Metamorphosing

This card uses wave function collapse, a concept from quantum mechanics, as a metaphor for two states in the human domain — the state of indeterminate potential and free floating possibility, and the state of definite commitment and grounded engagement in the particular. I emphasize the metaphorical aspect because there is a New Age tendency to appropriate the findings of quantum mechanics and use them inappropriately. Quantum mechanics applies to the subatomic domain, and is comprehensible in the language of mathematics. Some will take those findings, and in a glib and misleading way apply them to the human domain. Collapsing the wave function, applied metaphorically here, means to sacrifice the indeterminate state by committing and engaging with something definite. So, for example, someone who relationally is “playing the field” and is uncommitted has an uncollapsed wave function, whereas someone in a monogamous committed relationship or marriage has collapsed the wave function relationally. Sometimes it is better not to collapse the wave function. For example, it may be better to leave certain ultimate questions left open rather than collapse them into definite answers in the form of a rigid fundamentalism. The uncollapsed wave function can be a catalyst for exploration, investigation, [...]

Decay is natural. Let what is obsolescent in your life, what no longer serves, fall away. Decay is necessary for new life.

Shed archaic layers. Take off the gloves and other body armor and feel the textures of the world around you. The blade is more important than the sheath. “There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;” — T.S. Eliot You are not your persona or social self. We all put on social masks and in some circumstances they are quite necessary. But they are not who you are. If some old masks no longer serve, let them melt away. Sometimes we put on masks to meet the outer world — we act differently at work or school than with intimate friends, adopt specialized demeanors when interacting with police or on a job interview. But some people — some police, for example, or people forever trying to be cool — come to identify with the persona. They believe they are the persona, the uniform or cool clothes wear them, and authenticity and their essence become ever more submerged. I once saw a magazine ad that showed a generic square-jawed male model looking very self-satisfied. The caption of the ad was something like this: “Underneath his Yves St. Laurent shirt, his [...]

The dark night of the soul, the descent into destruction, suffering, and chaos may contain within it the hidden possibility of rebirth. The dark night of the soul can be a zone of intense anguish where the will to live is challenged. It is also a zone where great transformation is possible. Carl Jung, in his study of alchemy, related the dark night of the soul to the “Nigredo.” Nigredo is an alchemical term for a condition of decomposition that was the first step in the transformation of base matter into the philosopher’s stone. William James, the great American pioneer in psychology, a renown Harvard professor, would sometimes write in his journal, “Please God, give me a reason to live for the next fifteen minutes.” I’ve had numerous dark nights of the soul. In the most acute episodes of despair that I’ve experienced, it felt like I would never be a functional human being again, and that suicide might be the only remaining act of self-love possible. In the dark night of the soul, the old identity crumbles, and the will to live may collapse. The great potential for metamorphosis in this state is that one lets the false die, [...]

Change is our only constant. Something in you and/or the outer situation has to change. Go with the flow of transformation, don’t resist it by clinging to the obsolescent structures of the past. Life is change, you must keep moving, changing, adapting, transforming. Woody Allen, in his classic film, Annie Hall, said: “A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.” Your relationship with life, the Tao, must be like a live shark, constant forward movement or else stagnation and death. Embrace the need for continual transformation. Many forces within and without resist change. For those willing to read more, in “Dealing with Shock,” the last section of A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler, discusses a philosophy of shock: …all organisms are conservative. They dial in an equilibrium, what biologists call homeostasis, and they seek to maintain it. This is a crucial life function, because organisms are generally complex, fragile processes, that require relatively narrow parameters of environmental conditions ‚Äî such as oxygen levels, temperatures, food sources ‚Äî and, inevitably, the environments in which they occur [...]

“All things must change to something new, to something strange.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Human incarnation is usually a fluctuation between metamorphosis and stagnation. As the Dylan lyric puts it: “he not busy being born is busy dying” Norie Huddle, in her book Butterfly, describes in poetic language the metamorphosis of caterpillar into butterfly: “The caterpillar’s new cells [after it has built its cocoon] are called ‘imaginal cells.’ They resonate at a different frequency. They are so totally different from the caterpillar cells that his immune system [that is the immune system of the worm] thinks they [the new imaginal cells] are enemies… and gobbles them up… But these new imaginal cells continue to appear, more and more of them! Pretty soon, the caterpillar’s immune system cannot destroy them fast enough. More and more of the imaginal cells survive. “And then an amazing thing happens! The little tiny lonely imaginal cells start to clump together, into friendly little groups. They all resonate together at the same frequency, passing information from one to another. Then, after a while, another amazing thing happens! The clumps of imaginal cells start to cluster together!… a long string of clumping and clustering imaginal cells, all [...]

You are a transformer. A human being is an entity incarnating in a corporeal primate body that is undergoing a state of continuous transformation, from conception through birth, growth, aging and death. We live in a state of continuous metamorphosis and that is great! Not so great for an ego that would like to hold onto things, identify and resist change! As a super complex process, human incarnation bifurcates into either a higher state of organization or a lower one. As a Dylan lyric puts it, “He who’s not busy being born, is busy dying.” Another way we lose sight of our transformative nature is that we succumb to the fallacy that our present state is permanent. We’re in a bad mood and we experience it as though those feelings will continue forever. But even the long-term deficits in our lives are not permanent, even though they may come to feel that way. Think about the most stubbornly permanent-feeling problem area or perceived deficiency in your life. You may feel it extending out around you into the past and the future. That aspect is not permanent either, if only for the most basic fact of human incarnation — our bodies [...]

“All things must change to something new, to something strange.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Human incarnation is usually a fluctuation between metamorphosis and stagnation. As the Dylan lyric puts it: “he not busy being born is busy dying” Norie Huddle, in her book Butterfly, describes in poetic language the metamorphosis of caterpillar into butterfly: “The caterpillar’s new cells [after it has built its cocoon] are called ‘imaginal cells.’ They resonate at a different frequency. They are so totally different from the caterpillar cells that his immune system [that is the immune system of the worm] thinks they [the new imaginal cells] are enemies… and gobbles them up… But these new imaginal cells continue to appear, more and more of them! Pretty soon, the caterpillar’s immune system cannot destroy them fast enough. More and more of the imaginal cells survive. “And then an amazing thing happens! The little tiny lonely imaginal cells start to clump together, into friendly little groups. They all resonate together at the same frequency, passing information from one to another. Then, after a while, another amazing thing happens! The clumps of imaginal cells start to cluster together!… a long string of clumping and clustering imaginal cells, all [...]

Strange partnerships and unusual couplings may be synergistic. Mutation and metamorphosis are ascendant evolutionary themes and these may require the unexpected intermingling of dissonant elements. The coming together of typically unrelated human types may yield interesting results, like my nephew and two nieces who are half Russian-Jewish and half Palestinian-Christian. The unusual coupling is not always with another person; it may be with a new idea, study, practice, career, food, medicine, or place of travel. These posed objects, found in my friend Marc’s place in Brooklyn, appear to be an Imperial Walker having sex with an F-16. These are artifacts of dissonant eras of technology, one from our world, one from a mythological world. Their coupling is unexpected, and yet they actually have so many things in common — both are human/machine cyborg weapons involving a machine exoskeleton surrounding a human operator. More essentially, both are of the Lego persuasion and plastic with interchangeable parts. Therefore both are constructed changelings whose parts could be interchanged to create newly mutated forms. Consider that this may be a propitious time to be open to unusual couplings.

Valuing prolonged adolescence sounds counterintuitive, I know. Indeed, our culture abounds with examples of the worst sort of prolonged adolescence, such as narcissistic baby boomers desperately and pathetically trying to hold onto the things of youth. I have often quoted the Mary Renault character who said, “Man must make his peace with his seasons or the gods will laugh at him.” It can be dangerous to cling to the Puer Aeternus, the archetype of the eternal youth. And yet there is also the creative, inspiring and metamorphic side of the prolongation of adolescence, a more hidden side of the paradox of prolonged youth that also needs to be honored. From an evolutionary and developmental point of view, it is often an advantage to be a late bloomer. A general trend we see in nature is that the more complex the organism, and the more potential it has for individuality, the longer it needs to develop. Baby spiders and scorpions seem to come into the world already fully locked and loaded with everything they need to know to be spiders and scorpions. They seem to have pre-installed operating systems of instincts allowing them to function as miniature adults at soon as [...]