Blogtalmud: tune-in to the hidden harmony of chaos

On the slab this evening an inspiring piece by Kristina Dry?a drawing on Joseph Campbell and Karl Jung (Dave Snowden look away now). Idea of blogtalmud is I quote the article in its entirety and intersperse with musings, links and whatever takes my fancy :-)

Hey ho let's go:

“We all know the myth of the four ages—of gold, silver, bronze, and iron—where the world is represented as declining from its golden age, growing ever worse. It will disintegrate, presently, in chaos—only to burst forth again, however, fresh as a flower, and to recommence spontaneously the inevitable course,” Joseph Campbell writes in?The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays 1959 – 1987.?[20]

Actually I didn't but I do now. This brings to mind the piece I did on the Ecocycle and conversations with David Dibble on Ilya Prigogine's Dissipating Structures, our conversation on the first chaotic episode of Growing the Edge last year and the work of James Grier Miller introduced to me by Allen Woods I cite here.

The cycle of life, indeed life itself -- as Grier Miller observed -- operates at all scales and within all modalities, whether we are talking about the natural world, an empire or a snowflake. And whether from an arts, sciences, philosophical or spiritual perspective we can each come to know its cadences. Some people even make a career out of it.

It’s familiar, but unhelpful, to believe that chaos exists only outside of us, “out there” somewhere. And that this chaos “out there” presses in upon our internal lives in an intrusive and disruptive manner. Yet referencing chaos as solely occurring outside of ourselves positions us as passive victims. If we could only trust the grace, beauty, flow and fluidity, which can potentially arise out of chaos, we’d then touch into the boundless possibilities that exist beyond our commonly held misconceptions.

Yes chaos is wired into the operating system of the universe--that much is certain. Listen to my conversation with David Dibble about this. As such it is never too far away, like a transcendental vortex, beckoning us as we traipse round the event horizon of the supermarket car park. For some reason we are skilled as a species of resisting this pull--of considering chaos (to reuse terms I picked up at last year's Cynefin Retreat on Anthrocomplexity and Aesthetics) more yuck than yum. I guess we would be boundless mush otherwise--resistance to the forces of entropy (and even reversing the flow) being a fundamental property of life after all (cf. Erwin Sch?dinger's Negentropy). If we were just plumes of methane currently exploding from the Siberia tundra we wouldn't be so bothered:

Trust speaks to me of vulnerability; humility and courage in the face of overwhelming forces. Campell's words also bring to mind the phrase "LetGo" and the work of J.Brian Hennessy. Indeed letting go, softening our resistance to the transcendent forces of chaos, and allowing ourselves to be a passive conduit carrying the currents of entropy's play is fundamental to the creative process as well as drawing to mind the work of Adrian Bejan. Letting it happen: do what thou wilt (not an endorsement of Crowley but came to mind). This passive point is important: though observant throughout to access the infinite that lies outside our bounds.

From our observed, direct experience we learn that 99.9% of creative processes happen at the border’s edge between order and chaos. For anything truly original to be born in the world, chaos must first precede it. Nothing new can emerge until we’re ready to reach into the chaos—willingly—and pull it out. Only out of chaos can a new order emanate, be this order within one’s own personal psyche or in the collective. In the apparent void, which chaos leaves behind in its wake, life renews itself. And this renewal of life occurs through the alternate filling and emptying of consciousness.

Prigogine again. So perhaps birth itself, that creative wellspring, is merely a manifestation of these boundary effects -- territorialisation and deterritorialisation as dealt with by Gilles Deleuze?and?Félix Guattari's Assemblage Theory.

The phrase "Only out of chaos can a new order emanate" sticks in the mind. Nietzsche did not say this but he did say some cool things about chaos that resonate as pointed out in this snippet from Milo Crotoni:

Nietzsche did not originate that particular phrase, though a web search finds a few places where people claim that.?Ordo Ab Chao?(Order From Chaos) is from Freemasonry. Nietzsche did, however, write in several places about chaos. The two I recall are

From Thus Spake Zarathustra

I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.

Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.

And from The Will to Power

To become master of the chaos one is…that is the grand ambition here.

My read of these words is this: Nietzsche thought of anything that doesn’t grow or reinvent itself as lifeless and a dead end. He celebrated the bit of chaos that goes beyond our tidy and too facile picture of the world.

Like all things Nietzsche, this contains deep insight together with exaggeration. A finite mind cannot fully capture the order of Life. It transcends our best attempts to make it concrete. Does that mean order is unreal or imagined? If one looks at Nature, for example, it is damned near indestructible because it finds its way around limitations to a new order. In that sense, Nietzsche is correct. Order is to a degree imperfectly captured by our limited conceptions. There is always something beyond the order we conceptualize.        

In my mind I visualise creative systems with gravitational pull. These systems are like black holes duking it out, each trying to out suck the other. The fabric of space time is pulled apart until there is a resolution to a new temporarily stable state and in the interregnum we have creativity.

Too often, though, we attempt to prevent the appearance of chaos. To avoid it we try to imagine it in advance and rush ahead of it. Or when we’re in the throes of chaos, we prematurely try to organize it and instill conceptual frameworks on it. But we usually get burnt in the process because chaos, although meaningful, is non-rational. We can never halt it. We can only accept it and heed its instructions.?

Hmm. I seem to recall Cynefin practitioners allowing for the invocation of chaos in a creative context--can it be both tamed and let loose in the same framework?

There’s an aspect of our psyche that “knows”?chaos is the condition of potential before manifestation—the progenitor of all progress—but how do we trust this recognition when we’re facing our own personal pandemonium??And when it appears that our external order is threatened with disarray, how do we maintain faith that a divine reordering of our internal life is simultaneously occurring??How do we find the inner compass within ourselves to even locate metaphoric north when there’s seemingly a swirling, catastrophic mess surrounding us? How do we establish our center and poise in the eye of the storm?

Transcendence of self. The universe is bigger than us though we are also part of it. Let go and trust. Look death in the eye with compassion. Compasses and north recall to mind my recent audiobook listening of Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, where he draws on his time spent in the horrors of Auschwitz and other camps where he lost several members of his family including his parents, brother and wife.

Frankl was one of the founders of the third Viennese school of psychotherapy and the discipline of Logotherapy. For him, a non-neurotic mental life is characterised by the finding of an inner purpose unique to all of us.

Campbell states, “Those who have identified themselves with the body and its affections will necessarily find that all is painful, since everything—for them—must end. But for those who have found the still point of eternity, around which all—including themselves—revolves, everything is glorious and wonderful just as it is.” [20]

Indeed Frankl finds plenty of meaning and purpose in the wrong type of chaos, suffering and death.

To find our bearings,?it’s crucial we?focus on guiding our soul into present time and reconnect with that deeper part of ourselves that “knows” and can move in concordance with the chaos. Given that we’ll always be in a dance between order and disorder,?being and becoming, can we discover a way to cultivate?wu wei, a state where our actions are effortlessly in alignment with the flow of life? And can we also learn to be quiet and still in the river of life and actually listen to what it requests of us?

Dov Tsal's Taoist approach to Agile.

Campbell reminds us:

?“The first duty of man, consequently, is to play his given role—as do the sun, the moon, the various animal and plant species, the waters, the rocks, and the stars—without fault; and then, if possible, so to order his mind as to identify it with the inhabiting essence of the whole.” [20]

Marcus Aurelius (or was it Shakespeare?): to thine own self be true.

However, as C. G. Jung said, “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.” We often confuse self-sabotage with the chaos that births universes. The latter chaos is certainly cosmic, while the former most definitely puts us out of commission. There’s always chaos when we move into new paradigms of power, potential, creativity, and influence, but we must first question whether we’re indulging in the type of self-generated, fracturing, and distracting chaos that keeps?us trapped in our obsolete and dysfunctional patterns.?Here we?must break the old order to create a new order—and do it consciously.

So it has to be the right type of chaos -- cf. the wrong type of leaves. From without rather than within.

Once chaos has fulfilled its task of rearranging what needs reordering, it will begin to dissipate, step aside, and allow us to gradually take the next steps towards the higher reordering that’s presented itself. Yet a note of caution here: transformation isn’t linear and the spiral of evolution will eventually bring another form of chaos to test our courage, resilience, and self-awareness because everything—whether it’s spiritual insights gained or physical challenges overcome—will return to be repeated at higher iterations of themselves.?

• Yeah, Bish ?, chaos gets bored of us after a while and splits for better pickings elsewhere. It's restless like that --like a transcendent train winding through the universe, stopping at remote stations before speeding on its journey to the infinite.

The position from which we engage the chaos also matters. It affects its alchemy. That’s why we’re continually invited to remember that our minds can’t ever leap ahead of the chaos.?Only an open, assenting, non-judgmental heart can meet and accept its inevitable phases. “There is but one way to say yea in love,” Campbell writes, “and that is to affirm what is there. That is true love; and, as Paul says, ‘Love bears all things.’” [289] And we never have more light, love and inspiration available to us than when we’re in those frightening, disorienting, helter-skelter places. Sometimes it takes an overwhelming breakdown of the mind to have an undeniable breakthrough of the heart.?

Chaos - much to love, much to fear.

And because chaos is the genesis of all things?sui generis, the nine Muses and three Graces are far easier to access during this time. Campbell states:

?“This number (9) is the number, moreover, of the great goddess Aphrodite, as the personification of love, and of whom the nine Muses and three Graces are the specialized manifestations. There is a beautiful harmony to be recognized in these mythological images; and this harmony is a reference to the hidden, the occult, which sits within the universe and all things.” [255]

Chaos for me mocks numbers and steals the gods' lunch money on their way to school. Occasionally it leaves them alone and whispers suggestions for their homework.

And for emphasis, I would add the recognition of the beautiful, hidden harmony, which exists within chaos.?

Notwithstanding its fearful symmetry born of innocence and experience ;-) Thanks Kristina.