The levels from which 'thought' emerge cannot be discerned directly.
Some events happen that are extraordinary but this is not evident when they happen. They are intended for use in the future, but this is evident only when the event is 'used'. This one event was a very important event, it was the first of it's kind. Ordinary daily events do not often cause confusion in the mind or an extraordinary body response the way this one did.
It happened one night in 1982 as best I can date it. I'd gone to a square dance lesson at the Hard 'n Easy Club, alone because my husband and I had separated. It was my habit to have a book with me so that I could appear to occupy myself during breaks. That's because I felt cold, painfully cold, isolated and utterly remote from everyone. The book was a necessity not only because I didn't have to talk to anyone, but I also felt a need to read. That night I had an old fictional book, The Weaver of Dreams by Myrtle Reed with me.
How I acquired the book is part of the event: A few weeks prior to this incident, I had passed a used book store that was not yet open for business. The door was open so I paused to ask the owner who was working among stacks and piles of book when the store was going to open. We exchanged a few pleasantries then I noticed just at eye level a heaven blue colored spine of a book, the title in gold letters. I asked if I could see it, then after riffling through it, seeing the extra-ordinarily unusual front of the book, the date it was published, 1911, I asked if I could buy it. It was the prettiest book I 'd ever seen. However if it had not been at eye level, would it have come to my attention? The Weaver Of Dreams It's an old fashioned love story between an intellectually well matched male and female until a frothy, adorably helpless blonde child/woman entered their lives.
I had read more than half of the book when this event happened. .
During the evening the wife of our club's square dance caller came over to a couple near me and asked if they wanted to join her and her husband at a local restaurant. She did not include me which made me feel somewhat slighted, even a tad bit outraged. She came to my home once a week for a sewing lesson and she seemed very friendly then. However I had noticed a difference in the way she was to me in public than in my home,. In public she seemed 'friendly' but not really friendly; also I danced with her frequently because neither of us had a partner. Her husband being the caller often left her with no opportunity to dance, and she loved to square dance. She always danced the male position and I danced the female. No woman that I knew could do the male position as well as she did and because she knew the moves so well, I really liked to be partnered by her. We had danced together most of the evening.
It is an important detail that I was trying to teach her to sew because she couldn't find clothing that fit her tall oddly shaped figure.
I knew where they usually went with friends after the dance so I went to the restaurant. As I passed the table where the caller, his wife and their 'regulars' were gathered, (all couples) she greeted me with a smile, apparently friendly and asked if I wanted to join them. I said "no, thanks" and started to walk away. Quite unexpectedly, I walked back to their table. Then I heard myself say some things that were very unlike me. What I said was not anything I'd thought about or intended to say. I can't remember exactly what I heard myself say, but I began with : "I know you won't let me join you.". I felt a strange sense of being forbidden although I'd been invited. That made no sense because she had just asked me to join them, with an apparently friendly smile.
It's obvious now that a sense of being 'forbidden' had somehow begun to be noticed but from a level that I could not relate to at that point in Time! I know that I said quite a lot that I'd not thought about saying and I do remember saying: "You will not let me be myself." for no reason that I could have understood that night. Then I took my book and went to another table. I felt no embarrassment and was not curious about my unexpected outburst.
I opened the book and began to read where I'd left off. After a few lines I noticed a feeling in my body as I read. The feeling grew as I read, so that I felt extremely 'strange, slightly dizzy', A sense of confusion was certainly present as one part of me 'saw myself being affected' by what I was reading!
This is what I read in the book that generated an unexplainable body response; it's a fragment of a conversation:
`"I don't believe you can live with other people and not absorb something from their ways of thinking and manner of expressing themselves. Moreover Aunt Cynthia has a very penetrating personality."
"All strong natures have." Chandler answered. "Some people are shaped wholly by their environment, as plastic material conforms to the receptacle in which it is placed. Others mould their environment to meet the demands of individuality."
"Can it be done?" asked Judith, thoughtfully.
"Always, if one is strong enough. From mysterious sources we draw to ourselves that which we require or expect. If a tree may lift into it's trunk the materials for sap and fibre, and if the moon may control the tides why should not thought which is the most wonderful and powerful of forces bring that which we require or expect into one's daily life, if not the absolute control of circumstances."
When I read the last sentence my head felt dizzy, I shivered and felt an overall 'strangeness' that I could not have named then because I had not ever named 'feelings'. I was unawares then of this very great lack in my self. "..why should not thought which is the most wonderful and powerful of forces bring that which we require or expect into one's daily life, if not the absolute control of circumstances." There was a distinct emphasis on certain words in that sentence.
When this event happened my life had already veered away from 'normal' for me. 15 years later (1997) I had learned to understand what the paragraph was intended to convey to me: it really described what was happening in front of me, in a situation I had noticed in a couple I knew. Later I became aware they were living a basically identical life to the life I was living at that point, a fact that became obvious over a period of years, not days, weeks or months. The 'condition' of living with someone and being affected by that person, who 'molded everything' so that it 'conformed to that which we require or expect' had to be discovered, bit of information by bit of information. The most amazing factor was when I recognized that the information seemed to come in an orderly flow that was disorienting, confusing!. That's because it came in a form I could not have suspected. The paragraph from Charles Williams is as precise a description as could be written. What I read in a book that I chanced to find somewhere, just happened to notice, described what was happening at the time in my life! I knew nothing then about such 'shared mindsets' between individuals in a family, or marriage, or on a larger scale, in the 'Big Picture'. The term 'double bind', being caught in an in-articulatable situation was not one I knew about when this incident happened. The experience of being 'caught' literally and physically at the 'twist point' in what I later named the 'moebius twist' began to become noticeable that night. A few incidents happened when I 'heard myself say' something I'd not thought about, but didn't have an curiosity about until several years later!
Double bind. Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing argued that the strange behavior and seemingly confused speech of people undergoing a psychotic episode were ultimately understandable as an attempt to communicate worries and concerns, often in situations where this was not possible or not permitted. Laing stressed the role of society, and particularly the family, in the development of madness. He argued that individuals can often be put in impossible situations, where they are unable to conform to the conflicting expectations of their peers, leading to a 'lose-lose situation' and immense mental distress for the individuals concerned. In 1956, Palo Alto, Gregory Bateson and his colleagues Donald Jackson, Jay Haley and John H. Weakland [9] articulated a related theory of schizophrenia as stemming from double bind situations. Madness was therefore an expression of this distress, and should be valued as a cathartic and trans-formative experience. The double bind refers to a communication paradox described first in families with a schizophrenic member. Full double bind requires several conditions to be met: a) The victim of double bind receives contradictory injunctions or emotional messages on different levels of communication (for example, love is expressed by words and hate or detachment by nonverbal behavior; or a child is encouraged to speak freely, but criticized or silenced whenever he or she actually does so). b) No meta-communication is possible; for example, asking which of the two messages is valid or describing the communication as making no sense c) The victim cannot leave the communication field d) Failing to fulfill the contradictory injunctions is punished, e.g. by withdrawal of love. The double bind was originally presented (probably mainly under the influence of Bateson's psychiatric co-workers) as an explanation of part of the etiology of schizophrenia; today it is more important as an example of Bateson's approach to the complexities of communication.
The term 'meta-communication' is not easy to relate to if you as a person have not experienced it, and I had not, although it was beginning to occur. It was an 'effect' that changed what I heard in every day situations, and it affected my body/mind; I felt 'dizzy'. The 'meta-communication' began when the woman's husband, the square dance caller in my dream, made casual off hand remarks to the group, and the content of what he said was directed to me personally it seemed, and the content related directly to thought that I'd never said anything about to anyone. This 'effect' did not happen except through this one man, at least not until 1984. Then I had an episode in which this 'effect' occurred when my husband said something one day, about not being able to stop whistling a jingle he'd said kept running through his mind. I understood instantly that the reason the jingle was plaguing him could be related to a terrible situation between us, we were in a terrible conflict then, about money. "What will you do with all the money you save?" was the jingle. I didn't say aloud or mention that this jingle was 'meaningful' to us, the understanding was in my mind, in a depth location I believe, visible but not 'speakable'.
The real surprise was recognizing a kind of 'play' was building up where everyone but me knew the script! I had to learn from those individuals what my part in the drama was! It all had to do with a 'secret about the insane', which had been brought to my attention in advance, over decades really, before the summer of 1984.
The paragraph from The Weaver of Dreams is on page 175 and that number is not an insignificant detail either. It's a number that has emerged over a period of years to mark my personal pathway through life in the way road signs mark an actual highway.
8888888888888888888888888888
By the time this incident happened, I had begun to become fascinated by a certain 'oddness' in the relationship of one particular couple: the man (he was the man in the Dream I'd had in 1981) to whom I felt a growing need to get to know, to talk to. My relationship to him emerged from some things his wife said about him as we sat sewing although at that point it was just beginning to emerge. She sometimes made remarks about her husband while I sewed and she watched, and I realize now that I felt a sense of curiosity about why I could not seem to see the man she described. One night she'd remarked as he walked away: "I cannot think of one good thing about that man.". I'd been shocked because he seemed to be extra-ordinarily attentive and even very kind to her.
It was beginning to bother me that I felt a 'tug of attraction' towards the man. I felt an unexplainable desire to talk to him, to get to know him and because there was nothing other than curiosity behind my need, I couldn't understand the growth of such an attraction. (When I did understand this 'strange attractor' towards this man, or the unusual relationship I had with his wife, (which was that I began to 'take care' of her in a way that puzzled me). it was 7 event filled years later, in 1987. A missing link gave me information that linked back to what I'd read in The Weaver Of Dreams.
Which in turn linked up with a book I'd read when I was a child about Luther Burbank's hybridizing of the field daisy. A couple as 'bonded together' as this couple was may seem to be unhealthy, but in a Big Picture scenario, that may not be true. It's a bond that formed a united mind, and this was a kind of 'hybridizing', that formed a new mindset. Memories of the book I'd read about 'hybridizing' when I was in grade school plagued me for no reason I could understand shortly after 1984. way Luther Burbank. I remember clipping a newspaper article about the effect known as the Stockholm Syndrome after it was recognized to explain how Patty Hearst changed from being a captive to a member of the group that had taken her.
I had gotten a job at Boeing by the time I could understand the 'missing link' that explained my fascination with the man and the unusual effect the woman had on me. One day in a casual conversation a co-worker made a remark that formed a link between this couple, between something that had happened in my mind in the 1984 event, then also to my past, my real world life: This co-worker was someone I felt a deep compatibility towards instantly. We could talk about things that surprised me, naturally and without embarrassment, which was not true of the man I wanted so much to get to know.
My co-worker was in his early 30's, about the age of my oldest son. I felt that he thought of me as a mother figure because his mother had died within the past year. He had talked to me quite openly about his marital relationship, how he felt about his wife and her apparent lack of willingness to be a partner in their marriage. Then one day he told me where he had lived, a town that I had heard the wife of the man towards whom I felt such curiosity about, that it was her home town. It was a town highly flavored with Dutch-ness. She had remarked one day that it was like living in a town that was more like a strict church than a town.
By the time my co-worker made that remark I'd had so many unusual events happen, as a result of my unexplainable 'strange attraction' to her husband that it revealed a startling, almost unbelievable situation: this couple were living at that point in time, a life situation that was identical to the situation in my home.
Except that gender roles were reversed, there had been an almost precise duplication of their private life in my own home. I had begun to hear certain offhand remarks the man made, to a room full of people in a quite different way than normal. When such events happened, I felt extremely unbalanced, literally. When it happened once, then again, and then somewhat frequently by the time 1984 approached I was walking on floor that was no longer stable.
By 1988 I had experienced continuously 'strange' events for more than 4 years. I had not been able to sleep normally at night since 1981, late in the year by then.
When I left the evening that I read the remark in the book: "I don't believe you can live with other people and not absorb something from their ways of thinking and manner of expressing themselves. Moreover Aunt Cynthia has a very penetrating personality."" I did not think about what I'd said nor did I realize that I'd done something quite unusual for me to do. I didn't think about the effect of what I'd read, everything just happened.
The real shock happened when I began to realize how much time had to pass --several years--before I began to realize that I had lost control of myself, and that was the point where it began. Although I heard myself say what I had said and remembered eventually those moments it was only because they were brought back into my mind after a period of years. Somehow I could wonder to myself only then, about what I had not given any thought toward when the event happened. It had not occurred to me how spontaneously I had spoken and how I had not understood any reason for what I'd said until the 'regenerated memory' caused me to think about them.
The significance emerged quite slowly, over a period of years, only a few less than a decade passed before I began to understand the 'spontaneous' experience of hearing myself, in occasional events. This kind of 'event' had begun to happen only in a relationship with this one woman and in a different form, her husband. In a different form, I had begun to hear her husband's casual remarks, it was usually a sort of 'filler' speech, while he talked to his square dance students. It began to seem that these offhand remarks, was said specifically to me and that in them he was telling me about what was going on in his home. Rather slowly, I began to notice common themes in every song he chose to use. He was extremely repetitious and I'd heard the same songs because he used less than 10 records for years without my noticing what I began to notice. One evening I noticed al of his records had a theme of being in a kind of prison or of being different than he seemed to be. "The way I am, don't fit my shackles..." The theme became evident to my silently observing eyes and ears, then one night he sang a new song and I liked it so much that I bought a copy for myself, Lord, I hope this day is good. I'm feeling lonely and misunderstood.. I became aware he had changed one line in the song, replacing it with "I wish I was single..." .
It was years later that I realized what was the reason for what I said that night. I had begun to feel 'mixed signals' in my body.
I felt in my body a contrast between how she was when we were in public and how she was in my home, so I had begun to experience 'mixed signals'. In private she was chatty and friendly but in public there was a difference that had begun to bother me. I was puzzled that she sat beside me, watching as I sewed, (intending she would venture on her own at home), chatting easily and in a confidential way, but she never initiated making one garment, or finishing anything we started. I had begun helping her learn to sew but she had never initiated anything except when we were together. Their club was one of 2 advanced and challenge level clubs in our area and they both had made it clear they wanted him to become nationally well known. Many members of their club wanted the club to grow and form a stable base for him to develop his calling talents, which to use were very, very good. Several people were more aware than I was that they didn't make their club accessible, they didn't seem to make newcomers welcome the way they would have done if they were committed to becoming well known. It did not occur to me that a square dance caller that makes it difficult to learn and who develops a reputation for being 'mean' to his own dancers is living out a double bind. I began to feel it in my body before I could name anything I felt then. I began (in my own limited way) to do things that ordinarily I would never have presumed to do to anyone...except one other person, the man I was married to. He is Dutch.
The condition of 'induced psychosis' or 'folie aux duex' is one that I knew nothing about when I read this 'electrified' snippet from the book.
It was more than 10 years later that I realized that when I read the words in the book, which was 80 years old by then, that it described to me what was going on in my life. There were people directly in front of me, whose relationship had certain puzzling qualities that everyone who knew then talked about among themselves, but never to the couple. The topic (at that point in Time) was so unspeakable, that I had actually begun to experience a terrible sense of what the word 'unspeakable' really is about. I could not say to either of them that for no reason I could understand I began to feel a terrible sense of grief about the man and a deep sense of pity for her. It was obvious to me they believed I had a gender based attraction to the man but I felt nothing other than a depth of sadness that twisted my body with grief. I began to weep tears that wrenched my body so that I began to talk about myself as a 'towel person'. Tears drenched my face for years, every day and I could not understand how my body produced such a quantity of tears. One day I read a term in a book, 'archetypal weeping' that somehow seemed personalized and 'referential', but by that point in Time so many other circumstances in my life were reaching near overwhelm that it's only now that I understand where the 'strange attraction' really had it's origin.
A kind of shared mind between them was somehow evident, but it became a group shared mind eventually, shared by people who did not suspect they were affected in a cult like way with this couple. We spent more time together, this couple for a period of about 7 years, more often that some people go to church. There were only a few loyal club members who didn't get angry at being treated mercilessly at times when we were in public. We were shamed because we could not dance to his calling, and also many potential club members were put off because his own dancers couldn't successfully manage to complete a tip without collapsing into chaos very frequently.
P. S. The young man that was my co-worker was found dead in his bed in 2000. He had been stabbed 47 times as the newspapers reported, and he was 47 years old. It was an apparent break in and robbery while his wife was out shopping. He worked the third shift so he was sleeping in the day time. Two years ago I attended as much of the trial as I could and his wife was convicted of his murder. It was a painful trial to witness, because it revealed how this woman had lived and dealt with a situation nearly identical to the one in my life except that they had quite a lot more money. She had never had a dishwasher and their house was always in a state of remodel which was certainly true in my own life. There were many 'clues' in the room that pointed towards her, most of which she would probably not have understood until she had the same kind of understanding of herself and her marital relationship that I have now. Her habits had revealed her.
This young man and his particular 'Dutch-ness' and the wife of the man that attracted me so with her particular kind of 'Dutch-ness' were brought together, not by any will of mine, or for any purpose that I knew about while things were happening, but there was something to be understood as quite purpose filled at work. This is not a comment about the Dutch, it's just an attempt to explain how some function of mind operated, and how by 'chance' my life aligned precisely with events in the exterior world so that I became aware that in 1984 we were all doing 'work' for an other level.
