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Hi Olivia,

I imagine you already know lots about this subject, but your question inspired me, who does not, to explore the question of how could psalms be like a river, as issue that might already be obvious to you, I don’t know. I wondered if it might be found in (or so I read somewhere) how so many psalms open with a painful problem which moves through to a fulfilling resolution. I find this theory inspiring because it is a wonder I have discovered and enacted in my own life and as a therapist and meditation teacher helped others to as well. It occurred to me to test this theory with the psalm Jesus quotes the opening line of on the cross.

Not being a Biblical scholar, I turned to Google and found myself on its prophet, Wikipedia, which provided the King James version, which did seem to bear out this inspiring theory. How the psalm starts with that despairing cry which flows along transforming into expressions of wonder, gratitude and praise. Starting with:

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
He trusted on the LORD[b] that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.”

But then enacts a process that flows into this resolution:

“For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.
The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.
For the kingdom is the LORD’s: and he is the governor among the nations.
All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.
A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the LORD for a generation.
They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.”

A little wrinkle in “my” theory emerged when I consulted Neil Douglas-Klotz’s translations from the language Jesus and his followers spoke, Aramaic. Douglas-Klotz’s work has long inspired me.

““And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34, KJV)

“El el lamana shbwaqtuni (Aramaic of what Jesus says).” (Douglas-Klotz, 2022, p. 100)

Douglas-Klotz translates the Aramaic as: “… O Alaha, what a wonder–this is the purpose for which I was spared and released!” (Ibid, p. 101)

Reading this line fills me with awe! It is what Gendlin refers to as “an instance of itself”; it enacts itself in us! So this psalm seems to start in its first line by vividly announcing the fulfillment of the whole process it is going to enact and then enacts a process of moving from a despairing, frozen sense of abandonment into a river that flows, transforming into relief, gratitude and wonder.

Can one find that pattern in other psalms? Starting the resolution in an inspiring way and then evoking in us a painful problem that flows in a transformative way into release and fulfilling resolution?

Reference
Douglas-Klotz, Neil. 2022. Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus: The Hidden Teachings on Life and Death (p. 100). Hampton Roads Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Psalm 22, Wikipedia, found on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalm_22#:~:text=Psalm%20of%20David.-,My%20God%2C%20my%20God%2C%20why%20hast%20thou%20forsaken%20me%3F,inhabitest%20the%20praises%20of%20Israel.

Benjamin, so happy for you in the connections and camaraderie you are discovering!

I’m looking forward to the conference, including your presentation, Andrew, and so many others. I thoroughly loved reading both of McGilchrist’s books. It amazes me seeing so many threads I have been following coming together in a conference!

What a great conversation! And I love that poem, Kathleen, and look forward to sharing it in other contexts such as with fellow practitioners and therapy clients.

Eric, I love the warmth, fun and creative empathy in what you have shared. I imagine you had fun creating it. Thank you so much, it was inspiring.

Lovely summarizing quotation, Tom, experience as our participation in reality.

What a lovely conversation, Kathleeen and Charlie, I am delighting in discovering that reading it, I am already participating in it.

I find myself savouring the twin themes of mortality and (surprising me) immortality implicit here.

Reflecting on how occasions influence and perish into each other evokes in me (and perhaps you as well?) fear of perishing into the nothingness you are referencing. Coming alive to the felt sense of this, I feel compassion for my anxiety and for you too if you are feeling or have felt this anxiety. Carrying this forward, wonder arises appreciating (experiencing, valuing, getting a sense of) how, as Eugene Gendlin pointed out, we are born together into situations out of interaction first. How fulfilling richly experiencing coming into being into a situation together is, how fulfilling experiencing the felt sense’s always more and being changed by this is. Becoming through transformation is always more than I was hoping for.

I asked myself just now, is this what I mean by an intimation of immortality, this sense of fulfillment in transformative becoming? I’m realizing it was what I meant, but exploring it freshly now, my wonder and gratitude is about participating in the always more of sacred creativity. This hope for immortality does not know how to let go into becoming, wants to be a thing forever (lol!). Recognizing this, my hope for immortality has decided it would be more fun to come out and play, and has released into the fun.

Reflecting on this, I am reminded of four deeply interrelated processes Gotama shared with his ascetic companions, when he was trying to describe the path he had discovered. (I am indebted to Stephen Batchelor for highlighting these “four tasks” which apparently predate the later interpolation of the four noble truths in that scripture).

Such is suffering, it can be known, it has been known.
Such is the arising, it can let go, it has let go.
Such is the cessation, it can be experienced, it has been experienced.
Such is the path, it can be walked, it has been walked.

My sense of these is how to live any situation, a way of transformative becoming. I want to add that it is not that there is always suffering. Gotama said that both suffering and happiness arise contingently, and that liberation is freedom from craving (grasping, aversion, or delusion).

Thank you so much, Tony, for resonating with and responding to me.

Hi Charlie,

What an interesting topic! I too was intrigued by Whitehead’s use of the word “experience” and looked up its etymology. According to Wikitionary:

From Middle English experience, from Old French, from Latin experientia (“a trial, proof, experiment, experimental knowledge, experience”), from experiens, present participle of experiri (“to try, put to the test, undertake, undergo”), from ex (“out”) + peritus (“experienced, expert”), past participle of *periri (“to go through”); see expert and peril. Displaced native Old English āfandung (“experience”) and āfandian (“to experience”).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/experience#:~:text=(countable)%20A%20collection%20of%20events,Trial%3B%20a%20test%20or%20experiment.

I love that: “to try, put to the test, undertake… to go through”. It helps me imagine how “experience” — or “experiencing” might imaginatively apply to actual occasions.

I also love the move Dilthe made in using it as a gerund, “experiencing”, something Eugene Gendlin carried forward in fruitful ways. What is referred to is our embodied implicitly felt participation as fluid, creative body-environment processes. Gendlin and his colleagues developed the Experiencing Scale which is highly correlated with effective therapy outcomes. High levels of experiencing (what I refer to as “presencing” a word I got from Iain McGilchrist) involve coming alive to the implicit felt sense of our experiencing, pregnant with implicit meaning, inclinations and values, and finding words, imagery or gestures that explicate the always more of what they are implying, creating ripe conditions for felt shift transformations that throw us into deeper, more coherent, empowered life engagement. My sense is that “experiencing” rather than the more abstract “experience” is a better launch pad for imagining the being and becoming of actual occasions.

Warm regards,

Bill

Hi Charlie,

What an interesting topic! I too was intrigued by Whitehead’s use of the word “experience” and looked up its etymology. According to Wikitionary:

From Middle English experience, from Old French, from Latin experientia (“a trial, proof, experiment, experimental knowledge, experience”), from experiens, present participle of experiri (“to try, put to the test, undertake, undergo”), from ex (“out”) + peritus (“experienced, expert”), past participle of *periri (“to go through”); see expert and peril. Displaced native Old English āfandung (“experience”) and āfandian (“to experience”).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/experience#:~:text=(countable)%20A%20collection%20of%20events,Trial%3B%20a%20test%20or%20experiment.

I love that: “to try, put to the test, undertake… to go through”. It helps me imagine how “experience” — or “experiencing” might imaginatively apply to actual occasions.

I also love the move Dilthe made in using it as a gerund, “experiencing”, something Eugene Gendlin carried forward in fruitful ways. What is referred to is our embodied implicitly felt participation as fluid, creative body-environment processes. Gendlin and his colleagues developed the Experiencing Scale which is highly correlated with effective therapy outcomes. High levels of experiencing (what I refer to as “presencing” a word I got from Iain McGilchrist) involve coming alive to the implicit felt sense of our experiencing, pregnant with implicit meaning, inclinations and values, and finding words, imagery or gestures that explicate the always more of what they are implying, creating ripe conditions for felt shift transformations that throw us into deeper, more coherent, empowered life engagement. My sense is that “experiencing” rather than the more abstract “experience” is a better launch pad for imagining the being and becoming of actual occasions.

Warm regards,

Bill

Thank you so much, Dr. Davis!

Hi Thom,

Re (2), yes, for me too, it was a lovely epiphany opening experiencing all the way down. Mind you “experiencing” rather than “consciousness” is a very familiar and favourite word for me, mainly from Eugene Gendlin and historically Dilthey, pointing to experiencing as a phenomenological, fluid process rather than an abstract category, and especially high levels of experiencing, such as Gendlin’s experiential focusing. I can see that Whitehead is using the more abstract word “experience”, but it seems to me “experiencing” could also be used for what he is pointing to. It is like a whole range of new interrelating to/with the world opened, and what fun to feel/imagine into the world this way, a myriad pregnant interrelated strands of experiencing droplets that are singing us and the whole world into becoming and being. It feels to me like these levels of dying/rebirthing/immortality are having fun discovering ways of participating creatively together, birthing us and our world. Coming alive to participating in everything interaffecting everything, something that is familiar for me that emerges in meditation and sharing meditation experience with others, walked through a now open door into my everyday life.

Warm regards,

Bill

Hi Olivia,

I love your highlighting the importance of relationality and interwoveness for Whitehead including the fundamental influence of his wife. And your contrasting this with traditional Christianity and orthodox science, philosophy and their exemplification now in late stage capitalism. I love too sharing what made you laugh, rotten eggs and oranges as indications of vigour makes me laugh too and appreciate Whiteheand’s good humour and sense of humour.

Warm regards,

Bill

Chris, Your point reminds me of the difference between the way classical Buddhist Theravada vipassana is set up to attend to instances of time observing for example globally unpleasant sensations in the belly understood as the fundamental micro-moments of consciousness arising and, as Evan Thompson describes in his book Why I am Not a Buddhist, structuring experience so that there are only disconnected moments affording insights into not-self, constant change, and suffering. Contrast that with Daniel Stern’s view of how the present moment is 1-10 seconds long, the length of a musical phrase or a phrase in a sentence, and working memory chunks it together so we can follow a melody or a sentences and paragraphs. Understood that way, mindfulness follows waves forming feelings and other interrelated processes, and it is helpful to reflect on how this emerged and where it is inclined to go. Reminds me of Eugene Gendlin’s view of time as the unfolding of our interrelated living processes. Highlights for me how meditation can be a vehicle for creative philosophical and methodological exploration, your understanding transforming as you transform, rather than trying to comply to a predetermined method.

Bruce, I can’t vouch that is is not a fake Buddha quote, but I once heard a Buddhist teacher claim that Gotama said something like, a third of the people like me, a third are indifferent, and a third dislike me. Compared to that, sounds like you were batting pretty well.

Tony, could you say a bit more about the developmental levels in high school students that would have difficulty with these concepts and which could understand it? On the face of it, it would make sense to me that high school kids who are able to understand time as a creative process probably have more experience with creative engagements affording the kind of epiphanies and transformations that would have already manifested in their life in developing more complex ways of understanding and experiencing self, others and world. Are you thinking in more cognitive developmental terms or do you see this as deeply interrelated cognitive, feeling and motor capacities?

Warm regards,

Bill

Hi Douglas,

Here’s a passage where Segall reflects on Schelling, Hegel and Whitehead:

“At this point, readers may wonder if Whitehead’s cosmology rests on a personal whim. Is metaphysical knowledge even possible? Can flawed, finite individual human beings really grasp the infinite in thought? Who dares try to utter the ultimate? Schelling was among the first philosophers to mark the irresolvable tension between systematic necessity and personal freedom. In his 1801 essay “Presentation of My System of Philosophy,”407 he appears to grandiosely identify a product of his individual consciousness with the universal system of reality. There is something to such identification, of course (atman is Brahman, etc.); but such an inflated view of one’s own philosophy can easily balloon into the sort of narcissistic inflation famously lampooned by James.408 In his more mature works, Schelling (while critiquing his friend Hegel) becomes a good deal more skeptical of the possibility of individually attaining the Absolute once and for all.

“Whitehead is no less immodest than Schelling or Hegel in his speculative wagers, though he would insist that we never lose the ability to laugh even at our own most serious ideas about God, the universe, and ultimate reality. Whitehead’s intention was not to offer us his own idiosyncratic artistic rendering or mystical vision of reality. Rather, he strove to articulate the most generic, universal, and common features of our shared experience, doing so with as much logical rigor and scientific adequacy as he can muster. He attempted to reveal the structure and dynamics of reality through the medium of a strange, invented language that he admitted is almost entirely ill-fitted to the task. Flawed and clumsy as it is, he hoped the lexicon of his open system traced the branches of the world-tree we call reality well enough to guide us at least a few steps forward along the philosophic path toward its roots. He was not deluded enough to believe that his precise categories and definitions, definitions, if found useful, would remain unchanged as they are carried forward and applied by others.”

Segall, Matthew. Physics of the World-Soul: Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology (pp. 147-148). SacraSage Press. Kindle Edition.

Warm regards,

Bill