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More than Experiential learning – psychological transformation

The main ways I have explored anything in my life is by doing it. Climbing mountains – living & breathing philosophy in my early20s, relationships, counterculture & politics, psychotherapy, Psychodrama and cyberspace!

This blog, since its to its origins in “Links Pages” is one of the vessels for my experiential learning, a fairy mild one. Psyber-L was another – a really intense mailing list, that for a while was public, until closed at the wishes of its members. The two DreamEvents were powerful spaces to learn in. Doing psychotherapy online professionally is another experience that has given me an understanding of the net.

All of these things I do, with an eye to meaning, purpose and their depth, I can’t help it. If there is a way to go deeper – I sink in! They are vessels for my psyche when it needs to rumble & explode.

My current experiential vessel Thousand Sketches began naively, but I have realised that is a zone for me just like a psychotherapy relationship, a Psychodrama group, or a love relationship. I have not understood till now that the power of the psyche is enabled in our creativity area. The project is the psyche wanting something with me. It sounds a bit grand – but it is probably a simple & every day thing, just that right now it is very alive for me & I need to make sense of it all. Occasionally I am afraid it will drive me nuts.

I am writing this as I am planning an “launch” in Christchurch on 3 November. That is part of this project, it is public. Being messed around by my psyche in public! Public in Christchurch, and in New Zealand as I take this to Trade Me

It feels “Trade Me” is very literally true. It seems very congruent that the project has an auction gallery. I have written here – and extensively about Hermes being the archetype of the Internet. He is also the God of trade. It all fits – he has got me!

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Myth myth?

CG Jung Page – The Ghost at the Back Door

Dolores Brien reviews Sophia Heller’s new work The Absence of Myth. Good review and in its own right a useful discussion about what myth is useful for & what is miss-use. Dolores perspective is the one I am close to

The individual too has the same need. The telling of one’s story is the desire to “place ourselves within a larger story,” not for grandiose reasons, nor even to find Meaning in doing that, but rather, to understand just what was and is going on in this life I am living at this particular moment in history. Despite the radical disruption of postmodernism, there remains, and I venture to guess will always remain, a desire for continuity. To be in touch with one’s past is to be in touch with the fullness of one’s humanity.

However there is some coming together with her antagonist, Heller, as she knocks some miss-use of myth to inflate ego.

Heller’s project paradoxically references ghosts coming in the back door. She is already mythic, or was that introduced by Dolores? Either way myth presents itself, unbidden. I have not read the book, but I can hear the music of that old movie “Ghostbusters”! We live in myths, language is based on it. Far from leading to a lack of consciousness about the here & now, a particular use of myth raises consciousness.

Experience can’t be deconstructed, it is understood in living through it.

~

The whole review is here in case it goes dead:
Continue reading “Myth myth?”

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Great podcasts – Friendship

BBC – Radio 4 In Our Time – Philosophy Archive

This is a treasure page. I have to be in the mood for this rather heavy stuff, but they are worth the effort. I have subbed to them and have a back log on my player. Unfortunately they are only streaming them there at the moment – Total Recorder would get them though. I particularly enjoyed the history of friendhip one today.

Friendship

It seems that with Imago we have a philosophy and a practice of love, built on all the traditions before it, and still those old traditions, even on friendhip, can amplify our notions of love.

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Another Sketcher – digital addict

The Digital Pencil

Some nice pictures & I like what MJM has to say about the way of working.

This is how I work

I’m completely addicted to digital drawing. I buy new watercolor paper and traditional paints and pristine sketchbooks at The Art Store, but they gather dust beside my desk. I feel less worthy somehow when I sketch using my computer. Ridiculous, I tell myself — it’s really just like choosing a mechanical pencil over a Berol 2B, or a Rapidograph over a quill pen. No digital god steers my fingers when I sit at my computer. I know that, but somehow I keep planning to get back to “real drawing” someday, where my mistakes aren’t permanently erased by a simple “Ctrl-Z” command.

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Joe Boyd on Kim Hill

Radio NZ – Saturday Morning with Kim Hill Podcast Feed:

Playing Favourites with Joe Boyd Legendary producer of key UK musicians during the 1960’s. This is a longer version of this interview than that broadcast and is without the music because of copyright issues. It includes the true story of Pete Seeger and the “axe incident” at the Newport Folk Festival, how Joe Boyd got into – and out of – scientology, and the story behind the song ‘Duelling Banjos’. (Sat, 19 Aug 2006 10:10:00 +1200)

Kim digs up these old boomers and I learn more about the era I grew up in than by being there. Great. He produced my then favourite band The Incredible String Band. I particularly like to hear the longer version of these interviews. By the same token – when I don’t like one I can skip. Pity the music is deleted – Request, please put up a list of the deleted songs on the show notes, one might have been by Nick Drake who I am now curious about.

The other thing that Kim Hill seems to be thriving on are scientists. Some very good ones on her show. For example: Brian Cox

The sad thing is that they don’t archive these shows. Criminal to have the asset, produced on public radio, hidden from future use. The chances are these links are dead by the time you read this.

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Assertive Outreach by Peter Ryan and Steve Morgan

Amazon

Assertive Outreach: A Strengths Approach to Policy and Practice by Peter Ryan and Steve Morgan

 A Strengths Approach to Policy and Practice

This book gives a comprehensive, evidence-based account of assertive outreach from a strengths perspective. It emphasizes developing a collaborative approach to working with the service user, which stresses the achievement of the service users own aspirations, and building upon the service users own strengths and resources. The book provides a comprehensive, authoritative approach to the subject, that combines an overview of the policy and practice issues. It makes use of extensive case study material to illustrate individual and team circumstances.

My last post pointed to the Author, Steve Morgan’s website.  The blurb above sounds excellent, and it seems there is a strong focus on practice-based evidence and I am now more curious about the “strenghts” approach which I have seen introduced top down with not much success.

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