Georgy, Narcissism and Community in the Post-Communist Bloc

"I want my relationships to be sharp." Georgy is a psychoanalyst. He is a powerful man. His words come out sparsely, but when they do, they stick. As if this whole story really is connected, when I arrive there is a reunion of two groups of fasters Jora (as he is affectionately called) has taken out on the land since he got back to the Ukraine after the Death Valley experiment, and one of these was not only fasters, but their families came with them. He says it was like a village, almost thirty people in camp together, and then sending out their fathers and sons and wives and the rest staying, tending the fires, making food together. Perhaps there is space, room for our families in this work, indeed for all families. And what if it is even more potent, more powerful, that the families are there? That there is a community there to receive the fasters, and that while they are out, there is a community supporting each other in base camp?

How simple, how original. I don't know what it means. But it happened. And it worked. And all were touched by it--every member of the family had a new unique experience, and each member of the family participated in the story that came back from the mountain. How can these stories remain only personal, when there is a community there to send them off and to receive them, and not become something more?

It seems like Georgy answered the Uwe and Rebekka directly. You make room for and honor the family by doing just that, include them, and see what alchemy is there hen the many small circles of family join together once again around the camp fire.

The State of Learning and Bumble-Bees

Thoughts after an interview with Lonnie Gould of Suggestopedia at Psycho therapeutic Conference in Kiev:

Our current education system is based on the French mechanical model.
But...
Nature functions at 7-10 kHz. Productive human mode is 22-28 kHz, but receptive Alpha wave state is 10-12 kHz, so to learn we must be relaxed—in state of nature-to allow more information in. The mind can focus on multiple levels—birdsong, highly complex, non-random. So when we are "just sitting in nature" we are actually learning—processing information. To learn we must be at rest. Learning is not about being productive, it is about being receptive!

Much like the state one enters into in the wilderness.

Lonnie says that our first memory becomes a blueprint for what sensations we seek in life. I remember my wonder and fear at a huge buzzing bumble bee in the kitchen. It was the first moment I remember discovering that I was I and there were other things that were not me-- that were separate, an alien reality, both exotic and frightening.

I wonder...

How are we constantly reliving our first memories?
How am I constantly reliving the bee- that excitement and fear of something not me? And from another world? Because the first memory is the first separation from wholeness—the differentiation of instinct, of pure reaction and thought—a moment of decision? A moment of popping above the surface of pure experience—realizing self through other? Through contradiction—a pleasure and a pain—or a contradiction of experience, or a sense of time—of self above something?

What does it mean to be receptive, what does it mean to re-member? To create a memory, must we stand outside of the flow of time?