The human being, in general, is subject to swings in one’s moods and to get hurt emotionally, this signifies the undeveloped level of the emotions. But there is a level above the level of mood swings and being emotionally hurt, it is rarer and usually it requires training and guldens, but with artists and creative people – they can reach temporarily this upper level, through the media of their creativity; being it a play, a novel, an essay, a painting, poetry and the like. In spiritual process this higher level is called: Peak experience, a term taken from Abraham H. Maslow – terminology. In Zen it is called: Little Kensho.
If in lower level of the emotions one is subject to be emotionally hurt (and then to become personally involved about it) then at the upper level – the person there possess self-consciousness, and there not only he is not subject to mood swings and to be emotionally hurt – but a reversal happens to being hurt emotionally, instead of becoming further anchored in the common level – a jump happens upwards, to the higher level.
Many artists and creative people say that if not for their creative process they would be in a very bad state, they also call their creative process – a therapeutic process, without which they will be lost.
In this level one is observing neutrally what happens to him emotionally, and then the hurt energy is going through a process of metamorphosis and becomes an energy of freedom and elevation, the emotions themselves are like a quiet lake, and the hurt energy is becoming in the level above to be a creative energy.
The turning of the emotions of hurt, insult, being discriminated, being humiliated and more into creative or spiritual energy is very similar to what the alchemists termed as: transforming lead into gold.
In a state of neutral observation the energies of being hurt, not only that they don’t terminate the person, but they pass through a process of Quantum Leap (and it could be said that for a person with self-consciousness the more painful is the hurt the higher it could leap…).
This ‘leap’ also exist in the book: “A second order change”, by Watzlawick weakland and fisch. A: First order change deals with the existing structure, doing more or less of something, and involving a restoration of balance. Second order change is creating a new way of seeing things completely. Second order change requires new learning and often begins through the informal system.
It is in the spirit of a famous quote of Friedrich Nietzsche: “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”
Here we come across one quiet radical explanation for this phenomenon: well, in emotional hurt there is a lot of power, more power than in good emotions, there is a saying: “The power of the bad to do bad is greater than the power of good to do good”. We would like to believe that the power of good in the world can correct and make good what the bad powers did, ‘bad people’ are usual more powerful then ‘good people’. It is easier to destroy then to build and construct, one can write a book for a long time, but you do not need a lot of power to tear the book to pieces. The good is being built slowly and softly the bad happens at once, powerful and destructive.
It is easier and quicker to corrupt and deteriorate then to grow and create.
What is being written about is of the possible sublimation of the energies of being hurt into creative higher energies. And then the power which was in the negative emotions transfer itself to charge and give power to the creative or spiritual – energies.
It is difficult to grasp that the effectiveness and strength of those high energies could be a result of sublimating negative energies that went through a process of reversal.
Power and strength are in the negative emotions, not in the positive ones. Relatively, the power of positive emotions is lower, for example the difference between a hug and a punch in the face; it is clear that in a box there is more power than in a hug, the same is between a bite and a kiss.
And here we come to what is more difficult to grasp; it is difficult, if not impossible, to create or reach a high spiritual level with positive energies. Only the sublimation of negative energies can supply the person a powerful creative or spiritual – energies.
Many creative people say that if it was not for their creative occupation they could have become criminals or mentally ill.
We generally believe that creative or spiritual capabilities come from above but rather from bellow, from low energies being transformed.
And how this transformation is being done? Well, by the existence of a noninvolved observer, this observer is the complete opposite to the identified person with his ups and downs.
To be an uninvolved observer is also the opposite from getting lost in what happens to oneself.
The quality of this transformation depends on the consciousness quality of the observer; a high quality consciousness is wide, deep and high, thus mastering the three dimensions of the possible consciousness: Width height and depth: what is the subtexts, the hidden meaning (depth), the spiritual aspect of what was said (height) and what is pushed away, out of the of the space of what is happening (width).
Without this three the consciousness of the, could be observer, is narrow, shallow and low. So, the sublimation of the energies is firstly depends on the existence of a noninvolved observer, and secondly on is the quality of his consciousness.
Quantum theory dealt a lot with the quality of the observer on a phenomenon, it is believed that his quality of consciousness can influence what it is observing.
The issue of the influence of the consciousness of the observer on an object got further development with Nobel Prize winner – the physicists: Eugene Wigner, he claimed that not every observer influences the same the phenomenon of which he is observing, and that phenonmenone of change in what is being observed depended on an observer with consciousness, he said that as long as the observer is a living creature with consciousness then there would be no change in what is being observed.
David Boehm, also a famous physicists, a leading figure in the development of the quantum theory, said that in the future we will have to include into physical equations human consciousness as one of the factors.
He further claimed that if there is no observer then the phenonmenone which is taking place will be in ‘superposition’ (be in to different states both at the same time), but when an observer which possess consciousness is looking at the measuring device, then the result will be definite.
To return to our subject; more about the observer; when the observer is being referred to it is meant a self-consciousness which is completely neutral.
The observer is a result of a person exchanging an inborn, automatic reaction with a conscious response. And the meaning is to change identification of one’s moods and hurt feelings with an uninvolved observation. If in identification one is getting lost in a particular emotions which takes control over him, then in self-consciousness one must develop an ability of separating himself from himself. To creat in addition the experienced self –a neutrally observing self, to look at what happens without a personal interest to be present.
There is in the neutral self-consciousness an ability to change the most painful feelings to change their nature and become creative or spiritual energies.
One who shade light upon this issue is the American philosopher and psychologist: William James in his: The varieties of religious experience and what is interesting in this book is that he shows how the most meaningful and mystical experiences happened precisely to people with what he called: a neurotic nature, it is mainly developed in the first lecture in the book: “Religion and neurology” there he wrote that people which a result of emotional hurt developed a personality disorders (the neurotics)- especially them were an excellent raw material for a consciousness changing religious experience.
A good analogy for this process of turning a neurosis to high religious experience – is fermentation, it is defined as: a process where there is a
chemical breakdown of a substance by bacteria, yeasts, or other microorganisms, typically involving effervescence and the giving off of heat.
(The process of fermentation involved in the making of beer, wine, and liquor, in which sugars are converted to ethyl alcohol.)
I we take wine, then in the beginning it is only grape juice (hurt emotions) it needs and agent, (in the case of wine it is a catalyst called: Zymase which causes the glucose to become ethanol), the fermenting agent (in the case of sublimating hurt emotions into a creative/spiritual power) – is the neutral observer, and the wine is high energies that went through a process of transformation.
The addition of the fermenting element causes fermentation and changes it’s nature.
In reality there are very few creative artists (for example) that possess only a neutral observer, and succeeded in turning their hurt emotions into full high creations (whether in oneself or in an art form), usually people who have got some genius (spiritual or creative) but has only partial observing consciousness, also experience emotional downfalls.
The more a person will activate self-consciousness on the account of emotional identification, so it is an indicator to the level of his emotional maturity, and to that he will crash down less and will experience creative or spiritual elevation.
If grape juice (as analogy to the raw state of one’s emotions) is left too long, without going through a process of fermentation, it will get rotten. But grape juice that went through a process of fermentation, not only that time does not effect it, but the more time passes by – the better is the wine.
The fermentation does not heal the hurt and painful emotions, it needs them in this raw state so the sublimation will take place.
Gabriel