Reached for: Zen (I)
“I can explain exactly what happened. Ask me how I feel about it and there's nothing there.”
Experience is routed through analysis first and arrives, if at all, as a conclusion with no weather in it. The habit was trained in a house where feeling was punished or plainly unsafe to display, so comprehension became the approved substitute for having a reaction. What it asks for is one sentence spoken before it has been understood.
Oedipus at the crossroads, who answered the riddle nobody else could and knew nothing whatever about his own life. The form implies a task of asking a question that cleverness cannot close.
- Essence
- The Withheld Fire
- Rule
- Having a reaction was the unsafe thing
- Substance / Activity
- Doctrine, philosophy, systems of understanding
- Archetype
- Oedipus
- Emotional theme
- Feeling held at a distance
- Behavioural pattern
- Intellectual command used to pre-empt emotional experience
- Family dynamic
- A household where emotion was suppressed, or where suppressing it was the requirement
- Core wound
- Having a reaction was the unsafe thing
- Exit
- Speaking from an unprocessed state, once
What is the "Reached for: Zen (I)" pattern?
Experience is routed through analysis first and arrives, if at all, as a conclusion with no weather in it. The habit was trained in a house where feeling was punished or plainly unsafe to display, so comprehension became the approved substitute for having a reaction. What it asks for is one sentence spoken before it has been understood.
What does "Reached for: Zen (I)" sound like when it shows up?
I can explain exactly what happened. Ask me how I feel about it and there's nothing there.
What is the archetypal form of "Reached for: Zen (I)"?
Oedipus at the crossroads, who answered the riddle nobody else could and knew nothing whatever about his own life. The form implies a task of asking a question that cleverness cannot close.
This is a pattern. Not a verdict.
It appears in many lives.