jung described as archetypes. The gorilla as one of it. :)
You payed attention to your dreams. That in itself is already an achievement.
Good question. I played with the concept of time here: https://hive.blog/science/@erh.germany/let-s-play-a-mental-game-of-time-perception
:) you may like it. Or did I show it already to you? Not sure. I shared this link lately with some people.
Greetings! I have to leave.