rilke – Andy White Blog

The Stone Hearted Man.

Once there were four brothers. When the three eldest were grown-up they set off to find wives for themselves. Their journey took them through a dark forest where night soon fell. The brothers found a little cottage in the middle of the forest and asked the strange old man who lived there to give them shelter. He invited them in, giving them food and lodging, on the condition that when they returned on their journey homewards they bring him a wife as well. The brother’s hid their amusement and agreed. When they reached the next land they entered into the service of the king who had three beautiful daughters. The brothers served the king so well he gave them his daughters’ hands in marriage and so they returned home, passing once more through the forest where the old man lived. ‘And where is my wife?’ he demanded. ‘Er, we forgot’, they relied. The old man promptly turned them all to stone, except for one of the princesses whom he imprisoned and had her cook and clean and sew.

The remaining princess was terribly upset but resolved to do as the old man asked to the best of her ability. One day she asked, ‘why did you turn them all to stone?’ and he answered, ‘because my heart is made of stone.’ ‘And where do you keep your heart of stone?’ she asked again. ‘Under the bedsheets,’ he replied and went off into the forest. The young woman then went out into a meadow and picked wildflowers which she made into a beautiful wreath. She placed it upon his bed, ‘so that your stone heart may know joy’, she explained when he got home. ‘You are kind,’ said the old man, softening. ‘In fact, in the middle of the forest is a huge rock and in that rock is a small bird and in that bird is my heart. If anyone should be able to smash the rock and capture the bird, I will have my heart back again.’ ‘Oh’, thought the Princess, ‘who could manage such a feat?’

Meanwhile, when the youngest brother heard that his older brothers had disappeared he vowed to find them and set off into the forest. Along the way he became hungry and set out his picnic, calling out, ‘is anyone there who needs to eat? Come and join me.’ A great ram with mighty horns suddenly appeared and the young lad shared his meal with him. ‘Take one of my hairs,’ said the ram, ‘if ever you need me take it out and I will come to your aid.’ Further down the path the boy became hungry once more and again set out out his picnic, ‘I still have some food left.’ he called out, ‘if anyone is there and needs to eat, come and join me.’ A dove lighted upon his blanket and shared his meal then saying, ‘take one of my feathers, if ever you need me I will come to your aid.’

When the young man came to the little cottage he found the princess who told him everything that had happened. He then went to the rock in the middle of the forest and took out the ram’s hair from a pocket whereupon the ram appeared directly and broke the rock in two. Out flew the bird and when he saw it he pulled the feather from his other pocket. The dove appeared in less than a moment and caught the bird, delivering up the old man’s heart which the youngest brother then carried carefully back to the cottage. The old man was overjoyed and released the brothers and sisters from their stone prison. There was a huge wedding and they all lived happily ever after.

The transgression of the three brother’s forgotten promise results in them being arrested in their tracks by the chthonic powers of the old man and either turned to stone or enslaved. The theme of being turned to stone is one which has a rather particular meaning in myth and folklore. Lot’s wife in the Old Testament is turned to stone for disrespecting God’s command not to look back at the destroyed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the plain below. She is fixed in the past, unable to move forward. She cannot accompany the movement of her family into a new future. Petrification is what happens when the possibility of transformation is forsworn.

In the story of Medusa, her power to turn others into stone is given by the gods to prevent further transgressions against her after she was raped by Poseidon. The story of Niobe is equally instructive. She boasts of her superiority to Leto because she has many children; Apollo and Artemis then destroy the children, and Niobe herself is turned into weeping stone. Her grief becomes geological. ‘Niobe became that representative of human nature liable to pride in prosperity and forgetfulness of the respect and submission due to the gods’. (wiki)

Petrification is symbolic of an arrested psychic process. It does not necessarily mean the disappearance of psychic life; but that psychic life has become imprisoned in an excessively rigid form. Becoming fixed in stone is what happens when the encounter between consciousness and the autonomous Other cannot continue. Whilst the petrification seems wholly punitive it also has the connotation of an entirely natural process. A person becomes stone because some psychic event cannot be metabolised. This is quite different from punishment. The stone becomes necessary as a container of unbearable affect.

Two thousand years of Christian theology has made it difficult for us to come to terms with the reality that the divine is both loving and malevolent, that God has his own shadow to deal with. We are generally left floundering in our efforts to take this psychological reality seriously and, like the three brothers, tend to ignore or forget the debt of responsibility due to the dark face of the Self.

Nevertheless, ‘to be divine, to be an adequate symbol of the Self, God must be endowed with a shadow’, (O’Kane 1990 p32) whose impact we are bound to feel in life’s tragedies, sufferings and incomprehensions. God is both terrifying and lovable because the numinous exceeds the ego’s comprehension. There is no defence or protection from the Unfathomable as Job discovered to his cost. This dark, scary aspect of the Self is hinted at in religious teaching but we are generally given little guidance in developing a sufficiently propitious attitude to address it. In psalm 111 we find, ‘The fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ And in an otherwise upbeat and joyous Christmas carol, ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night’ we find the angel who is announcing the birth of the Christ child also having to sooth terrified shepherds, ‘fear not’, said he, ‘for mighty dread had seized their troubled minds’.

The angel does not say ,’there is nothing to fear’. The shepherds dread is an appropriate response to a numinous encounter which shreds ordinary categories of knowledge. The angel is ‘mind blowing’. Angels descending and glory shining around is enough to make anyone wet themselves and in the face of which ‘being good’ doesn’t quite seem like adequate protection. ‘Every angel is terrifying,’ says the poet Rilke, ‘if I were taken to his heart, into the presence of his greater being, would I not be consumed?’

Thus it is not just the shadow of the personality which tends to be split off and repressed but also the shadow of the divine itself which is then compelled to live out its days in the forest of the unconscious, exerting its influence in tangential ways. The disrespect shown to the old man by the three brothers provokes a response commensurate with the frightening power of the dark self. Its as if the stone hearted man were saying, ‘if you cannot afford me the kind of respect which acknowledges the complexity of the divine then you are ill-equipped to enter into the complexities of life itself and so, for your own sakes, you will have to tarry here a while’.

Arrested development is not a punishment, it is a form of safe guarding. Those who do not have sufficient resources to manage the contrary rigours of life as it is must develop rigid character structures accordingly. They become ‘encapsulated’ and think ‘concretely’. A worldview uncomplicated by vexing promises or annoying responsibilities results in folk being impervious, like stone, to the needs of others. The conviction that the world is what I know of it renders us prisoners of sedimented paradigms, unable to think outside the box.

We all know people who seem hard-boiled, walled off, unavailable to influence or appeal and who are therefore childlike and even infantile. The recent renaming of Lake Ontario as a response to American domestic and international crisis is a case in point. So the stone hearted man, whilst dark, is not necessarily evil. The brothers’ forgotten promise makes it unwise for them to proceed because, by their own admission, they lack the necessary wherewithal to fully engage with the relational demands of adult life.

Our story presents us with two worlds, one of which is presided over by the lofty king in his protective castle, the other is a deep dark forest presided over by a very different kind of man, wild, mysterious, primal, the stone that the builder refused. The three older brothers make the mistake of disrespecting the stone-hearted man; they mock his vital instinctually, with the unfortunate consequences that their own vitality is then petrified.

The youngest brother’s attitude is quite different. He is able to accommodate the disparate aspects of the psyche with equal respect and attention, sharing his picnic with both the chthonic and instinctual ram and then later with the aerial purity of the dove.

Before the split had opened up between Olympus and Hades, the ram and the dove were both considered sacrificial animals which mediated between humanity and the gods. They represent the polarity of divine energies. The youngest brother’s skill is not about any kind of heroic endeavour. It lies in his capacity to enter into relation with two radically different manifestations of the numinous. He honours both the transcendent receptivity of the dove and the scary, vital ferocity of the ram. This is what Jung calls the coniunctio oppositorum, out of which emerges the capacity to resolve an apparently intractable situation.

The ram is the destructive, turbulent force capable of busting open what has become closed, the de-integrating effect of the numinous which, to quote Kahlil Gibran, ‘breaks open the shell of our understanding’. The dove is that surgical delicacy which can retrieve the bird/heart without hurting it and make it available to the hero whose skill, like Parsifal is in being able to ask the right question. This question is not ‘who is out there?’ which reduces the other to an object of consciousness but ‘is there anyone there who needs to eat, anyone who would like to join me?’ which makes of the other a fellow subject with whom a feast can be shared.

The propitious attitude necessary to creating a redeeming and transformative possibility is primarily established by the princess’s enduring patience and the kind gesture of making the mandala of flowers by which she gains the secret knowledge of the heart’s whereabouts. Later it is embodied by the youngest brother’s generosity to the `Ram and the Dove within the temenos of his picnic blanket, the sacred protective space where opposites can meet without mutual destruction, all of which sets in motion the possibility of bringing about the restoration and remembrance of the lost heart. What has been lost is recovered and restored, not by heroic action but by the propitious attitude. The temenos is the psychic space in which this attitude becomes effective and recovery can occur.

The hero’s task is to open the rock without destroying what it contains. If the heart were destroyed, the story would be about defeating an evil power. But the heart is returned and when it is returned, the apparently monstrous/stone-hearted man becomes a benevolent agent of transformation. What looked like an enemy was actually a disordered sacred power whose centre had been displaced.

The aim is not annihilation of the dark power. It is restoration of relatedness between dissociated elements. The sacred has both an aerial and a chthonic face. Human psychic wholeness requires relationship with both. This is remarkably close to Jung’s concept of the transcendent function, not the elimination of opposites, but the emergence of a third position from the tension between them. Initially the divine appears split into radically different symbolic forms, the dove that descends from above and the ram that breaks through from below. The hero’s task (and skill) is to recognise both as belonging to the same sacred field. Then the heart can be recovered, the old man restored and the nuptial party liberated.

The Jealous King.

There was once a king who would not allow his daughter to marry. He kept her shut up in his castle and turned all her suitors away. One fine day she asked him pretty please and since it was indeed such a fine day, if she could not walk briefly in the meadow below the castle walls? Eventually the King agreed but warned her not to go too far… lest some harm come to her.

The Princess walks out into the meadow and there she finds a young man who is sooo handsome she immediately falls in love. He is, of course, a Prince from a neighboring kingdom. Each return to their respective fathers saying they want to get married. The Jealous King flies into a rage, closes the castle gates and challenges the young Prince to lay siege to his walls if he wishes.. which is just what he does. After a while the Prince realizes the castle is empty, everyone has escaped through underground passages. Only the King and Princess remain. The King implores his daughter’s obedience but she refuses and in a fury he casts a terrible spell upon her which turns her into three animals; a rabbit, a lion and a dragon.

The Prince searches high and low for the Princess but to no avail. Nothing but pesky and somewhat dangerous creatures. In despair he sends his troops home, continuing to search alone. In a nearby wood he comes across an Ancient Crone who tells him the secret of the King’s curse. He must return to the castle and find the animals, kissing each one three times.

At their wedding feast the Old King is included on the guest list, though further down the table than he might have liked.

This subversion of the Princess by the Jealous King can be looked at a number of different ways. One way to view this story is at face value, as an allegory for current events, a good example being the recent claim of harassment, false imprisonment and illegal gagging orders made against American virologist Dr Mikovits at the bequest of King Fauci who had other ideas about what should become of her HIV research, all of which then escalated into spell casting tsunamis of propaganda against her, millions spent on silencing something…

which could not possibly be.

Er, I thought Fauci was the good guy?

It depends on who your standing next to on the podium, can we continue?

of course..

Another way of looking at this story is to imagine that all the characters and interactions are parts of oneself. Fairy tales and myths are public dreams which, like dreams, can be seen as both describing outer events in an allegorical way but also as an emerging outcrop of consciousness from within. The problem with approaching either dream or fairy story from this subjective point of view, where all the characters and events are given the slant of an entirely inner pageant, is that you are then denied the luxury of projection upon which so much interaction and internal cohesion depend. The symbols involved can no longer be regarded as some quaint matter simply for other folk’s consideration. They not only have to do with us but act upon us.

‘The individual is then faced with the task of putting down to his own account all the iniquity, devilry, etc. which he has blandly attributed to others and about which he has been indignant all his life.” CG Jung

Given the understandable resistances involved, what might it mean that the inner king has imprisoned fair maid and cast this divisive spell? Could the metaphors involved refer to some crucial psychological dynamic within the individuation process? If so, what might that be?

The problem with growth and change is that it shakes previously sturdy self-constructs and leaves behind the familiarity of old ways of being. You have to suck at something new, trade in your old strategies and values for others as yet untested. This is why initiatory thresholds and transformations of any kind are generally difficult and unpleasant, necessitating much merrymaking to compensate the dread. They often require ritual, observance and loads of relatives to contain the transition which involves a process dubbed ‘de-integration’ by analyst Michael Fordham; you get pulled apart but not to pieces.

Not everything in the psyche is going to be happy about this. The instinct for self preservation wants to prop up the old structure, even if it does not serve the impulse to growth with which it is then bound to clash. This is why support for Trump increased at the beginning of the Corona virus outbreak in America despite his utterly incompetent handling of the situation. The Devil you know is safer than the angel you do not.

..’and so I keep down my heart and swallow the call-note of depth dark sobbing.’ R.M Rilke

The Jealous King is the ‘old outmoded dispensation’ in the psyche, the dominant function for a particular stage of life which has served its part and become redundant as a way forward, the alchemical calcinatio where the soul feels dried out and dusty, where no more marrow can be sucked from your situation.

Such circumstances provoke crisis. The wheel of life has turned but not found new expression, the tools and strategies of yesteryear no longer adequate for today’s challenges. And yet despite this we all tend to drag our feet and hang on to old structures, sabotaging potential and silencing emerging consciousness.

‘Instinctive forces does not reason. They assume from the immense experience of Nature’s ways that it will serve best to be stabilized according to initial experience, most commonly [among] those whose strong need for a maternal figure has followed them into middle age.’ J Liedloff

Fortunately, love and life find a way. The new shoot eventually manages to squeeze past the psyche’s defenses, often by virtue of a chance encounter or some seemingly insignificant event which then catalyses change, though not without bitter conflict and feeling besieged by the very flood of energy you have been hoping for.

Finally, the threatened dominant function, walled in but without the usual resources at its disposal, resorts to dissociative tactics, a spell which divides and incapacitates. For a while the new form of life seems desperately imperiled or at least at sixes and sevens.

‘The integration of contents that were unconscious and projected involves a serious lesion of the ego… a decomposition of the elements indicating dissociation and collapse of existing ego structures,.. closely analogous to schizophrenia.’ C G Jung.

Not much fun. Our story seems to be suggesting that the process of becoming more conscious involves considerable inner conflict and suffering which can decommission ‘normal’ functioning.

‘The energies and attention of the individual are often so engrossed that the power of coping with normal life may be impaired.’ R. Assagioli.

There is a real risk that emerging consciousness cannot be integrated. Fortunately, the Ancient Crone makes an appearance just at the moment of despair and tells the Prince what to do. She is Old Mother Earth, the Principle of Co-operation and Relatedness, a power deeper and more potent than that of the King. She understands not only the malady but also the cure, the fragmented potential has to be loved back to wholeness, the scary lion and the terrifying dragon along with the sweet bunny. If the Princess can be loved in her totality, warts and all, there will be transformation. The Jealous King doesn’t have to be killed, just deposed. He can even go to the wedding feast so long as he accepts a lesser place at the table.

The Curse of Creativity.

I once had the dubious honor of being locked up in a third world jail for an irregularity in my passport. I was thrown into a stinking cell in absolute darkness. The stench could have stripped paint. Bodies shuffled in the acrid void. A match was lit and held up to my face, one of three brothers who then shared their single blanket and the newspaper sheets that served for a bed.

As dawn broke I noticed another man sitting apart from us. He was curled into an upright fetal ball, sleeping on his feet to avoid the cold floor, arms wrapped around himself protectively. It was a posture that had the stamp of long practice. I asked the brothers about him. One of them explained that he had been here fro many years. He tapped his temple meaningfully.

Each morning some benefactor would drop off some peanuts and an orange for this poor prisoner. He received no visitors. No-one spoke to him. Not even the brothers. He was utterly alone. Over the several days it took to secure my freedom I watched him closely. Initially I was afraid. Then I got curious.

He said nothing, barely moved except to sun himself in the open corridor for the few hours in the day we were allowed out of our cell. He’d perch himself in a corner, trouser legs rolled up, his legs dangling out of the bars that ran down one side of the walk-way. There he would slowly unpack his treasure, meticulously shelling his peanuts and building an artistic cone with the husks. He attended to this in great detail, balancing each shell with delicate precision. Should any shell tumble down he would painstakingly replace it with quiet urgency until the project was complete.

Then he would peel his orange. Each rind was used to decorate the cone. Every last scrap of white pith was removed with infinite delicacy and used to crown his totem. Then he would break open the orange with all the seriousness and ceremony of communion. Each segment was savored as if it were ambrosia. Deep contentment seemed to flood through him as he lingered over every last morsel.

When he was finished he leaned his entire body against the bars as if exhausted with gratitude before extracting a remarkably clean handkerchief from the inner recesses of otherwise filthy clothes and carefully wiped the corners of his mouth. His sacrament was complete for another day.

Folk tend to assume that creativity is about talent and end products. We confuse it with technical ability. It suits us to do this. You can tell yourself that you have not been blessed with such gifts, that unmanifest creativity is not your fault.

Much tougher is the consideration that creativity is a kind of attitude towards life which is precisely our responsibility to cultivate regardless of circumstance. This can be done under the most abject conditions. Creativity in not the same as making things. It is not even a precondition for it. So what stops us from living so unconditionally when there is such freedom to be had?

The reason is that the creative attitude is iconoclastic, it breaks the mold of self construct, prods life’s holy cows, stirs up all the mud from pond’s bottom. Certainty and the confidence that goes with it has to be renounced. Introducing yourself gets complicated.

One of the struts in my own identity was always that I hadn’t an artistic bone in my body. I said so loud and long, enough to begin to get suspicious…. One day, just as a way of getting out of the house, I thought I would make a mosaic in my garden. Not art you understand. But the mosaic had other ideas and became art whether I liked it or not.

Now I had a problem on my hands. People were coming to see it. Someone ratted on me to the local newspaper. Strangers pulled their cars over in the lane to ask how I was getting on. Some little girl in the Post office said ,”look mummy, its the mosaic man.”

It was all too much. I covered it over and went back to being a writer. I was pleased with my new commitment. Then I got depressed. Then I got sick. A spell in hospital under the watchful eye of specialist consultants produced only raised eyebrows. Then I had a dream, a howling banshee screaming at me like a jilted lover, raging abandonment and retribution. Next morning I uncovered the mosaic and resumed my work. Within a few days my illness had disappeared. I wasn’t sick any more… but I was in crisis.

The birth of anything is a brush with death. Creativity’s handmaidens are Chaos and Bewilderment. An end to the log jam comes at a price. Much as it is uncomfortable, the inner blockage can feel like the lesser of two evils compared to the disorientation that attends a deliberate step into an unknown self. And so you stay put, reaching for the comfortable props that in a short while will be cursed as boredom.

The problem is not lack of courage but that the source of the fear is not sufficiently named and is therefor difficult to face. Rilke said it best…

”Every angel is terrible and so I suppress myself and swallow the call note of depth dark sobbing.”

Which brings us to the knife cut of our final undoing, compelled to ask from whence as well as to what end. Something other than ego consciousness is at play and demanding to be taken seriously. Not only will your creation create you back, it will depose you too. To be inspired is literally to breath something in, something unknown, doing I don’t know what…. questioning your place in the grand scheme of things with the eternal reminder that you are not the master of your own house.